School Library Connection Archive
Information Literacy

Welcome!

Jacquelyn Whiting
Isn't it telling that we have adopted the word "viral" to describe the spread of media posts? It connotes infection, danger, and a need for inoculation while at the same time, many of us (including me on this site) hope that the content we disseminate will do just that—spread exponentially. The ongoing conversations that will take place on this page are intended to strengthen our information savvy and our capacities for nurturing information literacy in the members of our learning communities. I invite you to join the conversations and engage with me and each other to these ends.

Jacquelyn Whiting
Instructional Coach and Technology Integrator, Connecticut

Videos Don't Lie, Right?

by Jacquelyn Whiting

Sometimes it feels eerie to me that we live in an era where so much of what was once science fiction is now reality. The 1999 Disney Channel movie Smart House is the story of a fully-automated dream house that becomes an overbearing, angry, and jealous presence in the lives of the family that inhabit it.

When I talk with my really techy friends about machine learning, the substance of the conversation quickly goes over my head. Then, I found How to Speak Machine: Computational Thinking for the Rest of Us by John Maeda and things became more clear. Woven through examples of the inner working of machines are pearls of wisdom about what it means to be human and the good, bad, and the ugly of our relationships with machines. One of those passages gave rise to the post you are reading right now: "The actual machinery of computing is complicated yet understandable; the social impact of this complicated machinery becomes complex when it involves as many humans as it does today."  Read More >>