Skip to main content

Powerful weapons of speech- think about ethics and design first

Last week we interviewed Illah Reza Nourbakhsh, Professor of Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. We talked a lot about how robots will affect the future. However, there was a segment of the interview that really touched on the role of the teacher and technology in the classroom.

Nourbakhsh explains the new challenges teachers face when students are working with technology in the classroom:

…educators not only need to give students the power to invent, because they need to be creators, but they need to teach them what it means to think about the process of invention, to think about the ethics of society and that’s not a lesson that we’ve ever been busy teaching people in say middle school or high school before.

When asked about teachers who feel they don’t know enough about technology, he explains:

…teachers are decades older than their students, or at least a decade older,  they know about society, they know about ethics, they know about rhetoric. And we can create resources that make it ever easier for them to teach with that. But basically we’re giving people much more powerful weapons of speech. And if we do that, we have to also teach them how to use that speech. If we decouple those in the wrong way, it’s a disaster. Then we have this zoo and our quality of life goes to heck.

You can find the entire show at LabOutLoud.com, but I clipped out the segment that speaks to technology integration and share it below.

[download clip]

P.S. In this clip, co-host Brian Bartel coins the phrase “edtech smog” to describe the instances where technology pollutes our mission as educators. I’m putting Voki and Animoto at the top of my list as #EdtechSmog.

Finding the right font with flipping typical

I’ve been looking at a lot of fonts lately. Like many others, I’m not a fan of the Comic Sans font. To me, it just looks sloppy. Since Comic Sans comes closer than other fonts to matching the look of handwriting, we see it used A LOT in elementary schools. Yet, I think there are even better choices.

While Handwriting Without Tears is a company popular for it’s handwriting teaching materials, they do not sell their font. At their website, they recommend using Century Gothic as a substitute. The lower case “a” is usually the first character I look at. There are only a handful of fonts that display this letter similar to the shape that is taught to kids. As you can see below, Comic Sans follows the shape in spirit but Century Gothic does a much better job.

Comparing fonts
Comparing fonts

If you want to search your computer for other font options, then visit the website flipping typical. It offers a perfect way to view all the fonts installed on your computer. Make sure to click “load more” at the bottom of the page to see all your options.

flippingtypical

 

KG Primary Dots is another font I found online that is available for free if your use is non-commercial. It offers a dotted font for tracing and lined fonts for extra guidance.

Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m a bit of a font nerd. Check out the great documentary titled Helvetica (it’s on Netflix) and you will be too.