Fake videos of real people — and how to spot them

Supasorn Suwajanakorn’s TED Talk looks at how technology is making it easier to create fake videos of real people. If you don’t have time to watch the whole video, fast forward to the 4:10 mark and see a glimpse of what this could look like.  Suwajanakorn, a Google engineer, also described the work he is doing to create a counter-measure to allow people to see if a video is authentic. He is working on a “reality defender” plug-in that could be installed on websites to spot fake videos.

Prioritizing Teacher Self-Care – Edutopia

This post on Edutopia looks at an elementary school in Nashville where teachers have set up a system to ensure that their colleagues have a social-emotional support network in place when they need to step away from the classroom for a moment. One of the teachers summed it up as follows:

“You sometimes just need to ask for help, and it’s okay, and it’s really accepted here, and it’s promoted. No one’s alone, we’re a ship and we run together, and there’s someone always that has your back.”

Technology as a Distraction – Dean Shareski

This is an important read from Dean Shareski about the dilemma that we are dealing with whether we are an educator or a parent. The bottom line is that this issue is not only impacting students, but it is also having a negative impact on many adults.  He sums up the dilemma facing our students as follows:

“…consider the average teen trying to sleep at night. Their choice is a world of information, entertainment and connection vs the back of their eyelids or time thinking quietly. That’s not a fair choice. That’s a choice many people struggle with including myself.”

As we talk more and more about Social Emotional Learning and mindfulness in our schools, Dean encourages adults to help teenagers answer the following questions:

• “How to be alone?”
• “What does it mean to be disconnected?”
• “How can we better appreciate the simple joys of life?”
• “How do we develop habits of mind and body when the dopamine effects of these devices are so compelling?”
• “What does contentment look like?”