Thursday, May 21, 2020 - the topic was distance learning, a phenomenon that has suddenly captivated the world of school and education. Certainly, under the best of circumstances, with the most clever of professionals and parents, distance learning is an ideal short-term solution for students attempting to learn during this global mess. With second and third waves of coronavirus looming for later this year and 2021, along with the very large number of students for whom distance learning is a poor or otherwise unacceptable solution, there are big questions to be asked about how we learn, what we learn and why we learn.

 

More about this week's guests:

 

Dr. Monica Goyette became the Superintendent of Schools for the Mat-Su Borough School District in April, 2017. An Alaska educator since 1998, she holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Social Sciences, a Masters of Education in Guidance and Counseling, a Masters of Education in Educational Leadership, and a Doctorate of Education in Educational Leadership/Curriculum & Instruction. Prior to becoming the Superintendent, Dr. Goyette worked as a counselor, teacher, school principal, executive director, and assistant superintendent of instruction. Dr. Goyette’s teaching and educational leadership experiences have shaped her agenda, which has an unwavering focus on student achievement and success. She looks forward to making learning meaningful and lasting for students; using capital assets resourcefully and wisely; and meeting the needs of students, parents, and employees.

 

Jessica Taylor Piotrowski, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). She is the Director of the Center for Research on Children, Adolescents, and the Media (CcaM), the Program Group Leader for Youth & Media Entertainment at ASCoR, and recently completed a 4-year term as the Chair of Children, Adolescents, and the Media division of the International Communication Association – the largest academic division of children and media scholars worldwide. An award-winning scholar, Dr. Piotrowski’s research investigates how youth process and comprehend media content, with specific attention to the potential benefits of media. She is particularly focused on understanding how young users process media content (cognitively, affectively, and physiologically) and the role of individual differences (dispositional, developmental, and social) in the selection and processing of media content. In recent years, she has begun to dive deeply into the topic of digital literacy in childhood and adolescence. Dr. Piotrowski frequently speaks at academic and trade conferences on the role of media in the lives of young people today. Moreover, with a strong belief in forging the divide between academic scholarship and societal practice, Dr. Piotrowski often shares her work in higher education classrooms, at public policy organizations, at children’s media organizations, and with childcare providers both within the Netherlands and worldwide. She is the co-author of the book Plugged In: How Media Attract and Affect Youth (Yale University Press, 2017), and regularly publishes in communication, psychology, and education journals.

 

Dr. David Weinberger: In books, articles, posts, classes, and talks, David Weinberger, Ph.D. explores the effect of the technology on ideas. He is a senior researcher at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society and was co-director of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, and a journalism fellow at Harvard's Shorenstein Center. Dr. Weinberger has been a marketing VP and adviser to high tech companies, an adviser to presidential campaigns, and a Franklin Fellow at the U.S. State Department. In four books he has explored the effect of the Internet on knowledge, on how we organize our ideas, on business, and on the core concepts by which we think about our world. His new book, Everyday Chaos: Technology, Complexity, and How We're Thriving in a New World of Possibility (Harvard Business Review Press) argues that AI and the Internet are transforming our understanding of how things happen, enabling us to acknowledge the complexity and unknowability of our world. Dr. Weinberger has a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Toronto and lives in the Boston area.