Jess Mitchell - #OpenEd18 Keynote

okay um I'd like to begin by acknowledging the land on which we gather it's the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe and hardness Aune people today I'd like to talk to you about the ethical edges whose being left behind slipping through the cracks why how do we reconcile that and what is doing enough I'm an American I was struck by the practice of the acknowledgment of the traditional territory at the beginning of each meeting that happens in Canada I live in Canada now it surprised me and it surprised me how it made me feel I felt more connected to the land in a deeper way tuned into indigenous history on the land and acknowledgement of that matters maybe even more so and more accurately than the Thanksgivings we celebrate I'm gonna do things a little bit differently today stick with me if at first it doesn't make sense and let it wash over you and pay attention what sticks these are barnacles so I might say something that you think he'll yes that's a barnacle I might say something that upsets you that's also a burn achill so let it wash over you I think remember those barnacles that stick with you because I'm terrified of awkward silences so if we have a chat or we have time to chat please tell me what your bone wrinkles are I want to tell you some stories today and their stories from my perspective and some from my life I want to talk a little I'm gonna talk a lot about black culture and indigenous culture in this talk I still question whether I'm the one to tell those stories and I'm uncomfortable with telling those stories and I think that's where we should be at the uncomfortable place we should talk about the discomfort I'm telling them from my perspective and my experience of them and I don't mean for you to compare the stories again put them wash over you so uneasy is where I'd like us to be there are a lot of elephants in this room our world is ripe with inequalities discrimination and systemic biases the so called playing field is not level all men and women are not created equal our unalienable rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness remain in reach of only some so we have me - black lives matter occupy and our right to education is not universally enjoyed some things aren't changing we're still very much human some of us are scared to say things out loud some of us have powers some of us still don't have power so how does inclusion happen in that context where do we see it I argue that we see it in each of us in our tall intolerance for failure so what's your tolerance for failure when I mean by this is at what point do you with eyes wide open knowingly draw the line and say to yourself this is the best I can do that's enough this is as much as I can do who can we tolerate failing we don't ask that question very often we often talk about who we can help I want us to ask ourselves who are we comfortable leave you behind the thing is we all do this we all draw lines we all make a determination of what level of failure we're OK with we all do this but we don't talk about it much we all make decisions every day all day long does a bass phone look like this this is a this is speaking about an intolerance for failure we design our fun we design our lives our priorities are minimum or maximum our ethics and therefore our tolerance for failure how many design decisions did you make today how much tolerance for failure do you possess so this is a picture of alarms every 15 minutes on an iPhone but this is trivial when we make decisions that impact others the stakes are higher and the ethical implications are normos so I ask you what's your tolerance for failure in education should we draw the line at race I think Bob Casper Laurel Trent Tran Ovitz Michael Strickland are going to talk about this today in their session who you calling racist she we draw the line of disability Carl Nelson Louise Perez Lynn McCormack Cheryl Constantini Melanie Morris Joshua Mitchell Michelle Reed tell us the stories about who we're excluding by drawing the line and accessibility and disability should we draw the line at a particular socioeconomic status I'm pretty sure we're gonna learn about this today from Jacob Jenkins Jamie Hannon's and Jill leaf stead when we talk about the historically underserved groups the repeating cycles of exclusion should we exclude certain geographies this is a global community we've got a presentation on the north and south on Twitter from Taryn Terezin Archon Dez and Denice Beyonce tell us about this relationship probably murder all your names how should we divide up the world and decide who gets access English speakers only especially in North America My dear Sylvia year goes Politis Elizabeth Goodman Cecilia Vela Jorge Baca Laurel man Sara diga Mila historias de los estudiantes telling me the stories about the students Kent's telling a story about Lansing the stories stick with us I'm not going to show you data that doesn't stick who is an education available to context is always mattered when we talk about education we often do it in the abstract we're educators we educate students we do so in institutions of Education I want to get deeper into that I want us to talk about the context we learn teach and grow in so this is a journey I'm asking you to take with me today the way things begin matters this is a picture of ancient Greece in ancient Greece education was for wealthy men the foundations of all thought including ethics excluded anyone else women were excluded the poor the middle-class most of us say education should be available to everyone but we know it isn't obviously some progress has been made visible when we see who has access to education now but is it enough are we comfortable 90% access or what about 80% access I want to argue that while some of these questions might make us uneasy make a squirm we all decide where to draw the line every day in admissions decisions and class policies for attendance in the cost of textbooks and the cost of Education in our willingness to make alternative formats in the way we talk about students in the way we determine success yeah the technical decisions we make the decisions we make in boardrooms and the way we talk about the people that we're working with have an impact and it's an impact on the chance for education their access in their exclusion people draw the lines the ethical lines we always have and we always will and throughout history we have on notable occasions proving ourselves to be pretty terrible line drawers the ancient Greeks in their wealthy men only line pretty sure that was a bad line this slide is one that Jose Antonio Vargas delivered at defiance m/l it's a shocking slide it's upsetting to many of us people draw these ethical lines though and the point of this slide is that they call them law and they do it as acts of power over another these are not good lines this says the way things begin matters apartheid was legal the Holocaust was legal slavery was legal colonialism was legal legality as a matter of power not justice these are seriously bad lines we are really bad at some other things too I mean we still get causation and correlation mixed up we think tall people are more capable than shorter folks we're a mess of fantastic uniquenesses gnarly biases and a sense of being and driven we're so silly and it's dangerous so whose education available too and so let's take this journey through stories that occupy my mind where the Lions have been in our recent past and where they are today a few weeks ago some of you attended the open education southern symposium in Fayetteville Arkansas a few hours away from Little Rock is where my parents live now it was in Little Rock in September 1957 that the Little Rock Nine a group of nine African American kids enrolled in all-white public school the governor of Arkansas brought out the Arkansas National Guard the President of the United States intervened and students were escorted to school by the US Army those students were tormented bullied harassed for years not for a day or two for years what was their educational experience like what did they learn in between this slide and this is a picture of one of the Little Rock Nine and this next slide wants you to in your mind imagine Kent State so if you drive six hours north and a little east you get to my hometown in Northeast Missouri I grew up not far from the Mississippi River in rural farmland to give you a sense of the community that local high school would often clear out especially of young men during the harvest and at the beginning of deer season I see some nods and when I think about my childhood there I think about cliff 23 years after the Little Rock Nine cliff was in kindergarten with me it was 1980 and he was the only black child in our school in his first week of kindergarten cliff was called the n-word I think about his mother who had to give cliff the talk now I'm not talking about the birds-and-the-bees talk I'm talking about the one that comes much earlier than that for black boys the one where his mother explains to him how the world sees him I think about him in his home before school begins reaching for his favorite hoodie sweatshirt pausing remembering what this culture thinks about him and boys and hoodies and then taking it off for a more appropriate shirt he was in my school he was in my grade he was in the room next door to me and my mom was his kindergarten teacher so where's cliff now I don't know what was his experience with education why am I here and he isn't these are lines these are the lines that we as people have drawn historically the Little Rock Nine is the changing of an ethical line by force in one case the reassertion of that line 23 years later in my kindergarten class with cliff lines are a matter of power all right this is getting heavy so we're gonna go to donkeys or mules so this is a picture of mules that carry the u.s. mail into the Grand Canyon two hours into the canyon to the soup I reserve I have micro obsessions I always have I went through a US Postal Service obsession a few years ago lately I've been obsessed with making the perfect hamburger I'm very close I got really into the dividing of the mama bells and the baby bells and telecommunications history I want to spend some serious time this fall practicing tying knots and I went through a Nikola Tesla ac/dc moment so being here on top of Niagara Falls is pretty huge for me I mean this is where the war happened a cbgc Tesla be dead uh soon and the rest is electrical history join me with that microbe session but the microbe session I want to talk to you about is a deep dark path of ethics I've been wrestling with forever why some and not others why this decision and not something else why are we happy with the line here and not there I recently rewatched the Ken Burns documentary called the West and it led me down a deep dark path of ethics the film might as well have been called the systematic eradication of the Native Americans this is a quote from chief plenty coups a crow who said education is your greatest weapon with education you're the white man's equal without education you are his victim and so shall remain all your lives study learn help one another remember there's only poverty and misery in idleness and dreams but in work there's self-respect and independence but education wasn't really available to Native American kids their education came in the experience of white men coming in and killing an entire Buffalo herd now the tribe had no source for food now the tribe is lining up to get food from the government children were separated from their families and forced into schools where they weren't allowed to speak their language or reference their culture people would go through the signing and breaking Andry signing of treaties every year or so and this isn't just old news about an hour from here is the six nations of the Grand River First Nations Reserve in southern Ontario this woman is IO current the Thomas a university student and a mother of five who's lived without running tap water since the age of 16 or children lack access to things commonplace elsewhere like toilets showers baths for washing they use a bucket I'm looking forward to joanna funk telling us more about marginalized indigenous communities in Australia in her talk listen to her stories Flint still doesn't have clean water I've often been interested in the social and political messes in the edge cases I studied philosophy and undergraduate and graduate schools but there was something I didn't get in the 20-page essay assignments about the Nicomachean ethics so I went downstairs literally into the basement of my school's library inappropriately squirreling myself away in the music library micro obsessing about Dylan and Baez and Vietnam and don't get me started on Woody Guthrie in the Dust Bowl another microbe session I think I need to talk to Emily Cox we don't know each other yet but I think that you might be the only person who can help me with its micro obsession with me music and your talk about opened' and intro to music industry class Emily find me please so the basement the music library it led me to learning about New Orleans native sons the Marsalis is or I call them the marsala the Neville's the music up and down the Mississippi Muddy Waters Old Man River I was procrastinating horribly I'm learning a ton and my grades were lower every spring term because the New Orleans Jazz Fest overlaps with finals week it was torture no I'm not a musician I didn't study music I just happened to go to school in New Orleans in the context shaped my microbe sessions these diversions into the basement music library brought me to a further rabbit holes of wonder I swam around a culture and art Baez and Martin Luther King Alvin Ailey's revelations on the top the Amistad the slave ship rebellion on the bottom strange fruit and I'm pretty sure that this educational background made me obsess a little bit more about Beyonce's Coachella 2018 performance I can't wait to read the dissertations coming out about that art and the social and the political and the educational in the music altogether there was no class for this there was no major I wanted to drink it all in until my next microbe session kicked in which was catching a frisbee behind my back I did that next semester but New Orleans is a magical city it gets in your bones southern decadence Drive Thru daiquiris the music the will to live the resistance slavery subjugation centuries of pain and suffering those stories stuck with me I maintain I was designing my own education a kind of game of following curiosity chasing rabbits down the holes and exploring I was having fun and I was learning how to draw my ethical line in the sand you know this guy and this is true for so many of us can't McGuire say I learned deeply in spite of schools so much more than because of school which it wasn't true to Philip that today for today's students this is true for so many of us because the ground isn't level and to learn to draw our lines we need experiences this is a quote from Jessie stromwell and Sean Michael Morris's new book and urgency of teachers I urge you early to go hairy this book those experiences that we need are the stuff of exploration discovery Wonder epiphanies and mistakes so there I was this young woman one of two undergraduates both women applying to graduate school and philosophy my ground was shaky I was closeted I was in the basement listening to music and I didn't know how to do this stuff the stuff of learning without the expectations within the expectations rather there were advisors there was the undergraduate advisor who said you just don't suffer for it you don't have something in you that compels you to do philosophy I don't think it's for you look at you you look normal healthy uncomplicated oh boy he was an alcoholic in grad school the other undergraduate has not been well they were suffering but he missed it he missed an opportunity just like philosophy is not only those for those who are suffering he drew the line wrong just like the ancient Greeks did it's not just for men and it's not just for people who suffer for it this is the foundation of all knowledge I ignored him after a good bit of time licking wounds and feeling miserable which is to say I overcame him but never forgot what he said and still for others resilience takes much more overcoming I want to tell you about Damon who went from being in a very bad crowd and dropping out of high school to getting his GED going to night school at a private university transferring to the university's engineering program getting a masters at an r1 getting a PhD in an r1 and getting a tenure track job he's unusual there are other demons out there but that guy is special he's driven but the obstacles he had to overcome the people who actively stood in his way the professor he admired that said he didn't think computer science was for him he thought Damon should give up his dream of getting into the engineering school Damon's experience of walking back to his car from the library catching the campus police you guessed it same library the utter lack of diversity anywhere he looked they all stood in his way and said give up this is not for you you don't belong here I remember wondering what it looked like to him I enlarged the people of color on our campus we're in the service industry they were serving us food in the cafeteria Damon was my best friend in university he was the first person I came out to we were a young distractible lesbian from a very small town near the Mississippi and a young black man from the other end of the Mississippi encounter Louisiana with a GED and a dream of being a university professor sounds like the beginning of a joke Damon would like you all it open at 18 to know that if he were a superhero he'd be Iron Man because he has a cool lab nearly unlimited funding this guy is so nerdy I love him this is Damon dr. Damon Woodard University of Florida Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering a tenured professor and standing next to him is dr. tempest Neil she's a first of a lot of things she's the first African American woman to receive a doctorate in computer engineering from the University of Florida she's Damon's first PhD graduate from the University of Florida and she's his first graduate to join the Academy she just began a first semester as an assistant professor at the University of South Florida she works on some really complicated stuff so the changing of the Neth achill line in one case the research in 23 years later in my kindergarten class the eradication of a people and their life as a starting point the dissuasion of young black man trying to climb we know folks don't have the same opportunities we know the ground isn't level especially in Louisiana the ground is under sea level in many cases well I was going to play you this amazing song by Randy Newman it's called Louisiana 1927 mark to tell Marsha ball for those he from the south did a nice version Aaron Neville did a wonderful version for people from Canada Jolie Holland the cofounders would be good Tanya's did in London with a version the the chorus is they're trying to wash us away so this is about the Great Flood in 1927 where a million people lost their homes what happened and what the song captures is that some bankers in New Orleans white rich bankers decided to dynamite a couple of levees in poor and less populated towns they dynamited it and then the next day realized they didn't have to do that but it was too late those people did not get any compensation they got no homes this actually created the great migration of black people from the south to the northern cities to Detroit to Chicago this is this enormous migration this enormous cultural moment microbe sessions open ed where do we draw a line in 2018 2019 we've got digital redlining who is authoring our Oh a ours who's publishing who can publish how are technologies to be decisions being made at our institutions and we aren't just talking about who gets in the door literal access for time' who comes with a full belly to class having had breakfast who sees themselves in the stories they read whose voice is heard whose voice is heard in the world what does the advisor think about who is fit for graduate school this is Social Development Goal number four is to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education promote lifelong learning opportunities for all so I think it's time we got a little uncomfortable again we're achieving so much as a community we need to do more we need to celebrate the successes and then we need to look at where we drew the line is opening mice is open licensing enough Ethan Cenac and many others who just know is open content enough Jessie Shawn Rajeev Robin say no and they push to open pedagogy is most students enough the UN says no it should be all it must be all I'm going to say something that might be controversial if I haven't already in this community we have many open textbooks with more to come we're doing great there we have great progress on open content and open licensing and we have a rich group of really smart people working toward open pedagogy the work isn't done it's never done on any of those but the area that we don't have pretty much any work done is open dialog we don't know how to have tough conversations we don't practice productive critique we as a community don't talk about the hard things the elephants we don't talk about the institutions to say it's too expensive to make accessible content we don't talk about how we don't know how to hire for diversity we don't know how to talk about sexual harassment in a productive way and I want someone do a session it open at about Mormons and oh we ours and about why so much leadership in this community is coming from Utah incidentally if you want to learn more about Mormons and Utah the struggle to get to Utah you want to know that context and that story go watch that Ken Burns documentary the West you'll learn something that I bet you don't know nothing is neutral we make design decisions all the time I was in a session that received gave at another conference there was an educator there who taught and at an institution in the UK and his college was in a poor neighborhood and he was using his own open textbook and he would make edits to it and then asked the students to download it again he didn't realize until that session that he was actually contributing to Digital redlining each time he was expecting his students to download the latest edits that he had the latest tweaks he wasn't thinking about the impact on their digital usage and on their families so let's be transparent about all of this ask the questions what's the role of capital whose voice is being amplified whose is being diminished what's our tolerance for what's our demand for transparency what about privacy and representation Billy Mikey and steel Wagstaff are gonna talk to us about privacy and data in their session I'm going to blow through this quickly Barbara Chow presented this slide at an event maybe last year a couple years ago diversity is number inclusions a process inequities and outcome and we know the inclusively designing things are thinking about inclusion fundamentally gets at issues of diversity equity and inclusion it requires us not only to change our methodological approach but to examine our own individual biases we are beyond the point where we have to think about edge cases if you aren't thinking about it and you aren't hiring for it please see me later today do you walk into a room aware of your privilege if you wake up in the morning and don't find yourself plagued by issues of diversity equity and inclusion in education then you're probably walking with a chip of privilege you should find somebody who will help you see that in a productive way I don't mean to be a downer this is the up part open education can help change these issues open education is a reason I learned about Ted I met his wife at mobile in Banff Alberta a few years ago he's stuck in my head he's a farmer he was he's painfully shy his learning disability and he hated school so much he dropped out of it in high school his wife is an instructional designer at Portage College by her own admission she can't make it through a MOOC that's me too she has yet to complete one he's completed over 20 he loves him he comes in from the fields at night and he works on his courses designing his own education at his own pace to his own preference preference this is open this is a picture of a young girl at a stem event for young girls in Guadalajara Mexico she's holding a comic book picture of me this kind of makes my heart burst this comic book is the hard work of Kelsey Merkley who's given us uncommon women these comic books and a colleague in the open movement Angie Contreras brought these back home and had this event for young girls and stem so these young girls see women working in technology they see women who look different working in technology this is how change happens this is open truth and reconciliation Kathleen Wynne the previous liberal premier in Ontario promised in 2016 Ontario's schools would teach all children about the legacy of residential schools and would incorporate indigenous perspectives in the in the elementary and secondary curriculum including social studies history geography and civics when Doug Ford was elected premier that effort was abruptly canceled the Ontario Institute for studies in education responded with a large list of open materials that teachers could use to teach this material it's an open list and anyone can add to you once this information is open you can't box it back up this is open this is real but you she's young woman from New Delhi India she applied to our Google Summer of Code program this year and was selected for her proposal for our project we asked her to create a game for children who use eyes eye gaze and think of eye gazes like a mouse that you move with your eye movement it's for someone who has very limited motor control and they use their eyes for on-screen keyboards and for controls so imagine typing out this talk using an eye gaze it's laborious and so a lot of the games for children who use eye gaze are binary they're this answer or that answer or there are a few selections these kids miss out on exploration and discovery and we know how important that is to children into learning so rheic reiated this adorable game it's called spy find think of it as like a good night moon meets animation with spiders as she sent me a message this weekend it said I wanted to share something with you I got the prestigious Google women techmakers scholarship 2018 from asia-pacific region they asked me about spy flying during the interview and absolutely loved it as a part of the scholarship I'll be visiting the Google office in Singapore next week she's amazing this is open if you'll humor me everybody please stand up I'm done asking who's going to stand up so now I'm gonna challenge you to be the person who sits down and sits down when you won't stand up for the following if you're a man and you see someone interrupt or shut up a woman what are you gonna do you're already standing up so you're obviously you're gonna stand it up if you're a white person and you see the voices of black indigenous people of color getting excluded or shut down what are you gonna do thank you if you're a straight person and you see a queer kid struggling what are you gonna do if you're a woman in a senior position and you're in a position to help a younger woman to mentor her what are you gonna do okay cool this work doesn't stop it isn't a task it's a practice and we need to push ourselves further if you're only having diversity equity and inclusion conversations and de and AI spaces we need to have them all the time we need to have them everywhere if accessibility bugs are not blockers yet if your events are held at spaces that aren't accessible or your keynotes recorded captioned live captioned are your lectures who's going to say we need to talk we need to figure this open dialog thing out the trouble with keynotes don't listen to me after you've been listening to me all this time and beware the entrapments of the sexy slide deck I'm really glad that Kent and I did not plan this but he's right this has become the currency of our field now with the high-resolution pictures and the fancy fonts who does it exclude and who benefits from it so who should you talk to you and listen to I just can't give you a bunch of names I'm gonna make all these slides available these folks - ok so Todd Rose Sasha Constance Chuck Chris Borges Sean Michael Morris Jesse stromwell Tara Tara Robertson the open textbook Network Mahabali who shall read rebus bccampus uncommon women open stacks listen to children listen to moms listen to LGBTQIA at 2's if you don't know what that is google it listen to by POC if you don't know what that is google it I'll tell you that one it's black indigenous people of color listen to people you disagree with listen to your curiosity listen to your gut open is the way we fix this folks this is what ash Dryden said at the CC summit a couple of years ago it isn't the job of people who are marginalized to help you understand how to include them don't ask how can I include you just do it it's all of our jobs every student un s DG number four it's our job to be curious open and inclusive and to listen more don't forget the lines the little rock nine cliff i io corinth a-- thomas damon these are the lines that we make that are a matter of power i also don't forget to celebrate the successes farmer Ted las niñas truth and reconciliation Riya Bhatia these are the example of the access to education that is power it's inextricable from issues of social justice the openness of things matters this isn't a difference of opinion between the pragmatists in the principle we're all both this my friends is an ethical battle we are all waging within ourselves to decide where to draw a line now let's talk openly about where we draw it if you clump together this week at open ed you won't benefit from the stories you all have if you know everyone in the circle of people you're talking to turn around and find someone you don't know don't get yourself into the situation with the usual suspects adjuncts where are ya adjuncts are here [Applause] students where are you grad school dropouts see me later I'm one of you outsiders misfits in the usual suspect unusual suspects make yourselves heard and seen this week tell the stories you all belong here this is open and remember to push farther I worry about the queer kids I worry about the by POC folks 1865 for the Thirteenth Amendment 150 years later how we doin I worry about how little has changed I worry that we don't exercise a Hippocratic oath in education and do no harm but I believe that changes with all of us wrestling with where we draw the line we are the people who decide where to draw the line I'd like to thank the open ed community program community for inviting me to speak today I'm not sure why you did it thank you so much I hope I didn't disappoint you I'm deeply honored and I'd like to thank David Wiley personally for being so open being so kind and continually doing all the work and finally to those who never get justice who start below zero if you don't enjoy the benefits the many many benefits we are coming hang on this is open thank you [Applause]