Today, we wanted to provide a brief update on major upcoming projects at Human Restoration Project. Within we'll talk about:

• Ongoing work of the Human-Centered Schools Network (apologies for the audio quality...we are at a "beach house" in Michigan...)
• Our upcoming conference in 2 weeks! (July 24-27)
• Upcoming announcements and podcasts

Thank you for tuning in!

Today we’re joined by Aaron Schorn, Head of Growth and Community at Unrulr. Aaron is an experienced educator who runs an afterschool social entrepreneurship program for young people. And recently, he introduced Unrulr to us at HRP — in short, it’s one of the only edtech tools we’ve ever recommended, and it’s one of the few edtech tools we’d be comfortable sharing on our podcast.

In short, Unrulr is a storytelling tool to showcase learning. It allows young people and educators to take photos or videos of what they’re doing, tag it according to a value, standard, or objective, then share it online privately or publicly. And what really stood out to me was that students can document their journey overtime, creating posts where they group together these moments and showcase a timeline of learning. We see this as a fantastic tool to document learning, share to families and community members, and act as a way to move away from one-and-done grades and toward narrative assessment.

Aaron Schorn, Head of Growth and Community at Unrulr and Director of the Nalukai Startup Camp, a social entrepreneurship program for young people based in Hawaii

• Unrulr's Website
• Empathy "Journey"

And provided by teacher Gary Heidt (who shout-out...introduced us to Unrulr!)

• Student "Journey"
• Student "Moment"

Today we’re joined by Meredith Broussard. Meredith is a data journalist whose research and reporting centers on ethical AI and data analysis for the social good. She’s an associate professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University and research director at the NYU Alliance for Public Interest Technology. And she’s an author, including writing Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World and the recently released More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech.

We invited Meredith on to specifically talk about the intersection of the recent rapid growth of consumer-focused generative AI, such as ChatGPT, Midjourney, DALL-E, etc. as well as their integrations into commonly used education tools like Microsoft Office and soon, Google Documents. And I know that many educators are already worried about the implications of AI in classrooms…but it’s going to be quite jarring when Google Docs has a built-in AI text prompt. In our view, we’ll need to find ways to talk about AI and technology more broadly with students, guiding them in the use of these platforms and problematizing them — as opposed to just banning them outright.

Dr. Meredith Broussard, associate professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University and research director at the NYU Alliance for Public Interest Technology, and author of Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World and the recently released More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech

• Meredith Broussard's website
• More than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech by Dr. Meredith Broussard (MIT Press, 2023)
• AI Stereotypes and Critical Reflections: Who's Being Generated? - YouTube Guide/Lesson by Human Restoration Project

On today's podcast, we're joined by Dave Runge, co-founder and director of Future Schools. Future Schools is an Australian-based innovative schools organization, centered on exploring what's possible in schools by connecting together like-minds across over 100 school partners. Both in and outside of Australia, Future Schools helps educator teams explore what's possible, evolve their practices, and transform their spaces.

Dave focuses his work on change leadership, recognizing that we need to focus on systemic change to achieve lasting results. And in today's conversation, we'll talk about that change-making process -- why so many spaces feel "stuck" and what we can do to help them branch out.

Dave Runge, co-founder and director of Future Schools who works with over a hundred schools across Australia and internationally to build new systems and reimagine education.

• Future Schools' Website
• Pressure from Above, Pressure from Below research study
• Conference to Restore Humanity! 2023

In the late 2000s, the concept of “solarpunk” emerged. In 2022, YouTube channel Our Changing Climate with, my guest today, Andrewism published a video titled “How We Can Build a Solarpunk Future Right Now”, in which they make that the case that "Ultimately Solarpunk envisions a world that might be slower, but more intentional. One that ties humanity closely to the natural world.” Or as Andrewism put in a reply to the video: "A future with a human face and dirt behind its ears."

But if solarpunk is the future with humanity put back in, achieving it means taking control of that future from economic, social, & political forces that seem to be on autopilot to self-destruction, utterly divorced from human desires & human intervention. One path we've imagined already, and its grimy survivalist individualism was the defining feature of Reagan-era science fiction classics. However, in its radical reimagination of economic & social structures, solarpunk resists the nihilism & doomerism of the grim dehumanized technological dystopias that dominate the worlds of, say, Blade Runner, Robocop, & William Gibson's Neuromancer. 

Do we have the willingness to challenge the predominant social, economic, & political structures & systems that need to be challenged? To change the very nature of humanity's relationship to the planet? What role does education play in all of this? 

Andrew goes by Andrewism on his YouTube channel. His 66 videos, covering topics from education, liberation, and history, to family, parenting, and of course, solarpunk - have nearly 3 million combined views. Young people from around the world are watching & learning from him and participating in the community he has cultivated around his channel.

• Andrewism's YouTube channel
• Fighting Back Against the Future: Imagining a Solarpunk Education
• Conference to Restore Humanity! 2023

Gamification is a long-standing practice across lesson planning and educational technology, but it doesn’t always work out the way we expect. At the end of the day, if the nature of the task is not interesting, then what we’re creating is more about compliance than engagement. In this session, we will host a conversation on what it means to gamify content, learning, and pedagogy: recognizing potential success while advising for potential pitfalls.

This episode is a panel discussion we had with game designer & author, Adrian Hon, on the pros and pitfalls of “gamification” as part of our EduFuturism Learning Series. You can find all of the previous events including Innovative AI Tools for the Classroom…and their Dilemmas and Learning From Video Game Tutorials, as well as register for upcoming events in the series @ humanrestorationproject.org/learning. You can also find this video and others on our YouTube channel by searching for Human Restoration Project. 

Adrian Hon is an award-winning video game designer and is the CEO and founder of Six to Start, co-creator of the world’s most successful smartphone fitness game, Zombies, Run! He previously was the director of play, creating alternative reality games, at Mind Candy.

• Watch on YouTube
• You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All
• Adrian Hon on Twitter
• Conference to Restore Humanity! 2023

This conversation is nearly a year in the making, from the first messages with my guest back in 2022 - which also happened to be the last of my 9 years teaching AP European History. That year there were over 4.7 million AP Exams taken by 2.6 million students from 23,000 secondary schools. At about $100 per exam…well, you don’t need to get a 5 on the AP Calc exam to finish that equation. And…here we are again, another high-stakes time of the academic year for yet millions more high schoolers seeking college credit from the College Board. 

From AP to SAT, the College Board is a billion dollar educational gatekeeper that plays an outsized role in American education in policy and practice, K12 and beyond. In fact, as my guest today outlines in her book, many states have passed laws requiring the College Board play exactly that role: mandating that schools offer a minimum number of AP courses (that require AP trained teachers), offering cash incentives for student test scores, & dictating to universities what scores they will be required to accept for which credits.

Even more recent partisan challenges to curriculum, like the rejection of AP African-American History by the Florida Dept of Education, should also cause us to reflect on the homogenizing and controlling influence of what has become a de facto national curriculum, AND the metrics we use to evaluate success, AND the ways we assess & award credit, AND the philosophies & pedagogies we use in classrooms with students. Somewhere in the recent past, figure & ground inverted, and we not only lost track of what was important - the best intentions of what courses like these could represent - but along the way we ceded a lot of power to a single company and a single brand - Advanced Placement - to determine our educational goals, values, & practices from the top down.

Annie Abrams holds a doctorate in American literature from NYU and is currently on childcare leave from her job as a public high school English teacher. She writes in the introduction to her brand new book Shortchanged: How Advanced Placement Cheats Students..

• Shortchanged: How Advanced Placement Cheats Students from Johns Hopkins University Press
• Annie Abrams Twitter

“I learned so much about viewing the world, especially mass media, through a critical eye this year. I learned about what traps we fall into while viewing media and how we can prevent that. I also learned about good vs. questionable journalism tactics and how this can affect how accurate a news source is.”

My guest today, Sam Shain, is a musician, artist, writer, former journalist and current English teacher in Maine. That opening quote was just one student review of Sam’s journalism class from his book Education Revolution: Media Literacy for Political Awareness, available from Zer0 Books. Teaching in the United States has never been more fraught, as teachers across the country are implicitly or explicitly forced to avoid certain topics, texts, and questions that have been labeled divisive, controversial, or - worse yet - political. Of course, these topics also tend to be the most immediate & important, and are accompanied by intense mis- & disinformation - the reality of climate change, systemic racism, COVID-19, and the outcomes of our electoral system, to take some examples from just the last couple of years - all of this seems particularly heightened with the new ability of AI to generate audio, video, and images to spread politically motivated narratives easier than ever before via social media, and a receptive population willing not only to accept them but to participate in spreading mis- & disinformation. As the student testimonial I read earlier testifies to, the gap has never been wider between our vital need to teach critical media literacy and our ability. To do. Just that. 

Sam Shain is a former journalist and English teacher. He believes education is the way out of our country's current predicament and teachers and students can lead the revolution in turning this country around. Sam wrote for the Capital Weekly for several years and occasionally contributes to the Kennebec Journal.

In addition to teaching and writing, Sam sings and plays guitar in the band the Scolded Dogs, who play frequently throughout Maine and have released several original albums. Sam lives in Hallowell, Maine.

• "Not Rehired for Teaching Politics": One Teacher's Story
• Education Revolution from Zer0 Books 

It only takes a few seconds on Hanaa Elmi’s Twitter timeline for even the most oblivious observer like myself to know that what she is doing is magical. One post from February details several images of student contributions from reflections on Stone Soup and other related readings - child’s handwriting draws your eye to the center of each poster - We take care of each other by…We take care of water by…We take care of the Earth by… - student drawings and reflections surrounding those prompts create the shared understanding - Hanaa also captures “Our Ideas” in the margins - have a spirit of ubuntu (I am because we are), she writes, Be like the Water Walkers, Love water!

Another series of images shows her young students exploring questions like “What’s the heart of the story? What do you think the author wants us to know in our minds & hearts as a reader?”, one student reply reads “Ms. I think the heart of the story is that anger is okay and normal. We just have to breathe.” 

Hanaa prompts students to explore the differences & similarities between justice & charity. She quotes from one of the dozens of books her students use, “What are words really? Are they just random letters arranged in different ways? Or do they have magical powers that can inspire and amaze?” A student uses a number string to double 40. Students with clipboards find and sort animals on a number line by their height. They write, draw, & reflect in dream journals. I could go on and on and on… In every post, it’s so obvious that students are deeply engaged & invested in the world & with each other. 

Community, love, joy, and learning are self-evident in the work she does with kids.

Hanaa Elmi is an elementary teacher in Windsor-Essex County. She is a graduate of the University of Windsor who roots her work in community: creating thriving spaces that humanize students. She is passionate about creating spaces where students deeply connect with the world around them in just, restorative, and conscientious ways.

• Miss Elmi's Twitter

Welcome to a brief HRP update with me, Nick Covington, Creative Director here at Human Restoration Project!

As you may have hear, Chris & I are coming off a whirlwind of a week in Columbus, Ohio, where we hosted a team from our Poland-based partners at Holistic Think Tank, Polish teacher representatives from the Polish-American Freedom Foundation, and a rockstar group of American teachers that included a team from our friends in Muskegon, Michigan (be on the lookout for more involvement from them in the future), as well as Trevor Aleo, and Jen Lucas; on the campus of The Ohio State University. The keynote of the conference was from none other than former Finnish minister of education & the author of Finnish lessons, Pasi Sahlberg, speaking not only to the need for systemic change, but the right kind of systemic change: rooted in cooperation, customized curriculum, holistic teaching and learning, trust-based professionalism, and where every school is a good school.