Yikers. I wonder why that lovely pair of shoes I’ve been coveting are following me around so relentlessly? Perhaps this has to do with the all-knowing, GOOGLER MONSTER!
All kidding aside, filter bubbles are indeed a very scary thing. Â Scary AND full of interesting possibilities.
I had a really wacky idea: what if we as teachers use the principles of content marketing (essentially what these filters are doing) to enrich the content of our classes? To show up when students least expect it? Creepy, right?
Do we not encourage the ideas we want our students to wrestle with in our classes to dog them on weekends and show up in their dreams? We want those ideas to transform their way of looking at something and show up in unexpected places in their lives. Just like that lovely pair of shoes some company paid Google to push into my awareness when I’m looking up the number of asteroids in space, for example. Could we not make course content more “buyable?” Some of the content marketing tools include videos and podcasts. It’s easy to throw a lesson on during the commute or watch a quick vid on a break. I’m wondering if it might not make sense to put these “value added” strategies to good use instead of evil use!
Obviously, there are some issues with my theory…but it’s a starting place for discussion, right?
SCHOOL 