Zombies, Oprah, and Zoom, South By!
2021 SXSW EDU Online expands its scope
By Clara Ence Morse, Fri., March 5, 2021
After the complete cancellation of Austin's homegrown South by Southwest last spring, including the education-exclusive forum SXSW EDU, this year's SXSW EDU Online roars back for a digital-only experience. The three-day lineup – next Tuesday through Thursday, March 9-11 – features the traditional curation of celebrities, ed techies, education journalists, and other leaders in the education industry. This year, organizers added dozens of panels dedicated to the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has reshaped nearly every aspect of American education.
Headliners include big-name celebrities like featured speaker Chris Evans, the Captain America star who recently co-launched a video-based civics engagement website dubbed "A Starting Point," and keynote speaker Oprah Winfrey, who will discuss the ramifications of childhood trauma with child psychologist Dr. Bruce Perry in a Tuesday opening keynote conversation.
In addition to celebrity-led presentations, attendees can seek out discussions, presentations, Q&As, and film screenings across eight broad tracks covering equity and justice, emerging tech, and the future of work, among other topics. Panels tackle topics of heated discussion both in Austin and across the U.S., including innovative methods for expanding broadband internet access, practical advice for creating an anti-racist classroom, and critically assessing the "Hollywood" ideal of college – a romanticized version of higher ed that fails to reflect today's growing majority of working or financially dependent college students.
Virtual learning, of course, is one of the most prescient current topics in the education industry. As many parents, teachers, and students have grappled with navigating the digital classroom (and graduates wonder how on earth anybody manages to learn anything over Zoom), EDU Online embraces a variety of responses to the challenge. Practical panels on teaching topics like computer science and data abound; advice for frazzled parents is there too, with sessions like "Building a Home-School Connection: Lessons Learned." Taking pandemic response in a different direction, however, one session, "Why Teach Kids About Zombies and Superheroes," looks to a more supernatural apocalypse. Led by a Harvard professor, the panel encourages professors to "#teachaboutzombies," in part as a way to alleviate Zoom fatigue.
Austin's education community – or the edu-curious – will recognize some topics that reflect the local response to education during the COVID-19 crisis. Last November, the Austin Independent School District lost some 5,000 students from its projected enrollment in the pandemic fallout – some transferred, some simply dropped off the map, and some joined small "micro-schools," also known as "learning pods." "Offline and Left Behind," which features 2016 presidential candidate Jeb Bush (and which festgoers might also recognize from "please clap" fame), will center around the learning lost due to uneven internet infrastructure. On the other hand, "Do Pods & Public Schools Have to Be at Odds?" will examine the effects of learning pods on public schools and discuss potential solutions to making pods more equitable.
Finally, after a national reckoning with continued systemic racism in the wake of George Floyd's murder, SXSW EDU Online devotes over a dozen sessions to discussing racism in the classroom, how to support Black students, and anti-racist classroom environments. Panels range from promoting the power of Black moms to reimagining financial education as a way to promote equity. One Wednesday session examines one of the grossest injustices in public schools to come to light, in a district which serves over 80% Black students. "Detroit Speaks: Reclaiming the Right to Literacy" features a seventh-grade student and two employees of the Detroit Public School Community District, which received a multimillion-dollar settlement last year after students from some of Detroit's lowest-performing public schools successfully sued the state of Michigan for denying their right to literacy. Panelists will discuss the district's skyrocketing literacy test scores in the wake of the lawsuit.
In short, people from zombie enthusiasts to equity advocates to ed-tech geeks should be able to find a panel for them at SXSW EDU Online this year.
What and Where: Nine Panels to Catch at SXSW EDU Online
Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Bruce Perry in Conversation, Tue., 9:30am: "Ms. Winfrey and Dr. Perry will discuss their forthcoming book, What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing."
Offline & Left Behind: The Lost Generation, Tue., 11am: "The digital divide compounds structural disadvantages of race and poverty, and is the critical educational issue of our time."
The 'Kids' Aren't Alright: Reinventing Higher Ed, Tue., 12:30pm: "For too long, we've romanticized the 'Hollywood' version of college. But the majority of today's students work while in school, half are financially dependent, and a quarter are parents. Traditional higher ed isn't designed to serve these students and it shows."
Why Teach Students About Zombies & Superheroes, Tue., 12:30pm: "Learn how and why an innovative public policy educator features superheroes and a zombie apocalypse in his teaching."
Building a Home-School Connection: Lessons Learned, Wed., 11am: "Building a home-school connection, especially during a time when parents are the main essential link from schools to students."
Connected in Class: A Starting Point & Close Up, Wed., 11:30am: "The imperative for civic engagement and bipartisanship has never been more urgent. The Close Up Foundation and Chris Evans' A Starting Point have teamed up to create ASP HOMEROOM, an educational civic engagement portal."
Detroit Speaks: Reclaiming the Right to Literacy, Wed., 2:30pm: "Hear from a Detroit student, teacher, and leader about the powerful new literacy curiculum, professional learning, and vision that are transforming Detroit schools into engines for equity."
EduCast: Legacy Tech Is a Bridge to Broadband, Thu., 10:30am: "Traditionally used for public safety, datacasting is now being used to deliver instructional content to students with broadband challenges. This session will discuss the pilot projects while facilitating conversations around access, equity, and decreasing the digital divide."
Do Pods & Public Schools Have to Be at Odds?, Thu., 4pm: "Could this COVID-19 trend emerge as a long-term solution for improving educational outcomes?"
Find details on passes ($139), lineup, and more at www.sxswedu.com, and follow our SXSW 2021 coverage at austinchronicle.com/sxsw.
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