A First Amendment Win, the Shatner Lesson, and Headlining Like the Times: this week on Fresh Powder

In Defense of Twitter Trolls

Someone has been trolling the president on Twitter from an anonymous account. Actually, there are dozens of Trump Twitter trolls out there, but only one in particular caused the Trump admin to demand the unmasking of that Twitter user’s personal info. That happened in March. Twitter, predictably, said no, and filed a First Amendment lawsuit last Thursday. By Friday, the government withdrew their summons, and Twitter dropped the suit. Bravo, Twitter. That’s a First Amendment win we can all appreciate.

Misinformation Feed

Since the election and all the attention to fake news that came with it, we all like to think we’ve gotten a lot more savvy about the information we consume. But, if you check out William Shatner’s Twitter feed from last week (the celebrity got involved in a weird conversation about autism), it’s clear that not all of us are there, yet. Basically, Shatner Googled some things about autism, then shared top search results without checking the sources. As you can probably guess, the information was dubiously sourced. It’s frustrating, but it’s instructive: information sharing happens fast, and we must do our due diligence, lest we misstep and accidentally Shatner all over Twitter.

Headline Like the Times

Here’s a thing: apparently, at the New York Times, journalists don’t actually write their own headlines. The task is left to experienced editors. That’s because writing a great headline takes skill and practice, and actually (as we all know) it’s pretty hard to do. And headlines are important, because they’re the first thing your reader sees. So, while you probably can’t make your editors write all the headlines, you can totally utilize these tips from the NYT editors who do it all the time.

A New Education

There’s always buzz about some new teaching technique or another, right? After all,the teacher’s primary duty is to facilitate the learning of each and every student. And therein lies the difficulty: how does one effectively host a classroom filled with myriad personalities and learning styles, AND prepare those students for success. The new thing is social-emotional learning, SEL. It’s a curriculum that focuses on the development on the whole child, psychology and everything. And it’s getting results; kids who were struggling before SEL implementation have seen dramatic gains in success. It’s a fledgling program, and a very cool idea that’s definitely worth knowing about.

These things also happened: Pulitzer’s were announced, so that’s exciting. If that doesn’t do it for you, perhaps this analysis of birth order is more your speed. And sometimes, it’s important to try to get a year’s worth of free chicken nuggets from Wendy’s, just because.