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 Upcoming Presentations

Bugs, Bots & Algorithmic Bias: Examining the Promise & Peril of AI in Education

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January 24, 2025​

University of California, Berkeley

CS21LA Leadership Insitute

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Since the high-profile release of ChatGPT in 2022, the desire to leverage the power of AI to transform teaching and learning has hit a fever pitch. Believed by many as the “silver bullet”
that will bring an end to educational inequality, AI technologies continue to proliferate within college classrooms and across campuses, promising to bolster academic achievement, spark
student engagement and ensure campus safety all while lessening the workload of overworked and systemically underpaid faculty and staff. However, as research is beginning to show that
many of the AI technologies being used in and designed for postsecondary institutions are rife with algorithmic biases that threaten to exacerbate - rather than remediate - educational inequity for historically marginalized students.

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In this keynote lecture, I will discuss the challenges, critiques, and calls to action that currently permeate the field of education concerning AI, and highlight how an explicit focus on justice and
educational equity within the design, procurement, use and teaching of AI technologies can produce transformative changes for teaching and learning. I simultaneously center the technological innovations of Black youth that complete a 5 week critical AI summer program, and in doing so showcase how we can collectively reimagine, rebuild and even refuse anti-Black AI systems within education.

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 Past Presentations

Impact of Technology and Digital Media on Child and Adolescent Development and Mental Health

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Invited Panelist

 

April 4-5, 2024 

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

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The goal of this meeting, hosted by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the National Institute on Mental Health (NIMH), is to discuss the current state of, and future directions for, research on the positive and negative impacts of technology and digital media (TDM) on the development and mental health outcomes of infants, children, and adolescents. The invited workshop panelists represent an array of scientific disciplines and research topics. The workshop will address TDM effects at different ages (early development, childhood, and adolescence), and outcomes (cognitive, physical and mental health), as well as the need for diversity and inclusion in TDM studies. The meeting will be open to the scientific community and the public at large. 

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Link to Full Recording Here

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2024 Conferences and Invited Talks

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  • Black Voices at Code for America

    • Code for America | June 20, 2024
       

  • Impact of Technology and Digital Media on Child Adolescent Development and Mental Health

    • National Institute of Health (NIH) | April 4-5, 2024
       

  • Freedom Dreaming in the Digital: How Black Youth Design Technologies For Hope, Healing & Futurity

    • George Mason University | March 21, 2024

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  • AlphaPersuade: A Summit on Ethical AI
       o UC Irvine, CA​ | Feb 29, 2024
     

  • ​Third Annual Bell Hooks Symposium: Black Feminist Worldmaking

    • Northeastern University, Boston, MA​ | Feb 2, 2024
       

  •  Youth Digital Wellness in the Age of GenAI

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  •  Black History Nerds Saturday School

    • University at Buffalo, NY | Jan 13, 2024


 

2023 Conferences and Invited Talks

  • Race, Racism and Digital Technology: Understanding the Effects of Algorithmic Anti-Blackness on Black Students​

    • Harvard University | School of Education 
       

  • Employing Critical Race, Abolitionist Pedagogies In CS:  Designing Race-Conscious and Justice-Oriented Tech with Black Youth â€‹

    • Presidential Session | AERA 2023 Conference, Chicago, IL
       

  • Toward a Critical Race Technology Theory in Education: Interrogating Sociotechnical Racism in Educational Research, Pedagogy, and Practice

    • Roundtable Session | AERA 2023
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  • Freedom Dreaming in the Digital: Designing Fugitive Worlds and Abolitionist Technologies with Black Youth

    •  Center for Critical Internet Inquiry | UCLA
       

  • Race, Activism & Digital Trauma: Examining the Power and Peril of Social Media Activism for Black Girls"

    • Children & Screens 
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  • Race, Education, and #BlackLivesMatter: How Digital Activism and Algorithmic Oppression Impact Black Girls in College

    •  Paper Presentation | AERA 2023 Conference, Chicago, IL

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  • DeBugging Black Death in the Digital: How Black Youth Survive, Resist and Redesign Anti-Black Technologies Towards Collective Change

    • Informatics Spring Seminar Series | UC Irvine​

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  • Fostering Critical Race Computational Thinking in CS: Preparing Youth to "Talk Back" and "Bring Wreck" to Algorithmic Anti-Blackness in Schools and Technology

    • Alliance for Identity-Inclusive Computing | Duke University, Durham, NC​
       

  • Designing Abolitionist STEM+CS Programs for Black Youth 

    • ​MIT Media Lab | Cambridge, MA​
       

  • Race, Activism & Digital Wellness: How Social Media Shapes the Lives and Schooling Experiences of Black Youth"

    •  New York Public Library Center for Educators and Schools

2022 Conferences and Invited Talks

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  • ​Keys to the City: Nipsy Hussle, Marathon Education, and the Celebration of South Central"

    • Symposium | AERA Conference 2022




 

2021 Conferences and Invited Talks

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  • "Toward a Critical Race RPP: How Race, Power, and Positionality Inform Practice Partnerships"

    •  ASHE Conference, San Juan Puerto Rico

 

  • "Death, Discipline and Digital Resistance: How Black Youth Leverage Technology to Survive and Resist Anti-Black Racism"

    •  CU Boulder Leeds School of Business Alumni Career Webinar Series​
       

  • "A Black Town Hall: Mental Health and Resiliency"

    • Center for Communication and Media Studies, CU Boulder

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  • Co-Designing for Black Lives: How Black Youth Leverage Computer Science to Design and Deploy Race-Based Mental Health Spaces Online"

    •  Youth Connections for Wellbeing Showcase
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  • "Navigating Professionalism and Anti-Blackness in the Academy"

    •  CU Boulder College for Media, Communication and Information
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  • "Death, Discipline and Digital Resistance: How Black Youth Leverage Technology to Survive and Resist Anti-Black Racism"

    • UC San Diego Department of Computer Science

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2017-2020 Conferences and Invited Talks

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  • "Minoritized Students' Engagement, Identity, and Agency in Computer Science: Listening to the Students Themselves"

    • SIGCSE Conference, 2020, Minnesota, Missouri

 

  • "They Steady Tryin, But They Can't Break Us: Critical Perspectives in Prison, Prostitution and Poverty in the Lives of Black Women"

    •  Black Feminism Conference, Spelman College, Atlanta, GA

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  • "How Black Girl Activists Survive and Resist Racism Online" 

    •  Yale University, New Haven, CT

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  • "Death, Dying & the Necro-Digital Internet: Critical Examinations of #YouthActivism and Racial Trauma Online"

    • UC Irvine Connected Learning Alliance Speaker Series​
       

  • "Multiraciality in Higher Education"

    •  Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference, USC, CA

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  • "Black Women and Digital Diasporas: A Post-Colonial, Global Black Feminist Perspective"

    •  Black Feminism, Womanism and the Politics of Women of Colour in Europe Conference, October 2017,  Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Bookings & Media Inquiry

For more information on how to book a keynote, guest lecture, full or half day PD session, or media interview, please send a request to tctanksl@g.ucla.edu with your proposed dates, session format and duration, and target audience, and I will provide a estimated budget. 

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