This algorithmic literacy workshop puts a new spin on media literacy by moving beyond fake news to examine the algorithms that shape our online experiences and how we encounter information in our everyday lives.

The Penn State Berks Privacy Workshop Series focuses on privacy issues for students in the past, present, and future.  The Privacy Workshop spotlights privacy practices and concerns in the current moment; Digital Leadership explores future implications of past and current digital behaviors; Digital Shred provides tools to evaluate and mitigate the damage of past digital behaviors; and Digital Wellness focuses on privacy across the lifespan - bringing together the past, present, & future by finding a balance of technology & wellness, while aligning habits and goals.  Each workshop is grounded in theory – countering approaches that overpromise user control in the face of information asymmetries and the control paradox – and embrace students’ autonomy and agency by avoiding prescribed solutions, and instead encouraging decision-making frameworks.

The Penn State Berks Privacy Workshop Series focuses on privacy issues for students in the past, present, and future.  The Privacy Workshop spotlights privacy practices and concerns in the current moment; Digital Leadership explores future implications of past and current digital behaviors; Digital Shred provides tools to evaluate and mitigate the damage of past digital behaviors; and Digital Wellness focuses on privacy across the lifespan - bringing together the past, present, & future by finding a balance of technology & wellness, while aligning habits and goals.  Each workshop is grounded in theory – countering approaches that overpromise user control in the face of information asymmetries and the control paradox – and embrace students’ autonomy and agency by avoiding prescribed solutions, and instead encouraging decision-making frameworks.

The Penn State Berks Privacy Workshop Series focuses on privacy issues for students in the past, present, and future.  The Privacy Workshop spotlights privacy practices and concerns in the current moment; Digital Leadership explores future implications of past and current digital behaviors; Digital Shred provides tools to evaluate and mitigate the damage of past digital behaviors; and Digital Wellness focuses on privacy across the lifespan - bringing together the past, present, & future by finding a balance of technology & wellness, while aligning habits and goals.  Each workshop is grounded in theory – countering approaches that overpromise user control in the face of information asymmetries and the control paradox – and embrace students’ autonomy and agency by avoiding prescribed solutions, and instead encouraging decision-making frameworks.

This workshop delivers an action-oriented introduction to personal data privacy designed for new college students. The session is designed to reveal the systems in place to collect and analyze online behavioral data, and to unveil the real-world consequences of online profiling in contexts like sentiment shaping, consumer preferences, employment, healthcare, personal finance, and law enforcement. In lieu of a prescriptive approach, students analyze case studies to observe how online behaviors impact real-world opportunities and reflect on the benefits and risks of technology use to develop purposeful online behaviors and habits that align with their individual values. Developing knowledge practices regarding privacy and the commodification of personal information and embodying the core library values of privacy and intellectual freedom, the workshop promotes a proactive rather than reactive approach and presents a spectrum of privacy preferences across a range of contexts in order to respect students’ autonomy and agency in personal technology use.