Group items tagged

" twXplorer, which allows you search for a specific hashtag or term, giving you the most recent 500 tweets along with some basic analysis of the content found therein."

"The idea behind Open Lab Hours is simple: create a space for students interested in journalism and technology to gather and work on projects. All are welcome. Some students come with the most basic questions, like "What's the internet?", while more advanced students come to debug projects, or hack on interactive and data stories for student publications. The key has been to create a community for people who want to learn. With a safe space for beginners, rookies and advanced folks to work together, relationships are naturally formed between students with varying skill levels. These relationships help newbies learn while providing more advanced students with the capacity to teach and develop new project ideas."

What we're trying to do with Agora: "The idea behind Open Lab Hours is simple: create a space for students interested in journalism and technology to gather and work on projects. All are welcome. Some students come with the most basic questions, like "What's the internet?", while more advanced students come to debug projects, or hack on interactive and data stories for student publications. The key has been to create a community for people who want to learn. With a safe space for beginners, rookies and advanced folks to work together, relationships are naturally formed between students with varying skill levels. These relationships help newbies learn while providing more advanced students with the capacity to teach and develop new project ideas."

"We can do better by our students. The number one thing would be to inculcate the idea of the university *as* a workplace, and all of us as professionals in it. And of course, many professors (me!) need a lot more training in the mechanics of the workplace than we ever get. The next, and much easier thing, would be to offer opportunities to acquire basic workplace technical skills: using software, running meetings, emailing like a grownup, navigating the org chart."

Nice light piece on how to use some basic web tools to learn about a person.

"The personal blog is an important, under-respected art form. While blogs as a medium are basically just the default format for sharing timely information or doing simple publishing online, the personal blog is every bit as important an expressive medium as the novel or the zine or any visual arts medium. As a culture, we don't afford them the same respect, but it's an art form that has meant as much to me, and revealed as many truths to me, as the films I have seen and the books I have read, and I'm so thankful for that."

""When you can call a line of code a spell, then you are getting somewhere," Fruchter said. After all, isn't computer code basically modern magic?"

Author states "this has been a long, rambling article....My basic thesis is that IoT technology can be a tool for behaviour change for social and environmental benefit, through involving people in making systems which address problems that are meaningful for them, and which improve understanding of the wider systems they're engaging with. "We're heading into a world of increasingly complex engineered systems in everyday life... "Yet there is a disconnect between the potential quality of life benefits for society, and people's understanding of these - often invisible - systems around us." Worth a read to inspire several thoughts and arguments.

FYI, Coursera's "University Teaching 101" is just starting. Basic SOTL, best practices, know your students, developing instruction plan, working in small groups, teaching online.

I could have written this (absent email arguments). "I could have written that yesterday. I've learned a ton more about programming and databases; I've spent time getting the basics of computer science; and it's all to just keep doing the same damn things over and over again, and then forgetting I did them, and repeating them. Like a version of Groundhog Day about making Groundhog Day. "

"A new grant program, announced on Thursday, takes aim at ugly-duckling research projects that have a big upside but are too nascent or implausible to win the attentions of federal grantmakers or venture capitalists. Amazon will provide $2 million initially for the grants, and the director of the program will be an Amazon employee, according to a legal agreement signed last spring. Individual grants will be worth anywhere from $10,000 to $100,000, said Vikram Jandhyala, the university's vice provost for innovation. The barriers for entry are purposefully low. There is no fixed application window. Anybody who works for the university, attends courses there, or is otherwise affiliated with the University of Washington is eligible to apply. The online application form asks for basic information and then a series of questions, beginning with: What's the problem, what's the solution, who will benefit, and why is now the right time to do it? The company is encouraging students and scholars of all stripes to apply, not just techies. "

"Later in his commentary Ragusea touches on transparency: "just trust me I know what I'm talking about doesn't work anymore, even if you are trustworthy and you do know what you're talking about," he says. "It's like math problems in school: it is not enough to get the right answer you have to show your work." Since at least 2011 in journalism developer circles show your work has been a mantra, and it is slowly spreading to other parts of the newsroom. Ragusea argues that Thompson's idea of discovery is important not because "people enjoy watching their hero sleuth chase down a mystery" but because nobody will believe you anymore when you "report a bunch of facts, even if you explain where you got them from. You have to show how you got them." Show, don't tell. It's writing 101 and it is the basic idea of active versus passive transparency. I like putting the emphasis on active transparency, in part, because it reinforces the idea of journalism as a process not a product."