Group items tagged

"Medium does a lot of things well. Its easy-to-use interface for composing blog posts creates a clean, distraction-free environment for the reader. But one thing it doesn't do well is audio. Music, radio shows, and podcasts aren't a featured part of the product. London-based developer Roman Mittermayr put together MediumSounds so he could mash together what he liked about the Medium design with the musical content he posts to SoundCloud. His creation adds a missing element to what Medium offers - a way for sound to be a main feature, not just an embedded part of the post."

"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."

"Giving a syllabus a profound inside-out reorganization is more than just window dressing. It involves deep thought about your course content and how a student encounters it. Marshall McLuhan said, "the medium is the message" and while the traditional medium for a syllabus is a portrait-oriented 8.5×11 text document printed on paper and handed out the first day of class… it needn't be the only possibility.

"A common phenomenon at the time was that people would start blogging on Blogger - because it was free, popular, and easy to set up - and then "graduate" to more powerful tools. Movable Type, Greymatter, and, later, Wordpress, had a much higher barrier to entry (before WP had turnkey hosting). But once someone had discovered the joys of sharing thoughts on the Internet, they were willing to invest the effort in order to get the added features and flexibility that the install-on-your-server software afforded."

Bet you never thought of the adjective "cool" when writing your syllabus. In case you want to start, this syllabus is very cool. I will be following this class as they publish their writing openly. I am optimistic that the teaching & learning will be pretty cool.

" This course is not one in which an instructor feeds you information and you regurgitate it for a good grade. You (the student) and I (the instructor) are almost certainly going to disagree on some things, and that's just fine (see the Grading section below). It's probably easiest to think of this course as a small, independent publication/think tank focused on the concept of 'cool'. Your job is to look carefully and thoughtfully at the world around you, and produce a series of essays that would help a potential reader understand your stance on what 'cool' means to you. You'll be using the process of writing and editing to help you define, and refine, that stance for yourself. You're also responsible for helping your fellow writers do the same. " h/t Stan

h/t Stan

"A protest bot is a bot so specific you can't mistake it for bullshit"

The entire article provides an interesting way to look at course design as well as ALT Lab website construction. "Grab the audience's attention visually. An enjoyable story offers a hook, a call to action, immediately, as soon as you open it."

"Digital literacy is getting a sense of your networks. It's like learning a new city, invisible but beautiful, and baffling when you don't know how a new city works. But then, as you roam around, it can start to make sense. You get more comfortable, and in time, your rhythms come together with its, and you can feel the city. You can cross the street safely and get what you need from the city. You can make friends there, and find safety, and love, and community. We all live in this common city now, and we just need to learn to see it. We live in an age of networks, and it's an amazing age."

Not sure I agree with all of this but these are things I think about.

"the "active" in "active use of technology" we are referring to is what is happening in the mind of the child. Active use for young children occurs when they use technologies in generative ways, that is, when they are generating insights, associations between new and existing knowledge, or creating their own content. This encourages more active cognitive processing that leads to deeper, longer lasting learning."

Boom!

"We all benefit from the free and open exchange of ideas, and I'm just glad this image has been part of that exchange."

""We were initially torn between collaborating with universities and working outside the world of college," Thrun tells me. The San Jose State pilot offered the answer. "These were students from difficult neighborhoods, without good access to computers, and with all kinds of challenges in their lives," he says. "It's a group for which this medium is not a good fit.""

" Back then, I perceived my experiences on the internet as ephemeral. My screenshot habit picked up when I began thinking of my time online as something archived and traced."