ALT Lab

A nice breakdown of Twitter search methodology we might parallel in other contexts. "You probably skipped right over the most important word used by the five sources above. It's everyone's favorite word, and one you should add to any Twitter search that's seeking personal experiences: Me. (And its close cousin "my.") Most people relating a personal experience - aka, good sources - will use it. Most people observing from afar - aka, useless sources - won't. Let's look again at those five sources, and this time pay attention to the words they used that enabled us to find them. There's another word variation they all have in common."

A tool that tells you stuff about any WordPress site.

Multimedia storytelling from MIT . . .

These people don't use/think about Twitter the way I use/think about Twitter.

"It's no accident that many of the most-read New York Times articles of the last few years have been complex takes on serious subjects in a form other than a traditional article: an explainer of the Ebola crisis, a photo essay on aging, a video on ISIS and, from us, the rent-vs.-buy calculator, a graphic on nonemployed men, a map on poverty and an interactive on generational politics."

I really enjoyed Karl Miller's talk and his course is well worth exploring.

"Amazon's toys category is no longer sorted into "Boys" toys and "Girls" toys. "

Interesting idea . . . with some repercussions. "Courses are bogus.  You don't go to MIT for the courses (and every course that MIT teaches is online anyway).  You go to MIT so that you can learn how learn stuff that they haven't yet started a class for. "

Modeling a number of things in this post that would have strong parallels in faculty/student blogging.

One of those impressive student blogs that inspires. h/t Amy Nelson

It's a bit insane to me this was a conversation but it's one that ought to happen much more. Are we practicing what we preach? "One of my undergrads came up to me and said, 'You know, Professor, your ideas about games as models for learning environments are really interesting, but I'm curious, why don't you teach your class following those ideas?'" Mr. Fishman says. "And I thought, Well, that's a really excellent question."

"Muller concluded that those "clear," "concise" and "easy to understand" expository videos that abound in science education do not appear to be particularly effective in teaching science. By contrast, videos with dialogue that address the underlying misconceptions students bring to science seem to be more educationally effective."

"In particular, we wanted to see if there was any difference between tweets from locals and those from people who traveled to Ferguson to participate in or report on the protests."

"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."

"A recent Twitter conversation that cast doubt on the conclusions of a genomics study has revived a debate about how best to publicly discuss possible errors in research. Yoav Gilad, a geneticist at the University of Chicago in Illinois, last month wrote on Twitter that fundamental errors in the design and data analysis of a December 2014 study2 led to an unfounded conclusion about the genetic similarities between mice and humans."