Aug 29, 2015 12:00 AM
Jul 30, 2025 12:00 AM

TLDR 10

Milestone Issue: Hypertext History and Educational Innovation

Published: August 29, 2015 β€’ πŸ“§ Newsletter

Welcome to Too Long; Didn't Read (TL;DR), issue #10. Thank you once again for signing up for this newsletter. We're now up over 100 subscribers...and on to our tenth issue. Thanks again for the support. :)

πŸ”– Key Takeaways

I started up my class here at the CofC this week and met my first group of students here. I also sat in on my first series of committee meetings. It's been very exciting as I get started.

This week I posted:

What I Use: Chrome - In this series of posts I share some of the digital texts and tools I use in my workflow. This post covers my use of Chrome on Mac & PC. I recommend checking out the extensions I share at the bottom of the page.

Tweaking WordPress to Scaffold and Empower Your Readers - I'm constantly building, breaking, and iterating on content I share online. In the process I document my decisions (and failures) in an attempt to reflect and guide others. In this post, I discuss some of the finer elements (themes, plugins) I use in my blog to support readers. If you have your own WordPress site, or blog (you should) I recommend checking out the post...and sharing your own thought process.

πŸ“Ί Watch

Manuel Lima: A Visual History of Human Knowledge

Manuel Lima: A Visual History of Human Knowledge (TED Talk)

A fascinating, yet haunting look at a thousand year mapping of the networked nature of human knowledge. It makes you reflect on how interconnected we really are. This is especially true when researchers map out what we know and how we make sense of it.

πŸ“š Read

The Coddling of the American Mind
There were a lot of ripples from this piece over the last two weeks for me. In my orientations last week there was a lot of discussion about how we prepare students for discussions and topics that might be a bit upsetting. This piece discusses how our concern and awareness for trigger warnings may be hurting the mental health of students.

Pew Research Report: Americans' Views on Mobile Etiquette
Another great research report from the Pew Research Center. This report discusses the challenges that exist as ubiquitous connectivity affects our lives. If you have ever questioned the use of the cell phone in class, at dinner, on a flight, or watched people with their eyes glued to a screen while walking...this is for you.

The full report is available here.

There's an App for That. Well, Maybe.
Recognition, and a general call from the U.S. Department of Education to identify better methods to evaluate apps labeled as "educational." In the post, they announce a Request for Proposal (RFP) to develop this process.

Explain Everything is Now Available in the Chrome Web Store
Explain Everything is an amazing app for iOS (iPad/iPhone), and Android phones/tablets. The app allows you to annotate and record videos of your annotations in real-time...with audio. This is great for creating multimodal tutorials, video walkthroughs, and having students document their thinking aloud. The new Chrome app is only available for Chromebooks at this point, but I'm sure it'll soon be available across all Chrome browsers.

If you're looking for resources for having students document thinking on the iPad, I also recommend checking out this resource on "sketchnoting" from iTunes.

Teacher Entrepreneurship Week 2015
This week Steve Hargadon led four nights of interviews with teachers and educators acting as incredible agents of change. The end result is an incredible series of videos all free and available on YouTube. You can view the full schedule here.

This is a great opportunity to identify some of the thought leaders in education, listen to their ideas, and follow their work.

50 Years Ago Today the Word "Hypertext" Was Introduced
An interesting historical piece on the new GigaOm looking at the origin of hypertext. This includes an interview with Ted Nelson who coined the term on August 24th, 1965. It's amazing to see how ubiquitous this has become in such a short amount of time.

How to Survive a Mass Shooting
This post discusses the prevention and reaction to events involving an active shooter. Although this type of post is not directly related to the content I usually share in this newsletter, I think it's important to share widely. During my years in education, I've had too many instances where violence has touched the schools within which I worked.

During my first years teaching, our school invited in FBI profilers to discuss ways to prepare, prevent, and react in an active shooter event. I've also attended other trainings when they're offered at my institutions. Much of this information is the same message I've received throughout. Preparation and planning is one of the best things you can do to help keep you alive.

Amazing Pictures: Baby Chameleon Doesn't Know It Hatched
Stunning wildlife photography capturing natural moments.

When Educators Make Space for Play and Passion, Students Develop Purpose
Guidance from Harvard Ed specialist Tony Wagner and the seven essential things young people need to be successful lifelong learners:

Listen to Tony Wagner present on Play, Passion, & Purpose at his TEDx talk.

πŸ”¨ Do

Use ShareAlike to Make an Audio Slideshow from Your Photos
As students start playing with digital content, it's important to find apps that will let them quickly and simply mess around and create something new. There are several good apps teachers can use with students to quickly and easily play with digital content. Animoto and VoiceThread are two that come to mind.

ShareAlike is a free tool that makes it quick and easy to mix photos together to create an audio slideshow. It is available on iOS (iPhone/iPad), (soon to be on) Android, and as a web app.

It looks like an exciting new tool to test out and allow your students to play with digital content. Take a look at Richard Byrne's video for a walkthrough.

πŸ€” Consider

Reaching 100+ subscribers feels like a meaningful milestone for this newsletter experiment. The growth suggests there's real appetite for curated, thoughtful analysis of educational technology trends rather than just breathless coverage of the latest tools.

The 50th anniversary of "hypertext" provides fascinating historical perspective on how quickly revolutionary concepts become invisible infrastructure. Ted Nelson's vision of interconnected information now seems quaint compared to our current web reality, yet his core insights about networked knowledge remain profound.

The trigger warnings debate raises important questions about how we prepare students for challenging ideas while maintaining intellectual rigor. These conversations during orientation week highlight the practical challenges educators face in balancing safety with academic freedom.

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Connected concepts:

Part of the πŸ“§ Newsletter archive documenting digital literacy and technology insights from the early TL;DR era.