Select a result to preview

TLDR 129

Too Long; Didn't Read Issue 129

Published: 2017-12-22 • 📧 Newsletter

Welcome to Issue 129. The truth is out there.

Last week in TL;DR #128, we took a deep dive into all things net neutrality. I usually try not to go in to that level of granularity on a topic in this newsletter, but I think it's important for that topic. I also want to have one link to serve as a reference point if/when we need to go back to that topic. The only new thing I'd add is that you should follow the lead of the digitally active teens and call your legislators if you live in the U.S.

This week we'll get back to a "normal" issue that is jam-packed with some important things I didn't share last week with all of the net neutrality news. Read all of the way through...there's a quiz at the end. ;)

Please subscribe to make sure this comes to your inbox each week. You can review archives of the newsletter or on Medium.

This week I posted the following:

Say hey with a note at hello@wiobyrne.com or on the socials at wiobyrne. Next week I'm going to release a five-part, year-end series of posts on reviewing your digital hygiene. Let me know what questions you'd like to have me answer.

🔖 Key Takeaways

📺 Watch

The new Star Wars movie was released this week. I haven't gone to the movies yet to see it. That has made my online reading habits a struggle as I avoid any mention of Star Wars, spoilers, or most social media. :)

We're in the thick of the holiday season right now. As part of this, I've spent too much time driving around looking at houses with (too many) lights and displays. We've also been watching a lot of YouTube videos of massive light displays choreographed with their own custom music mixes.

One of my favorites of the week is this video from Matt Johnson. If you watch this video and want to see how they made this happen...scroll on down to the Make section. ;)

📚 Read

The other tech bubble

Last week, Facebook quietly released a groundbreaking admission. The company said in a blog post that their product...the social media feed that millions are glued to right now...can often make you feel good, but it can also make you feel bad.

As Farhad Manjoo states in the NY Times, this is not a notable admission. Who this is coming from...is huge. To me, this is like me telling a family member that smoking is bad for you. They may not care. But, if the cigarette manufacturer comes out and says..."hey...this might be bad for you"...they/you/we should take notice.

I share this admission from Facebook as part of the post above in Wired from Erin Griffith about 2017 and the year in tech. In this she notes:

Facebook, the greatest startup success story of this era, isn't a merry band of hackers building cutesy tools that allow you to digitally Poke your friends. It's a powerful and potentially sinister collector of personal data, a propaganda partner to government censors, and an enabler of discriminatory advertising.

The broader themes of Griffith's piece focus on how much has changed in the world over the last year, even as tech founders prefer to keep their head in the sand. There is a lot of nuance in the article that I urge you spend more time reading. Think about the change not occurring in the industry...and the change that may come from the outside.

Part of this change needs to come from you/us. What should we expect from these platforms, apps, and services? I think we should be expecting much, much more. But, we're also part of the problem.

The fake news culprit no one wants to identify: You

You may be like Miranda Katz, and immediately delete your Facebook account after reading a story like the one above. Katz indicates that found herself strolling through her News Feed eight hours later. Katz indicates that "there's an instinct to point fingers; to find someone to blame for the information hellscape in which we find ourselves." She concludes the introduction by stating "we can't quit the products, we become desperate for the companies to save us from ourselves."

The post then moves to an interview with danah boyd who indicates that this is never going to happen.

As boyd indicated in an earlier piece, we have more than a technology problem: "[W]e have a cultural problem, one that is shaped by disconnects in values, relationships, and social fabric. Our media, our tools, and our politics are being leveraged to help breed polarization by countless actors who can leverage these systems for personal, economic, and ideological gain."

The remainder of the piece focuses on the real problem in this is a need to re-knit society and create more informed, active users. If you've been following TL;DR over the past year, we've been slowly uncovering this over the past year...and thinking about the implications of education and literacy in the mix.

While we're here...bookmark these two pieces. The first is a list of ten readings for this distrustful media age. The second is a tweet thread from Peter Adams on ways to have learners critically examine journalism and media. If you've never encountered a tweet thread, think of it as a series of short ideas, or blocks of text. Read from the top down...they all include a number to indicate their place in the thread.

Impatient with colleges, employers design their own courses

We've seen a lot of the reports about how education, especially higher ed isn't preparing individuals for their eventual careers. As a counterpoint, perhaps review this piece from Inside Higher Ed that suggests that some Americans believe that a postsecondary education is essential.

Regardless of how you come down on this argument, we have to recognize that there is a shift in the future of work, the role of education, and how our different societies view these elements.

This post from Jon Marcus is a reprint from The Hechinger Report details an interesting trend in which institutions of higher ed are slow/resistant to change, so businesses are going around them and developing their own training courses, materials, and assessments.

I can vouch for the slow pace/path of change in higher ed. I spent about a year and a half designing/developing a progressive program at my previous institution, only to see it folded two years later as the institution decided to move in a different direction. To me...this Hechinger Report looks like a business opportunity. ;)

Great post from Jesse Stommel detailing the questions he asks himself when planning and developing instruction and assessments.

I shared a synthesis of these steps below...please head over to Stommel's post to get everything.

  1. What is my primary goal for students with this course / assignment?
  2. What is my digital pedagogy? How does my goal for this assignment intersect with my broader teaching philosophy?
  3. What tools that I already use (analog or digital) could help me achieve these goals?
  4. In order for this activity / class to work, what gaps do I need to fill with other tools / strategies?
  5. Is my idea simple enough? What can I do to streamline the activity?
  6. What is my goal beyond this assignment / course? How will the activity (and my pedagogy) evolve?
  7. Go back to step 1 and work through these steps (and likely several times).

The remaining steps Jesse lists as "below the fold" and should form a recursive loop:

  1. Does this activity need to be assessed? Or does the activity have intrinsic value?
  2. Is there a way to build the assessment into the assignment? For example, can I have students reflecting on their process inside the activity itself? Can my assessment arise organically from within, and as part of, the learning activity?
  3. What additional assessment strategies should I use?
  4. What is my goal in assessing student work?
  5. Go back to step 8.

As I develop/revise courses for my upcoming semester...I'll continue to fold these philosophies into my work. I'm thinking that I also need to make this thinking and my philosophies more overt to students as the semester begins.

Alien probe or galactic driftwood? SETI tunes in to Oumuamua

I'm a space nerd. I grew up wanting to be an astronaut. I remember where I was when the Challenger exploded. I also read too much sci-fi. Hopefully you've been following this story.

Scientists have been tracking 'Oumuamua, an asteroid from another star system currently zipping past Jupiter at about 196,000 miles per hour, too fast to be trapped by the sun's gravitational pull. This 800-meter-long, 80-meter-wide, cigar-shaped rock was first discovered in mid-October by astronomers at the Pan-STARRS project at the University of Hawaii. There is even a team of scientists that have developed a paper on the methods and means to get a team up to explore this object.

The most recent thinking on this object is that it might be a "comet in disguise."

I'd also like to note that this week, it was released that the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program has been secretly documenting UFO visits according to Politico and The New York Times. Some of the video on this in incredible. :)

🔨 Do

As suggested earlier in the Video section, we've been watching some incredible YouTube videos of these types of displays. Some of the best of these are from the Johnson Family Light Show. Honestly...take 20 minutes and watch some of these videos on YouTube.

As I'm watching these...I'm wondering how they did that. This video from Matt Johnson goes into a lot of detail. I was stoked to see the Raspberry Pi being used as well. :)

I spend time in classrooms working with educators and students to make things light up with LEDs. A video like this is good to show at the end as people are wrapping up. It lets kids dream a bit to wonder what else they could make.

🤔 Consider

"Your eyes can deceive you; Don't trust them." — Obi-Wan Kenobi

In a week exploring fake news, Facebook's admission their feed can harm us, and UFO disclosure alongside interstellar objects, Obi-Wan's wisdom feels prescient. Our eyes—and feeds, and search results—deceive constantly. The challenge isn't just technical filters but developing the critical thinking and cultural fabric to question what we see, especially when platforms profit from our engagement regardless of truth.

Previous: TLDR 128 • Next: TLDR 130 • Archive: 📧 Newsletter

🌱 Connected Concepts:

Part of the 📧 Newsletter archive documenting digital literacy and technology.