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TLDR 133

Too Long; Didn't Read Issue 133

Published: 2018-01-19 • 📧 Newsletter

Welcome to Issue 133. Helping you get your fill.

This week I rebooted the Digitally Literate Research Project. This is an open research project in which we're studying the use of technology in instruction around the globe. Our survey is in English and available here. If you're an educator in Pre-K up through higher ed...especially in international audiences...please take/share this. Also, we're building a small cadre of bloggers that want to think and write about edu, tech, open, and everything in between...please send me an email to join us.

This week I posted the following:

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Say hey with a note at hello@wiobyrne.com or on the socials at wiobyrne.

🔖 Key Takeaways

📺 Watch

January 19th is Edgar Allan Poe's birthday.

Neil Gaiman suggested that Edgar Allan Poe should be read aloud. He recorded this video of him reading "The Raven" in 2016 as part of Pat Rothfuss's Worldbuilders charity drive.

Poe is a favorite of mine, and was a regular fixture in my 8th grade classroom. I need to find more room for him in my life as I build a literate home for my children.

📚 Read

In TL;DR #132, I hinted at the upcoming changes that supposedly were coming to your Facebook feed. Farhad Manjoo takes this subject on with his usual savvy wit. I'm including the opening from his piece as it is a perfect analogy of the societal problems we're having.

Imagine you're a cookie mogul. You figured out a way to make lots of money by giving away delicious cookies for free, and in less than a decade, you created a global cookie behemoth.

But recently your cookie kingdom has begun to crumble. Scientists are worried that people are eating so many of your cookies that they're making themselves sick — yet they keep eating more, because who can say no to free cookies? There are concerns that your cookies are crowding out the market for normal food; after your success, fruit and vegetable companies have pivoted to free cookies, and now much of the global food supply is just cookies. Rising cookie addiction might even have helped a foreign government influence your country's election.

So you decide to do something. You convene your best bakers, and you tell them, look, from now on, we don't just care about how many free cookies we can shove into people's gullets. We want to take a holistic look at the overall cookie experience. We want people to eat some cookies, sure, but we don't want them to eat too many, so we will have to make our free cookies less addictive and more "meaningful." Let's maybe put carrots and kale and broccoli in the cookies.

What sort of cookie company wants people to eat fewer cookies?

If you want to dig in deeper...check out this piece from Ben Thompson.

It's the (democracy-poisoning) golden age of free speech

With the advent of these new and digital technologies, many think there is an opportunity to enable freedom of speech, and likewise the empowerment of all due to global connectivity. As indicated by Zeynep Tufecki in this piece in Wired:

In today's networked environment, when anyone can broadcast live or post their thoughts to a social network, it would seem that censorship ought to be impossible. This should be the golden age of free speech.

Yet, we appear to be witnessing the opposite effect. We see marginalized voices having a hard time being heard. We see things going viral, it seems, simply because they are negative. We see dark ads, propaganda, and unseen monies shifting the sands online.

There has to be a better way.

This post from the Knight Foundation reports of the changing dynamics of trust in our sociopolitical ecosystems. The post shares an overview of the full report, available here.

I'm sharing this for two reasons. The first is that it encapsulates much of the same message that we've been unpacking here in TL;DR for months. That is, what are the effects of these literacy practices in online and hybrid spaces...and how do they impact our offline interactions as citizens. It seems we have a struggle that exists as we decide whether we want to be citizens with others in our neighborhoods, or citizens in a globally connected marketplace.

More importantly, take some time to go look at the design aesthetics of the post. I've been focused on making my materials more approachable and accessible for all individuals. This post, sharing the highlights of their research, is a good exemplar.

In one of my research projects, I'm studying local activist groups to understand how they use digital texts and tools to achieve their goals. In these discussions, I've been asking about the role of educators in these practices and how they can help youth make sense of the turmoil in society. This is a challenge given that parents, and possibly their teachers, don't know how to cope with these times.

This post came through from Philip Russell on the Cult of Pedagogy blog that discussed some granular advice on bringing these topics into classrooms. I definitely like this focus, but it also sparks dialogue on the part of educators as to whether they feel this is appropriate.

Great post in the Harvard Business Review on the future of jobs.

As we see technologies advance, we're also seeing multiple jobs, and entire fields may be eliminated due to these advances. This post shares some interesting perspectives to keep in the back of your mind:

🔨 Do

This past weekend, I wanted to make some buffalo wings for a party I was holding to watch the football playoffs. In the past, I've cooked wings in a crockpot, baked them in an over, and on the grill. They seem to never turn out quite right.

I first learned how to cook buffalo wings while working in a sports bar while at UMass. The process was to deep fry the wings, and then toss them in a hot saute pan with hot sauce and clarified butter. Sadly, I do not have a deep fryer in my house...yet. :)

This recipe turned out relatively well. The wings came out very crispy and tasted great. I then tossed them in a mixture of hot sauce, bbq sauce, butter, & brown sugar.

I'll definitely try this again. I've also been thinking about the science involved in baking contents with a light dusting of baking powder.

🤔 Consider

"There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world." — Robert Louis Stevenson

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