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TLDR 23

Too Long; Didn't Read Issue 23

Published: 2015-11-28 • 📧 Newsletter

In TL;DR I'm sharing things that happened during the week in literacy, technology, & education that I think you should know. Please feel free to share with others you believe would benefit. If you like what you see here, I recommend subscribing to get it hand-delivered to your inbox.

To send me feedback, questions, concerns...please email me at wiobyrne@gmail.com or reach out on Twitter. To review past issues please click here. Thanks again for the support. :)

This week I worked on the following:

🔖 Key Takeaways

📺 Watch

An insightful talk by Veronica Belmont as she discusses the process by which her identity was overtaken by a meme. She openly and honestly reflects on her own participation and activities online.

Matt Haughey explains that it's a "great talk that really drives home the point that sometimes the Internet can be a crappy place, but on the bright side, the Internet does let people hear the rest of a story."

📚 Read

The incredible Laura Hilliger has been unpacking her own thoughts and reflections about privacy/security over the last couple of blog posts. I love these posts for a number of reasons. First, I think Laura writes in an approachable manner that is concise while at times poetic. Second, her posts are honest, and I think they represent ways that we (perhaps) should think about privacy/security.

As an example, I'll share one of the lines from this last post:

My question is – why should I have to armor myself? This is not about saying "I have nothing to hide", it's about whether or not I need armor when I'm a single grain of sand.

I also recommend reading her earlier post on identifying your "line" when it comes to privacy.

In this post, Greg Ferenstein details our framing and understanding of privacy over the last 150 years. I find pieces like this fascinating as they help us contextualize our recent attempts to create and advocate for privacy.

This is a long read. Sit down with your tablet and a cup of coffee. :)

This post was shared by Laura Hilliger in the latest issue of her newsletter.

On our college campuses there recently has been a lot of protest and calls for recognition of a number of issues. In this post, Dalitha Lithwick calls for initiatives that promote dialogue and empathy among individuals.

I'm sharing this post to promote our thinking about online and hybrid spaces that could be leveraged as safe spaces for dialogue and unpacking these issues. The challenge is that, as I've detailed in the first couple of elements I shared in this newsletter...online spaces can sometimes be used for good or evil. Wondering if there is a way technology can be used to help.

This piece in nprEd shares an interview with Matt Candler and the 4.0 Schools initiative.

Although I am intrigued by the work and model from 4.0 Schools, I'm much more moved by the overall guidance of the post that suggests that it is perfectly appropriate and that you're being successful if you don't worry about scale and numbers all of the time.

While creating and sharing online, we sometimes are very aware of numbers of readers/viewers and wondering why we can't have thousands or millions more. Perhaps there is wisdom in focusing on small-scale approaches. As the post states, perhaps we should focus on communities, identify problems, come up with solutions, and test prototypes.

I will try to keep this advice in mind as I work on some new initiatives.

Antero Garcia writing in the School Library Journal about the possibilities for vlogging. Vlogging is short for video blogs and is increasingly becoming the medium of choice for youth as they learn online.

Tools for vlogging include Snapchat, Vine, Instagram, and YouTube. Antero states:

Vlogging is a venue for youth consumption and production regularly identified as an important space for educators to consider within their practice. While vlogging is a multimodal form of communication, it might also be a return to an oral tradition. Alongside social networking platforms such as Vine and Snapchat, fleeting videos and their circulation are not the text-based modes of engagement we have been using in the classroom.

Oh yes!!!

I love the work/materials from the Raspberry Pi Foundation. I've owned and hacked up different projects with the previous Raspbery Pi iterations. This latest version is only five dollars and is a bit faster than the previous units.

Supposedly, they had an earlier plan to make a $60 version that would focus on better performance but scrapped it after talking with Google's Eric Schmidt.

If you want to see a bit more, definitely check out this "unboxing video" from Doug Belshaw.

🔨 Do

This post by Kevin Hodgson details his use of Soundtrap to collaborate and make music with online jam partners.

Over the past couple of years I've been experimenting with Soundcloud and other podcasting mediums/tools to create and share audio only content online. I think tools like Soundtrap might provide opportunities for educators and students that want to investigate playing and colaborating with audio or music online.

🤔 Consider

"I learned that a long walk and calm conversation are an incredible combination if you want to build a bridge." — Seth Godin

Screencaptures and screencasts are mandatory tools that educators have in their toolkit. My thinking is that we should all be recording, remixing, and publishing digital content. YouTube is just one venue to help make this happen. Educators sometimes feel they should be afraid of recording and publishing online. But we should all be creating, sharing, making our thinking visible.

Transparency in higher education—Amanda Bozack and I kept thinking we should write something to get people thinking/talking about possibilities for transparency in relationships and management. Ultimately we too late realized that these decisions would cause the dissolution of our jobs and programs. Nevertheless, I have been thinking more about transparency and will have more thoughts in upcoming posts.

Veronica Belmont's talk drives home the point: sometimes the Internet can be a crappy place, but on the bright side, the Internet does let people hear the rest of a story. Her identity overtaken by a meme. She openly and honestly reflects on her own participation and activities online.

Laura Hilliger's question cuts: why should I have to armor myself? This is not about saying "I have nothing to hide", it's about whether or not I need armor when I'm a single grain of sand. Her writing is approachable, concise while at times poetic. Her posts are honest, representing ways we (perhaps) should think about privacy/security.

Greg Ferenstein's piece on the birth and death of privacy spans 3,000 years. I find pieces like this fascinating as they help us contextualize our recent attempts to create and advocate for privacy. This is a long read. Sit down with your tablet and a cup of coffee.

Campus protests calling for recognition, dialogue, empathy. I'm sharing to promote thinking about online and hybrid spaces that could be leveraged as safe spaces for dialogue. The challenge: online spaces can sometimes be used for good or evil. Wondering if there is a way technology can be used to help.

Starting small not scale—perfectly appropriate and you're being successful if you don't worry about scale and numbers all the time. While creating and sharing online, we're sometimes very aware of numbers of readers/viewers, wondering why we can't have thousands or millions more. Perhaps there is wisdom in focusing on small-scale approaches. Focus on communities, identify problems, come up with solutions, test prototypes. I will try to keep this advice in mind as I work on some new initiatives.

Vlogging—video blogs increasingly becoming medium of choice for youth learning online. Multimodal form of communication, might also be return to oral tradition. Fleeting videos and circulation not the text-based modes of engagement we've been using in classrooms.

Raspberry Pi $5 Model Zero—oh yes!!! I love the work from Raspberry Pi Foundation. I've owned and hacked up different projects with previous iterations. This latest version only five dollars, bit faster than previous units. Doug Belshaw's unboxing video shows what's possible.

Kevin Hodgson using Soundtrap to collaborate and make music with online jam partners. I've been experimenting with Soundcloud and other podcasting tools to create and share audio content online. Tools might provide opportunities for educators and students investigating playing and collaborating with audio or music.

Seth Godin: a long walk and calm conversation are an incredible combination if you want to build a bridge. Transparency, privacy, safe spaces, starting small, vlogging, making music—all forms of building bridges. Sometimes literally creating them, sometimes too late realizing decisions causing dissolution. The question remains: how do we build bridges worth crossing?

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