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TLDR 3

Too Long; Didn't Read Issue 3

Published: July 10, 2015 • 📧 Newsletter

🔖 Key Takeaways

Thank you once again for being one of the first to sign up for this newsletter. In this weekly email, I'll pull together some of the content that I shared out throughout the week. It's basically things that I think you should know & discuss. Please feel free to respond back, and share out with others.

I had two posts this week:

This week we started up my final stretch of classes at UNH. These include the starting & ending sequence of classes in the IT&DML program.

📺 Watch

A special look behind the scenes of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Yes...I'm sharing this because it's Star Wars. I'm also intrigued by the use of live action, and the awareness of the limitations of computer generated imagery (CGI) by the directors. It's an interesting commentary by a group that is trying to make a film that uses the newest in digital technologies, but still connects back to the original films.

📚 Read

We often engage in this debate about whether or not online reading is really reading. In 2008 the NY Times took some of our research from the NLRL to look at how reading has changed. My opinion is that the skills of reading online (and on screens) is the same, yet different in some ways to reading offline. We do need to recognize that reading on a screen...especially a screen of different sizes will have consequences.

I've been doing a lot of research on meditation and some of the skepticism surrounding it. I'm starting a new 30 day challenge in which I'll be meditating every day. I'll start by using the Headspace app mentioned in the piece from the New Yorker.

Excellent post from Cathy Davidson in which she makes the case for focusing on pedagogy in education. Despite all of the challenges in the world, by focusing on your classroom and pedagogical choices, educators can act as agents of social change.

The research examines the use of video as a teaching tool in professor-centric massive open online courses (xMOOC). Some of the takeaways from the research provide some insight into best practices for open learning. Specifically, "Think twice before using video.... it seems problematic that online learning pedagogy is concentrated so heavily in this medium."

Thanks to Stephen Downes for sharing.

Early last week this post made the rounds online and sparked some curiosity as we looked at what happens if/when robots/androids dream. This week the images and videos got a bit more strange.

According to a Demos report, education focused on the development of character and specific traits may not be a good idea. It is not known how embedding these traits in education enhances or modifies learning objectives. It also may ignore cultural or societal values placed on these characteristics.

If you've never heard of Reddit, it is a web-based blog that displays news based on personal preferences and community likes. Reddit is often called the "front page of the Internet" and the backbone of this community are the moderators for the individual discussions, or "subreddits" on the site. The protest stems from the firing of Victoria Taylor who was one of the key advocates for the "Ask Me Anything" interviews and a contact for most moderators.

At the end of the week, Ellen Pao steps down as CEO after the Reddit revolt.

After you read this post, go read Ready Player One. By the time you're finished, you'll be ready for when his latest, Armada is released on July 14th, 2015.

🔨 Do

You've probably heard me (or countless others) talking about digital badges and want to get a better understanding of what they entail. Sign up for this open badges course put together by Doug Belshaw and Bryan Mathers. As an added bonus, they're releasing the course on GitHub, so you can edit/revise/comment as you see fit.

🤔 Consider

Despite all of the challenges in the world, by focusing on your classroom and pedagogical choices, educators can act as agents of social change.

Cathy Davidson

Davidson's argument resonates across this issue's threads—from rethinking how we use video in online learning, to questioning character education's cultural assumptions, to communities revolting against platforms that ignore them. Change happens at the intersection of individual choices and collective action. Your classroom, your pedagogy, your decisions matter.

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