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TLDR 41

Too Long; Didn't Read Issue 41

Published: 2016-04-15 • 📧 Newsletter

Hi all. Welcome to issue 41 of the TL;DR Newsletter. In TL;DR I'm synthesizing news and events from the past week in literacy, technology, and education. Thank you for the support.

This week we examine the digital storytelling, public performance, and fingers.

I'm always tweaking TL;DR to better suit you. If you have feedback, questions, or concerns...please feel free to the "reply" button and send me a response. I'd love to hear from you.

This week I've been working on the following:

🔖 Key Takeaways

📺 Watch

Cassetteboy's latest video is amazing mashup/critique of the "snoopers charter"

Great mashup of UK Prime Minister & Home Secretary Theresa May discussing the "snoopers charter." The snoopers charter is a controversial attempt to pass sweeping new surveillance powers in the UK and beyond.

📚 Read

Overview of a session at the recent annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA).

The panel included public academics who routinely blog and share materials on social media. They indicate the challenges and opportunities that exist in using these tools and spaces to advance personal and public scholarship.

A great post presenting research in the "Web We Want" series in The Guardian. This post explores the data from their commissioned research and tries to point to a direction for better conversations online.

I'm sharing this post for two reasons.

First, I agree with their focus on promoting better dialogue and insight in online. Additionally, I think it's important to recognize the horrific behaviors that sometimes exist in online spaces.

Second, I'm enthralled with the mixture of style and substance in the digital storytelling used in this post. The mix of data, charts, images, GIFs, and video is a great example of a future direction that we can all strive for as content creators.

Smart, savvy research looking at gender and age as illustrated by movie dialogue in almost 2000 films. The author(s) "Googled their way to 8,000 screenplays and matched each character's lines to an actor."

I appreciate the examination of language using the contexts of gender and age in pop culture.

I also love the stellar digital storytelling by the super cool team at Polygraph. The mix of text, data, and graphs is something to strive for as we create online.

Great piece from Jo Baeler and Lang Chen. Jo Baeler is a professor at Stanford University's Graduate School of Education and the CEO/co-founder of YouCubed. Lang Chen is a postdoctoral research fellow in psychiatry at the Stanford School of Medicine. The post is a mix of these two perspectives in thinking about math and cognition.

The post extends far beyond math as they consider visual thinking and the use of bodily/kinesthetic information to scaffold learning. Specifically, "Many teachers have been led to believe that finger use is useless and something to be abandoned as quickly as possible."

The authors suggest that use of the fingers is far from being "babyish," brain science suggests that this technique is essential for mathematical achievement.

If you mention the "maker movement" in a group of educators, you'll get either half of the room very excited...or very confused.

The "maker movement" is very hot right now, but there is relatively little research being conducted as of yet in this space.

This post serves as a simple literature review of some of the most current work in the field. The materials include guidance from Erica Halverson and sessions at AERA 2016.

🔨 Do

Giphy Capture is a Mac app from the folks at Giphy. This app is an updated, more powerful version of their GIF Maker web app.

I first learned about this tool from the incomparable Laura Hilliger...so you know it has to be good. If you haven't already, you should subscribe to her Freshly Brewed Thoughts newsletter.

I'm very excited about the use of instructional GIFs for use in blog posts and teaching materials. It provides a possible middle ground between screencaptures and screencasts in instructional materials.

At first I thought GIPHY Capture might be a limited app, but in testing it over the past week it has a lot of nice features built in. I definitely recommend playing with it. I also recommend Recordit for use on Mac and PC.

🤔 Consider

"Be yourself - not your idea of what you think somebody else's idea of yourself should be." — Henry David Thoreau

This week: digital storytelling, public performance, fingers.

Four pieces of work - Digitally Literate Courses side project continues. Bots post came together during an early morning run. TLT Survey launched for global educators - this is right up your alley. Web Literacy 2.0 released with Mozilla.

Cassetteboy mashup critiques UK surveillance. Education Twitterati discuss risks and rewards of public scholarship. Guardian's digital storytelling on comment toxicity is enthralling - the mix is something to strive for. Polygraph examined 2,000 screenplays for gender and age. Fingers in math class - brain science says it's essential. Maker movement research emerging. Giphy Capture for instructional GIFs - very excited about this.

Be yourself - not your idea of what you think somebody else's idea of yourself should be.

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