TLDR 5

Too Long; Didn't Read Issue 5

Published: 2015-07-24 • 📧 Newsletter

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.

This week I posted:

Describing the Complex Systems that Influence & Guide My Workflow and earned the Advanced Kanban Badge from Doug Belshaw.
Scaffolding students (and educators) as they consume, curate, & create online

I had the privilege of presenting a keynote at the 2015 New Literacies Institute at NCSU. I worked with an amazing cohort of teachers from NC and China as they develop collaborative, inquiry-based units. My materials for this session are available above in the "Scaffolding Students" post. I also presented a "cool tools" session on Vine (Play With Digital Media, Stop-motion Animation, & Vine to Earn the #VineOff Badge) and urged them to earn the #VineOff badge by clicking here.

My time at the NLI was incredible and I left with a ton of ideas...and questions about our role as educators and how publicly should we advocate, or speak out online for freedoms and literacy. I'll have more on that in a future post.

🔖 Key Takeaways

Educator Advocacy: Lee Skallerup Bessette challenges educators to move beyond silence on social justice issues—we can no longer hide behind privilege.
Kanban Workflows: Earned the Advanced Kanban Badge, exploring complex systems for personal and collaborative productivity.
Reading Neuroscience: Research reveals words are encoded by sound and shape, not just meaning—implications for how we teach literacy.
Screen Time Nuance: Louis C.K. reminds us that phones take away "the ability to just sit there"—being a person requires disconnection.
Student Publishing: The need to create and share online, balanced with protecting students' privacy and digital safety.

📺 Watch

Chuck Jones - The Evolution of an Artist

Great clip from Every Frame a Painting looking at the evolution of Chuck Jones into a master of comedic animation. It's fascinating to watch how experts create, and the thinking behind the process.

📚 Read

Excellent piece from Lee Skallerup Bessette
on the work that needs to be done in and out of our classrooms given current events.

As educators and school leaders, we can no longer hide behind the privilege of “not knowing.”

I also suggest reading & considering this post

by Kevin Hodgson .

7 Questions to Ask Regarding Whether Education Technology Improves Learning

A list of questions from Terry Freedman
to ask after you question whether learning is improved through the use/integration of tech.

What Education Technology?

What other factors are present?

What is the Education Technology being used for?

How is the impact of the Education Technology being evaluated?

What exactly is being measured?

How much is Education Technology being used?

Is there an "experimenter" effect going on?

When we read, we recognize words as pictures and hear them spoken aloud

Piece from Scientific American
discussing research in neuroscience looking at what happens in our brains as we read. Results suggest that words are not simply encoded in the brain by their meaning but by simpler attributes such as sound and shape.

Why we can't put our phones down

Post on our inability to disconnect from our devices and self-regulate the intensity of our own lives.

Comedian Louis C.K. quoted in the post - “You need to build an ability to just be yourself and not do anything. That’s what the phone is taking away is the ability to just sit there. That’s being a person.”

The Test That Can Look Into a Child's Reading Future

This story on NPR's Morning Edition sparked a lot of discussion (vitriol) in my online personal learning networks. I'll leave my thoughts out of this and just ask that you read and make up your own mind. I would like to know more about the research, the subjects, and follow-up field testing.

Somehow Teen Girls Get the Coolest Wearable Out There

Piece from WIRED looking at the Jewelbot, a "friendship bracelet that teaches girls to code." You can find out more here from their Kickstarter page , or view the video here .

Love the story and the initiative...hate the title from WIRED.

Student Self-Publishing - An Essential Part of 21st Century Learning

The need for students to create and publish content online. The post includes some guidance on some digital texts and tools to make this happen. Once again, the primary concern in online content construction might just be protecting students and their content as they interact and share online.

[An awesome guide to typography for you and your students]

Butterick's Practical Typography is a web-published book on typography for the general audience. The book is beautiful, educational and designed for the web. If you (or your students) build, design, and publish online...this resource is a must.

🔨 Do

The Animation Station

Check out this incredible tutorial from Instructables
showing the development of an animation station. This gives me a ton of ideas about what can be done with video, technology...and a little creativity.

The full video is available here .

🤔 Consider

"You need to build an ability to just be yourself and not do anything. That's what the phone is taking away is the ability to just sit there. That's being a person." — Louis C.K.

"As educators and school leaders, we can no longer hide behind the privilege of 'not knowing.'" — Lee Skallerup Bessette

After the New Literacies Institute, I'm wrestling with questions about educator responsibility. How publicly should we advocate for social justice and freedoms online? When does professional silence become complicity? These are uncomfortable questions, but Lee's piece reminds us that staying informed and speaking out are part of our professional duty.

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🌱 Connected Concepts:

Pedagogy — Cathy Davidson on focusing classroom pedagogy as social change.
Social Justice in Education — Educator responsibility to advocate publicly on issues of freedom and literacy.
Kanban and Workflow — Advanced Kanban systems for personal and collaborative productivity.
Reading Neuroscience — How our brains encode words by sound and shape.
Digital Wellness — Louis C.K. on disconnection and "the ability to just sit there."
Maker Culture — Animation stations and creative technology projects.
Typography and Design — Butterick's Practical Typography as essential web publishing resource.
Accessibility — Pocket's text-to-speech supporting diverse learners.
Student Privacy — Balancing online publishing with protecting student safety.
Jewelbot — Wearable technology teaching girls to code through friendship bracelets.

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