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TLDR 78

Too Long; Didn't Read Issue 78

Published: 2016-12-30 • 📧 Newsletter

Welcome to issue 78 of the TL;DR Newsletter. In TL;DR we typically discuss events of the week in education, technology, and literacy. In this issue we'll position ourselves to address challenges.

This week I worked on the following:

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🔖 Key Takeaways

📺 Watch

Over the past week several incredible women passed. Yes, Carrie Fisher and her mother Debbie Reynolds passed within one day of each other.

Astronomer Vera Rubin transformed her field by helping to identify "dark matter" in the cosmos.

In the video above I highlight Edith Ackermann. Ackermann, a developmental psychologist and learning researcher at the MIT Media Lab, passed away this week at the age of 70. The video describes her perspectives on play, tinkering, learning, and the role of the eye. Definitely good stuff for those tinkerers and makers out there.

📚 Read

For me, technology is a literacy issue. Increasingly we read, write, socialize, and communicate in digital spaces. As such, it's important that we focus on opportunities to educate and prepare ourselves (and our children/students) for these spaces.

As we increasingly use the internet for literacy purposes, it's clear that we need to do a much better job in educating readers in online spaces. We can't trust our search engines to tell us the truth. We also see a trend in which people (Americans in particular) will believe anything...just because they found it on the internet.

One of the bastions of this fact checking online has been Snopes. This post from the NY Times describes some of the work behind the scenes. I think it's also important that we understand the philosophy behind their work if we are to weigh their evidence against the work of others.

Facebook doesn't tell users everything it really knows about them

In previous issues of TL;DR I shared insight into how to find out what Facebook knows about you. Specifically, we took a look at identifying the social and political graph that the social network has about you.

ProPublica reports that this insight doesn't share everything that Facebook knows about us. Specifically, the report suggests that Facebook is bundling a dozen different data companies to target customers. This even includes some of our offline actions.

In the report, the authors look at some of the organizations that you've never heard of that are building (and selling) databases of information about you. Definitely something to consider as you share and interact online...and off.

This post from Bloomberg Businessweek shares some of the challenges as Wikipedia tries to expand its base of volunteer editors.

Wikipedia is only as good as its community of editors. About 30,000 people contribute regularly to the English-language version of the site, an additional 45,000 to the other editions. Not surprisingly, given that the organization's earliest supporters were software geeks, its entries often reflect the concerns and biases of a group that's overwhelmingly white and, according to several surveys of Wikipedia editors, about 85 percent male.

Another great post from Katrina Schwartz in MindShift. This post serves as a retrospective and perhaps "reality check" to think about the year that was in our classrooms.

Schwartz posits that the following were the big themes from 2016:

Click through the post to expand on the presented themes.

I'm a big fan of the Tim Ferriss Podcast and routinely share tips and tricks in some of my blog posts. The podcast, and one of his books (The Four Hour Workweek) is one of the primary reasons why I've been a lot more entrepreneurial over the last year.

This post from Maxim shares some insight following the release of his latest book, Tools of Titans. I'm planning on blogging about the text as I read to keep track of my thoughts.

In this post, Ferriss shares the following advice for dealing with "haters" and dealing with criticism online:

🔨 Do

I've shared plenty of recipes discussing the art of cold brew here in the Make section of TL;DR. I've wanted to start to drink more tea and this has been accelerated thanks to a recent gift from a friend. I was given a starter kit from Teavana that includes a ceramic mug with a lid, and a metal strainer that allows the loose tea to steep in the water.

I've spent the last week researching online, watching YouTube videos, and testing the process.

At this point I'm using a basic green tea (Bancha) that came with the kit. I have been focusing on the amount of tea (1.5 teaspoons) as well as the amount (8 ounces) & temperature (170 F) of the water. Once I have those pieces nailed down, I'm focused on taking the time to allow the tea to come together.

After this experiment, I'll share some more insight into other teas (and tea cocktails) that I'm trying. Please let me know if you can help in the process.

🤔 Consider

"Sometimes you can only find heaven by slowly backing away from hell." — Carrie Fisher

This week: position ourselves to address challenges.

Sometimes you can only find heaven by slowly backing away from hell.

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