2,369 Matching Annotations
  1. Jan 2016
    1. “teaching engineer”

      The fucking hubris of this is worthy of the profanity. This is classic Taylorism and worse because engineering/managing complexity is impossible unless you force everything into a 'legible' state, a reduced state.

    2. Me, I rewound and replayed those statistics videos a lot. It didn’t help.

      Education fails for most of us when it becomes this farming adage: just put the food down where the goats can get to it. If all education is, is this, then almost everybody will be left out. I think that is what technocrats like Khan and Gates want in their most secret hearts even if they would never admit it--rule by the autodidact, rule by those who look just like them.

    1. "What can I do to enable change for the better in language learning?"

      Question

    2. strategy

      Is this only what we will do or is it something else?

    3. Whose language do we speak?  Whose interests do we serve?

      questions

    4. What is to be our 'change for the better'?   Who is 'our'?

      question

    5. "BE REALISTIC!!"

      I get it. My alt rallying cry is

      BE FANTASTICAL

    6. I have come to the conclusion that you can not enable change for the better in language learning, if you do not enable change for the better in education.

      thesis

    7. "What can I do to enable change for the better in education here where I teach?"

      question

    8. What is to be our 'change for the better'?   Who is 'our'?

      question

    9. Nothing, nothing will ever change.

      Something will change.

    10. Open doors are not enough.

      Yes, you have got to feel like walking through.

    11. Many moons ago I believed that if you put the food down where the sheep can get to it, they will eat it. Not so much.

    1. without investigating how the technologies might be helpful.

      Somebody somewhere has to test these tools IRL and that means they have to take the risk of failure. We just need to make the risk small and safe. We need to protect the early adopters.

    2. “Sticking all kids on an app where they are just having fun but not rigorously learning.”

      Cringe worthy phrases of the day "just having fun" and "rigorously learning". If you got rigor, you not learning. You dead.

    3. for all students v

      all students? one sized equitable tool fits all?

    4. And which are, in fact, worse than a pencil?

      I am ok with quantifying this and even making a rough matrix/rubric of techquity, but I am unwilling to say unequivocally as best practice (shudder...) that a pencil is 'better' than an app. Each has its charms and the user's mileage may vary.

    1. Will these

      All grand questions. But as Candide said, let us cultivate these gardens. And observe what happens.

    2. Working Out Loud Week #wolweek

      One of these real talk affinity spaces.

    3. What students need he says is meaning, and dialogue with their peers and elders.

      Yes. Maybe even simpler we could: we need real talk with peers and elders.

    4. The unattractiveness of unmeaningful commercial networked teaching and testing can hardly be understated.

      Abso-freaking-lutely!

    5. The challenge is enormous.

      yes and no. If it is nothing more than opening your door and making your classroom permeable, then what could be simpler. I did not say easy. Just simple. If you change the initial conditions even slightly then perhaps the butterfly does cause a hurricane in Cuba.

    6. La vie inactive

      Reminds me of St. John of the Cross' "via negativa", describing something but describing what it isn't. Learning is divided between school and 'the real world'.

    7. yawning gap between their 'education' and what they call in France 'La Vie Active' (the rest of their lives).

      Mark Twain said, "Don't let your schooling get in the way your education." Might substitute 'learning' for 'education' because of the fishy smell that emanates from the latter.

    8. "Networked market-led/PISA innovation"

      Follow the money.

    9. opening a little more than space.

      This is to aspire and to die for.

    10. What can be learnt from studying the 'learning spaces' and practices of the most innovative companies?

      I am wary here. I have read too many Harvard Business Review articles and bestseller leadership/entrepreneurship books to want to replicate the "100 points of light generalized to the universe" theories.

    11. How do we transform pockets of innovation into wider uptake of innovation?

      Moving to influence others with known happy practice.

    12. "Teaching space" architecture often encourages 'closed door policies'.

      This is exactly what Christopher Alexander wrote. So you have to change the physical space. This what the permaculturists say, you have to change the ecosystem. I wonder what Buddhist farmers like Masanobu Fukuoka would say?

    13. It is a question of  first "educational culture" and second access to innovative networks.

      Current educational error can be reduced to one faulty assumption: students learn because teachers teach.

    14. What a teacher does (once the door is closed) may be largely unknown.

      Unknown outside AND unknown inside and forgotten outside.

    15. many good reasons for teachers to continue practices which have hardly evolved and where 'new' technology has largely reinforced existing practices of teacher controlled/centred closed classrooms.

      If the function of learning is duplicate conditions inside of the learner, I suppose this is true. But even in static times, when change was more glacial, there was still a need to address change. And now that change is a constant we need learning ecosystems that address this stressor so that we can adapt and survive. The old way is like the story of the guy who lost his car keys and a cop finds him looking for them under the street lamp. The cop wants to know where he lost them to which the guy says, "Over by my car." The cop asks, "Then why are you looking over here?" To which the guy says, "There isn't any light over there." We need to provide folks with good flashlights not hope that there are convenient street lamps. I think that is what CLAVIER is trying to do.

    16. The practices of language teachers

      A largely inconvivial space in France (frankly, the US too mostly).

    17. afffinities
    18. the CLAVIER project

      Simon and his colleagues assume that the connected learning network for becoming an English language user already exists. We just have to jack into it via affinity spaces.

    19. As there is a 'digital divide' so there is a 'linguistic divide'.

      Access as metaphor. Security metaphor? If you don't have the key, the password, the magic symbols/handshake/medium of exchange, then you don't get in.

    20. English language skills

      Simon tutors/teachers/facilitates English language learning for his students.

    21. It is only by working/learning out loud and understanding that the classroom walls are virtual that things have changed.
      1. think out loud about your status quo
      2. know that wherever you are, the map's margins and lines are never as solid as one might imagine

      This permeability is one of the defining characteristics of learning in the virtual age.

    22. Nothing would have changed

      This is always a retrospective view. Always worry about the post hoc view that this represents. Perhaps the change was inevitable given the set of initial conditions the classroom represented at this point in time. Perhaps we need the hard rock problem that the status quo ante bellum represents. Perhaps it is just one narrative of many that are equal to more compelling.

    1. infinitely malleable

      No, it's not. Technology carries with it a certain amount of rigidity. Text boxes as discussion mechanisms. Limited to text? Not always but usually. Coding creates finitude not eternity.

    2. but is this really what we mean or even want?

      Why wouldn't we? Aren't we just privileging the salacious over the boring? This is where the word "privilege" explodes with the non-meaning it is so capable of carrying. I don't even know what it means anymore and I think that this is a classic strategy of those without power, disabuse the word by opening up its boundaries just like some words have been re-abused by closing down their boundaries.

    3. Who has the power to make certain that their perspective is heard above the fray?

      You cannot manage a meme.

    4. a diet of starvation

      Hilarity ensued. I never felt information starved as a student or as a hobbyist or as a business owner or as a parent. It was the tempo of the information gathering that was different.

    5. We had to learn new skills in order to manage the fact that fats and sugars are abundant and cheap in our diet

      I think this ignores the genetic fact that some of us are way better at this conversion process. The same might be argued about the handling of information abundance. Yes, we can learn to get more skilled, but there are still differences baked in by adaptive evolution. Unexpectedly it would seem.

    6. how can we optimize them

      You cannot optimize or manage the efficiency of complex systems. It is a fool's errand to try.

    7. And what does this mean vis-à-vis vulnerable populations who may be more susceptible to being manipulated by content driven by an agenda?

      Some proportion of the population must be driven by a biological need for certitude. We all have cognitive bias, but for some this need for certitude is so strong that it cannot be balanced. What can we do for those in this situation.

    8. information quality
      1. We can rule informaton by separating the good (credible, fair, good-faithed) from the bad (inaccurate, unfair, hate-filled)
    9. solving “information overload

      Problem-solution template/metaphor:

      1. We can rule information with tools (the technocratic solution)
      2. We can rule the information but only so long as we acknowledge the truth that we are not multitaskers but serial taskers who have to learn how to codeswitch.
      3. We can rule the information by allowing ourselves to not be ruled by fear of missing out.
    10. “information overload.”

      burden metaphor

      Make up your mind. Which is it? Here tossed salad of a paragraph is indicative of the confusion we all have in face of this thing called the Internet or the web or mediarich ecosystem. See. We can't even agree with a noun to call the thing out.

    11. consume all

      eating metaphor

    12. more access

      security metaphor

    1. a move towards thinking of genres in terms of interpretive strategies readers bring to their encounters with texts.

      Very much a move toward what we in litcrit call 'reader response' theory or what in physics they call observer effect.

    2. In other words, genres of participation are not value-neutral when it comes to issues of equity and opportunity.

      power relationships.

    3. We are still early in developing a robust understanding of these complicated barriers to participation.

      I don't want to say 'understate much' but I do want to indicate the level of complexity that is being undertaken is at a scale similar to exploring the genome.

    4. we’ve selected many cases that have high numbers of girls and black and Latino/ Latina youth.

      What are we looking at here: race, gender, economic class or what? Which category is more 'telling'?

    5. jump off from this point into finding a new genuine interest

      geeking out

    6. interest-driven practices

      messing around

    7. friendship-driven practices

      hanging out

    8. agency versus structure

      huh? agency as a everything from total freedom to totalitarian submission, a continuum? Agency within structure.

    1. classroom learning or out-of-school learning

      Perhaps the next paradigm shift has more to do with blurring or erasing the line between informal and formal learning than making that line brighter. Every situation is a learning situation, every learner defines for themselves how best to learn, every person in that person's life can be a participant in that learning culture. The idea would be to make learning a permeable thing.

    2. the term has never really worked for me.

      Interestingly it seems to be working for Laura Hilliger here: http://laurahilliger.github.io/learning-materials/

    3. For those who are used to a teacher-controlled classroom, this shift towards power-sharing can be frightening.

      @dogtrax wrote about this recently discussing the difficulty of allowing his 6th graders to 'have their heads". The structure has more to do with just learning. Schools are about sociality, they are about babysitting for working parents, they are about shared culture, they are about isolating young cohorts from the workplace. I see teachers working within the limits of this structure, but only at the tacit consent of the system, a consent that can be removed at will at any time.

    4. shape the curriculum

      I would not want beginning nurses to shape the curriculum on how to insert a central line. Content can shape participatory approach.

    5. lives beyond the schoolroom

      Is this authoritativeness inherently wrong for the classroom? Could there be ways to move from external control toward internal control? Can authority be made to serve autonomy? Isn't this quite common in tutor-mentor or apprenticeship structures, even informal learning situations?

    6. authoritative

      The word "authority" here is one I am unclear on. Does Jenkins mean acknowledged and certified expert knowledge, does he mean hierarchic power, or does he mean something else entirely?

    7. Teachers feel as if they have limited control over what happens in their classrooms; parents feel as if they have little control over what gets taught their children; and students feel as if they have no control over what or how they are taught.

      😁👍

      You can use emojis in osX by holding down command+control+spacebar to open up the emoji keyboard.

    8. Quote:

      "But this was more than a useful innovation. That first book — and the classic paper “A City is Not A Tree,” and really every work by Alexander since — amounted to a kind of technological critique, revolving around the observation that we’re doing something wrong in the way we make things. We’re substituting an oversimplified model of structure-making — one more closely related to our peculiar hierarchically limited way of conceiving abstract relationships — in place of the kinds of transformations that actually occur regularly in the universe, and in biological systems especially. Ours is a much more limited, fragmentary form of this larger kind of transformation. The result of this problem is nothing less than a slow unfolding technological disaster. We know it as the sustainability crisis."

      Salingaros, N. A. (2012) The radical technology of Christopher Alexander - the Permaculture research institute. Available at: http://permaculturenews.org/2012/12/06/the-radical-technology-of-christopher-alexander/ (Accessed: 11 January 2016).

    9. In these settings, learning is a side effect of creative production, collaboration, and community organizing, not the explicit purpose of the activity.

      Learning is never a side effect. It is a parallel event, occuring all the time. If we consider learning as a consequent event and an object of some other doing, then we are in danger of committing the same sin as the 'banking' model--x causes y. Dangerous and predictably problematic.

    10. By examining participation we see our relationship to “content” – whether that is educational or entertainment-centered – as part of shared practice and cultural belonging, not as a process of individual “internalization.”

      Isn't it both? For example, when I do annotations like this I am looking for a way to understand and, if worthwhile, internalize the best ideas I find. It is a part of my own internalization process.

    11. Researchers at IRL, PARC, and LCHC demonstrated through empirical study that learning is inseparable from the cultural identities, practices, and material settings of everyday life. They argued that the educational agenda should focus not on getting things into kids’ heads but on supporting contexts where kids could belong, participate, and contribute.

      Theory drives practice. Learning theory drives learning practice. Problem is this: what if you are wrong in part or in whole? What has been the consequence of learning as 'banking' theory?

    12. I haven’t focused on in-school learning.

      Probably a good idea. Not enough folks focused on informal learning.

    1. King explicitly linked racism to economics in ways that remain sharply relevant.

      Yes, racism is just another tool in the box for the haves to keep the have-nots from sharing in the incredible wealth generated by us all.

    1. In my experience, email becomes a pit where ideas go off to die.

      Well...applies to blogs as well even when in a fishbowl. Readers are not codeswitching carefully and intentionally.

    2. The #WalkMyWorld Project is an open education, open publishing, and open research initiative. In it we develop and facilitate a mentored, open, online learning community in which educators and their students use social media (e.g. Twitter) to connect and share.

      walkmyworld defined

    3. A fishbowl discussion is a participatory form of dialogue that allows the entire group to participate in a conversation.

      fishbowl defined

    4. In this post I discuss the possibilities for using your personal blogs, and Medium to create a fishbowl discussion for use in project and research planning

      Purpose of post

    1. In that way, even in this state of sense-making I can model for others how I'm seeking to identify the potential of what we're doing in the margins when we gather as a mob to annotate together. 

      I propose some prototypes for this kind of scholarly/active research work.

      1. Pick a short text/poem/digital object.
      2. Create a solo Hangout on Air.
      3. screencast the text chosen at highest possible resolution.
      4. annotate with hypothes.is while the the Hangout is running.
      5. When finished, upload to YouTube.
      6. Create a YouTube playlist with all participants represented.
      7. Use Vialogues or NowComment to comment on other's videos or to analyze or otherwise annotate and observer and name and notice.

      Of course one could also do this with a screencasting tool like Screencast-o-matic or Camtasia. I am sure there is better workflow than this, but maybe this "small pieces loosely joined" philosophy works best. It doesn't matter how you get it to the cloud, just get it there and share. I know I will be doing this in my online intro to lit course this semester. Gotta.

      1. save
    2. I think there is something to learn by engaging in text-centered discourse and then looking back at the digital footprint that results. 

      Yes! This is the next step that these technologies enable. And who knows what will happen once we step through that door and see four more doors in front of us. Just hope it's not a tyger behind one or all of them.

    3. One important possibility I see for collaborative annotation is the opportunity to structure learning conversations about texts that produce transcripts of written discourse that we can see, study and learn from.

      Take it a little further from the other night--Google Hangout on Air + Screenshare +Hypothes.is = a new way of collaborative learning. And a new way to learn about our learning, metacognition on the hypothes.is half shell.

    4. Skimming through these familiar texts I thought about the potential for social annotation.

      Great. My thoughts, too. How do we make these affordances dance, how do we make them mean more and give us a stronger signal on how people and ideas work.

    5. my aforementioned brother

      ah, the subtext here could fill volumes...well,

    6. Not pictured above are the giant, expensive sticky notes I used to annotate Blau's book at the end of each chapter. They're big and pink and covered with my excited ideas

      Does it seem like annotation tools are just pouring old wine into new bottles? They afford so much more. What they represent are useful palimpsests, bridges between people carried by 'text' like a StarTrek transporter.

    7. the promise of having educator readers mark up text together

      Yet another way to look at writing and reading as indistinguishable conversations. This would be a profound author talk tool.

    8. favorite, "annotation discussion thread"

      Fav Annotation Annotated

    9. My favorite annotation from the flash mob

      Just love the rhetorical strategy here--give a fav. I love the phrase "for example". As a reader I am being mapped down a wide blue highway when I hear it or its many cognates.

    10. annotation mobsters.

      Love the moniker. Now where's my gat. Gotta have a gat to be a mobster. Or at least a pen.

    11. With those as yet undiscovered possibilities in mind, some colleagues and I convened online for an experimental "annotation flash mob."

      Consider all the adjacent possible doors that had to open for us to even consider taking this small step toward collaborative annotation. We stand on the shoulders of giants.

    12. The Internet, with its interactive opportunities and Web 2.0 applications, suggest a more social approach, and present an opportunity for teachers and students alike to consider the possibilities for annotating together

      But now...annotation can be social. The Webs are alive with marginalia.

      In pairs, in web-powered groups, and yes oh yes in crowds

    13. Still, though we shared our annotations in discussion, the act of annotating was an independent act that we did alone,

      Historically, even very recent history, annotation is a solitary act. Or at best it's an imagined conversation with the author, usually one-sided.

    14. In teaching I learned the authentic value of talking back to a text with annotations.

      Talk back to the text--annotate

    1. It won’t be easy.

      MLK quote from Nobel Speech 1964. Lots of powerful turns at end well worth studying.

    2. But I can’t do these things on my own

      This is straight from ym the Bernie Sanders playbook.

    3. it only serves as a recruitment brochure for our enemies.

      sort of like drone strikes?

    4. Ask the leader of al Qaeda in Yemen

      Ask the wedding party in Yemen...oh wait you can't b ecause you aithorized drones to kill them.

    5. And the international system we built after World War II is now struggling to keep pace with this new reality.

      Is this nuance lost on most Americans?

    6. America safe and strong without either isolating ourselves or trying to nation-build everywhere there’s a problem.

      another issue--doing so without killing our economy.

    7. we didn’t deny Sputnik was up there.

      Backhand to global climate change deniers.

    8. I think there are outdated regulations that need to be changed, and there’s red tape that needs to be cut.

      No, duh.

    9. The bipartisan reform of No Child Left Behind was an important start,

      Laughable lauds for a failed program.

    10. Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction.

      Another Trump ref

    11. Today, technology doesn’t just replace jobs on the assembly line, but any job where work can be automated.

      Is this just another "expert" prediction like Christensen's bogus disruption theories.

    12. these things

      Is this a veiled attempt at American exceptionalism?

    13. promising to restore past glory if we just got some group or idea that was threatening America under control.  And each time, we overcame those fears.

      Reference to Trump et al.

    14. change that’s reshaping

      change as the only constant

    1. The series Anatomy of a Scene invites film directors to comment on their own work.

      I use Vialogues to do the same kind of video annotation.

    2. Michael Chabon also added an annotation to the final couplet of the track.

      Celebrity annotation--is that added value?

    3. slow readers down,

      slow reading, slow eating, slow .... a new zeitgeist?

    4. Skills and Strategies | Annotating to Engage, Analyze, Connect and Create

      Please use this tag below for your annotations--nextprez

      If you tweet out, please use #nextprez.

    5. In this post we hope to both expand their definition of what annotation can be and inspire them to experiment with new ways of doing it

      purpose of article--a call to action.

    6. By Jeremy Dean and Katherine Schulten

      Jeremy Dean, bio at Hypothes.is. Katherine Schulten, bio at NYTimes

    1. If anything, all the incentives have gotten worse; if anything, the ranks of dedicated, safely employed critical thinkers in a position to be the voice of reason have thinned. In all likelihood, the coverage today would be far uglier and more prejudicial than it was when the scandal actually broke.

      spooky ture.

    2. What she found, over and over, was that researchers whose conclusions didn’t line up with politically correct orthodoxies — whether the orthodoxy in question involved sexual abuse, transgender issues, or whatever else — often faced dire, career-threatening consequences simply for doing their jobs.

      perhaps this addresses the very real danger of 'doing your job' that you raise in your Dear Henry soundcloud file?

  2. Dec 2015
    1. this process has been domesticated.
    2. but I’ve come to believe that what’s at stake is probably much more complicated than I thought.

      A common refrain: the more I know, the more I know that unknown unknowns lurk aplenty. This is the wisdom of experience and not of youth.

    3. Coming of Age
    4. Little consideration is given to the diversity of how these supposed “digital natives” experience technology

      This is a common assumption I teach my students to disabuse whenever they see it. People are rarely a monoculture, almost never monolithic block.

    5. often assumed

      Assumed by whom. I have a hair-trigger bias on this because of some media outlets who have argued that 'some expert', unnamed of course, says this or that. Grrrrrrr!

    1. So my goal for each job was also to keep meeting more people I could learn the business from—everything in the wine industry is based on relationships.”

      Each "job" elicits relationships. If it doesn't then you aint larnin'

    2. For Strieter, the wine business requires simultaneously solving the science of growing, the art of making, and the business of selling

      Question to ask yourself: how does my job pose interesting questions to pursue? what are those questions? are they the right questions to spark my passion?

    3. The bottom line

      Here is a comic version that sums up in the final panel: Image Description

    4. We made the case that companies should do more through redesigning the work environment to elicit and amplify worker passion in order to improve learning opportunities and ultimately drive sustained performance improvement.

      Why not build the capabilities of passionate workers and let them build their own damned work environments that "elicit/amplify worker passion 2 improve learning opportunities/drive sustained performance improvement." Whynot have a partnership together? Why does this reek of management hierarchy?

    5. Less than 12.3 percent of America’s workforce possesses the attributes of worker passion.

      The assumption here is that 'worker passion' however that is defined is the driving force behind higher levels of performance.

      This is the driving force behind all of my composition classes. You have to 'wanna' and I mean really wanna write about that special topic or question. Without that you will have at best competent drivel.

    1. we almost pulled the plug

      pull the plug

      One of my favorite annotations is an image that points to dead metaphor, i.e., cliche. In a way it helps to revive both the metaphor and its extension.

    2. In many ways, forms of media participation have become so mundane and everyday that they do not “count”

      Can't remember the exact quote but it reminds me here that only when a tool becomes ordinary does it become useful

      Image Description

    3. the conversation doesn’t have to end but may spark many subsequent exchanges with many more people.

      Hence the need for a public conversation with the whole book. Hell no to the isolated scholar here

      Hell to the Nope

    4. Truth be told, I never wanted it to end.

      Process as product? Process over product?

    5. teasing out the various strands of our interconnected research

      Teasing of the Yarn

    6. the busiest people we know
    7. And the result is a book, which is being released this month by Polity Press.

      The metaphor behind "release" is pretty profound. Released into the wild. Like the book is a injured wild thing that has been nursed to health and now returns to the zeitgeist from whence it came? More like a domesticated thing that we allow in and out through the pet flap in the door?

      I am thinking more in terms of 'reader response' theory which argues among other things that the book as a stable thing that the authors have control over no longer exists once it is 'released' into the reader wild. As lit-crit David Bleich once noted, "Knowledge is made by people, not found."

    8. a wealth of other topics we hold near and dear.

      Assumption: not the wisdom of crowds (mobocracy) but the wisdom of wise crowds.

    9. The key word here is conversation.

      And wouldn't this book have been even more of a conversation had they also published it on a platform like WordPress using PressBook's plug-in. Hey, they could still do it, right?

    10. The Conversation Never Ends

      I am reminded a bit tongue in cheek of Robert Earl Keen's anthem of touring, "The Road Goes on Forever (and the Party Never Ends")

  3. Aug 2015
    1. Maybe I don't even know what a soft skill is. Is hammering a nail a soft skill while writing the instructions for how to do it be a "soft skill"?

    2. “soft skills”

      Sorry but when I see "soft skills" I hear "soft targets" a jargony dodge phrase that avoids the real.

    3. We need to prepare students for the future not catch up to the past.

      Reminded of Otto Scharmer and The Presencing Institute and how we need to stop leading from the past. You can't change the past. What we need is a new way of conjuring future as it wants to emerge now. Scharmer's book Theory U is an ethereal manual on how to do just that.

      Image Description

    4. focusing

      Focus--now there's a magic metaphor. Part of me loves legible illusions like the map and chart and the infographic. Insofar as they are of use but only just another filter for meaning I am OK with it, but the institutional demands of schooling always make them something more.<br> I think that part of the problem is in that magic word focus. If you want to extend the metaphor a bit to the biological realm, as I understand it our brains actually put together more information about visual "reality" from the peripheral. Plus, there is a huge paradox in focusing: our high def , sharp vision occupies 1% of the retinal area but preoccupies 50% of the visual cortex. The paradox being that the fovea is a blindspot because of its acuity. We see yet we do not. Our minds are half occupied with seeing the grand 1% of the sensorium (yeah, I can appreciate the analogy to modern economic life here) Small wonder that the Latin word fovea originally translates as "pit or pitfall". Focus is a pitfall, there for a specific adaptive purpose--to survive on some savannah or woodland or veldt somewhere. But we live in a very different environment now. We need the periphery. Metaphor controls, it is the default until we reprogram it. I think we need to reprogram the 'focus' metaphor.

  4. Jul 2015
    1. guiding student to discover

      I think so too, but also part of me is so wary of trying to know what is best for someone else.

    2. part of my life

      Mine, too. Partly internalized, partly a space to revisit, partly a piece to fit into the large and borderless 4d puzzle that is living.

    3. What do you think the above image is?

      the would be two sets of frog eyes at night in a muddy pool.

    1. Here’s what I wrote to her:

      I don’t think the change is largely in the medium. I think the change is in the stance. Most of what people are calling remediation, most of what I am doing in fact, is just a mapping over from one medium to another. Unless the parallax occurs like Sousanis talks about in Unflattening, I don’t think there is a remediation. It’s not the medium it’s the messenger.

    2. I am trying to find some balance for the word even as I work with the concept.

      I am trying to hold two or three defs in my head here. Context is all. Language can be terribly tribal. Or in this case a guild language like so much academic jargon, intended to off-put the uninitiated and to make sure that those with the correct handshake and ring can play.

  5. Jun 2015
    1. a desire to honor my responsibility to the community.

      You are following through and I am up early this morning trying to honor your intention--reciprocation, to me the most powerful social reason of all. Only my humble opinion.

    2. I realized that I was feeling pressure - self-generated, I'm sure - to "lead" since the inquiry strand is "my thing"; and I was feeling that I needed to produce something in order to "lead."

      I was feeling similar pressures from farm work and the miserable heat and humidity. I am getting up at 4 am now to get some decent head work in before I have to do the farm stuff. Don't cry for me, Argentina.

    1. We do not want to leave the school system behind. We need to keep driving toward where we want everyone to be versus waiting until everyone is ready. The end goal will involve the Internet, and there needs to be a framework for it.

      But we do want to leave it behind--the words we use--"school system" tell us exactly what is at the center--schools. What we learn are learn systems where learning is at the center which implies tacit-wise that the learner is at the center.

      (http://gph.is/1e82Pef)

      learner centric

  6. Apr 2015
    1. Using Wikipedia’s “Wikipedians” as a general compass, only .01 — .02 % of their audience creates (contributes) to their community. Everyone else, statistically including yourself, is just a leech of the system.

  7. Jan 2015
    1. "Burroughs’ output predicted the affective temporalities that social networks would make ubiquitous half a century after Naked Lunch appeared: a continuous stream of emissions less concerned with the definitiveness of any individual utterance than with the continued elaboration of a familiar presence."

      I get the click of recognition with this particular quote. The world isn't so much flat as that Pharisee Friedman asserts as it has been leveled like the top of a mountain, all the energy goodies ripped out and the overburden midden gravity fed below, holler fill.

    1. animated gif in a zeega Terry Elliott did

      Here is the link: http://zeega.com/170893

    2. they noticed that my whole article was really about that

      I have just the book for you: Sentipensante Pedagogy

    3. but our real need is to feel loved ok, that’s a bit extreme, but you know

      No, this is not extreme at all. Love has so many forms and all are worthy.

    1. watch this and push back against the criticism of our profession

      Also, watch this and be aware of what drives folks to say and think horrible thinks about the very folk they claim to trust with their kid's brains.

    2. This is a great idea, WMWP.  Real service for your community.
      
  8. Dec 2014
    1. Maybe that is where this argument goes. I believe that the The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House. Audre Lorde.

    2. continue caring.

      Ancillary question: care about what?

    3. those that care and those that don’t care

      The problem for me is that this is a continuum of caring. They are oftentimes both. They define caring from each-their-own perspective. In other words the strategic students show how they care by honoring the system that assigns points to work and the intrinsic learners show they care by honoring their own inner compass. These 'definings' and 'honorings' are quite different from the way teachers and mentors define caring which are in turn quite variable.

    4. she made the mistake

      Reminds me of Taylor Mali: What Teachers Make. Or you can just listen to the relevant snippet here: Let's Be Honest

    5. “do they care?”.

      Simon Ensor and I have been having 'picnic' conversations on this over the last couple of months. I have even had Hangouts of One (yes, I am a lonely dude) that are in part about this. In our picnics the question has taken another form: is it fun?

    1. Are you pro- or anti-emoji?

      I am anti-communication. Just like the patent office said in 1865 about no new patents and what Bill Gates said about memory (yes, he really did say it-- [http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/09/08/640k-enough/]) we don't really need new vintages do we?

    2. There’s a strain of Jewish humor that hinges on which word is stressed in speech, which corresponds to which word is in italics in writing.

      Well...this borrowing from voice to speech is not exclusive to any culture. He just wanted an excuse to tell a joke.

    3. It’s not that good writers have chosen to flout a rule; it’s that the rule is not a rule in the first place. What Heller and many writers before him have never asked is: What makes a rule a rule? Who decides? Where does it come from?

      This is exactly the same thinking I discuss with students when I introduce citation to them. I get the inevitable question: why do I have to do it this way? I respond with three words: tribal, logical, conventional. Not in any particular order. Linguists are descriptive, grammar marms are prescriptive. Guess who is way more interesting.

    4. you’d sound like a pompous jackass.

      Holy, leaping jehosaphats of hyperbole, Batman. He's so hyperbolic he's asymptotic. Yeah. I said it.

    5. I tend not to be a pedant about Latin plurals. I like “the media are,” but I’m in a fussy minority here.

      Using the connotative and negative tone of pedant shows exactly how he feels.

    6. Trying to embed something in here from the atlantic article

      <iframe width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" src="&lt;a href=" http:="" <a="" href="http://www.theatlantic.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">www.theatlantic.com="" video="" iframe="" 384088="" "="" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">http://www.theatlantic.com/video/iframe/384088/"></iframe> OK, that didn't work. How about a YouTube vid? <iframe width="640" height="360" src="//&lt;a href=" http:="" <a="" href="http://www.youtube.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">www.youtube.com="" embed="" VX07m-wahOg"="" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">www.youtube.com/embed/VX07m-wahOg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe> OK, not embeds work so far. Not even images. Inserting images using the image url just gives you a link. Was hoping for the actual image.

    7. astonished at how difficult they were to interpret.

      similar to a telephone interview--transcripts are valuable to the visually impaired but they represent a throttling of the gestalt, the whole of voice and vision that make up the full monty that is F2F conversation.

    8. his grammar feud

      Yeah, grammar marmism is rampant in our worlds. Some people mistake language for a machine when it is really a joshua tree or a redwood or some kind of fungus. The only disease that would kill language would be the evolution of telepathy and I don't think that would do it. To adapt Johnny Paycheck: take your rules Mr. Heller and shove 'em.

    9. the author and Harvard professor

      Interesting choice of word order here: author and professor instead of professor and author.