Month: June 2018

Bookmarked Interviewing My Domain – Mind on Fire (mindonfire.us)

Having your own domain needs to spring from your own desires: as a way to talk back to the world; as a way to talk to yourself while allowing others to listen in; as a way to document your passage through this all-too-brief passage of light that is your life.

Sandy, I really like your point about understanding what you are doing. I often feel the same way too. The more I do, opening various doors, the more I realise I don’t know. I guess the reality is that the sky is the limit when it is a space of your own.

Thank you for sharing.

Replied to Flânographie? by Ian Guest (Marginal Notes)

The mobility of the flanographer traces out pathways of experience. Observation, ongoing sense-making and mapping during the course of these perambulations are manifest in each of the three phases – data collection, analysis and presentation. It’s about following and making interconnections and associations. The flâneur’s sensibility means applying the same strategy consistently across the study.

It feels like flânography and assemblages go together?
Bookmarked Building a Coaching Culture | It’s About Learning by Cameron Paterson (learningshore.edublogs.org)

One of the key learnings from educational research over recent years is that it is simply not possible to measure the quality of teaching the way people want to. Measurement is a comfort blanket but most of the measurement is meaningless. Coaching is our way of promoting a culture of trust, instead of an audit and micromanagement culture.

In Cameron Paterson’s notes from a staff presentation he outlines the many benefits of coaching and how it differs from a managerial approach.
Bookmarked In These Divided Times by Pernille Ripp (Pernille Ripp)

So look at the power of the tools you have at your disposal.  Look at what you can do with a camera. With a computer. With your voice and your connections.  Look at whose voices are missing in your classroom. Look at who your students need to meet so that they can change their ideas of others.   

We say we teach all children, but do we teach all stories?  Do we teach the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, or just the sanitized version that will not ruffle any feathers?  I can choose to bring others into our classrooms so that their stories are told by them. I can choose to model what it means to question my own assumptions and correct my own wrongs.

I really like Ripp’s point that we need to consider how we use technology, it just makes me wonder what play technology can play in silencing voices? Whether it be the labeling of gorillas or the normalisation of whiteness by camera flashes and filters, it feels that speaking ones voice is easier for some than others for a range of reasons.
Bookmarked Designer batsman: The making of Matt the Bat (cricket.com.au)

The creation of ‘Matt Renshaw, Test opener’ has been a deliberate, decade-long project. Through it all, his love for the game – and his relationship with his dad – has never wavered.

This is an interesting read from the perspective of a growth mindset and coaching. It is a great insight into the reality that ‘it takes a village’. It can be easy to see the ‘talent’ and overlook the years of time and support before that moment.

Ian recognised Matt had talent that exceeded his own. Finding ways to nurture it became a sort of education for him as a father and a coach. “I learnt very early that it’s his game,” he says. “He sees the world very differently to what I do, which is a very good thing because he’s a better player than I was. There’s a tendency early on to go (as a coach), ‘You can’t do that’, because of your limitations. “You have to say, ‘Here are the options – this is what could happen’, and then let him go and explore. Then he works it out for himself. But it’s about that exploration.”

Bookmarked How to Run A Teacher Innovation Pitch At Your School (A.J. JULIANI)

The four questions I keep coming back to again and again when thinking about how to grow a culture of innovation are:




What do we allow for?


What do we make time for?


What do we support?


What do we celebrate and measure?

This comes back to ideas associated with distributed leadership and disciplined collaboration.
Bookmarked Learning in and with Nature: The Pedagogy of Place by Diane Kashin (Technology Rich Inquiry Based Research)

From the beach as place to the forest as place, what is important is the meaning making. Cumming and Nash (2015) discovered that not only do children develop a sense of place from their experiences learning in the forest, they also form an emotional attachment to place that contributes to place meaning. Place meaning can help to explain why people may be drawn to particular places. Place meaning helps to support the development of place identity, and to promote a sense of belonging. I am grateful for the opportunity this summer to experience the beach and the forest. It is my hope that children will be given the gifts of these places too.

Diane Kashin discusses her interest in nature as a space to learn and play. She shares the story of collecting beach glass on the shores of Lake Huron. This reminds me of Alan Levine’s reflection on ‘106‘ and Amy Burvall’s focus on looking down. Kashin’s story of collecting that which was once rubbish reminds me of Shaun Tan’s picture book The Lost Thing. Actually, most of his books can be appreciated as noticing space, place and belonging.

Replied to In just one tweet? by Ian Guest (Marginal Notes)

A couple of weeks ago, I settled on the first iteration of my bullet points. Then a couple of days ago, while out running and listening to a podcast, I got closer to my tweet, or better yet, a phrase. It was just a word someone used on the podcast, not even related to my research, but which I felt captured the essence within the bullet points. I’ve found that teachers’ professional learning on Twitter is not a single thing, but many interwoven things brought together, working together. The word I heard on the podcast was ‘hybrid,’ but on getting home from the run, discovered it carried too much baggage, associated as it was with blended learning and more about a mixture of on and offline experiences. Even so, I knew I needed something which conveyed a similar sense of different elements working together; this is after all what assemblage is. After shuffling through a thesaurus or two (said he, neatly sidestepping the plural form), I settled on ‘Compound Learning.’ Although it didn’t feel quite the same as ‘hybrid learning,’ the more I think about it and try to flesh it out, the more right it feels.

I really like the idea of riffing off one word like ‘compound’, reminds me of my yearly focus on ‘one word‘.

Reading through your thoughts I was left wonder about the place of Twitter within it all. I understand that one needs a focus, but it sometimes feels arbitrary when reading through your work. I met you via a podcast, picked up resources via Diigo, read your blog and engaged on Twitter. When I think about this, I am left thinking that if you took Twitter out of the conversation – if such an extraction were possible – that not much would change. Is Twitter then the ‘original’ compound? It feels like the focus is connected learning or learning?

Not sure if that makes any sense? I am sure that I just don’t get it, but I thought I would share none the less.

Bookmarked API Is Not Just REST by Kin Lane (apievangelist.com)

This is one of my talks from APIDays Paris 2018. Here is the abstract: The modern API toolbox includes a variety of standards and methodologies, which centers around REST, but also includes Hypermedia, GraphQL, real time streaming, event-driven architecture , and gRPC. API design has pushed beyond just basic access to data, and also can be about querying complex data structures, providing experience rich APIs, real-time data streams with Kafka and other standards, as well as also leveraging the latest algorithms and providing access to machine learning models. The biggest mistake any company, organization, or government agency can do is limit their API toolbox to be just about REST.

I read Kin’s work to continually develop my understanding of APIs. It would seem that they are having more and more of an impact on the way we work, yet so many people (I work with) have little understanding of what they are or how they work. These annotations are a useful starting point and capture a few key definitions.

A Programmatic Interface

Application is about applying the digital resources made available via a programmatic interface.

Transport versus Influence

Looking back I wish we had spent more time thinking about how we were using the web as a transport, as well as the influence of industry and investment interests, but maybe it wasn’t possible as the web was still so new.

REST versus RPC

RESTafarians prefer that API providers properly define their approach, while many RPC providers could care less about labels, and are looking to just get the job done. Making XML and JSON RPC a very viable approach to doing APIs, something that still persists almost 20 years later.

Rest Framework

REST is a philosophy, and much like microservices, provides us with a framework to think about how we put our API toolbox to work, but isn’t something that should blind us from the other tools we have within our reach.

CSV

CSV as a data format represents an anchor for the lowest common denominator for API access. As a developer, it won’t be the data format I personally will negotiate, but as a business user, it very well could mean the difference between using an API or not.

XML

Our toolbox needs to still allow for us to provide, consume, validate, and transform XML.

API Query Language

There are trade offs with deciding to use an API query language, but in some situations it can make the development of clients much more efficient and agile, depending on who your audience is, and the resources you are looking to make available.

Webhooks

Webhooks are the 101 level of event-driven API architecture for API providers. It is where you get started trying to understand the meaningful events that are occurring via any platform.

Websub

Websub represents the many ways we can orchestrate our API implementations using a variety of content types, push and pull mechanisms, all leveraging web as the transport.

Server-Sent Events

Server-sent events (SSE) is a technology where a browser receives automatic updates from a server via a sustained HTTP connection, which has been standardized as part of HTML5 by the W3C.

WebSocket

WebSocket is a different TCP protocol from HTTP, but is designed to work over HTTP ports 80 and 443 as well as to support HTTP proxies and intermediaries, making it compatible with the HTTP protocol.

gRPC

As with other RPC approaches, gRPC is based around the idea of defining a service, specifying the methods that can be called remotely with their parameters and return types.

Kafka

Kafka has moved out of the realm of HTTP, using a binary protocol over TCP, defining all APIs as request response message pairs, using its own messaging format. Each client initiates a socket connection and then writes a sequence of request messages and reads back the corresponding response message–no handshake is required on connection or disconnection.

Headers

One thing I’ve learned over the years while building my API toolbox is the importance of headers, and they are something that have regularly been not just about HTTP headers, but the more general usage of network networks.

Mixed Message Formats

In my world, there will always be a mixed of known and unknown message formats, something that I will always work to tame, as well as be increasingly apply machine learning models to help me identify, evolve, and make sense of–standardizing things in any way I possibly can.

Listened Cook Cut Damage Destroy by Prop from undercovermusic.com.au

Cook Cut Damage Destroy

Over a year in the making, this album is more than just a collection of remixes… it’s a diverse, yet cohesive collection of collaborative electronica. The album features the fusion of Prop’s marimba and vibraphone section with cut up electronica and dubbed out glitchy rhythms, experimental looping and for the first time in prop’s life… vocals.

I loved Prop’s album and was always fascinated how of Julian Hamilton and Kim Moyes transitioned from the blended soundscapes to the pumping tunes that they write as The Presets. This compilation provides some insight. It is made up of a series of remixes from artists all over the world, including the Presets.

Different from Gotye’s Mixed Blood album or Jack Antonoff’s Terrible Thrills series which are more traditional covers, this album is something of a reimagining. Not only are the sounds different, but often the original structure is also thrown out. This is made because of the absence of any vocals guiding the original tracks.

I never knew it existed and am glad a stumbled upon it as I looked for tracks on Google Music.

Bookmarked Sweeping archways, open spaces for Melbourne’s new ‘landmark’ stations (ABC News)

Final designs for Melbourne’s five new underground train stations have been unveiled, with Public Transport Minister Jacinta Allan predicting they will become new landmarks for the city.

It will be interesting to see these spaces when finished and how they will change the surrounding environment.

Bookmarked Autechre: NTS Sessions 1-4 (Pitchfork)

Autechre’s eight-hour NTS Sessions adds another level of the British duo’s legacy. Though it’s created by a computer, it will bring you to another plane of human existence if you let it.

This review of the latest offering provides an interesting insight into the non-human actors within electronic music. The argument put is that the more albums made the more Autechre they become.

Even when they are proudly flouting their influences, retracing the daisy chained 808 madness of Mantronix or the nauseating cacophony of early Coil, they claim full ownership. It’s not possible for Autechre to sound like anything except Autechre. And, with each new release, they somehow sound more like Autechre than on the previous one. The sound design is fuller, the programming more intricate, the shock of the new hitting just a bit harder than before.

Replied to Asking for Blog Suggestions by Glen Cochrane (A Point of Contact)

Can you recommend a blog that you enjoy?

I found Critchlow’s post really intriguing. I personally consider ‘big B’ associated with those who balance between the content and the technology:

When I think about blogging, there is a cross-over between technology and the way it is used. Big B bloggers are those who take each to their extremes. Content is important. But so is process and product. It is something personal, stemming from our changing circumstances and intent.

Rather than Byrnes and Kottke, my ‘Big Bs’ are Chris Aldrich and Alan Levine. Sorry Glen, probably not the suggestions you were after.

Replied to Picking a Noticing Pattern: I’ve Logged 469 Photos of 106’s (CogDogBlog)

So it’s been 7 and a half years since that first 106 photo and I find, when I’m out, my secondary senses are usually noticing signs and addresses and license plates, as my brain seems tuned into looking for that pattern.

I will never forget walking the streets with you Alan when you were in Melbourne. All the sudden it occurred to me that you were counting. It wasn’t that you were on the hunt, but rather you seemed opened to the opportunity:


“A House of DS106” by cogdogblog is licensed under CC0

What it made me realise was how much I take for granted. I really like your idea of picking something to notice.

I had a similar experience with Amy Burvall, who stopped mid-conversation to capture a unicorn caught in the concrete.

Bookmarked I’m Starting to Have Serious Doubts About Amazon Prime by Adam Clark Estes (Gizmodo)

My own personal Amazon Prime day is in two weeks. It’s not the day that Amazon puts a lot of random crap on sale. (That’s in approximately three weeks.) My day is when Amazon will charge me $120 for another year of membership. That’s $20 more than what the company charged me last year and $40 more than what I paid five years ago, when I signed up for a free trial of Prime and forgot to cancel it. This year, I think I might bow out.

Adam Clark Estes reflects upon six years on Amazon Prime. He discusses the influence that the subscription has had on his habits and some of the things that he has done to counter this.

This fixation with Amazon is different, though. Amazon is the monster I invited into my home over a decade-and-a-half ago, when I started buying books for college online, and it’s been living in my basement since then, eating my spare change and growing. Over the years, when Prime entered the scene, the monster demanded more than the erstwhile meal of stray dollar bills and tapped directly into my bank account, where it started sucking down funds, like a colossus with a straw that led straight to my milkshake. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the beast’s company sometimes. It’s always giving me fresh reasons to enjoy having it around. And it’s become increasingly apparent that Amazon Prime, now my nefarious old friend, can’t be replaced.

Mike Caulfield puts forward another response to this situation. He argues that rather than worrying about the Walmarts and Amazons, we should use the money saved to fund an organisation that supports your aims.

Go to Walmart and save $10 a week. At the end of the year give that $520 to a political or advocacy organization that supports your aims. Or use it to fund a newspaper that investigates Walmart. Or send it somewhere else to have an impact.