Bookmarked White, Male, And Convincing Myself I Am Doing Good With Technology (kinlane.com)

Technology is a trip. Web technology is a delusion-ally virtual trip. It really seems to have many of us by the balls (pun intended), and working us like a puppet. I still perform this act on a daily basis via API Evangelist. Why? Because it makes me money! Of course, I’m always working to minimize the bullshit. Something I’m continuing to do by eliminating the mission driven rhetoric, but I just can’t quit API Evangelist. I’ve assumed this persona, and can’t seem to shake it. As I keep working to understand the beast I’ve created, I will continue to tell the story here on the blog.

Kin Lane reflects on the addictive nature of technology and the way in which he has convinced himself over time that he is actually doing good. This touches on the some of the ideas around ‘automating inequality’.
Bookmarked Beyond the Rhetoric of Algorithmic Solutionism by dana boyd (Points)

Rather than thinking of AI as “artificial intelligence,” Eubanks effectively builds the case for how we should think that AI often means “automating inequality” in practice.

danah boyd reviews a book by Virginia Eubanks which takes a look at the way(s) that algorithms work within particular communities. Along with Weapons of Math Destruction and Williamson’s Big Data in Education, they provide a useful starting point for discussing big data today.
Bookmarked Ancient Tree Structure Is Like a Forest unto Itself by Daisy Yuhas (Scientific American)

Some 370 million years ago cladoxylopsid trees stood at least eight meters tall, capped by branches with twiggy appendages instead of leaves. They looked a bit like spindly palm trees. Today their scant remains reveal little about their insides; in most cases their innards had rotted before the trees fossilized, and storms had filled them with sand. But the recent find of two well-preserved fossils in China has exposed the trees’ inner workings—which are like no other species studied before.

Daisy Yuhas documents the discovery of an extinct tree with a trunk made up like laticework, a hollow core and no leaves.

via Freshly Brewed Thoughts by Laura Hilliger

Bookmarked All The Ways Your Smartphone And Its Apps Can Track You (Gizmodo Australia)

In the end your smartphone use is helping to build up a picture of who you are and the kind of advertising you’re interested in for companies like Google, Facebook, and others — even if an app isn’t part of a massive advertising network, it may well sell its data to one. Apple stands apart in this regard, keeping the data it tracks for its own use and largely on a single device, though of course the apps that run on iOS have more freedom to do what they want.

Even if you’re reasonably content to put up with some monitoring on Android and iOS, it’s important to know what kind of data you’re giving up every time you switch your smartphone on. Whether it means you uninstall a few social media tools, or disable location tracking for a few apps, it gives you some semblance of control over your privacy.

Mark Nield explains some ways that phones track users, including capturing location settings via photographs. He also provides some tips for how to regain some of the control through the privacy settings. Along with Adam Greenfield’s breakdown of the smartphone, these posts help to highlight what data is being gathered about us and how.
Replied to Replying on Micro.blog is a bit like being able to comment o… by john john (John’s World Wide Wall Display)

Replying on Micro.blog is a bit like being able to comment on someone’s site from your RSS reader. It is nice to have so many ways & places to chat.

Comment directly.

Via micro.blog.

On own site via webmentions when you want to own your thought or add it to another bubble.
Like this: Like Loading…

One of the things that I notice about Micro.Blogs in regards to your blog John
is the amount of interaction that you seem to get. This post is a prime example.

Some talk about the death of comments, but I feel that comments have changed and evolved. Now there are many things that ‘make a comment’ all tied together with webmentions.

I do wonder though in regards to Micro.Blogs whether it is about the features and affordances of the platform or if it is the community that exists there? Or are they intertwined, somehow learning from each other?

Replied to Redesigning Doug Belshaw’s Thought Shrapnel by Doug Belshaw (Open Educational Thinkering)

Check out my redesigned newsletter (and blog!)

Doug, I think I may have lost count to how many blogs you are up to, let alone domains. I have ventured down a different path of having two blogs, my main site and another which collects many disparate things. In part because I was struggling to maintain so many moving parts, but also because I have dived into the IndieWeb.

Do you have any hiccups with so many sites? For example, it was my understanding that Bridgy has certain limitations. Although moving away from the silos, I guess that may not be a concern?

Looking forward to following the links, along with the newsletter.

Aaron.

Bookmarked The human solution to Facebook’s machine-produced problems also won’t work by Doc Searls (dsearls)

The best thing for Zuck to do is get the hell out, let it finish failing, and start over with something new and better, based on what he and others have learned from the experience. (Which tends to be the best teacher. And hell, he’s still young.) It should help him—and all of us—to know that all companies fail; they just fail faster in Silicon Valley.

Doc Searls on why Facebook’s attempt to fix itself will fail and how the world has changed.
Bookmarked Good theft vs. bad theft (austinkleon.com)

Despite the common saying, imitation is not flattery. It’s transformation that is flattery: taking what you’ve stolen and turning it into something new.

Austin Kleon returns to an idea that is central to his book Steal Like an Artist. Summarising TS Eliot, Kleon suggests that the secret is not imitation, but rather transformation. This reminds me of Harold Bloom’s idea of ‘anxiety’. I also love Kleon’s closing remarks:

If you met the artist you’re stealing from in a stalled elevator, would they shake your hand or punch you in the face?

Replied to A Digital Food Diary on My Own Website (Chris Aldrich | BoffoSocko)

Food and Drink on my own website
I’ve been wanting to do it for a while, but I’ve finally started making eat and drink posts. The display isn’t exactly what I want yet, but it’s getting there. For myself and those reading, I’ll try to continue tweaking on templates, but with the start of …

Is there a limit? Chris, I love how your site just keeps on developing. I am not sure if I am going to start adding such stories to my site, but it really gives me hope about a better web.
Replied to

Mariana, just wondering where you have stored your archived lists? I was notified of there deletion via ‘Broken Links’. I really liked your Storify on GIFs.

I am in fear if this is a start of a series of dominoes. My Tumblr posts are all POSSE’d, however I really need to think about my Flickr collection. Must admit it has really sparked me to reconsider a number of practices and processes, which is probably good.

Bookmarked What I would like to see in online learning in 2018: 1: a theory of classroom affordances (tonybates.ca)

Under what conditions and for what purposes is it better to learn in a face-to-face context rather than online? And when and how should they be used to complement each other when both are readily available?

Tony Bates suggests that there is research needed in regards to online learning, as well as a theory of learning. I am reminded of Richard Olsen’s post on link between research and theory. I wonder where this fits with Dron and Anderson’s Teaching Crowds and Ian Guest’s investigation into Twitter.
Replied to Pocket 2017 Year in Review (Chris Aldrich | BoffoSocko)

According to Pocket, I’m still in their top 5% of their readers/users despite the fact that I cut way back on using it this past year in strong deference to using other feed readers including one built into my website.
Apparently I read 678, 617 words in their app this year which according to the…

Apparently I am in the Top 1%. I must admit that I have come to use it more now that you can play posts. What I find intriguing is what they measure ‘reading’ as and how they decided that it was like reading 35 books. It actually made me wonder if there are many people actually using Pocket anymore?
Bookmarked ‘We must kill this cult of measuring everything that schools do’ (Tes)

The idea that the solution to the nefarious effects of constant high-stakes measurement is to bring in more high-stakes measurement – albeit of a different thing – is palpably insane. It is further evidence, if we needed any, that we have surrendered our profession to a cultish scientism whose mantra is measurement.

JT Dutaut wonders about a future where the solution to too much testing in education is more testing.
Bookmarked Founding a Startup, Just One More Time – Ben Werdmuller – Medium by Ben Werdmuller (Medium)

Knowing what I know now, from the founders I work with, my background in startups, and what I’ve learned from working at a values-based accelerator: if I was to do it all again, what choices would I make?

Ben Werdmuller reflects on his experiences with three different startups and provides a number of lessons he has learnt along the way. These include starting by getting your feet wet, working out how far you can go without going full-time, identifying who else might be needed for the journey, which ownership structure will work best, how you will build the solution and who will buy it.
Bookmarked Behaviour Management: A Bill Rogers Top 10 (teacherhead)

The series titles give a flavour of the Bill Rogers approach:

Positive Correction: the basic premise that teachers and schools should adopt a non-confrontational approach to discipline, based on positive teacher-student relationships, respect for the dignity and rights of individuals, choices about consequences of behaviour and encouragement for student self-discipline.
Prevention: planning for good behaviour; teaching the routines and the rules.
Consequences: have a clear structure that students understand and use to inform the choices they make.
Repair & Rebuild: the imperative to work hard to build and repair the damage that is done when things don’t work out.

Tom Sherrington breaks down Rogers main ideas, including positive language, take up time and partial agreement. This post offers a useful overview and an important provocation.
Bookmarked The Social-Media Star and the Suicide (The Atlantic)

There were no gatekeepers to stand in his way, and YouTube itself only acted after the video became news. In every step but the filming of the dead body, this is not the system breaking, but the system functioning as intended. And as with the recent discovery of widespread exploitation on “child-safe” parts of YouTube, it points to a dark tendency in today’s engagement-optimized web. As online platforms have pursued engagement to the detriment of everything else, they have come to favor content that dehumanizes us. Meanwhile, the same platforms dominate more and more of teen culture.

Robinson Meyer discusses the situation in which Logan Paul posted a corpse on YouTube. The post provides some wider context associated with the Paul brothers and the dehumanised web that they are a part of.
Bookmarked IndieWeb Press This bookmarklets for WordPress (snarfed.org)

Most people don’t want to write HTML just to like or reply to something. WordPress’s Press This bookmarklets can already start a new post with a link to the page you’re currently viewing. This code adds IndieWeb microformats2 markup to that link. Combined the wordpress-webmention plugin, you can use this to respond to the current page with just two clicks.

Ryan, I have tinkered a little with the IndieWeb bookmarklets. However, I was wondering about using them to bookmark sites?

I have been using Dave Winer’s Radio3 platform/bookmarklet, but would rather a process which would allow me to store bookmarks on my blog and POSSE them. I was therefore wondering about creating a similar bookmarklet that generates ‘Bookmark’ post-kinds, as well as the possibility of posting from mobile?

Am I going down the wrong path, especially as WordPress tinkers with ‘Press This’?

Bookmarked 'Too much control': Pasi Sahlberg on what Finland can teach Australian schools by Michael McGowan (the Guardian)

“One way to think about it is maybe, you have all these good things – funding, your economy, good teachers – but you’re not improving. Maybe the problem is that things are tied up in a system that is not able to be flexible enough for teachers. Maybe there is not enough trust in Australia in good teachers.”

An article discussing Finnish education, the importance of play in the early years, the problems with NAPLAN and a focus on equity in Australian education.
Replied to Issue #119 of the TL;DR Newsletter – rethinking the simple bare necessities. by Ian O’Byrne (mailchi.mp)

Over the past week, you’ve most likely either developed your own resolutions for the new year…or heard many others sharing what they’ll change over the next 360 days.

Tim Ferriss suggests, and I agree, that these resolutions are mostly a waste of your time. I try to focus on building (or breaking habits) throughout the year as indicated in this episode of the Tim Ferriss podcast.

But, in thinking about the start of a new year, it is human nature to think about new beginnings. In light of that, I’ve been working on developing an annual review for myself as Tim discusses in this post.

I’ll post my review once I’ve completed it. I’m currently using this model to develop my assessment. Once I’ve developed my metrics, I’ll perform an 80/20 analysis of my effort and time during the year…and make the appropriate changes.

Interesting newsletter as always Ian. I was particularly taken by the discussion of reviewed.

In regards to your point about ‘yearly’ reviews, I added to my yearly review of newsletter posts to also include a personal reflection.

I still think that I need to develop this and that is why I chose ‘intent‘ as my one word this year (another alternative to new year resolutions)

I will have to look through the various links for more tips and get back to your discussion of routine and maintaining a positive mindset. The

Replied to METAMORPHOSIS and emerging from the chrysalis: #oneword2018 by Dr Deborah Netolicky (the édu flâneuse)

METAMORPHOSIS is also about letting go. It is about shedding old skins, old bodies, old habits, old values, old dreams. It is about considering what I want to take into my next decade, and what I’m willing to leave behind.

I love the way in which a single word can be used to tie a bunch of desperate parts together, even more so, your words over time really tell a story. I really struggled to think of a word this year. I related to some of the points that you made about change and really liked the idea of metamorphosis. I feel like it is something that we are always doing, but not necessarily aware of or willing to give the time to.