Tag: Alan Levine

Liked Lumpers and Splitters, Tags and Categories for Organizing and Sharing by Alan Levine (CogDogBlog)
It takes a while to develop a system for organizing posts, but it’s really worth doing from the start, or right now. I assure you, if you keep blogging, having a system for organizing your past ideas will help you as you pile on many posts– I rely more on tags and categories to find things than search.
Replied to Hacking an Ontario Extend Visited Countries Map (CogDogBlog)


Alan visited 17 countries (7.55%)
Create your own visited map of The World

While most people might fog over in a faint at the site of HTML, to me it’s like good coffee. So in the img tag, src="" contains a URL we are calling some kind of Google API for charts that dynmically returns an image. Without bothering too much, I can guess easily for the value chld=BS|BZ|CA|MX|PR|US|VI|CN|JP|QA|SG|AU|NZ|DE|IS|ES|GB we are sending the list oc countries to map.

You can play with it in a web browser, by adding or removing countries. Try manipulating this URL

In following your blog Alan, I have learned to the love the URL. There is so much hidden in the code and not all of it is that complicated. A simple one that I got from you is ?random to pick a random post.
Replied to Blog Posts As Old Concrete Slabs or Alive in the Cracks In Between? (CogDogBlog)
Here’s another nifty way to make your blog alive; link to your own posts. It’s so easy in the WordPress editor when selecting text to hyperlink.
Even better again Alan is to link to other people’s posts too! There are flowers absolutely everywhere.
Replied to Show/Fork Us The SPLOTS! (CogDogBlog)
If you are creating sites with these WordPress themes I have built (as well as the three Calling Card ones, WP-Dimension, WP-Highlights, and WP-Big Picture — I need a favor. I want you to… SHOW US THE SPLOTS!
Went to add my use of your themes Alan and see that they are already on the list. Happy days.
Replied to The Little “b” and the Big “C” (CogDogBlog)

Another metaphor I often reach for is a DVD. Much of what we do in school feels like the movie on the disk- the paper, the project, the presentation, we focus on the final end product. But my favorite part of DVDs was always all the other stuff, the extras– the director’s commentary, the out takes, the location mini documentary, the story of the making of the movie.

I see blogging as providing that too. Ask them to write Extras.

I love the notion of the ‘extras’ Alan. I think that I probably need to do more of this.

In regards to comments, I always wonder if we restrict what we consider as a response. I think that being constructive is useful. I just wonder if the ability to comment on Twitter or Micro.blog extends this?

Replied to Fellowship of the SPLOT (bavatuesdays)
The idea is to try and get a series of these SPLOTs in cPanel dashboards across our shared hosting and institutional servers, not only get give folks access to these tools—although definitely that—but also in hopes people will see what’s possible and make their own SPLOTs that can in turn be shared back for others to use. In this way Reclaim could help provide a hub to distribute these “tiny teaching tools” (to misquote Tom Woodward).
I love Alan’s SPLOTs and the support Reclaim provides. I have used Big Picture to create my own ‘home’ page and supported someone in summarising their work. I think they offer so much potential.

I am wonder what place microformats play with all this? I have enjoyed following Greg McVerry’s effort to incorporate #IndieWeb values into his work with Higher Education. I must admit, with my ‘Sunday drive’ of a blog, I am still finding my way. Was just wondering.

Bookmarked Class Exploder: NetNarr Lesson on the Gameboard of Digital Redlining (CogDogBlog)

My blog is a place where I take apart my ideas, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. Each episode is produced and edited by host and creator aka me, wherever I am. Using the jumbled, thought tracks that keep me awake at night, I ask myself to delve into the specific decisions that went into creating my work. I barely edit them, and not frequently enough checking for typos, but condensing the story to be tightly focused on how bring my ideas to life.

Class Exploder
Alan Levine riffs on Song Exploder and the way in which each episode deconstructs a song bit by bit. He uses this as a model for reflecting on a lesson as an invitation for blogging. Not only is Levine’s example that he provides an interesting task in itself, but the whole activity bank is a great example of the heutagogical nature of Communities of Practice.