With the potential demise of social media, does this offer a possible rebirth of blogging communities and the standards they are built upon?
A lot of your post also reminds me of Bryan Alexander’s relatively recent post I defy the world and to go back to RSS.
I completely get the concept of what you’re getting at with harkening back to the halcyon days of RSS. I certainly love, use, and rely on it heavily both for consumption as well as production. Of course there’s also still the competing standard of Atom still powering large parts of the web (including GNU Social networks like Mastodon). But almost no one looks back fondly on the feed format wars…
I think that while many are looking back on the “good old days” of the web, that we not forget the difficult and fraught history that has gotten us to where we are. We should learn from the mistakes made during the feed format wars and try to simplify things to not only move back, but to move forward at the same time.
Today, the easier pared-down standards that are better and simpler than either of these old and and difficult specs is simply adding Microformat classes to HTML (aka P.O.S.H) to create feeds. Unless one is relying on pre-existing infrastructure like WordPress, building and maintaining RSS feed infrastructure can be difficult at best, and updates almost never occur, particularly for specifications that support new social media related feeds including replies, likes, favorites, reposts, etc. The nice part is that if one knows how to write basic html, then one can create a simple feed by hand without having to learn the mark up or specifics of RSS. Most modern feed readers (except perhaps Feedly) support these new h-feeds as they’re known. Interestingly, some CMSes like WordPress support Microformats as part of their core functionality, though in WordPress’ case they only support a subsection of Microformats v1 instead of the more modern v2.
For those like you who are looking both backward and simultaneously forward there’s a nice chart of “Lost Infractructure” on the IndieWeb wiki which was created following a post by Anil Dash entitled The Lost Infrastructure of Social Media. Hopefully we can take back a lot of the ground the web has lost to social media and refashion it for a better and more flexible future. I’m not looking for just a “hipster-web”, but a new and demonstrably better web.
Some of the desire to go back to RSS is built into the problems we’re looking at with respect to algorithmic filtering of our streams (we’re looking at you Facebook.) While algorithms might help to filter out some of the cruft we’re not looking for, we’ve been ceding too much control to third parties like Facebook who have different motivations in presenting us material to read. I’d rather my feeds were closer to the model of fine dining rather than the junk food that the-McDonald’s-of-the-internet Facebook is providing. As I’m reading Cathy O’Neil’s book Weapons of Math Distraction, I’m also reminded that the black box that Facebook’s algorithm is is causing scale and visibility/transparency problems like the Russian ad buys which could have potentially heavily influenced the 2017 election in the United States. The fact that we can’t see or influence the algorithm is both painful and potentially destructive. If I could have access to tweaking a third-party transparent algorithm, I think it would provide me a lot more value.
As for OPML, it’s amazing what kind of power it has to help one find and subscribe to all sorts of content, particularly when it’s been hand curated and is continually self-dogfooded. One of my favorite tools are readers that allow one to subscribe to the OPML feeds of others, that way if a person adds new feeds to an interesting collection, the changes propagate to everyone following that feed. With this kind of simple technology those who are interested in curating things for particular topics (like the newsletter crowd) or even creating master feeds for class material in a planet-like fashion can easily do so. I can also see some worthwhile uses for this in journalism for newspapers and magazines. As an example, imagine if one could subscribe not only to 100 people writing about #edtech, but to only their bookmarked articles that have the tag edtech (thus filtering out their personal posts, or things not having to do with edtech). I don’t believe that Feedly supports subscribing to OPML (though it does support importing OPML files, which is subtly different), but other readers like Inoreader do.
I’m hoping to finish up some work on my own available OPML feeds to make subscribing to interesting curated content a bit easier within WordPress (over the built in, but now deprecated link manager functionality.) Since you mentioned it, I tried checking out the OPML file on your blog hoping for something interesting in the #edtech space. Alas… 😉 Perhaps something in the future?
Reply to Laying the Standards for a Blogging Renaissance by Aaron Davis (@mrkrndvs) #edtech boffosocko.com/2017/10/27/rep…
algorithmic filtering of our streams is a huge, huge problem. What a disaster.
“I’m not looking for just a ‘hipster-web’, but a new and demonstrably better web” @ChrisAldrich on the #IndieWeb boffosocko.com/2017/10/27/rep…
Thank U . Will reply in more detail in time, just wonder what level of plan you need to ‘subscribe’ to a OPML in @inoreader?
@mrkrndvs @johnjohnston And what a nicel OPML list/blogroll you’ve got there! Thanks for sharing!https://readwriterespond.com/wp-links-opml.php
Syndicated copies:
Technology is always adapting and evolving, here are a few of the recent changes to my digital workflows.
In a post discussing the setup of digital devices, applications and workflows, Clay Shirky explains how he regularly changes things up:
This disruption seems important in a time when platforms are designed to maximise our attention. As Shirky warns:
Change can take many shapes. Although I may not shake things up as much as Shirky, here are some recent tweeks that have kept things fresh:
Pocket
For a long time I have used Pocket to save links to come back to. It was one of the first applications I really took to. I use a range of methods to add content, whether it be via email, using an IFTTT recipe which saves my Twitter favourites or an extension in the browser. I then either read it later or listen depending on the device or context.
I started out listening using Lisgo, an iOS app. However, this functionality is built into the Android application so I scrapped the additional app when I changed phones. The only issue I had with listening via the Android app is the requirement to select a new article each time. A recent update completely changed that with the addition of continuous playback. This allows you to organise your various links in a playlist and listen to one after another. This new feature has lead me to rethink how I use Pocket and subsequently saving more and more links to listen to
In regards to other aspects of the application, I have never really used the tagging or archiving features. Instead I bookmark elsewhere and then delete the articles in Pocket once I have finished with it. The best functionality is still the ability to read a stripped back version of the text. AMP without all the other stuff associated with AMP. I wonder how Pocket will grow with the acquisition by Mozilla?
Inoreader
I love Feedly. I came to RSS Readers around the time Google pulled its reader from production. Before that, I relied on a combination of Pocket and social media. Feedly was perfect. I progressively built my feed over time getting to the point of following 200+ blogs. I also developed a a process which allowed me to capture a quote and share it out on Twitter.
I did not have any qualms, however when Chris Aldrich pointed out the limitation of storing your OPML file within the application I was intrigued. I didn’t really like how Feedly organised the various categories and always found it tedious to backup my OPML to share with others. The answer is to subscribe to an OPML Feed stored in the links of a WordPress site, rather than upload a static file. Feedly does not allow for this, but Inoreader does.
Starting afresh has been good. There are no features that I used in Feedly that are no replicated in Inoreader. Instead there are ways of working in Inoreader that I prefer, such as the ability to quickly mark posts as ‘read’ by pulling across, rather than swiping, as well as the potential to create my own filters. This maybe a start towards Aldrich’s idea of an #IndieWeb algorithm? At the very least, it helps in understanding how some of these things work and the infrastructure behind them.
Trello
I have written about the features and affordances associated with Trello before. One of the challenges that I have had with the application is how to get it to work for me. A lot of people talk about using the Kanban approach to support an agile way of working. This often involves allocating ‘points’ or colours associated with blocks of time, setting due dates and focusing on priorities. I tried this both personally and in my workplace. It did not work. I decided to leave it for a while and come back at a later point with fresh eyes.
In leaving the application alone, it quickly became apparent why I needed it. I had some documents in my Google Drive, PDF files sent to me via email, links to resources and notes that needed to be recorded somewhere. I therefore wondered if instead of a means of managing priorities that instead Trello could become something of a digital filing cabinet, Something of a ‘canonical URL’, where if you wanted to find something you would start there.
Creating a list for each of the key focuses, the cards broke down the various projects and activities. Each card then contains a description summarising what it is about and a list of resources associated with it. This is all done using Markdown. These resources are all added into one Google Drive folder and linked from there. The card comments are then used to provide a historical snapshot, documenting any developments, additions and meetings, while the checklists are used where applicable.
This new way of using Trello also led me to review my own use. A few years ago I set up multiple boards for all the things that I do personally, whether it be blogging, presentations or projects. Similar to my work experience, this failed. It was too busy and needed to be more efficient. After being reenergised by my use at work, I wondered if I could condense everything into one board? I therefore created lists associated with blogs, projects, ideas, interesting links, things to listen to etc and used the cards to unpack each of these areas. This has subsequently led me to crafting my blog posts using Markdown in the description section and adding links and notes in the comments. Although having its limitations, it is a much smoother process than writing Markdown in a Google Doc which I had started doing. When I want a more thorough writing space though I use Typely.
Typely
I remember reading a rant from Marc Scott a few years ago on the use of Microsoft Word, although it could have been about Google Docs as well. He ended with the plea:
I understand Markdown, but could never find the right reason or workflow. I kept stumbling upon different cases, whether it is Kin Lane’s use of Markdown with Jeykl and GitHub or Mike Caulfield’s Wikity WordPress theme with Markdown built into the bookmarklet. However, it was not until I started having issue with extra bits of code when copying text from Google Docs into my blog or newsletter that I realised why Markdown is so important.
I have been exploring a number of applications to support publishing of late, whether it is add-ons such as Grammarly and Pro Writing Aid or applications in general such as Google Docs and Trello. Initially I took to writing Markdown in Google Docs and pasting the text into a converter. This workflow though does not allow you to preview the text along the way. Using Trello allows you to work cross-platform. However the need to flick between preview and editing screen is tedious and not ideal. I recently came upon another application called Typely.
Typely is best understood as a beefed-up text editor. There are no hyperlinks or formatting. Instead you focus on writing. Other applications offer a similar experience, but where Typely differs are the various options to customise the experience, whether it be turning Markdown preview on or off, switching to a blog background or selecting rules to check for. The screen also adapts to the size of the screen, with panes collapsing if there is not enough space. It does not really work on a mobile screen though. Unlike Pro Writing Aid, the error highlights can easily be turned on and off or resolved. Although on a Chromebook, the combination for resolving issues (CTRL + Spacebar) is allocated to changing between languages. There is also the ability to open and save documents across different platforms if you sign in.
Noterlive
I have long used Twitter to share thoughts and findings at conferences, including quotes, reflections and links. This has gone through many iterations, whether it be retweeting what others shared or typing in a document first before sharing out. One of the challenges that I have always had though is how to meaningfully archive this content?
The obvious answer is to curate tweets and embed them. Like so many others, I have used Storify in the past. However, with its move to a paid product, other solutions are needed. I have also used Martin Hawksey’s TAGS script before to make collections of Tweets. Although these can be easily embedded into WordPress, this archive is broken if the original Tweet is deleted. Although Hawksey provided a link to another application for producing a full embed code, I could not get this to work.
Another option is Noterlive. This web app created by Kevin Marks was designed for making IndieWeb live noting (aka live tweeting/live blogging) easier and simpler. Chris Aldrich summarises it as follows:
Aldrich has also compiled some additional instructions. See an example here.
As an approach and application, Noterlive provides a means of recording snippets of text in a thread. However, it does not allow you to attach media or connect to the actual Tweet. You are also unable to include other Tweets directly in your archive. A solution to this is to add this content when you save the simple HTML archive. This can be a good point of reflection.
So there are a few of the recent changes to my workflows, what about you? Are there any applications that have made you rethink the way you work lately? As always, comments welcome.
Also posted on IndieNews
If you enjoy what you read here, feel free to sign up for my monthly newsletter to catch up on all things learning, edtech and storytelling.
About Latest Posts
Aaron
I am an Australian educator supporting the integration of technology and innovation. I have an interest in how collectively we can work to creating a better tomorrow.
Latest posts by Aaron (see all)
<a href="https://readwriterespond.com/2018/04/digital-literacies/">Literacy, Fluency and Plurality: A Reflection on Digital Literacies</a> - April 23, 2018 <a href="https://readwriterespond.com/2018/04/support-networks/">It Takes a Family – A Reflection on Support Networks that Make Leadership Possible</a> - April 22, 2018 <a href="https://readwriterespond.com/2018/04/secret-safe-and-informed/">Secret, Safe and Informed: A Reflection on Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and the Collection of Data</a> - April 15, 2018
Share this:
Email
Reddit
Twitter
Google
Pinterest
Pocket
Tumblr
LinkedIn
Also on:
Twitter
mastodon.cloud
Like this:
Like Loading…
<em>Related</em>
Building Digital Workflows by Aaron Davis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
My Month of October
In my work, I continued developing a scalable reporting solution, including planning out an implementation process. I also investigated some automated solutions associated with Google Sheets, including the creation of calendar events from a sheet, as well as developing a document from a database. I have managed to generate markdown code, the next step is to create a script to turn this into a Doc.
On the home front, our girls are enjoying the change of weather, spending endless hours outside on the trampoline and in the cubby house. I have lost count how many ‘concerts’ I have been the audience for featuring either Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off or Pharrell William’s Happy.
Personally, I have continued to explore different aspects of the #IndieWeb, including facepiles, posting comments from my own site and Micro.blogs. I also met up with Cameron Hocking for an interesting chat about conferences, communities and associations.
Here was my month in words:
My #IndieWeb Reflections – Meaning to elaborate on my thoughts on #IndieWeb for a while, Chris Aldrich’s post outlining a proposal for a book spurred me to finish jotting down my notes and reflections.
Sheets, Calendars, Events – Building on the APIs provided by Google Sheets and Google Calendar, I documented how to automate the addition and maintenance of multiple events.
Laying the Standards for a Blogging Renaissance – With the potential demise of social media, does this offer a possible rebirth of blogging communities and the standards they are built upon? Chris Aldrich wrote an insightful response as well.
Scripting an Automated Solution – A plan for an automated monthly newsletter produced from Google Sheets. The intention is to develop data in a way that it can be used in a number of ways.
Blogging the Digital Technologies Curriculum – Digital Technologies is more than just learning to code. This post re-imagines the curriculum around blogging and explores how it maybe better integrated. This post was also included in the Edublogs Newsletter.
I also passed 400 blog posts this month, which I actually totally overlooked at the time.
Here then are some of the thoughts that have also left me thinking …
Learning and Teaching
“Twist Fate @mizuko ” by mrkrndvs is licensed under CC BY-SATwist Fate – The Connected Learning Alliance challenged teens to pick a classic story and create an alternate scenario through art or story where a famous hero is the villain or an infamous villain, the hero, with the finalists collated in a book. For further insight into the project, Sara Ryan and Antero Garcia provide a reflection on the some of the stories and the project.
There is No App For That – On the Team Human podcast, Douglas Rushkoff speaks with Richard Heinberg about the challenges of a renewable future. Both authors question the narrative of technological progress and wonder about other human possibilities. Heinberg’s ideas are documented in the manifesto, There’s No App for That. Kim Stanley Robinson provides another take on the future, arguing that we have reached a junction with no middle ground.
Critical Creativity for Grownups: Teachers Try Intention, the Book – Disemminating ideas from the book Intention, Amy Burvall describes some of the creative activities that she has used with teachers. These include #INTENTIONOREO where participants have to work within the contrants of an Oreo and #INTENTIONBRICK where participants explain something using random Lego pieces. Dan Ryder, co-author of Intention, also presented some of these ideas as a part of the recent EdTechTeam Virtual Conference. Burvall also recently gave a TED Talk on creativity which also provides a good introduction to her work. In regards to other ideas around professional development, Jackie Gerstein shares some of the strategies she uses with teachers, while Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano discusses the idea of a scavenger hunt to connect and learn.
The Battle That Created Germany – David Crossland investigates new findings relating to the battle of Teutoburg Forest, between the Germanic tribes and the Romans. A decisive victory, it was a battle which stopped the Roman’s surge east of the Rhine. The article provdes an in-depth analysis of the battle and uncovers many of the complexities with retracing such events often overlooked in textbook accounts. It is interesting to think about the challenges associated with Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History series and why he continually states that he is not a historian.
Edtech
“We Are All Using APIs @APIEvangelist” by mrkrndvs is licensed under CC BY-SA We Are All Using APIs – Kin Lane explains how APIs are a part of our daily existence. Although we may not be able to do APIs, we need to be aware that they are there and what that might mean. This focus on the ethical as much as the technical relates to Maha Bali’s post about adding humanity back to computer science and Ben Williamson’s call to explore the social consequences associated with coding. Providing a different take on the ‘Hour of Code’, Gary Stager explains that the epistemological benefit of programming comes over time as we build fluency.
Simple Truth: Your Attention Has Been Hijacked. – Bill Ferriter reflects on the way smartphones have been designed to grab our attention. This continues with the discussion around technology engineers avoiding the use of social media, as well as Adam Greenfield’s autopsy of the smartphone on its tenth birthday. Doug Belshaw relates this all to the rise and recognition of ‘notification literacy’.
100+ Ideas And Prompts For Student Blogging – Updated from an initial post from Ronnie Burt, this collaboration between Burt, Sue Waters and Kathleen Morris provides a long list of prompts to inspire teachers and students in regards to blogging. Along with the recent culmination of the #edublogsclub project and John Johnston’s reflection on the Glow Blogs e-Portfolio system, these posts offer a number of ideas to continue blogging in and out of the classroom.
Where to Find Free Images for Students and Teachers – Kathleen Morris reflects on the use of images in the classroom. After unpacking a myriad of challenges, she suggests a solution: copyright free images. Supporting this, she compares a number of sites that provide access to free images and provides a number of printable resources to use in the classroom. Continuing the conversation around licences, Alan Levine encourages attribution, even when it is not required.
Your Data is Being Manipulated – In an extract from danah boyd’s keynote at the 2017 Strata Data Conference, she highlights some of the ways in which our lives are being distorted through data. Associated with this, boyd spoke at the Digital Media Lab Conference about the challenges of inadvertently learning the wrong things. She explains how the beliefs generated by online communities, such as 4Chan, shape our everyday understandings. It is interesting to consider this alongside Cathy O’Neil’s book Weapons of Maths Destruction, which is currently the focus in Bryan Alexander’s book club.
The Couple Paid 200k a Year to Travel – Jessica Holland explores world of social media influencers and uncovers the reality associated with being the product. This is something that is also coming into education, with the branding of teachers who are then given resources to use in the classroom. Has it always been this way?
Storytelling and Reflection
“Should men or society stop the Harvey Weinstein’s of this world @Tulip_education” by mrkrndvs is licensed under CC BY-SAShould men or society stop the Harvey Weinstein’s of this world – Marten Koomen explores where to now with Harvey Weinstein and the way women are treated in society. He suggests that we need a collective effort by government to develop legislation and policy. Along with Rebecca Solnit’s post on blaming women for men’s actions and Julian Stodd’s investigation of the wider cultural problem brought out in the #MeToo movement, they touch on a wider problem around gender and inequality. On the Gist podcast, Mike Pesca discusses the challenges associated with reporting such topics. Jenny Listman adds a reminder that such power is abused by regular people too.
Hurry Slowly: communication and trust are key to successful organisations – Doug Belshaw reviews a book/blog by Johnathan Nightingale exploring modern leadership. The two factors which stand out to him is communication and trust. This is something also correlated in the work of Paul Browning. Reading through Belshaw’s thoughts, I wonder if open planned office environments are bad for us?
Critical Pedagogy – My number one from #uLearn17 – Richard Wells reflects on the closing keynote for the recent uLearn Conference in New Zealand. It was by Ann Milne and involved shining a critical eye over inherent inequalities within their education system. Having visited New Zealand earlier this year, I think that it is easy to get caught in the hype around the various improvements and innovation. It also left me thinking about the voices left silent in my own system.
In Praise Of ‘And’…. – Kath Murdoch pushes back on the evidence that inquiry does not work, instead arguing that it is not a question or OR but AND. Along with David Price’s posts and Steve Collis’ TED Talk, they are a reminder that focusing on supposed ‘effective’ strategies sometimes requires more nuance, particularly when it comes to context. This is why I like the Modern Learning Canvas as a means of painting a richer picture of practice.
What Problem Are We Trying to Solve? – Chris Wejr reflects on the many changes occurring in education and askes the question, what problem are they trying to solve? He focuses in particular on the danger of continually jumping on the latest shiny technological toy or application. This reminds me of a post I wrote a few years ago about supporting the development of digital pedagogies which focused on starting with the intended outcomes. It is also interesting reading Wejr’s post next to Benjamin Doxtdator’s recent review of Most Like to Succeed.
FOCUS ON … LIBRARIES
“What is the value of a library with no content? @daveowhite” by mrkrndvs is licensed under CC BY-SA A recent article on the ABC News spoke about he demise of the traditional library in schools. Here is a collection of resources I collated with Anthony Speranza exploring the future of libraries and makerspaces:
Library 2.0 – Steve Wheeler provides a number of questions to consider about libraries of the future.
Libraries Without Walls – Steve Wheeler reflects on library from the perspective of content, services, spaces and skills.
New & Improved Libraries – Laura Fleming discusses how she was inspired by the work of Pixar Animation Studios when turning the library at New Milford High School into a constant learning organization.
Classroom in the Cloud: Technology as a Learning Environment – Laura Fleming explains how she designs online learning spaces in the creation of an ‘always-open’ library.
A Tale of Two Libraries – Eric Sheninger reflects on the change in the library space during his time at New Milford High School.
How Can Today’s Classrooms & Schools Become Inclusive Learning Environments? The Story of Minarets HS – Michael Niehoff share the spaces that were created at Minerats High School, including a Starbucks style media lounge.
Why We Need Libraries In a World Filled With Noise – AJ Juliani reminds us why the focus still needs to be around literacy and reading.
What Will Libraries of the Future Look Like? – James Barnett wonders if the hybrid nature of modern spaces will mean that they become curation places.
The future of the library – Seth Godin suggests that the next library will be one that helps people grapple with data, make things and engage with a wider community.
5-Minute Film Festival: Reimagining the Library – Amy Erin Borovoy collects together a range of film associated with reimagining the library spaces of the future.
Library makerspaces: revolution or evolution? – Chris Harte documents some of the transformations that have occurred at St Aidan’s Anglican Girls’ School in the development of a makerspace.
What is the value of a library with no content? – David White suggests in a library without content that what matters are people to support understanding it.
The Classroom or Library as a Maker Space – Jackie Gerstein discusses some actions involved in turning any space into a makerspace.
The Future of Libraries – Ron Starker and Doug Tindall describe the design of the library at Singapore American School with Rushton Hurley.
Board Games in the School Library: 3 Reasons Why It’s a Winning Play – Robert Schuetz shows why he introduced board games into the library space, explaining how they can support engagement, social skills, self-regulation and improved school climate.
A Librarian’s Guide to Makerspaces: 16 Resources – A collection of blogs and directories associated with libraries and makerspaces.
READ WRITE RESPOND #022
So that is October for me, how about you? As always, interested to hear.
Also, feel free to forward this on to others if you found anything of interest or maybe you want to subscribe?
Cover image by JustLego101
My Month of October
In my work, I continued developing a scalable reporting solution, including planning out an implementation process. I also investigated some automated solutions associated with Google Sheets, including the creation of calendar events from a sheet, as well as developing a document from a database. I have managed to generate markdown code, the next step is to create a script to turn this into a Doc.
On the home front, our girls are enjoying the change of weather, spending endless hours outside on the trampoline and in the cubby house. I have lost count how many ‘concerts’ I have been the audience for featuring either Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off or Pharrell William’s Happy.
Personally, I have continued to explore different aspects of the #IndieWeb, including facepiles, posting comments from my own site and Micro.blogs. I also met up with Cameron Hocking for an interesting chat about conferences, communities and associations.
Here was my month in words:
My #IndieWeb Reflections – Meaning to elaborate on my thoughts on #IndieWeb for a while, Chris Aldrich’s post outlining a proposal for a book spurred me to finish jotting down my notes and reflections.
Sheets, Calendars, Events – Building on the APIs provided by Google Sheets and Google Calendar, I documented how to automate the addition and maintenance of multiple events.
Laying the Standards for a Blogging Renaissance – With the potential demise of social media, does this offer a possible rebirth of blogging communities and the standards they are built upon? Chris Aldrich wrote an insightful response as well.
Scripting an Automated Solution – A plan for an automated monthly newsletter produced from Google Sheets. The intention is to develop data in a way that it can be used in a number of ways.
Blogging the Digital Technologies Curriculum – Digital Technologies is more than just learning to code. This post re-imagines the curriculum around blogging and explores how it maybe better integrated. This post was also included in the Edublogs Newsletter.
I also passed 400 blog posts this month, which I actually totally overlooked at the time.
Here then are some of the thoughts that have also left me thinking …
Learning and Teaching
“Twist Fate @mizuko ” by mrkrndvs is licensed under CC BY-SA
Twist Fate – The Connected Learning Alliance challenged teens to pick a classic story and create an alternate scenario through art or story where a famous hero is the villain or an infamous villain, the hero, with the finalists collated in a book. For further insight into the project, Sara Ryan and Antero Garcia provide a reflection on the some of the stories and the project.
There is No App For That – On the Team Human podcast, Douglas Rushkoff speaks with Richard Heinberg about the challenges of a renewable future. Both authors question the narrative of technological progress and wonder about other human possibilities. Heinberg’s ideas are documented in the manifesto, There’s No App for That. Kim Stanley Robinson provides another take on the future, arguing that we have reached a junction with no middle ground.
Critical Creativity for Grownups: Teachers Try Intention, the Book – Disemminating ideas from the book Intention, Amy Burvall describes some of the creative activities that she has used with teachers. These include #INTENTIONOREO where participants have to work within the contrants of an Oreo and #INTENTIONBRICK where participants explain something using random Lego pieces. Dan Ryder, co-author of Intention, also presented some of these ideas as a part of the recent EdTechTeam Virtual Conference. Burvall also recently gave a TED Talk on creativity which also provides a good introduction to her work. In regards to other ideas around professional development, Jackie Gerstein shares some of the strategies she uses with teachers, while Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano discusses the idea of a scavenger hunt to connect and learn.
The Battle That Created Germany – David Crossland investigates new findings relating to the battle of Teutoburg Forest, between the Germanic tribes and the Romans. A decisive victory, it was a battle which stopped the Roman’s surge east of the Rhine. The article provdes an in-depth analysis of the battle and uncovers many of the complexities with retracing such events often overlooked in textbook accounts. It is interesting to think about the challenges associated with Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History series and why he continually states that he is not a historian.
Edtech
“We Are All Using APIs @APIEvangelist” by mrkrndvs is licensed under CC BY-SA
We Are All Using APIs – Kin Lane explains how APIs are a part of our daily existence. Although we may not be able to do APIs, we need to be aware that they are there and what that might mean. This focus on the ethical as much as the technical relates to Maha Bali’s post about adding humanity back to computer science and Ben Williamson’s call to explore the social consequences associated with coding. Providing a different take on the ‘Hour of Code’, Gary Stager explains that the epistemological benefit of programming comes over time as we build fluency.
Simple Truth: Your Attention Has Been Hijacked. – Bill Ferriter reflects on the way smartphones have been designed to grab our attention. This continues with the discussion around technology engineers avoiding the use of social media, as well as Adam Greenfield’s autopsy of the smartphone on its tenth birthday. Doug Belshaw relates this all to the rise and recognition of ‘notification literacy’.
100+ Ideas And Prompts For Student Blogging – Updated from an initial post from Ronnie Burt, this collaboration between Burt, Sue Waters and Kathleen Morris provides a long list of prompts to inspire teachers and students in regards to blogging. Along with the recent culmination of the #edublogsclub project and John Johnston’s reflection on the Glow Blogs e-Portfolio system, these posts offer a number of ideas to continue blogging in and out of the classroom.
Where to Find Free Images for Students and Teachers – Kathleen Morris reflects on the use of images in the classroom. After unpacking a myriad of challenges, she suggests a solution: copyright free images. Supporting this, she compares a number of sites that provide access to free images and provides a number of printable resources to use in the classroom. Continuing the conversation around licences, Alan Levine encourages attribution, even when it is not required.
Your Data is Being Manipulated – In an extract from danah boyd’s keynote at the 2017 Strata Data Conference, she highlights some of the ways in which our lives are being distorted through data. Associated with this, boyd spoke at the Digital Media Lab Conference about the challenges of inadvertently learning the wrong things. She explains how the beliefs generated by online communities, such as 4Chan, shape our everyday understandings. It is interesting to consider this alongside Cathy O’Neil’s book Weapons of Maths Destruction, which is currently the focus in Bryan Alexander’s book club.
The Couple Paid 200k a Year to Travel – Jessica Holland explores world of social media influencers and uncovers the reality associated with being the product. This is something that is also coming into education, with the branding of teachers who are then given resources to use in the classroom. Has it always been this way?
Storytelling and Reflection
“Should men or society stop the Harvey Weinstein’s of this world @Tulip_education” by mrkrndvs is licensed under CC BY-SA
Should men or society stop the Harvey Weinstein’s of this world – Marten Koomen explores where to now with Harvey Weinstein and the way women are treated in society. He suggests that we need a collective effort by government to develop legislation and policy. Along with Rebecca Solnit’s post on blaming women for men’s actions and Julian Stodd’s investigation of the wider cultural problem brought out in the #MeToo movement, they touch on a wider problem around gender and inequality. On the Gist podcast, Mike Pesca discusses the challenges associated with reporting such topics. Jenny Listman adds a reminder that such power is abused by regular people too.
Hurry Slowly: communication and trust are key to successful organisations – Doug Belshaw reviews a book/blog by Johnathan Nightingale exploring modern leadership. The two factors which stand out to him is communication and trust. This is something also correlated in the work of Paul Browning. Reading through Belshaw’s thoughts, I wonder if open planned office environments are bad for us?
Critical Pedagogy – My number one from #uLearn17 – Richard Wells reflects on the closing keynote for the recent uLearn Conference in New Zealand. It was by Ann Milne and involved shining a critical eye over inherent inequalities within their education system. Having visited New Zealand earlier this year, I think that it is easy to get caught in the hype around the various improvements and innovation. It also left me thinking about the voices left silent in my own system.
In Praise Of ‘And’…. – Kath Murdoch pushes back on the evidence that inquiry does not work, instead arguing that it is not a question or OR but AND. Along with David Price’s posts and Steve Collis’ TED Talk, they are a reminder that focusing on supposed ‘effective’ strategies sometimes requires more nuance, particularly when it comes to context. This is why I like the Modern Learning Canvas as a means of painting a richer picture of practice.
What Problem Are We Trying to Solve? – Chris Wejr reflects on the many changes occurring in education and askes the question, what problem are they trying to solve? He focuses in particular on the danger of continually jumping on the latest shiny technological toy or application. This reminds me of a post I wrote a few years ago about supporting the development of digital pedagogies which focused on starting with the intended outcomes. It is also interesting reading Wejr’s post next to Benjamin Doxtdator’s recent review of Most Like to Succeed.
FOCUS ON … LIBRARIES
“What is the value of a library with no content? @daveowhite” by mrkrndvs is licensed under CC BY-SA
A recent article on the ABC News spoke about he demise of the traditional library in schools. Here is a collection of resources I collated with Anthony Speranza exploring the future of libraries and makerspaces:
Library 2.0 – Steve Wheeler provides a number of questions to consider about libraries of the future.
Libraries Without Walls – Steve Wheeler reflects on library from the perspective of content, services, spaces and skills.
New & Improved Libraries – Laura Fleming discusses how she was inspired by the work of Pixar Animation Studios when turning the library at New Milford High School into a constant learning organization.
Classroom in the Cloud: Technology as a Learning Environment – Laura Fleming explains how she designs online learning spaces in the creation of an ‘always-open’ library.
A Tale of Two Libraries – Eric Sheninger reflects on the change in the library space during his time at New Milford High School.
How Can Today’s Classrooms & Schools Become Inclusive Learning Environments? The Story of Minarets HS – Michael Niehoff share the spaces that were created at Minerats High School, including a Starbucks style media lounge.
Why We Need Libraries In a World Filled With Noise – AJ Juliani reminds us why the focus still needs to be around literacy and reading.
What Will Libraries of the Future Look Like? – James Barnett wonders if the hybrid nature of modern spaces will mean that they become curation places.
The future of the library – Seth Godin suggests that the next library will be one that helps people grapple with data, make things and engage with a wider community.
5-Minute Film Festival: Reimagining the Library – Amy Erin Borovoy collects together a range of film associated with reimagining the library spaces of the future.
Library makerspaces: revolution or evolution? – Chris Harte documents some of the transformations that have occurred at St Aidan’s Anglican Girls’ School in the development of a makerspace.
What is the value of a library with no content? – David White suggests in a library without content that what matters are people to support understanding it.
The Classroom or Library as a Maker Space – Jackie Gerstein discusses some actions involved in turning any space into a makerspace.
The Future of Libraries – Ron Starker and Doug Tindall describe the design of the library at Singapore American School with Rushton Hurley.
Board Games in the School Library: 3 Reasons Why It’s a Winning Play – Robert Schuetz shows why he introduced board games into the library space, explaining how they can support engagement, social skills, self-regulation and improved school climate.
A Librarian’s Guide to Makerspaces: 16 Resources – A collection of blogs and directories associated with libraries and makerspaces.
READ WRITE RESPOND #022
So that is October for me, how about you? As always, interested to hear.
Also, feel free to forward this on to others if you found anything of interest or maybe you want to subscribe?
Cover image by JustLego101
A reflection on my inquiry into communication this year and all of the lessons learnt along the way.
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.
Fragmentions
Ages ago I added support on my website for fragmentions.
Wait… What is that?
Fragmention is a portmanteau word made up of fragment and mention (or even Webmention), but in more technical terms, it’s a simple way of creating a URL that not only targets a particular page on the internet, but allows you to target a specific sub-section of that page whether it’s a photo, paragraph, a few words, or even specific HTML elements like
<div>or<span>on such a page. In short, it’s like a permalink to content within a web page instead of just the page itself.A Fragmention Example
Back in December Aaron Davis had made a quote card for one of his posts that included a quote from one of my posts. While I don’t think he pinged (or webmentioned) it within his own post, I ran across it in his Twitter feed and he cross-posted it to his Flickr account where he credited where the underlying photo and quote came from along with their relevant URLs.
Fragmentions could have not only let him link to the source page of the quote, it would have let him directly target the section or the paragraph where the quote originated or–even more directly–the actual line of the quote.
Here’s the fragmention URL that would have allowed him to do that: http://boffosocko.com/2017/10/27/reply-to-laying-the-standards-for-a-blogging-renaissance-by-aaron-davis/#I%E2%80%99m%20not%20looking
Go ahead and click on it (or the photo) to see the fragmention in action.
What’s happening?
Let’s compare the two URLs:
1. http://boffosocko.com/2017/10/27/reply-to-laying-the-standards-for-a-blogging-renaissance-by-aaron-davis/
2. http://boffosocko.com/2017/10/27/reply-to-laying-the-standards-for-a-blogging-renaissance-by-aaron-davis/#I%E2%80%99m%20not%20looking
They both obviously point to the same specific page, and their beginnings are identical. The second one has a # followed by the words “I’m not looking” with some code for blank spaces and an apostrophe. Clicking on the fragmention URL will take you to the root page which then triggers a snippet of JavaScript on my site that causes the closest container with the text following the hash to be highlighted in a bright yellow color. The browser also automatically scrolls down to the location of the highlight.
Note: rather than the numbers and percent symbols, one could also frequently use the “+” to stand in for white spaces like so: http://boffosocko.com/2017/10/27/reply-to-laying-the-standards-for-a-blogging-renaissance-by-aaron-davis/#not+looking+for+just This makes the URL a bit more human readable. You’ll also notice I took out the code for the apostrophe by omitting the word “I’m” and adding another word or two, but I still get the same highlight result.
This can be a very useful thing, particularly on pages with huge amounts of text. I use it quite often in my own posts to direct people to particular sub-parts of my website to better highlight the pieces I think they’ll find useful.
It can be even more useful for academics and researchers who want to highlight or even bookmark specific passages of text online. Those with experience on the Medium.com platform will also notice how useful highlighting can be, but having a specific permalink structure for it goes a step further.
I will note however, that it’s been rare, if ever, that anyone besides myself has used this functionality on my site. Why? We’ll look at that in just a moment.
Extending fragmentions for easier usability.
Recently as a result of multiple conversations with Aaron Davis (on and between our websites via webmention with syndication to Twitter), I’ve been thinking more about notes, highlights, and annotations on the web. He wrote a post which discusses “Page Bookmarks” which are an interesting way of manually adding anchors on web pages to allow for targeting specific portions of web pages. This can make it easy for the user to click on links on a page to let them scroll up and down specific pages. Sadly, these are very painful to create and use both for a site owner and even more so for the outside public which has absolutely no control over them whatsoever.
His post reminded me immediately of fragmentions. It also reminded me that there was a second bit of user interface related to fragmentions that I’d always meant to also add to my site, but somehow never got around to connecting: a “fragmentioner” to make it more obvious that you could use fragmentions on my site.
In short, how could a user know that my website even supports fragmentions? How could I make it easier for them to create a fragmention from my site to share out with others? Fortunately for me, our IndieWeb friend Kartik Prabhu had already wired up the details for his own personal website and released the code and some pointers for others who were interested in setting it up themselves. It’s freely available on Github and includes some reasonable details for installation.
So with a small bit of tweaking and one or two refinements, I got the code up and running and voilà! I now have a natural UI for highlighting things.
How?
When a user naturally selects a portion of my page with their mouse–the way they might if they were going to cut and paste the text, a simple interface pops up with instructions to click it for a link. Kartik’s JavaScript automatically converts the highlight into the proper format and changes the page’s URL to include the appropriate fragmention URL for that snippet of the page. A cut and paste allows the reader to put that highlighted piece’s URL anywhere she likes. It
Highlighting text pulls up some simple user interface for creating a fragmention to the highlighted text.The future
What else would be nice?
I can’t help but think that it would be fantastic if the WordPress Fragmention plugin added the UI piece for highlight and sharing text via an automatically generated link.
Perhaps in the future one could allow a highlight and click interaction not only get the link, but to get a copy of both the highlighted text and the link to the URL. I’ve seen this behavior on some very socially savvy news websites. This would certainly make a common practice of cutting and pasting content much easier to do while also cleverly including a reference link.
The tough part of this functionality is that it’s only available on websites that specifically enable it. While not too difficult, it would be far nicer to have native browser support for both fragmention creation and use. This would mean that I don’t need to include the JavaScript on my website to do the scrolling or highlighting and I wouldn’t need any JavaScript on my site to enable the highlighting to provide the specific code for the custom URL. How nice would it be if this were an open web standard and supported by major browsers without the need for work at the website level?
Medium-like highlighting and comments suddenly become a little easier for websites to support. With some additional code, it’s only a hop, skip, and a jump to dovetail this fragmention functionality with the W3C Webmentions spec to allow inline marginalia on posts. One can create a fragmention targeting text on a website and write a reply to it. With some UI built out, by sending a webmention to the site, it could pick up the comment and display it as a marginal note at that particular spot instead of as a traditional comment below the post where it might otherwise loose the context of being associated at the related point in the main text. In fact our friend Kartik Prabhu has done just this on his website. Here’s an example of it in his post announcing the feature.
Example of inline marginalia on Kartik Prabhu’s website “Parallel Transport”.You’ll notice that small quotation bubbles appear at various points in the text indicating marginalia. By clicking on them, the bubble turns green and the page expands to show the comment at that location. One could easily imagine CSS that allows the marginalia to actually display in the margin of the page for wider screens.
How could you imagine using fragmentions? What would you do with them? Feel free to add your thoughts below or own your site and send me a webmention.
Syndicated copies to:
Syndicated copies:
Fragmentions
Ages ago I added support on my website for fragmentions.
Wait… What is that?
Fragmention is a portmanteau word made up of fragment and mention (or even Webmention), but in more technical terms, it’s a simple way of creating a URL that not only targets a particular page on the internet, but allows you to target a specific sub-section of that page whether it’s a photo, paragraph, a few words, or even specific HTML elements like
<div>or<span>on such a page. In short, it’s like a permalink to content within a web page instead of just the page itself.A Fragmention Example
Back in December Aaron Davis had made a quote card for one of his posts that included a quote from one of my posts. While I don’t think he pinged (or webmentioned) it within his own post, I ran across it in his Twitter feed and he cross-posted it to his Flickr account where he credited where the underlying photo and quote came from along with their relevant URLs.
Fragmentions could have not only let him link to the source page of the quote, it would have let him directly target the section or the paragraph where the quote originated or–even more directly–the actual line of the quote.
Here’s the fragmention URL that would have allowed him to do that: http://boffosocko.com/2017/10/27/reply-to-laying-the-standards-for-a-blogging-renaissance-by-aaron-davis/#I%E2%80%99m%20not%20looking
Go ahead and click on it (or the photo) to see the fragmention in action.
What’s happening?
Let’s compare the two URLs:
1. http://boffosocko.com/2017/10/27/reply-to-laying-the-standards-for-a-blogging-renaissance-by-aaron-davis/
2. http://boffosocko.com/2017/10/27/reply-to-laying-the-standards-for-a-blogging-renaissance-by-aaron-davis/#I%E2%80%99m%20not%20looking
They both obviously point to the same specific page, and their beginnings are identical. The second one has a # followed by the words “I’m not looking” with some code for blank spaces and an apostrophe. Clicking on the fragmention URL will take you to the root page which then triggers a snippet of JavaScript on my site that causes the closest container with the text following the hash to be highlighted in a bright yellow color. The browser also automatically scrolls down to the location of the highlight.
Note: rather than the numbers and percent symbols, one could also frequently use the “+” to stand in for white spaces like so: http://boffosocko.com/2017/10/27/reply-to-laying-the-standards-for-a-blogging-renaissance-by-aaron-davis/#not+looking+for+just This makes the URL a bit more human readable. You’ll also notice I took out the code for the apostrophe by omitting the word “I’m” and adding another word or two, but I still get the same highlight result.
This can be a very useful thing, particularly on pages with huge amounts of text. I use it quite often in my own posts to direct people to particular sub-parts of my website to better highlight the pieces I think they’ll find useful.
It can be even more useful for academics and researchers who want to highlight or even bookmark specific passages of text online. Those with experience on the Medium.com platform will also notice how useful highlighting can be, but having a specific permalink structure for it goes a step further.
I will note however, that it’s been rare, if ever, that anyone besides myself has used this functionality on my site. Why? We’ll look at that in just a moment.
Extending fragmentions for easier usability.
Recently as a result of multiple conversations with Aaron Davis (on and between our websites via webmention with syndication to Twitter), I’ve been thinking more about notes, highlights, and annotations on the web. He wrote a post which discusses “Page Bookmarks” which are an interesting way of manually adding anchors on web pages to allow for targeting specific portions of web pages. This can make it easy for the user to click on links on a page to let them scroll up and down specific pages. Sadly, these are very painful to create and use both for a site owner and even more so for the outside public which has absolutely no control over them whatsoever.
His post reminded me immediately of fragmentions. It also reminded me that there was a second bit of user interface related to fragmentions that I’d always meant to also add to my site, but somehow never got around to connecting: a “fragmentioner” to make it more obvious that you could use fragmentions on my site.
In short, how could a user know that my website even supports fragmentions? How could I make it easier for them to create a fragmention from my site to share out with others? Fortunately for me, our IndieWeb friend Kartik Prabhu had already wired up the details for his own personal website and released the code and some pointers for others who were interested in setting it up themselves. It’s freely available on Github and includes some reasonable details for installation.
So with a small bit of tweaking and one or two refinements, I got the code up and running and voilà! I now have a natural UI for highlighting things.
How?
When a user naturally selects a portion of my page with their mouse–the way they might if they were going to cut and paste the text, a simple interface pops up with instructions to click it for a link. Kartik’s JavaScript automatically converts the highlight into the proper format and changes the page’s URL to include the appropriate fragmention URL for that snippet of the page. A cut and paste allows the reader to put that highlighted piece’s URL anywhere she likes. It
Highlighting text pulls up some simple user interface for creating a fragmention to the highlighted text.The future
What else would be nice?
I can’t help but think that it would be fantastic if the WordPress Fragmention plugin added the UI piece for highlight and sharing text via an automatically generated link.
Perhaps in the future one could allow a highlight and click interaction not only get the link, but to get a copy of both the highlighted text and the link to the URL. I’ve seen this behavior on some very socially savvy news websites. This would certainly make a common practice of cutting and pasting content much easier to do while also cleverly including a reference link.
The tough part of this functionality is that it’s only available on websites that specifically enable it. While not too difficult, it would be far nicer to have native browser support for both fragmention creation and use. This would mean that I don’t need to include the JavaScript on my website to do the scrolling or highlighting and I wouldn’t need any JavaScript on my site to enable the highlighting to provide the specific code for the custom URL. How nice would it be if this were an open web standard and supported by major browsers without the need for work at the website level?
Medium-like highlighting and comments suddenly become a little easier for websites to support. With some additional code, it’s only a hop, skip, and a jump to dovetail this fragmention functionality with the W3C Webmentions spec to allow inline marginalia on posts. One can create a fragmention targeting text on a website and write a reply to it. With some UI built out, by sending a webmention to the site, it could pick up the comment and display it as a marginal note at that particular spot instead of as a traditional comment below the post where it might otherwise loose the context of being associated at the related point in the main text. In fact our friend Kartik Prabhu has done just this on his website. Here’s an example of it in his post announcing the feature.
Example of inline marginalia on Kartik Prabhu’s website “Parallel Transport”.You’ll notice that small quotation bubbles appear at various points in the text indicating marginalia. By clicking on them, the bubble turns green and the page expands to show the comment at that location. One could easily imagine CSS that allows the marginalia to actually display in the margin of the page for wider screens.
How could you imagine using fragmentions? What would you do with them? Feel free to add your thoughts below or own your site and send me a webmention.
Respond via Twitter:
Reply
Repost
Like
Syndicated copies to:
Author: Chris Aldrich
I'm a biomedical and electrical engineer with interests in information theory, complexity, evolution, genetics, signal processing, theoretical mathematics, and big history.
I’m also a talent manager-producer-publisher in the entertainment industry with expertise in representation, distribution, finance, production, content delivery, and new media.
View all posts by Chris Aldrich
Syndicated copies:
Fragmentions
Ages ago I added support on my website for fragmentions.
Wait… What is that?
Fragmention is a portmanteau word made up of fragment and mention (or even Webmention), but in more technical terms, it’s a simple way of creating a URL that not only targets a particular page on the internet, but allows you to target a specific sub-section of that page whether it’s a photo, paragraph, a few words, or even specific HTML elements like
<div>or<span>on such a page. In short, it’s like a permalink to content within a web page instead of just the page itself.A Fragmention Example
Back in December Aaron Davis had made a quote card for one of his posts that included a quote from one of my posts. While I don’t think he pinged (or webmentioned) it within his own post, I ran across it in his Twitter feed and he cross-posted it to his Flickr account where he credited where the underlying photo and quote came from along with their relevant URLs.
Fragmentions could have not only let him link to the source page of the quote, it would have let him directly target the section or the paragraph where the quote originated or–even more directly–the actual line of the quote.
Here’s the fragmention URL that would have allowed him to do that: http://boffosocko.com/2017/10/27/reply-to-laying-the-standards-for-a-blogging-renaissance-by-aaron-davis/#I%E2%80%99m%20not%20looking
Go ahead and click on it (or the photo) to see the fragmention in action.
What’s happening?
Let’s compare the two URLs:
1. http://boffosocko.com/2017/10/27/reply-to-laying-the-standards-for-a-blogging-renaissance-by-aaron-davis/
2. http://boffosocko.com/2017/10/27/reply-to-laying-the-standards-for-a-blogging-renaissance-by-aaron-davis/#I%E2%80%99m%20not%20looking
They both obviously point to the same specific page, and their beginnings are identical. The second one has a # followed by the words “I’m not looking” with some code for blank spaces and an apostrophe. Clicking on the fragmention URL will take you to the root page which then triggers a snippet of JavaScript on my site that causes the closest container with the text following the hash to be highlighted in a bright yellow color. The browser also automatically scrolls down to the location of the highlight.
Note: rather than the numbers and percent symbols, one could also frequently use the “+” to stand in for white spaces like so: http://boffosocko.com/2017/10/27/reply-to-laying-the-standards-for-a-blogging-renaissance-by-aaron-davis/#not+looking+for+just This makes the URL a bit more human readable. You’ll also notice I took out the code for the apostrophe by omitting the word “I’m” and adding another word or two, but I still get the same highlight result.
This can be a very useful thing, particularly on pages with huge amounts of text. I use it quite often in my own posts to direct people to particular sub-parts of my website to better highlight the pieces I think they’ll find useful.
It can be even more useful for academics and researchers who want to highlight or even bookmark specific passages of text online. Those with experience on the Medium.com platform will also notice how useful highlighting can be, but having a specific permalink structure for it goes a step further.
I will note however, that it’s been rare, if ever, that anyone besides myself has used this functionality on my site. Why? We’ll look at that in just a moment.
Extending fragmentions for easier usability.
Recently as a result of multiple conversations with Aaron Davis (on and between our websites via webmention with syndication to Twitter), I’ve been thinking more about notes, highlights, and annotations on the web. He wrote a post which discusses “Page Bookmarks” which are an interesting way of manually adding anchors on web pages to allow for targeting specific portions of web pages. This can make it easy for the user to click on links on a page to let them scroll up and down specific pages. Sadly, these are very painful to create and use both for a site owner and even more so for the outside public which has absolutely no control over them whatsoever.
His post reminded me immediately of fragmentions. It also reminded me that there was a second bit of user interface related to fragmentions that I’d always meant to also add to my site, but somehow never got around to connecting: a “fragmentioner” to make it more obvious that you could use fragmentions on my site.
In short, how could a user know that my website even supports fragmentions? How could I make it easier for them to create a fragmention from my site to share out with others? Fortunately for me, our IndieWeb friend Kartik Prabhu had already wired up the details for his own personal website and released the code and some pointers for others who were interested in setting it up themselves. It’s freely available on Github and includes some reasonable details for installation.
So with a small bit of tweaking and one or two refinements, I got the code up and running and voilà! I now have a natural UI for highlighting things.
How?
When a user naturally selects a portion of my page with their mouse–the way they might if they were going to cut and paste the text, a simple interface pops up with instructions to click it for a link. Kartik’s JavaScript automatically converts the highlight into the proper format and changes the page’s URL to include the appropriate fragmention URL for that snippet of the page. A cut and paste allows the reader to put that highlighted piece’s URL anywhere she likes. It
Highlighting text pulls up some simple user interface for creating a fragmention to the highlighted text.The future
What else would be nice?
I can’t help but think that it would be fantastic if the WordPress Fragmention plugin added the UI piece for highlight and sharing text via an automatically generated link.
Perhaps in the future one could allow a highlight and click interaction not only get the link, but to get a copy of both the highlighted text and the link to the URL. I’ve seen this behavior on some very socially savvy news websites. This would certainly make a common practice of cutting and pasting content much easier to do while also cleverly including a reference link.
The tough part of this functionality is that it’s only available on websites that specifically enable it. While not too difficult, it would be far nicer to have native browser support for both fragmention creation and use. This would mean that I don’t need to include the JavaScript on my website to do the scrolling or highlighting and I wouldn’t need any JavaScript on my site to enable the highlighting to provide the specific code for the custom URL. How nice would it be if this were an open web standard and supported by major browsers without the need for work at the website level?
Medium-like highlighting and comments suddenly become a little easier for websites to support. With some additional code, it’s only a hop, skip, and a jump to dovetail this fragmention functionality with the W3C Webmentions spec to allow inline marginalia on posts. One can create a fragmention targeting text on a website and write a reply to it. With some UI built out, by sending a webmention to the site, it could pick up the comment and display it as a marginal note at that particular spot instead of as a traditional comment below the post where it might otherwise loose the context of being associated at the related point in the main text. In fact our friend Kartik Prabhu has done just this on his website. Here’s an example of it in his post announcing the feature.
Example of inline marginalia on Kartik Prabhu’s website “Parallel Transport”.You’ll notice that small quotation bubbles appear at various points in the text indicating marginalia. By clicking on them, the bubble turns green and the page expands to show the comment at that location. One could easily imagine CSS that allows the marginalia to actually display in the margin of the page for wider screens.
How could you imagine using fragmentions? What would you do with them? Feel free to add your thoughts below or own your site and send me a webmention.
Respond via Twitter:
Reply
Repost
Like
Syndicated copies to:
Author: Chris Aldrich
I'm a biomedical and electrical engineer with interests in information theory, complexity, evolution, genetics, signal processing, theoretical mathematics, and big history.
I’m also a talent manager-producer-publisher in the entertainment industry with expertise in representation, distribution, finance, production, content delivery, and new media.
View all posts by Chris Aldrich
Syndicated copies:
Fragmentions
Ages ago I added support on my website for fragmentions.
Wait… What is that?
Fragmention is a portmanteau word made up of fragment and mention (or even Webmention), but in more technical terms, it’s a simple way of creating a URL that not only targets a particular page on the internet, but allows you to target a specific sub-section of that page whether it’s a photo, paragraph, a few words, or even specific HTML elements like
<div>or<span>on such a page. In short, it’s like a permalink to content within a web page instead of just the page itself.A Fragmention Example
Back in December Aaron Davis had made a quote card for one of his posts that included a quote from one of my posts. While I don’t think he pinged (or webmentioned) it within his own post, I ran across it in his Twitter feed and he cross-posted it to his Flickr account where he credited where the underlying photo and quote came from along with their relevant URLs.
Fragmentions could have not only let him link to the source page of the quote, it would have let him directly target the section or the paragraph where the quote originated or–even more directly–the actual line of the quote.
Here’s the fragmention URL that would have allowed him to do that: http://boffosocko.com/2017/10/27/reply-to-laying-the-standards-for-a-blogging-renaissance-by-aaron-davis/#I%E2%80%99m%20not%20looking
Go ahead and click on it (or the photo) to see the fragmention in action.
What’s happening?
Let’s compare the two URLs:
1. http://boffosocko.com/2017/10/27/reply-to-laying-the-standards-for-a-blogging-renaissance-by-aaron-davis/
2. http://boffosocko.com/2017/10/27/reply-to-laying-the-standards-for-a-blogging-renaissance-by-aaron-davis/#I%E2%80%99m%20not%20looking
They both obviously point to the same specific page, and their beginnings are identical. The second one has a # followed by the words “I’m not looking” with some code for blank spaces and an apostrophe. Clicking on the fragmention URL will take you to the root page which then triggers a snippet of JavaScript on my site that causes the closest container with the text following the hash to be highlighted in a bright yellow color. The browser also automatically scrolls down to the location of the highlight.
Note: rather than the numbers and percent symbols, one could also frequently use the “+” to stand in for white spaces like so: http://boffosocko.com/2017/10/27/reply-to-laying-the-standards-for-a-blogging-renaissance-by-aaron-davis/#not+looking+for+just This makes the URL a bit more human readable. You’ll also notice I took out the code for the apostrophe by omitting the word “I’m” and adding another word or two, but I still get the same highlight result.
This can be a very useful thing, particularly on pages with huge amounts of text. I use it quite often in my own posts to direct people to particular sub-parts of my website to better highlight the pieces I think they’ll find useful.
It can be even more useful for academics and researchers who want to highlight or even bookmark specific passages of text online. Those with experience on the Medium.com platform will also notice how useful highlighting can be, but having a specific permalink structure for it goes a step further.
I will note however, that it’s been rare, if ever, that anyone besides myself has used this functionality on my site. Why? We’ll look at that in just a moment.
Extending fragmentions for easier usability.
Recently as a result of multiple conversations with Aaron Davis (on and between our websites via webmention with syndication to Twitter), I’ve been thinking more about notes, highlights, and annotations on the web. He wrote a post which discusses “Page Bookmarks” which are an interesting way of manually adding anchors on web pages to allow for targeting specific portions of web pages. This can make it easy for the user to click on links on a page to let them scroll up and down specific pages. Sadly, these are very painful to create and use both for a site owner and even more so for the outside public which has absolutely no control over them whatsoever.
His post reminded me immediately of fragmentions. It also reminded me that there was a second bit of user interface related to fragmentions that I’d always meant to also add to my site, but somehow never got around to connecting: a “fragmentioner” to make it more obvious that you could use fragmentions on my site.
In short, how could a user know that my website even supports fragmentions? How could I make it easier for them to create a fragmention from my site to share out with others? Fortunately for me, our IndieWeb friend Kartik Prabhu had already wired up the details for his own personal website and released the code and some pointers for others who were interested in setting it up themselves. It’s freely available on Github and includes some reasonable details for installation.
So with a small bit of tweaking and one or two refinements, I got the code up and running and voilà! I now have a natural UI for highlighting things.
How?
When a user naturally selects a portion of my page with their mouse–the way they might if they were going to cut and paste the text, a simple interface pops up with instructions to click it for a link. Kartik’s JavaScript automatically converts the highlight into the proper format and changes the page’s URL to include the appropriate fragmention URL for that snippet of the page. A cut and paste allows the reader to put that highlighted piece’s URL anywhere she likes.
Highlighting text pulls up some simple user interface for creating a fragmention to the highlighted text.
The future
What else would be nice?
I can’t help but think that it would be fantastic if the WordPress Fragmention plugin added the UI piece for highlight and sharing text via an automatically generated link.
Perhaps in the future one could allow a highlight and click interaction not only get the link, but to get a copy of both the highlighted text and the link to the URL. I’ve seen this behavior on some very socially savvy news websites. This would certainly make a common practice of cutting and pasting content much easier to do while also cleverly including a reference link.
The tough part of this functionality is that it’s only available on websites that specifically enable it. While not too difficult, it would be far nicer to have native browser support for both fragmention creation and use. This would mean that I don’t need to include the JavaScript on my website to do the scrolling or highlighting and I wouldn’t need any JavaScript on my site to enable the highlighting to provide the specific code for the custom URL. How nice would it be if this were an open web standard and supported by major browsers without the need for work at the website level?
Medium-like highlighting and comments suddenly become a little easier for websites to support. With some additional code, it’s only a hop, skip, and a jump to dovetail this fragmention functionality with the W3C Webmentions spec to allow inline marginalia on posts. One can create a fragmention targeting text on a website and write a reply to it. With some UI built out, by sending a webmention to the site, it could pick up the comment and display it as a marginal note at that particular spot instead of as a traditional comment below the post where it might otherwise loose the context of being associated at the related point in the main text. In fact our friend Kartik Prabhu has done just this on his website. Here’s an example of it in his post announcing the feature.
Example of inline marginalia on Kartik Prabhu’s website “Parallel Transport”.
You’ll notice that small quotation bubbles appear at various points in the text indicating marginalia. By clicking on them, the bubble turns green and the page expands to show the comment at that location. One could easily imagine CSS that allows the marginalia to actually display in the margin of the page for wider screens.
How could you imagine using fragmentions? What would you do with them? Feel free to add your thoughts below or own your site and send me a webmention.
Respond via Twitter:
Reply
Repost
Like
Syndicated copies to:
Flipboard icon
LinkedIn icon
Twitter icon
Twitter icon
Facebook icon
Google+ icon
WordPress
Syndicated copies:
Fragmentions
Ages ago I added support on my website for fragmentions.
Wait… What is that?
Fragmention is a portmanteau word made up of fragment and mention (or even Webmention), but in more technical terms, it’s a simple way of creating a URL that not only targets a particular page on the internet, but allows you to target a specific sub-section of that page whether it’s a photo, paragraph, a few words, or even specific HTML elements like
<div>or<span>on such a page. In short, it’s like a permalink to content within a web page instead of just the page itself.A Fragmention Example
Back in December Aaron Davis had made a quote card for one of his posts that included a quote from one of my posts. While I don’t think he pinged (or webmentioned) it within his own post, I ran across it in his Twitter feed and he cross-posted it to his Flickr account where he credited where the underlying photo and quote came from along with their relevant URLs.
Fragmentions could have not only let him link to the source page of the quote, it would have let him directly target the section or the paragraph where the quote originated or–even more directly–the actual line of the quote.
Here’s the fragmention URL that would have allowed him to do that: http://boffosocko.com/2017/10/27/reply-to-laying-the-standards-for-a-blogging-renaissance-by-aaron-davis/#I%E2%80%99m%20not%20looking
Go ahead and click on it (or the photo) to see the fragmention in action.
What’s happening?
Let’s compare the two URLs:
1. http://boffosocko.com/2017/10/27/reply-to-laying-the-standards-for-a-blogging-renaissance-by-aaron-davis/
2. http://boffosocko.com/2017/10/27/reply-to-laying-the-standards-for-a-blogging-renaissance-by-aaron-davis/#I%E2%80%99m%20not%20looking
They both obviously point to the same specific page, and their beginnings are identical. The second one has a # followed by the words “I’m not looking” with some code for blank spaces and an apostrophe. Clicking on the fragmention URL will take you to the root page which then triggers a snippet of JavaScript on my site that causes the closest container with the text following the hash to be highlighted in a bright yellow color. The browser also automatically scrolls down to the location of the highlight.
Note: rather than the numbers and percent symbols, one could also frequently use the “+” to stand in for white spaces like so: http://boffosocko.com/2017/10/27/reply-to-laying-the-standards-for-a-blogging-renaissance-by-aaron-davis/#not+looking+for+just This makes the URL a bit more human readable. You’ll also notice I took out the code for the apostrophe by omitting the word “I’m” and adding another word or two, but I still get the same highlight result.
This can be a very useful thing, particularly on pages with huge amounts of text. I use it quite often in my own posts to direct people to particular sub-parts of my website to better highlight the pieces I think they’ll find useful.
It can be even more useful for academics and researchers who want to highlight or even bookmark specific passages of text online. Those with experience on the Medium.com platform will also notice how useful highlighting can be, but having a specific permalink structure for it goes a step further.
I will note however, that it’s been rare, if ever, that anyone besides myself has used this functionality on my site. Why? We’ll look at that in just a moment.
Extending fragmentions for easier usability.
Recently as a result of multiple conversations with Aaron Davis (on and between our websites via webmention with syndication to Twitter), I’ve been thinking more about notes, highlights, and annotations on the web. He wrote a post which discusses “Page Bookmarks” which are an interesting way of manually adding anchors on web pages to allow for targeting specific portions of web pages. This can make it easy for the user to click on links on a page to let them scroll up and down specific pages. Sadly, these are very painful to create and use both for a site owner and even more so for the outside public which has absolutely no control over them whatsoever.
His post reminded me immediately of fragmentions. It also reminded me that there was a second bit of user interface related to fragmentions that I’d always meant to also add to my site, but somehow never got around to connecting: a “fragmentioner” to make it more obvious that you could use fragmentions on my site.
In short, how could a user know that my website even supports fragmentions? How could I make it easier for them to create a fragmention from my site to share out with others? Fortunately for me, our IndieWeb friend Kartik Prabhu had already wired up the details for his own personal website and released the code and some pointers for others who were interested in setting it up themselves. It’s freely available on Github and includes some reasonable details for installation.
So with a small bit of tweaking and one or two refinements, I got the code up and running and voilà! I now have a natural UI for highlighting things.
How?
When a user naturally selects a portion of my page with their mouse–the way they might if they were going to cut and paste the text, a simple interface pops up with instructions to click it for a link. Kartik’s JavaScript automatically converts the highlight into the proper format and changes the page’s URL to include the appropriate fragmention URL for that snippet of the page. A cut and paste allows the reader to put that highlighted piece’s URL anywhere she likes.
Highlighting text pulls up some simple user interface for creating a fragmention to the highlighted text.
The future
What else would be nice?
I can’t help but think that it would be fantastic if the WordPress Fragmention plugin added the UI piece for highlight and sharing text via an automatically generated link.
Perhaps in the future one could allow a highlight and click interaction not only get the link, but to get a copy of both the highlighted text and the link to the URL. I’ve seen this behavior on some very socially savvy news websites. This would certainly make a common practice of cutting and pasting content much easier to do while also cleverly including a reference link.
The tough part of this functionality is that it’s only available on websites that specifically enable it. While not too difficult, it would be far nicer to have native browser support for both fragmention creation and use. This would mean that I don’t need to include the JavaScript on my website to do the scrolling or highlighting and I wouldn’t need any JavaScript on my site to enable the highlighting to provide the specific code for the custom URL. How nice would it be if this were an open web standard and supported by major browsers without the need for work at the website level?
Medium-like highlighting and comments suddenly become a little easier for websites to support. With some additional code, it’s only a hop, skip, and a jump to dovetail this fragmention functionality with the W3C Webmentions spec to allow inline marginalia on posts. One can create a fragmention targeting text on a website and write a reply to it. With some UI built out, by sending a webmention to the site, it could pick up the comment and display it as a marginal note at that particular spot instead of as a traditional comment below the post where it might otherwise loose the context of being associated at the related point in the main text. In fact our friend Kartik Prabhu has done just this on his website. Here’s an example of it in his post announcing the feature.
Example of inline marginalia on Kartik Prabhu’s website “Parallel Transport”.
You’ll notice that small quotation bubbles appear at various points in the text indicating marginalia. By clicking on them, the bubble turns green and the page expands to show the comment at that location. One could easily imagine CSS that allows the marginalia to actually display in the margin of the page for wider screens.
How could you imagine using fragmentions? What would you do with them? Feel free to add your thoughts below or own your site and send me a webmention.
Respond via Twitter:
Reply
Repost
Like
Syndicated copies to:
Flipboard icon
LinkedIn icon
Twitter icon
Twitter icon
Facebook icon
Google+ icon
WordPress
Syndicated copies:
tag:facebook.com,2013:10101559856676565_liked_by_10100959863268165
Winston Tabb
https://www.facebook.com/5410052/posts/10101559856676565#liked-by-10100959863268165
tag:facebook.com,2013:10101559856676565_liked_by_10100959863268165
Winston Tabb
https://www.facebook.com/5410052/posts/10101559856676565#liked-by-10100959863268165
tag:facebook.com,2013:10101559856676565_liked_by_10154721789467491
Michael Kirk
https://www.facebook.com/5410052/posts/10101559856676565#liked-by-10154721789467491
tag:facebook.com,2013:10101559856676565_liked_by_10154721789467491
Michael Kirk
https://www.facebook.com/5410052/posts/10101559856676565#liked-by-10154721789467491
There are some who complain about the effort associated with commenting from my own site, especially when you often have to comment on the other site as well. Yet without people making this ‘sacrifice’ for a deomstratebly better web.
Eli, I imagine that it is more complicated than just turning attention to the user. I am not a programmer. I have not done any technical training. All my knowledge is self-taught. I may not know what all the errors mean, but I can at least debug to a degree. My actually occupation is the delivery of a sector-wide LMS. I am a teacher whose job it is to make connections between the technical and the pedagogical. My experience is that this comes down to storytelling.
I feel that what is needed are more people in-between the divide of Gen 1 & 2 vs. 3 & 4. People who are living it, asking questions and identifying the various points of confusion. I think this is what will take the #IndieWeb from a hipster-web to a “demonstratably better web“
Syndicated copies:
One of the challenges with the web can be managing content across multiple sites, one answer, create canonical links and share from there.
In a conversation on Twitter discussing the archiving images and canonical URLs, Amy Burvall explained that much of her work was simply stored on Instagram, which can be problematic. She asks whether I had any other suggestions:
This had me reflecting on all the spaces (or ‘cafes’) where I have seen Amy’s multimedia output,
Tumblr
Instagram
YouTube
WordPress
Twitter
Mastodon
Medium
Google+
I am sure there are more I may have missed, but it paints something of a picture. Added to this, not only does she frequent these social spaces, but often in different guieses as well.
One of the things that interests me about Amy’s work is that there is not necessarily a central space. If anything, I would say that it is her WordPress.com blog, but there is not a space where all the different parts are collected together. Although she also has her main site – amyburvall.com – this is more of a landing page design to connect, rather than collect.
Here I am reminded of a recent piece by Cory Doctorow where he reflects on the choices associated with technology. He states:
Douglas Rushkoff recently made the case against social media being used in schools. I agree with this and wonder we more schools do not create their own spaces. However, I also think that schools on the whole should do more to own their presence. What if they actually collected together their media story in one space. I think that Burvall faces that same conundrum.
There seems to be two schools of thought on this:
– PESOS: Publish Elsewhere, Syndicate (to your) Own Site
– POSSE: Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere
Dries Buytaert’s graphic provides a useful breakdown of the differences.
I remember when I started down the POSSE path, my focus was simply on my long form posts. I would use Jetpack to share links to Twitter and Google+. This approach however has its limits.
Firstly, Jetpack only provides a certain amount of social media sites provided. Secondly, it does not allow for much nuance in regards to content and how it is shared, particularly with media. The template is set within the code of plugin, with links sent out automatically. There are some ways to manipulate this, whether it be in the text box provided or by adding an excerpt, (an optional field in WordPress.) However, it is neither clear nor consistent.
Having spent some time with Edublogs/Global2, I learnt that Jetpack can be modified. I am not aware though how much you can adjust the code associated with sharing links nor anyone who has done this.
Another automated approach to sharing is through the use of a third-party platforms. The easiest and cheapest of these is IFTTT. It allows users to set up ‘recipes’, connecting various services together. These simply run in the background.
Although IFTTT provides more choice, this can still be limited. There are times when you have to work with the options available to rethink what is possible. I am also sceptical how IFTTT are making their money and whether they will pivot like Storify.
A similar third-party platform is Zapier. What is good about Zapier is that it really breaks down the various options clearly. The only catch with Zapier is the cost.
An alternative that does not rely on a third-party platform is SNAP (Social Network Auto-Poster). This WordPress.org plugin connects with a range of applications within your own site. Although the setup is not as simple as Jetpack or IFTTT (you are required to get your own API Keys), there are clear instructions provides to walk users through connecting each application.
Where Jetpack is fine for sharing links, it quickly becomes frustrating when trying to use your blog to share different forms of multimedia. SNAP provides an array of ingredients that can be used to create templates:
%TITLE% – Inserts the Title of the post
%URL% – Inserts the URL of the post
%SURL% – Inserts the shortened URL of your post
%IMG% – Inserts the featured image URL
%EXCERPT% – Inserts the excerpt of the post (processed)
%RAWEXCERPT% – Inserts the excerpt of the post (as typed)
%ANNOUNCE% – Inserts the text till the tag or first N words of the post
%FULLTEXT% – Inserts the processed body(text) of the post
%RAWTEXT% – Inserts the body(text) of the post as typed
%TAGS% – Inserts post tags
%CATS% – Inserts post categories
%HTAGS% – Inserts post tags as hashtags
%HCATS% – Inserts post categories as hashtags
%AUTHORNAME% – Inserts the author’s name
%SITENAME% – Inserts the Blog/Site name
There is the option for setting a default for each application. While you can easily adjust what is shared with each post. This might include personalising the Twitter message or sharing with specific users.
The versatility of SNAP allows users to extend beyond sharing out links and actually managing an online presence Personally, I have started using SNAP to share bookmarks to Diigo and images to Flickr.
SNAP also provides options for sharing to Instagram and Google+, as well as attaching multiple social media accounts. However, both of these require additional API Libraries and payments. Chris Aldrich has also reported that it requires deactivating second factor authentication on Google to work properly, which is not ideal.
One of the reasons for these additional libraries is that Instagram and Google+ do not provide traditional write access. The other option for these sites is to post elsewhere and syndicate back (PESOS) using sites like OwnYourGram and plugins like Keyring Social Importer. I am yet to go down either of these paths. For those spaces I cannot automate, I manually post on other sites and add a link to the Syndication Links plugin.
There are often two variables that people get caught up with: cost of additional applications and the additional time spent sharing and curating. The problem is that we forget to consider the ethical implications. There are so many things to consider when using other spaces, that sometimes the best option is to have manage your presence from your own site.
In Burvall’s case, there is also the additional consideration of going mobile. I too have that. A lot of my time is spent consuming and curating content while commuting. I use URLs as well as the browser interface to get my work done. It is not always ideal, but I manage.
This is in no way complete or the only way of approaching this problem. There are many others doing interesting things in this space, just go to IndieWeb.org for a start. I see this all as being a part of the push for a “demonstratably better web.” So what about you? As always, comments welcome, webmentions too.
Also posted on IndieNews
If you enjoy what you read here, feel free to sign up for my monthly newsletter to catch up on all things learning, edtech and storytelling.Share this:EmailRedditTwitterPocketTumblrLinkedInLike this:Like Loading…
Managing Content Through Canonical Links by Aaron Davis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Syndicated copies:
One of the challenges with the web can be managing content across multiple sites, one answer, create canonical links and share from there.
In a conversation on Twitter discussing the archiving images and canonical URLs, Amy Burvall explained that much of her work was simply stored on Instagram, which can be problematic. She asks whether I had any other suggestions:
This had me reflecting on all the spaces (or ‘cafes’) where I have seen Amy’s multimedia output,
Tumblr
Instagram
YouTube
WordPress
Twitter
Mastodon
Medium
Google+
I am sure there are more I may have missed, but it paints something of a picture. Added to this, not only does she frequent these social spaces, but often in different guieses as well.
One of the things that interests me about Amy’s work is that there is not necessarily a central space. If anything, I would say that it is her WordPress.com blog, but there is not a space where all the different parts are collected together. Although she also has her main site – amyburvall.com – this is more of a landing page design to connect, rather than collect.
Here I am reminded of a recent piece by Cory Doctorow where he reflects on the choices associated with technology. He states:
Douglas Rushkoff recently made the case against social media being used in schools. I agree with this and wonder we more schools do not create their own spaces. However, I also think that schools on the whole should do more to own their presence. What if they actually collected together their media story in one space. I think that Burvall faces that same conundrum.
There seems to be two schools of thought on this:
– PESOS: Publish Elsewhere, Syndicate (to your) Own Site
– POSSE: Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere
Dries Buytaert’s graphic provides a useful breakdown of the differences.
I remember when I started down the POSSE path, my focus was simply on my long form posts. I would use Jetpack to share links to Twitter and Google+. This approach however has its limits.
Firstly, Jetpack only provides a certain amount of social media sites provided. Secondly, it does not allow for much nuance in regards to content and how it is shared, particularly with media. The template is set within the code of plugin, with links sent out automatically. There are some ways to manipulate this, whether it be in the text box provided or by adding an excerpt, (an optional field in WordPress.) However, it is neither clear nor consistent.
Having spent some time with Edublogs/Global2, I learnt that Jetpack can be modified. I am not aware though how much you can adjust the code associated with sharing links nor anyone who has done this.
Another automated approach to sharing is through the use of a third-party platforms. The easiest and cheapest of these is IFTTT. It allows users to set up ‘recipes’, connecting various services together. These simply run in the background.
Although IFTTT provides more choice, this can still be limited. There are times when you have to work with the options available to rethink what is possible. I am also sceptical how IFTTT are making their money and whether they will pivot like Storify.
A similar third-party platform is Zapier. What is good about Zapier is that it really breaks down the various options clearly. The only catch with Zapier is the cost.
An alternative that does not rely on a third-party platform is SNAP (Social Network Auto-Poster). This WordPress.org plugin connects with a range of applications within your own site. Although the setup is not as simple as Jetpack or IFTTT (you are required to get your own API Keys), there are clear instructions provides to walk users through connecting each application.
Where Jetpack is fine for sharing links, it quickly becomes frustrating when trying to use your blog to share different forms of multimedia. SNAP provides an array of ingredients that can be used to create templates:
%TITLE% – Inserts the Title of the post
%URL% – Inserts the URL of the post
%SURL% – Inserts the shortened URL of your post
%IMG% – Inserts the featured image URL
%EXCERPT% – Inserts the excerpt of the post (processed)
%RAWEXCERPT% – Inserts the excerpt of the post (as typed)
%ANNOUNCE% – Inserts the text till the tag or first N words of the post
%FULLTEXT% – Inserts the processed body(text) of the post
%RAWTEXT% – Inserts the body(text) of the post as typed
%TAGS% – Inserts post tags
%CATS% – Inserts post categories
%HTAGS% – Inserts post tags as hashtags
%HCATS% – Inserts post categories as hashtags
%AUTHORNAME% – Inserts the author’s name
%SITENAME% – Inserts the Blog/Site name
There is the option for setting a default for each application. While you can easily adjust what is shared with each post. This might include personalising the Twitter message or sharing with specific users.
The versatility of SNAP allows users to extend beyond sharing out links and actually managing an online presence Personally, I have started using SNAP to share bookmarks to Diigo and images to Flickr.
SNAP also provides options for sharing to Instagram and Google+, as well as attaching multiple social media accounts. However, both of these require additional API Libraries and payments. Chris Aldrich has also reported that it requires deactivating second factor authentication on Google to work properly, which is not ideal.
One of the reasons for these additional libraries is that Instagram and Google+ do not provide traditional write access. The other option for these sites is to post elsewhere and syndicate back (PESOS) using sites like OwnYourGram and plugins like Keyring Social Importer. I am yet to go down either of these paths. For those spaces I cannot automate, I manually post on other sites and add a link to the Syndication Links plugin.
There are often two variables that people get caught up with: cost of additional applications and the additional time spent sharing and curating. The problem is that we forget to consider the ethical implications. There are so many things to consider when using other spaces, that sometimes the best option is to have manage your presence from your own site.
In Burvall’s case, there is also the additional consideration of going mobile. I too have that. A lot of my time is spent consuming and curating content while commuting. I use URLs as well as the browser interface to get my work done. It is not always ideal, but I manage.
This is in no way complete or the only way of approaching this problem. There are many others doing interesting things in this space, just go to IndieWeb.org for a start. I see this all as being a part of the push for a “demonstratably better web.” So what about you? As always, comments welcome, webmentions too.
Also posted on IndieNews
If you enjoy what you read here, feel free to sign up for my monthly newsletter to catch up on all things learning, edtech and storytelling.Share this:EmailRedditTwitterPocketTumblrLinkedInLike this:Like Loading…
Managing Content Through Canonical Links by Aaron Davis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Syndicated copies:
Background image via JustLego101
My Month of March
At work we took another step with the reporting solution that we have been working on. This involved setting up two schools. There was a bit of a rush to have all the testing and documentation completed beforehand. However, the relative smoothness made it all worthwhile.
In regards to the family, our eldest daughter was playing a game on the iPad recently and I said that maybe one day she might code her own such game. She said she could, but she had already decided that she was going to be a performer. I feel challenged everyday by my role as a parent. Do I step in and suggest that maybe she does not sound as good as Sia as she belts out her rendition of Chandelier or do I just support her in dreaming big? At the moment, it is the later. Our youngest on the other hand must have found my copy of A More Beautiful Question as she has taken to asking the Five Whys about absolutely everything. I answer and answer again. My wife says that I will lose, but I don’t see it like that. It is about the conversation, right?
On a personal level, I find myself diving deeper into reflections these days, especially with my second blog providing a means of ongoing engagement. One of the side-effects has been my lack of engagement in spaces like Twitter. I still write extended responses when challenged, but I do not trawl through conversations or conference hashtags as much as I used to. I am left wondering what am I missing in my move more and more to RSS and curated feeds?
In regards to my writing, here was my month in posts:
Automation Generation – Although many talk about the power and potential of automation to aid us, sometimes we need to step back and ask ourselves what this means and where the limits lay.
Managing Content Through Canonical Links – One of the challenges with the web can be managing content across multiple sites, one answer, create canonical links and share from there.
Paying for the Privilege: The Collective Move to Patreon – With the move to platforms like Patreon, it leaves me wondering about the impact on the wider community.
Here then are some of the thoughts that have also left me thinking …
Learning and Teaching
Image via “Stormtroopers Training: Theory” by Pedro Vezini is licensed under CC BY-NC-SAQuote via Kath Murdoch ‘‘12 ‘Lesson Hacks’ to Nurture Inquiry’’
12 ‘Lesson Hacks’ to Nurture Inquiry – Kath Murdoch provides a number of simple changes to consider in every classroom. They include letting students try first before providing instruction, turning learning intentions into questions, co-constructing success criterias, standing up rather than sitting down and changING your position in the classroom. Steve Mouldey also shared some thoughts on supporting learners with being more engaged and active within the learning, while Jon Corippo and Marlena Hebern shared ideas for how to create dynamic learning environments on the Ask the Tech Coach Podcast.
The Library of the Future – Deborah Netolicky reflects on her recent investigation into libraries. This include the history of libraries, as well as how they and those who work within them are defined. Her review of the literature found that libraries are: neutral and democratising; participatory and connected locally and globally; centred around learning, literacy, research, and knowledge; and, facilitators of interdisciplinarity. I have written about the future of libraries before, however Netolicky’s deep dive takes it a step further.
My Learning – It has been fascinating following Greg Miller’s thinking in regards to the construct of learning. There are many assumptions that go unquestioned in schools, I am finding that as I discuss reporting with more people. This move towards self-directed learning reminds me of the work going on at Geelong College and Templestowe College. My wonder is how we manage to marry these changes with various expectations, such as timetables.
How to Write an Edu-book – Alex Quigley discusses his six steps to writing a book. In addition to the reflections from Mary Myatt, Tom Sherrington and Ryan Holiday, they offer a useful insight into the writing process. It is interesting to compare these with the process often taught in schools. Students often get straight into writing without being given initial planning time.
Assessing Assessment for Digital Making – Oliver Quinlan discusses the challenges associated with Black and Wiliam’s work on feedback and digital technologies. In the absence of defined criteria, he suggests using comparative judgement where feedback is gained by comparing with a similar object.
Edtech
Image via “Lego on Facebook” by amarois is licensed under CC BY-NC-SAQuote via danah boyd
You Think You Want Media Literacy… Do You? – danah boyd discusses concerns about the weaponising of media literacy through denalism and says that there is a need for cognitive strengthening. Benjamin Doxtdator raises the concern that focusing on the individual. Instead he suggests considering the technical infrastructure. Maha Bali argues that we need aspects of both. In a response to the various criticisms, boyd admits that she is not completely sold on the solution, but we need to start somewhere.
Typing Tips: The How and Why of Teaching Students Keyboarding Skills – Kathleen Morris reflects on the place of typing in schools. She collects together a number of sites used to teach typing. It feels like we spend so much time debating handwriting sometimes that we forget about typing. Airelle Pardes suggests that the lack of a keyboard (and therefore typing) is one of the major reasons for the demise of the iPad in education. The discussion of typing also reminds me of a post from Catherine Gatt from a few years ago associated with assessing typing.
On the Need for Phone Free Classrooms – Pernille Ripp shares why her class will become phone free. A part of this problem is that the compulsive behaviour of social media and smart phones is by design. Douglas Rushkoff’s argues that other than teaching media, social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc) should never be used by schools. Mike Niehoff’s concern is what happens in the future when people have not learnt independance and moderation?
PressED – A WordPress and Education, Pedagogy and Research Conference on Twitter – This online conference involves 45 presenters across 12 hours posting 10 to 20 tweets each at a scheduled time. Although many have also shared posts corresponding with their presentations (Alan Levine, Tom Woodward, Jim Groom and John Johnston), you can also go back through the tweets. One of the things that stands out is the use of the different addordances, such as graphics and GIFs.
Dear IndieWeb, it may be time to start considering the user, not just the technical spec – Eli Mellen wonders if the answer to extending the #IndieWeb is in considering the user. I think that this is part of the challenge. Mark Pospesel discusses about reducing friction, while Cory Doctorow suggests that we need to reconsider which technologies we use. Whatever the particulars, it will take a collective response to move the #IndieWeb from the hipster-web to a “demonstratably better web”
Why the PDF Is Secretly the World’s Most Important File Format – Along with David Brock’s investigation into Powerpoint, this article is important in reminding us of two things, that things have not always been the way that they are and the way we got to now. Maybe we should demand better? Or maybe we need to spend more time reflecting on the past.
Storytelling and Reflection
Image via “Happy Little Trees” by nolnet is licensed under CC BY-NCQuote via Austin Kleon ‘How to Keep Going’ https://collect.readwriterespond.com/austin-kleon-bond-2018/
How to Keep Going – Austin Kleon reflects on the life of an artist and outlines ten things to consider in order to keep on going. Some of his suggestions include treating everyday like Groundhog day, building a bliss station and going for a walk to scar of the demons. Some other tips for staying focused include Jenny Mackness’ reflection that the last step does not matter, Jeff Haden’s suggestions that planning for a holiday is more beneficial than the holiday or Seth Godin’s reminder that the goal is change, not credit.
Excellent teachers in an age of fads – Mark Esner suggests that many teachers will often make anything work to a degree. What is really needed is time for teachers to study how students learn, as well as time to reflect on their processes together. John Spencer describes this as a food truck mindset. Some similar approaches designed to support teachers with structures, rather than solutions, include Modern Learning Canvas, Agile Leadership and Disciplined Collaboration.
Metrics, Thy Name is Vanity – Harold Jarche reflects on turning Google Analytics off. He instead suggests that the metric that matters (for him) is how many books he sells and how many people sign up to his courses. He gives the example of a course that had hundreds of likes and reposts, yet only one person actually registered. This has me thinking about which metric matters to me and the way in which I engage with others. Maybe Doug Belshaw is right in creating a committed group of supporters?
TER #109 – How large-scale tests affect school management with Marten Koomen – 04 March 2018 – In this interview, Marten Koomen addresses the question of how Victoria went from a state that was a leader in content knowledge and democratic values to the launch of a content-free platform driven by the terror of performativity? (My attempt at notes here.) This continues a conversation started last year. For me, this touches on Audrey Watter’s point about technology as a system.
The male glance: how we fail to take women’s stories seriously – podcast – Lili Loofbourow rewrites the wrong that has male art is epic, universal, and profoundly meaningful, while Women’s creations as domestic, emotional and trivial. This critique has ramifications far beyond fiction.
FOCUS ON … Cambridge Analytica
Image via “CIMG5200” by Phil LaCombe is licensed under CC BY-NC-SAQuote via Paul Ford https://collect.readwriterespond.com/how-to-fix-facebooks-data-breach/
This month saw the revelation of the ways in which Cambridge Analytica used and abused data scraped from Facebook to nudge voters in the 2016 election. It remains to be seen whether this is the start of a new era. In part this reminds me of the changes in the way people saw things after Snowden. Thinking about Doug Belshaw’s web timeline, maybe this will mark a new era of informed consent. Here then is a collection of responses to the current crisis.
Background
‘A grand illusion’: seven days that shattered Facebook’s facade – Olivia Solon provides a timeline associated with the breaches stemming back to 2015. Solon suggests that privacy settings should be renamed publicity settings.
My Cow Game Extracted Your Facebook Data – Ian Bogust discusses his experience creating a game on Facebook and explains how the Pandora’s box associated with external apps is one that they cannot be closed.
How Calls for Privacy May Upend Business for Facebook and Google – David Streitfeld, Natasha Singer and Steven Erlanger explore the history of privacy and data collection associated with Google and Facebook. They wonder what the impact will be of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation.
The people owned the web, tech giants stole it. This is how we take it back – Jonathon Freeland argues that Cambridge Analytica represents an attempt to reverse the internet’s push for the decentralization of power, to instead restore the traditional imbalance. The concern though is this recentralising of power is being done in such a way as if it were “the organic word of the crowd itself, spread virally from one person to another, with no traces or fingerprints left by those at the top.”
Spy Contractor’s Idea Helped Cambridge Analytica Harvest Facebook Data – Nicholas Confessore and Matthew Rosenber report on the revelation of the informal links between Cambridge Analytica and US spy agency, Palantir.
On The Obama Did The EXACT Same Thing Argument – Kin Lane explains that although Obama’s use of data may have been technically similar to Trump, the topics discussed in 2012 (big government, 2nd amendment, healthcare etc) were different to those pushed in 2016 (Mexicans coming for their jobs, the Muslim people coming to kills us, the community college mass shooting down the street being false flag, how queers and drug dealers should die, and how the Jews running the deep state had rigged the election.)
Facebook scraped call, text message data for years from Android phones – Sean Gallagher reports on the way that Facebook has been collecting call data on Android phones after inadvertently being given access to contacts.
ICE Uses Facebook Data to Find and Track Suspects, Internal Emails Show – Lee Fang explains how the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency uses backend Facebook data to locate and track suspects.
Hero to zero in Silicon Valley: Chips with Everything podcast – Jordan Erica Webber is joined by Brad Stone of Bloomberg and Dr Bianca Wright from the University of Coventry to look at the history of Silicon Valley giants and why we’re so slow to pull back from the tech companies we are most disgusted by.
We were warned about Cambridge Analytica. Why didn’t we listen? – Nicole Kobie lists a raft of reports involving Facebook and shady uses of data, such as Obama’s 2012 campaign and 2015 revolutions about Cambridge Analytica. She contends that this time is different as there are a number of whistleblowers who have come forward.
Roger McNamee: “I Think You Can Make a Legitimate Case that Facebook Has Become Parasitic” – Roger McNamee shares his efforts to get Facebook to fix its business model, but has come to the realisation that the libertarian values prevent this from happening.
Growth At Any Cost: Top Facebook Executive Defended Data Collection In 2016 Memo — And Warned That Facebook Could Get People Killed – Ryan Mac reports that an internal memo sent by Andrew Bosworth in 2016 shared fears that Facebook’s quest for ‘growth at all costs’ could cost the lives of users through bullying or terrorism.
‘Utterly horrifying’: ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine – Paul Lewis reports the concerns of Sandy Parakilas, the former platform operations manager at Facebook responsible for policing data breaches by third-party software developers. Parakilas says that his warnings associated with possible bad actors were ignored due to concerns around public relations.
Leaked: Cambridge Analytica’s blueprint for Trump victory – Brittany Kaiser, the second former Cambridge Analytica employee to come out, discusses a presentation documenting the Trump campaign. This includes an insight into a number of strategies used.
Mozilla ‘presses pause’ on Facebook ads over data-mining claims – Alex Hern reports that Mozilla has paused its ads on Facebook due to concerns around the privacy of users.
Gold Coast council dumps plan to mine Facebook data from Commonwealth Games visitors using free wi-fi – Elise Kinsella reports that the Gold Coast Councils decided to dump a move to mine Facebook data gained by forcing visitors to sign in with Facebook to use the ‘free’ wifi.
Responses
Facebook’s Surveillance Machine – Zeynep Tufekei explains that what Cambridge Analytica did may not have been a breach, in the technical sense, but it was a breach of trust. Facebook failed to gain informed consent, leading to the exploitation of users and their data.
Fish that swim upstream & shipwrecks – Borrowing from the work of Paul Virilio, Benjamin Doxtdator explains that when we created social media, we also created the shipwreck that is Cambridge Analytica at the same time.
Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica problems are nothing compared to what’s coming for all of online publishing – Doc Searls asks the question, “What will happen when the Times, the New Yorker and other pubs own up to the simple fact that they are just as guilty as Facebook of leaking its readers’ data to other parties, for—in many if not most cases—God knows what purposes besides “interest-based” advertising?”
Facebook: is it time we all deleted our accounts? – Arwa Mahdawl explains that the issues associated with Cambridge Analytica are only the tip of the iceberg, as Facebook is only one of many platforms engaged in surveillance capitalism. The alternative though is not necessarily clear.
Big data is watching you – and it wants your vote – Jamie Bartlett argues that blaming Nix and Cambridge Analytica is missing the point that every platform uses some form of A/B testing, micro-targeting, neural nudges and data analytics.
Why education is embracing Facebook-style personality profiling for schoolchildren – Ben Williamson explains that it is not only politics drifting to behavioural government, but education policy and practice too are beginning to embrace a behavioural science of algorithm-based triggers and nudges which are tuned to personality and mood. Whether it be through applications like ClassDojo or PISA’s move into psychometrics, education is mining beneath the surface to capture more and more details about personality, character and emotions.
Cambridge Analytica: the data analytics industry is already in full swing – David Beer says we need to realise that the analysis of data is deeply embedded in all the structures of our lives in which we live.
If You’re Pissed About Facebook’s Privacy Abuses, You Should Be Four Times As Angry At The Broadband Industry – Karl Bode points out that if we are really worried about privacy and the misuse of data then our attention should be on the internet service providers who have been caught out on numerous occasions helping governments spy on customers, as well as selling records of websites clicked.
Cambridge Analytica is bad, but Palantir is fucking terrifying – Drew Millard uses a blueprint of a patent submitted by Palentir to provide insight into the sort of reach their surveillance solutions have.
Why I deleted Facebook – Derek Sivers explains why he has quit Facebook. There are a host of others recorded on the #IndieWeb wiki, including Elon Musk.
For Some Students, #DeleteFacebook Is Not Really an Option – Tina Nazerian discusses some of the challenges for students associated with deleting Facebook. In particular, she highlights the dependency developed as a consequence for using it as a learning space.
Facebooked, Googled And Recovering Imagination – Sherri Spelic returns to two books written about Google and Facebook, highlighting that many of the current concerns around regulation were identified then. In response, Spelic calls more more imagination, look up, pay attention and pause.
Facebook – to delete, or not to delete? – The Luddbrarian suggests that what makes the current #DeleteFacebook campaign different is that the data breaches allowed Trump to win. The problem with this is that it overlooks the problem at the base of such automated solutions. What we need is to widen our technological imagination and consider how Facebook could be better.
Don’t Delete Facebook. Do Something About It – Siva Vaidhyanathan suggests that it will take more than a few users leaving to impact Facebook, instead we need to turn our attention to activism and supporting collective groups, such as scientific organizations, universities, libraries, museums, newspapers and civic organizations.
Silicon Valley Has Failed to Protect Our Data. Here’s How to Fix It – Paul Ford proposes the creation of a Digital Protection Agency to clean up the toxic data spill. This touches on what Mike Caulfield calls Info-Environmentalism.
It’s Time to Regulate the Internet – Franklin Foer says that the time has arrived for the United States to create its own regulatory infrastructure, designed to accord with our own values and traditions.
Why have we given up our privacy to Facebook and other sites so willingly? – Alex Hern suggests that we are not always aware with social media what we are giving up. He argues that where change is needed is around informed consent.
OAuth Has Many Flaws But It is The Best We Have At The Moment – Kin Lane argues that there is nothing stopping businesses from providing informed consent associated with OAuth, referring to Slack as an example, rather it is a choice. Therefore the answer is policy and regulation.
Facebook Is Screwed, And It’s Taking Us With It – Anthony Caruana contends that like Microsoft in the early 2000’s, Facebook needs to stop worrying about features and instead focus on securing personal data.
Don’t waste the Cambridge Analytica scandal: it’s a chance to take control of our data – Scott Ludlam argues that we are at a crossroads, with one path leading to data sovereignty and the other extending the grip of surveillance capitalism.
The Cambridge Analytica-Facebook Debacle: A Legal Primer – Andrew Woods provides a legal breakdown as to how Cambridge Analytica maybe prosecuted. One of the interesting points is that although they may have broken developer policies, it did so through the front door.
Platform Literacy in a Time of Mass Gaslighting – Or – That Time I Asked Cambridge Analytica for My Data – Autumn Caines documents the steps she took to try and get an insight into the data held by Cambridge Analytica.
Personality Tests and the Downfall of Democracy – Ben Werdmuller explains how the use of personality quizzes on Facebook have been used to develop detailed profiles of users. The problem is that this is how the platform was designed.
Facebook’s about-face and what it means for the future of news – Antony Funnell speaks with Mathew Ingram, Gabriele Boland and Gautum Mishra about the recent changes to Facebook’s algorithms to deprioritse the sharing of serious news to prioritise the personal.
Alternative Solutions
The Best Alternative For Every Facebook Feature – Mai Schotz cobbles together a group of apps and services to replace those provided by Facebook, such as Nuzzel, Signal and Nextdoor. Sadly, no mention of the #IndieWeb.
Can Social Media Be Saved? – Kevin Roose provides three possible interventions to rescue social media: give power to the users, create a federated network and put expiration dates on social graphs.
Freeing Myself from Facebook – Jonathon Lacour documents how he reclaimed his Facebook (and Instagram) data on his own site before deleting his account.
All the URLs you need to block to actually stop using Facebook – Nikhil Sonnad provides a long list of entries to add to your host file in order to completely block Facebook.
Back to the Blog – Dan Cohen suggests it is psychological gravity, not technical inertia, that is the bigger antagonist of the open web. His answer is to write more under our own banner as a model for those who are to come.
Are you ready? This is all the data Facebook and Google have on you – Dylan Curran shows how much of your information platforms likes of Facebook and Google store about you without you even realising it, as well as some ways to take action.
Beware the smart toaster: 18 tips for surviving the surveillance age – Alex Hern and Arwa Mahdawi provide a number of tips to survive in a world of surveillance. They include securing old accounts, turning off notifications and retraining the brain to focus.
READ WRITE RESPOND #027
So that is March for me, how about you? As always, interested to hear.
Also, feel free to forward this on to others if you found anything of interest or maybe you want to subscribe? Otherwise, archives can be found here.
Cover image via JustLego101.
Syndicated copies:
I started writing this post a few months ago but did not get around to finishing it, subsequently my initial notes have lay waiting. I was reminded of it by recent posts from Jim Groom and Alan Levine reflecting on the purpose of blogging. Here then is my contribution to the conversation.
In the March edition of the Loose Learners podcast, Mariana Funes and John Johnson discussed the difference between small b and big B blogging. In part, this was a response to a post by Tom Critchlow on ideas and the power of the network.
Although big B blogging maybe associated with link blogging and ‘interesting ideas’, the focus is on broadcasting, rather than connecting and commenting. The notion of big B blogging is usually associated with those like Jason Kottke, John Gruber and Richard Byrne.
In a recent interview, Kottke shared how his blogging has developed over time. He explains in particular how advertising and making money from his site has changed. What is interesting is the connection between big B blogging and making money. Although he shares his workflow and intent, what comes through is that it is still a job. I wonder if there is another possible definition of ‘Big B’ blogging that goes beyond advertising?
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.
For me, blogging is about utilising the various features and affordances available, but also trying to push the boundaries in understanding how they work. In Martha Burtis’ keynote for Domains17, she argued that Domain of One’s Own is more than just learning WordPress, rather it is about learning how to “publish online in an open-source Web application”. As she explains,
For some this experience is distributed across several spaces, such as a space to collect ‘breadcrumbs’ and a main space for longer forms. For others, it is about creating spaces specific purposes and then syndicating back to one place.
I think that this is what interests me about the IndieWeb. The focus is not just about content, but how content is presented. This focus on what and how stems from a why of developing a ‘demonstrably better web’.
So big B blogging to me is about allowing growth and development both personally and collectively. Although some spaces may have subscription accounts, this is not necessarily what keeps the lights on.
So what about you? What does blogging mean to you? How do you find balance between creation and construction? As always, comments welcome.
Also posted on IndieNews
If you enjoy what you read here, feel free to sign up for my monthly newsletter to catch up on all things learning, edtech and storytelling.
About Latest Posts
Aaron
I am an Australian educator supporting the integration of technology and innovation. I have an interest in how collectively we can work to creating a better tomorrow.
Latest posts by Aaron (see all)
<a href="https://readwriterespond.com/2018/05/big-b-blogging/">Finding the Tools to Sing – A Reflection on Big B Blogging</a> - May 20, 2018 <a href="https://readwriterespond.com/2018/05/query/">Sharing Data is Easy with QUERY</a> - May 9, 2018 <a href="https://readwriterespond.com/2018/04/digital-literacies/">Literacy, Fluency and Plurality: A Reflection on Digital Literacies</a> - April 23, 2018
Share this:
Email
Reddit
Twitter
Google
Pinterest
Pocket
Tumblr
LinkedIn
Also on:
Twitter
mastodon.cloud
Like this:
Like Loading…
<em>Related</em>
Finding the Tools to Sing – A Reflection on Big B Blogging by Aaron Davis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Syndicated copies:
Annotated Reply to Laying the Standards for a Blogging Renaissance by Aaron Davis by Chris Aldrich (BoffoSocko)
Syndicated copies to: WordPress icon
<!-- Generator: Sketch 60.1 (88133) - https://sketch.com -->
Hypothes.is Icon
Syndicated copies:
Aaron Davis: Laying the standards for a blogging renaissance – Chris Aldrich also replies