April, 2018 | Chris Aldrich

Following Open Pedagogy Notebook

Followed Open Pedagogy Notebook (http://openpedagogy.org/)

Sharing Practices, Building Community

There are many ways to begin a discussion of “Open Pedagogy.” Although providing a framing definition might be the obvious place to start, we want to resist that for just a moment to ask a set of related questions: What are your hopes for education, particularly for higher education? What vision do you work toward when you design your daily professional practices in and out of the classroom? How do you see the roles of the learner and the teacher? What challenges do your students face in their learning environments, and how does your pedagogy address them?

“Open Pedagogy,” as we engage with it, is a site of praxis, a place where theories about learning, teaching, technology, and social justice enter into a conversation with each other and inform the development of educational practices and structures. This site is dynamic, contested, constantly under revision, and resists static definitional claims. But it is not a site vacant of meaning or political conviction. In this brief introduction, we offer a pathway for engaging with the current conversations around Open Pedagogy, some ideas about its philosophical foundation, investments, and its utility, and some concrete ways that students and teachers—all of us learners—can “open” education. We hope that this chapter will inspire those of us in education to focus our critical and aspirational lenses on larger questions about the ideology embedded within our educational systems and the ways in which pedagogy impacts these systems. At the same time we hope to provide some tools and techniques to those who want to build a more empowering, collaborative, and just architecture for learning.

👓 Deprecating and Replacing Bridgy Publish for WordPress | David Shanske

Read Deprecating and Replacing Bridgy Publish for WordPress by

David Shanske (David Shanske)

I’ve decided to take a different direction for the Bridgy plugin for WordPress. I’ve never quite been able to explain to people it doesn’t actually do anything. It’s a user interface for the Bridgy service. I’ve decided that the best thing to do is to is to change the approach radically.

Reply to Bridgy Registration

Replied to Bridgy Registration · Issue #102 · indieweb/wordpress-indieweb (GitHub)

I have some functionality in the Bridgy app that allows someone to register for Bridgy for various services. I'm thinking of moving this functionality into the Indieweb plugin. All it is is a series of links that redirect you to the Bridgy site and redirect back when done.
That seems like Indieweb plugin territory.

I think there’s certainly a case to be made that it may make sense to include it in the IndieWeb plugin, particularly as it’s often a one time set up operation.

I also think that it might make a lot of sense to put that piece into the Syndication Links plugin as well since that’s a piece that directly relates to something Brid.gy is looking for to do backfeed. Doing this may also make even more sense if Syndication Links becomes a tool for POSSE as well. It would be nice to have a definitive one-stop-shop for syndication and backfeed related functionality.

As a “throw-away” aside, if you’re looking for a good name for such a thing, perhaps Boomerang? Throw your content out there and all the responses return back to your site?

👓 Twitter Pushing More News Links In The Home Timeline | BuzzFeed

Read Twitter Pushing More News Links In The Home Timeline by Alex Kantrowitz (BuzzFeed)

A Twitter spokesperson confirmed the new Twitter feature to BuzzFeed News. Twitter's aggressive move into news continues.

👓 With the grain: sociology | Espresso: The Economist

Read With the grain: sociology (The Economist (Espresso))

Research has shown that wealthier, urbanised regions tend to harbour more individualistic personalities, while poorer, agrarian areas have more collectivist, community-minded ones. But why? A study from the University of Chicago published this week suggests such differences could be down to a region’s predominant crops—an insight gleaned, improbably, from observing nearly 9,000 customers in Chinese cafes. People in China’s south farm rice, which requires a whole village’s co-operation on irrigation; in the north, they grow wheat, far less demanding of collective effort. The researchers’ first observation was that latte-lovers in wheat-growing regions were far more likely to be alone. Then the team surreptitiously blocked thoroughfares with chairs. Among northerners, 16% shifted the chairs (individualism is marked by actively modifying one’s environment), while only 6% from the rice-cultivating south did so (collectivists tend to work with what they’ve got). It’s an intriguing sociological suggestion, perhaps to be filed under “you are what you eat”.

Randomly ran across this over the weekend and seems like the kind of cultural/food-related study that Jeremy Cherfas would enjoy.

References this study: Moving chairs in Starbucks.¹

References

Talhelm T, Zhang X, Oishi S. Moving chairs in Starbucks: Observational studies find rice-wheat cultural differences in daily life in China. Science Advances. http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/4/eaap8469. Published April 25, 2018. Accessed April 28, 2018.

🔖 Want to listen: Jenny Lawson is Very Fond of Creepy Smiling Dead Animals and Worries Quite a Bit | The Hilarious World of Depression | APM Podcasts

Bookmarked Jenny Lawson is Very Fond of Creepy Smiling Dead Animals and Worries Quite a Bit by John Moe (APM Podcasts)

She’s the author of bestselling books and an incredibly popular blog, but Jenny Lawson showed up to our interview wondering, at least a little, if her appearance on this show and her whole career, really, was part of some delusion. It’s not. She’s the real thing: an incredibly funny and honest writer with a legion of fans, a very old decapitated and stuffed boar’s head named James Garfield, anxiety, depression, and a clear-eyed view of the world.

A show about clinical depression...with laughs? Well, yeah. Depression is an incredibly common and isolating disease experienced by millions, yet often stigmatized by society. The Hilarious World of Depression is a series of frank, moving, and, yes, funny conversations with top comedians who have dealt with this disease, hosted by veteran humorist and public radio host John Moe. Join guests such as Maria Bamford, Paul F. Tompkins, Andy Richter, and Jen Kirkman to learn how they’ve dealt with depression and managed to laugh along the way. If you have not met the disease personally, it’s almost certain that someone you know has, whether it’s a friend, family member, colleague, or neighbor. Depression is a vicious cycle of solitude and stigma that leaves people miserable and sometimes dead. Frankly, we’re not going to put up with that anymore.

The Hilarious World of Depression is not medical treatment and should not be seen as a substitute for therapy or medication. But it is a chance to gain some insight, have a few laughs, and realize that people with depression are not alone and that together, we can all feel a bit better.

The Hilarious World of Depression is made possible by a grant from HealthPartners and its Make It OK campaign, which works to reduce the stigma of mental health. Find out more at www.makeitok.org.

h/t Kimberly Hirsch

👓 PopSugar Stole Influencers’ Instagrams — Along With Their Profits | Racked

Read PopSugar Stole Influencers’ Instagrams — Along With Their Profits (Racked)

The lifestyle website stripped bloggers’ affiliate links from their posts and added the site’s own.

h/t Kimberly Hirsch

See also notes at stream.boffosocko.com.

References

Highlights, Quotes, & Marginalia