November, 2022 | Chris Aldrich

#FeedReaderFriday People I love following and learning from on the web:

Kimberly Hirsh – https://kimberlyhirsh.com/ a fascinating reader, writer, educator, and fandom expert

Tom Critchlow – https://tomcritchlow.com/ – consultant, digital experimenter and bricoleur, networked writing and education

Aaron Davis – https://collect.readwriterespond.com/ – educator, edtech innovation and implementation

Replied to a post by

Michelle Moore (@tmichellemoore@mastodon.social) (Mastodon)

Hello @chrisaldrich I ran across @jasontucker ’s post and joked about adding native ActivityPub support. But then remembered PESOS. And found this plugin - https://wordpress.org/plugins/dsgnwrks-twitter-importer/. I know your site does a lot, so do you import Twitter posts?

@tmichellemoore @jasontucker My Tweets are almost always syndicated via POSSE from my site to Twitter, but for those prior to circa 2015, I do have an archive if someone comes up with a simple tool to do that sort of direct import. I’d probably want to pick and choose which ones were public however. I haven’t used that particular Twitter importer, but have used Sternberg’s Instagram tool as Instagram doesn’t have an official API for crossposting.

If you really want native ActivityPub mirroring of your site on Mastodon, you might try @pfefferle’s ActivityPub plugin (along with his NodeInfo and Webfinger plugins). I still need to tinker with my own set up for better formatting, but you could follow my WordPress site @chrisaldrich@boffosocko.com

A while back I did set up a system that uses IFTTT to target my micropub endpoint for syndicating some content from silos that don’t have good/easy APIs or methods into my website. Generally I do this as private posts so I have the data and selectively post it as necessary. These days I primarily do this with my Hypothes.is annotations to my site, though only a tiny fraction of the 12,000+ is publicly available: https://boffosocko.com/kind/annotation/. Currently only about 1/3 of my 45,000+ posts are publicly viewable on my site.

Eventually someone might build Micropub as a Service so you can sign up and give it social silo accounts to have the service PESOS copies of your content to your website.

Listened to Howard Rheingold on Tools for Thought | Episode 94 • August 14, 2022 by Jorge Arango from The Informed Life

“We’re extremely powerful when it comes to making sense and finding connections, doing it visually instead of with a page.” Howard Rheingold is an eminent author, maker, and educator. His work has explored and defined key aspects of digital culture, including the use of computers as tools for mind augmentation, virtual communities, and social media literacy. In this conversation, we discuss computers as extensions for our minds, Douglas Engelbart’s unfinished revolution, basic literacies for interacting in information environments, and the resurgence of Tools for Thought.

Interesting and some useful base material here on literacies, but one can’t get very deep in 30 minutes with Rheingold on this topic. I would have rather this been 6 hours long and then multiple times that.

Looking for some interesting material to put in your feed reader? Try out Phil Gifford‘s ooh.directory or Ray‘s Blogroll directories. Lots of topics and personal websites to follow. #FeedReaderFriday

#FeedReaderFriday Wonder what I’m reading? Here’s my own following list:
https://boffosocko.com/about/following/

A central list I control with associated RSS feeds & OPML files makes it portable for use in various kinds of feed/social readers.

Victor Margolin’s zettelkasten process for note taking and writing

It’s not as refined or as compartmentalized as Niklas Luhmann’s process, but art historian Victor Margolin broadly outlines his note taking and writing process in reasonable detail in this excellent three minute video. (This may be one of the shortest and best produced encapsulations of these reading/note taking/writing methods I’ve ever seen.)

Though he indicates it was a “process [he] developed”, it is broadly similar to that of the influential “historical method” laid out by Ernst Bernheim and later Seignobos/Langlois in the late 1800s.

Victor Margolin’s note taking and writing process

Collecting materials and bibliographies in files based on categories (for chapters)
Reads material, excerpts/note making on 5 x 7″ note cards
- Generally with a title (based on visual in video)
- excerpts have page number references (much like literature notes, the refinement linking and outlining happens separately later in his mapping and writing processes)
- filed in a box with tabbed index cards by chapter number with name
- video indicates that he does write on both sides of cards breaking the usual rule to write only on one side
Uses large pad of newsprint (roughly 18″ x 24″ based on visualization) to map out each chapter in visual form using his cards in a non-linear way. Out of the diagrams and clusters he creates a linear narrative form.
Tapes diagrams to wall
Writes in text editor on computer as he references the index cards and the visual map.

I’ve developed a way of working to make this huge project of a world history of design manageable.
—Victor Margolin

Notice here that Victor Margolin doesn’t indicate that it was a process that he was taught, but rather “I’ve developed”. Of course he was likely taught or influenced on the method, particularly as a historian, and that what he really means to communicate is that this is how he’s evolved that process.

I begin with a large amount of information.
—Victor Margolin

As I begin to write a story begins to emerge because, in fact, I’ve already rehearsed this story in several different ways by getting the information for the cards, mapping it out and of course the writing is then the third way of telling the story the one that will ultimately result in the finished chapters.
—Victor Margolin

Replied to Commonplace Book, a Verb or a Noun? by

Aaron Davis (Read Write Respond)

Whenever I read about the various ideas, I feel like I do not necessarily belong. Thinking about my practice, I never quite feel that it is deliberate enough.

Sometimes the root question is “what to I want to do this for?” Having an underlying reason can be hugely motivating.

Are you collecting examples of things for students? (seeing examples can be incredibly powerful, especially for defining spaces) for yourself? Are you using them for exploring a particular space? To clarify your thinking/thought process? To think more critically? To write an article, blog, or book? To make videos or other content?

Your own website is a version of many of these things in itself. You read, you collect, you write, you interlink ideas and expand on them. You’re doing it much more naturally than you think.

—

I find that having an idea of the broader space, what various practices look like, and use cases for them provides me a lot more flexibility for what may work or not work for my particular use case. I can then pick and choose for what suits me best, knowing that I don’t have to spend as much time and effort experimenting to invent a system from scratch but can evolve something pre-existing to suit my current needs best.

It’s like learning to cook. There are thousands of methods (not even counting cuisine specific portions) for cooking a variety of meals. Knowing what these are and their outcomes can be incredibly helpful for creatively coming up with new meals. By analogy students are often only learning to heat water to boil an egg, but with some additional techniques they can bake complicated French pâtissier. Often if you know a handful of cooking methods you can go much further and farther using combinations of techniques and ingredients.

What I’m looking for in the reading, note taking, and creation space is a baseline version of Peter Hertzmann’s 50 Ways to Cook a Carrot combined with Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking. Generally cooking is seen as an overly complex and difficult topic, something that is emphasized on most aspirational cooking shows. But cooking schools break the material down into small pieces which makes the processes much easier and more broadly applicable. Once you’ve got these building blocks mastered, you can be much more creative with what you can create.

How can we combine these small building blocks of reading and note taking practices for students in the 4th – 8th grades so that they can begin to leverage them in high school and certainly by college? Is there a way to frame them within teaching rhetoric and critical thinking to improve not only learning outcomes, but to improve lifelong learning and thinking?