Category: Education

👓 Scale and Scope | Jim Luke

Read Scale and Scope by Jim LukeJim Luke (EconProph)
I’ve been saying for awhile now in discussions of the commons, OER, and higher education that a “commons doesn’t scale, it scopes”. Before I explain why I think a commons doesn’t scale very well, I probably need to briefly clarify what’s meant by scale and scope. Like many terms in economics, they’re both commonly used terms in both business and everyday life, but in economics they may carry a subtly different, more precise, or richer meaning. Both terms refer to the production of an increasing volume of output of some kind. Enthusiasts of particular good(s), be they an entrepreneur producing the a product they hope will make them rich or an open educator advocating for more open licensed textbooks because it will improve education, generally want to see their ideas scale. And by scale, they generally mean “be produced in larger and larger volumes”. Larger volume of output, of course, brings a larger volume of benefits to more users. More output –> more users –> more benefits. But it’s the behavior of costs that really intrigues us when we think of “scaling” as a way to increase output. More benefits is nice, but if more benefits also means an equal increase in costs, then it’s not so attractive.
I can see a relation to the economies of scope that Jim Luke is talking about here in relation to the IndieWeb principle of plurality. For a long time the IndieWeb community has put economies of scope first and foremost over that of scale. Scale may not necessarily solve some of the problems we’re all looking at. In fact, scale may be directly responsible for many of the problems that social has caused in our lives and society.

I’m also reminded of a post I annotated the other day:

Data sharing and how it can benefit your scientific career (Nature)

Crowther offered everyone who shared at least a certain volume of data with his forest initiative the chance to be a co-author of a study that he and a colleague led. Published in Science in 2016, the paper used more than 770,000 data points from 44 countries to determine that forests with more tree species are more productive.

I suspect a similar hypothesis holds for shared specs, code, and the broader idea of plurality within the IndieWeb. More interoperable systems makes the IndieWeb more productive.

I also can’t help but think about a reply to a tweet by Chris Messina in relation to the IndieWeb related article in this week’s The New Yorker:

Boris is asking a problematic question not remembering early issues with the Model T, which Jim Luke reminds us of in his article:

Remember Henry Ford’s famous quote about “the customer can get [the Model T] in any color they want as long as it’s black”?

We’ve already got the Model Ts of social media–it’s called Facebook. It’s Twitter. It’s Instagram. And they’re all standardized–black– but they all require their own custom (toxic and limited) roads to be able to drive them! I can’t drive my Model Twitter in Facebookville.  My Instagramobile has long since broken down in Twittertown. Wouldn’t you rather “See The U.S.A. In Your [IndieWeb] Chevrolet“?!

The answer to Boris is that the IndieWeb has been working on the scope problem first knowing that once the interoperable kinks between systems can be worked out to a reasonable level that scale will be the easy part of the problem. Obviously micro.blog has been able to productize IndieWeb principles (with several thousands of users) and still work relatively flawlessly with a huge number of other platforms.  There have been tremendous strides towards shoehorning IndieWeb principles into major CMSes like WordPress (~500+ active users currently) and Drupal (~50+ active users) not to mention several dozens of others including Known, Perch, Craft CMS, Hugo, Kirby, etc., etc.

I haven’t heard aggregate numbers recently, but I would guess that the current active IndieWeb user base is somewhere north of 10,000 people and individual websites.  Once the UI/UX issues have all been ironed out even a single platform like WordPress, which could easily add the individual pieces into its core product in just a few hours, would create a sea-change overnight by making more than 30% of the web which runs on it IndieWeb friendly or IndieWeb compatible.

Yes, friends, scale is the easy part. Plurality and scope are the the far more difficult problems. Just ask Zuck or Jack. Or their users products.

👓 Morehouse College Graduates’ Student Loans to Be Paid Off by Billionaire | New York Times

Read Morehouse College Graduates’ Student Loans to Be Paid Off by Billionaire (New York Times)
Robert F. Smith, who founded Vista Equity Partners and became the richest black man in America, said that he and his family would pay the Class of 2019’s debt.
Of course amid this interesting news which could serve as an interesting study group for students who will have had much of their debt wiped away:

Replied to a tweet by Jessica ChretienJessica Chretien (Twitter)
It’s threads/comments like these that make me think that using Micropub clients like Quill that allow quick and easy posting on one’s own website are so powerful. Sadly, even in a domains-centric world in which people do have their own “thought spaces“, the ease-of-use of tools like Twitter are still winning out. I suspect it’s the result of people not knowing about alternate means of quickly writing out these ideas and syndicating them to services like Twitter for additional distribution while still owning them on spaces they own and control.

I know that Greg McVerry, Aaron Davis, and I (among others) often use our websites/commonplace books for quick posts (and sometimes syndicate them to Twitter for others’ sake). We then later come back to them (and the resultant comments) and turn them into more fully fleshed out thoughts and create longer essays, articles, or blogposts like Jessica Chretien eventually did on her own website.

I wonder if it wasn’t for the nearness of time and the interaction she got from Twitter if Jessica would have otherwise eventually searched her Twitter feed and then later compiled the post she ultimately did? It’s examples like this and the prompts I have from my own website and notifications via Webmention from Twitter through Brid.gy that make me thing even more strongly that scholars really need to own even their “less formal” ideas. It’s oftentimes the small little ideas that later become linked into larger ideas that end up making bigger impacts. Sometimes the problem becomes having easy access to these little ideas.

All this is even more interesting within the frame of Jessica’s discussion of students being actively involved in their own learning. If one can collect/aggregate all their references, reading, bookmarks, comments, replies, less formal ideas, etc. on their own site where they’re easily accessed and searched, then the synthesis of them into something larger makes the learning more directly apparent.

Liked a tweet by Greg McVerryGreg McVerry (Twitter)

An Invitation to IndieWeb Summit 2019

Fellow educators, teachers, specialists, instructional designers, web designers, Domains proponents, programmers, developers, students, web tinkerers, etc.,

  • Want to expand the capabilities of what your own domain is capable of?
  • Interested in improving the tools available on the open web?
  • Want to help make simpler, ethical digital pedagogy a reality in a way that students and teachers can implement themselves without relying on predatory third-party platforms?
  • Are you looking to use your online commonplace book as an active hub for your research, writing, and scholarship?

Bring your ideas and passions to help us all brainstorm, ruminate, and then with help actually design and build the version of the web we all want and need–one that reflects our values and desires for the future.

I’d like to invite you all to the 9th Annual IndieWeb Summit in Portland, Oregon, USA on June 29-30, 2019. It follows a traditional BarCamp style format, so the conference is only as good as the attendees and the ideas they bring with them, and since everyone is encouraged to actively participate, it also means that everyone is sure to get something interesting and valuable out of the experience.

We need more educators, thinkers, and tinkerers to begin designing and building the ethical , , and interactive pedagogy systems we all want.

Come and propose a session on a topic you’re interested in exploring and building toward with a group of like-minded people.

While on-site attendance can be exciting and invigorating for those who can come in person, streaming video and online tools should be available to make useful and worthwhile virtual attendance of all the talks, sessions, and even collaborative build time a real possibility as well. I’ll also note that travel assistance is also available for the Summit if you’d like to apply for it, or you’re able to donate funds to help others.

I hope you can all attend, and I encourage you to invite along friends, students, and colleagues.  

I heartily encourage those who don’t yet have a domain of their own to join in the fun. You’ll find lots of help and encouragement at camp and within the IndieWeb community so that even if you currently think you don’t have any skills, you can put together the resources to get something up and working before the Summit’s weekend is over. We’re also around nearly 24/7 in online chat to continue that support and encouragement both before and after the event so you can continue iterating on things you’d like to have working on your personal website.

Never been to an IndieWebCamp? Click through for some details about what to expect. Still not sure? feel free to touch base in any way that feels comfortable for you. 

Register today: https://2019.indieweb.org/summit#register

👤 @kfitz @holden @btopro @actualham @Downes @bali_maha @timmmmyboy @dr_jdean @cogdog @xolotl @cathieleblanc @BryanAlexander @hibbittsdesign @greeneterry @judell @CathyNDavidson @krisshaffer @readywriting @dancohen @wiobyrne @brumface @MorrisPelzel @econproph @mburtis @floatingtim @ralphbeliveau @ltaub @laurapasquini @amichaelberman @ken_bauer @TaylorJadin @courosa @nlafferty @KayOddone @OnlineCrsLady @opencontent @davecormier @edtechfactotum @daveymoloney @remikalir @jgmac1106 @MiaZamoraPhD @digpedlab @catherinecronin @HybridPed @jimgroom @rboren @cplong @anarchivist @edublogs @jasonpriem @meredithfierro @Autumm @grantpotter @daniellynds @sundilu @OERConf @fncll @jbj @Jessifer @AneliseHShrout @karencang @kmapesy @harmonygritz @slzemke @KeeganSLW @researchremix @JohnStewartPhD @villaronrubia @kreshleman @raynamharris @jessreingold @mattmaldre

👓 Introducing SIFT, a Four Moves Acronym | Hapgood

Read Introducing SIFT, a Four Moves Acronym by Mike Caulfield (Hapgood)

The Four Moves have undergone some tweaking since I first introduced them in early 2017. The language has shifted, been refined. We’ve come to see that lateral reading is more of a principle underlying at least two of the moves (maybe three). We’ve removed a reference to “go upstream” which was a bit geeky. All in all, though, the moves have remained constant, partially because so many people have found them useful.

Today, we’re introducing an acronym that can be used to remember the moves: SIFT.

  • (S)TOP
  • (I)nvestigate the Source
  • (F)ind better coverage
  • (T)race claims, quotes, and media back to the original context

Idea for a spaced repetition user interface for Hypothes.is

While I’m thinking about younger students, I thought I’d sketch out a bit of an add-on product that I wish Hypothes.is had.

Background/Set up

I was looking at tools to pull annotations out of Kindle the other day and ran across Readwise again. Part of its functionality pulls highlights and annotations out of Kindle and then it has some UI that uses the idea of spaced repetition to have you regularly review what you’ve previously read and highlighted and presumably wanted to remember or use in the future.

Of course this is very similar to other spaced repetition/flash card applications like Mnemosyne, Anki, or language apps like Memrise and Duolingo among many others. I also seem to recall that Amazon once had some UI like this built into their Kindle Notebook, but I’m not finding it at the moment, but I know they’ve changed that UI sometime in the last two years–perhaps it’s gone?

The Pitch

Given the number of learners who are using Hypothes.is, wouldn’t it be a fantastic bit of functionality if Hypothes.is had a spaced repetition UI that would allow students to easily go back and review over their prior highlights and annotations?! Presumably this could be targeted for quizzes and tests, but honestly as a lifelong learner I very frequently love using tools like Timehop or even my website’s built-in “On this day” functionality to look back over bits and pieces of things I’ve done in the past, which also includes my annotations, since I’m keeping copies of them on my website as well.

Naturally such a UI should be able to search or sort by tag, date range, or even by source(s) so that a student could more easily wrangle a particular number of sources over which they wanted to review their material–particularly as over months, years, or decades one could build up a huge library of annotations. If, as a student, I was tagging my material by class course number subject area or something similar (like edu522, for example) I could then easily dump that into such a UI and be able to do spaced repetition studying for that subject area. Masters, Ph.D. students, and even the professoriate might appreciate it for occasional spaced repetition to be nudged or reminded of ideas they’d had in the past, but which may need rekindling to put into a thesis or potential future papers.

The more I think about this, the more I’d love to see it in Hypothes.is. If it’s not something the main team takes on, perhaps it could be an add-on for a group like Remi Kalir’s who have done some interesting work with the API to create Crowdlaaers. 

I’m planning to use import/export manually with tools like Anki to do some testing this coming weekend… I wonder what open sourced code may already exist that I could simply plug my Hypothes.is data into? Hmm…

👓 Pop Up Ed Tech, Trust, and Ephemerality | ammienoot.com

Read Pop Up Ed Tech, Trust, and Ephemerality (ammienoot.com)
This post captures a back and forth text conversation that Tannis Morgan and I had about an idea that piqued her interest from my NGDLE rant in 2017. I really enjoyed the way we worked this up between us. I wrote a lot of it fast and off the cuff and I’m sure with editing it would be more coherent, but hey ho, it can stand. As an aside we used the excellent Etherpad setup courtesy of the B.C. OpenETC. Etherpad remains one of my favourite tools for super-simple collaborative writing.

🎧 Episode 009 – Mike Caulfield: Engaging Students in Media Literacy | Media and the End of the World Podcast

Listened to Episode 009 – Mike Caulfield: Engaging Students in Media Literacy by Adam Croom and Ralph Beliveau from Media and the End of the World Podcast

Mike Caulfield, head of the Digital Polarization Initiative at the American Democracy Project and director of blended and networked learning at Washington State University Vancouver, joins us today to talk about engaging students in media literacy. He recently published the open Creative Commons licensed textbook “Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers.”

Show Notes

Hapgood is such a fantastic blog that while scrolling through the back catalog of Media and the End of the World episodes to see what might be interesting, I naturally put this one at the top of the list. I’m definitely not sorry. Caulfield’s work always gives me some hope that we can fix things in a broken world.
Watched A Pandora's Box for Teaching, Scholarship & Identity by Jim Groom from Muhlenberg College
Jim Groom is a co-founder of Reclaim Hosting, and an early architect of the Domain of One's Own Initiative at University of Mary Washington.
A very solid hour-long talk about A Domain of One’s Own, some of what it entails, and how it can be used to empower teaching, learning, and reflecting on learning.

📺 Crafting Your Digital Scholarly Presence | YouTube

Watched Crafting Your Digital Scholarly Presence from YouTube
In today’s fast-paced world where the Internet is the go-to research tool and information on any topic is just a click or tap away, one’s own digital presence is more important than ever. The College of Arts & Letters recognizes this, and starting August 2106, will offer all its graduate students and faculty a new kind of web hosting support. Read more http://www.cal.msu.edu/news/webhostingservice
This is a great short advertisement why academics and researchers should be a part of the IndieWeb as a means of owning and controlling their digital scholarly presence. This is obviously done from a bit of a DoOO perspective, but Christopher Long does a fantastic job here.