👓 Pasadena Busing Controversy: Sept. 14, 1970 | ColoradoBoulevard.net

Read Pasadena Busing Controversy: Sept. 14, 1970 by Roxanne Elhachem (ColoradoBoulevard.net)
In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. In the 1970s and 1980s, and under federal court supervision, many school districts started implementing mandatory busing plans within their district. This busing system would force children of Pasadena, who attended public schools, to take the bus in order to encourage integration of all the different races that lived in the city.

📺 School Segregation: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) | YouTube

Watched School Segregation: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) from YouTube

Public schools are increasingly divided by race and class. John Oliver discusses the troubling trend towards school resegregation.

👓 Some IndieWeb WordPress tuning | EdTech Factotum

Replied to Some IndieWeb WordPress tuning by Clint LalondeClint Lalonde (EdTech Factotum)
Been spending a bit of time in the past 2 days adding some new functionality to the blog. I am making more of an effort to write more, thanks in no small part to the 9x9x25 blog challenge I am doin…

Right now, I just want to write.  

You might find that the micropub plugin is a worthwhile piece for this. It will give your site an endpoint you can use to post to your site with a variety of third party applications including Quill or Micropublish.net.
October 14, 2018 at 01:01AM

My hope is that it will somehow bring comments on Facebook back to the blog and display them as comments here.  

Sadly, Aaron Davis is right that Facebook turned off their API access for this on August 1st, so there currently aren’t any services, including Brid.gy, anywhere that allow this. Even WordPress and JetPack got cut off from posting from WordPress to Facebook, much less the larger challenge of pulling responses back.
October 14, 2018 at 01:03AM

Grant Potter  

Seeing the commentary from Greg McVerry and Aaron Davis, it’s probably worthwhile to point you to the IndieWeb for Education wiki page which has some useful resources, pointers, and references. As you have time, feel free to add yourself to the list along with any brainstorming ideas you might have for using some of this technology within your work realm. Many hands make light work. Welcome to the new revolution!
October 14, 2018 at 01:08AM

the autoposts from Twitter to Facebook were  

a hanging thought? I feel like I do this on my site all too often…
October 14, 2018 at 01:09AM

I am giving this one a go as it seems to be the most widely used.  

It is widely used, and I had it for a while myself. I will note that the developer said he was going to deprecate it in favor of some work he’d been doing with another Mastodon/WordPress developer though.
October 14, 2018 at 01:19AM

👓 Tech suffers from lack of humanities, says Mozilla head | The Guardian

Read Tech suffers from lack of humanities, says Mozilla head by Alex Hern (the Guardian)
Mitchell Baker says firms should hire philosophy and psychology graduates to tackle misinformation
Is it just me or am I seeing a major uptick in articles defending the humanities over the past several years? I find it interesting given the political climate (at least in the United States) where it seems the sciences are under attack–at least culturally. Perhaps both are under attack, but from very different perspectives and levels.

🔖 An Urgency of Teachers: The Work of Critical Digital Pedagogy by Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel

Bookmarked An Urgency of Teachers: the Work of Critical Digital Pedagogy by Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel (criticaldigitalpedagogy.pressbooks.com)
This collection of essays explores the authors’ work in, inquiry into, and critique of online learning, educational technology, and the trends, techniques, hopes, fears, and possibilities of digital pedagogy. For more information, visit urgencyofteachers.com.

👓 Digital learning experts reflect on evolving field in new book | Inside Higher Ed

Read Digital learning experts reflect on evolving field in new book by Mark Lieberman (Inside Higher Ed)
Jesse Stommel and Sean Michael Morris examine their evolving thoughts on classroom technology and online education. A lot has changed in a short time, they found.
Nice little interview. Definitely makes me want to read the book.

👓 Prep, Poly, Westridge Ranked Among Top County High Schools | Outlook Newspapers

Read Prep, Poly, Westridge Ranked Among Top County High Schools by Camila Castellanos (Outlook Newspapers)
A trio of Pasadena-area high schools scored in the top five among private schools in Los Angeles County, while eight San Gabriel Valley campuses were ranked among the top 20 Catholic scho...

👓 Why History Matters | Audrey Watters

Read Why History Matters by Audrey Watters (Hack Education)
This talk was given today to Eddie Maloney’s class at Georgetown University (specifically, its Learning and Design program) on “Technology & Innovation By Design”

👓 Mathematics matters | Bits of DNA

Read Mathematics matters by Lior PachterLior Pachter (Bits of DNA)
Six years ago I received an email from a colleague in the mathematics department at UC Berkeley asking me whether he should participate in a study that involved “collecting DNA from the brigh…
Not sure how I had missed this in the brouhaha a few weeks back, but it’s one of the more sober accounts from someone who’s actually got some math background and some reasonable idea about the evolutionary theory involved. It had struck me quite significantly that both Gowers and Tao weighed in as they did given their areas of expertise (or not). Perhaps it was worthwhile simply for the attention they brought? Gowers did specifically at least call out his lack of experience and asked for corrections, though I didn’t have the fortitude to wade through his hundreds of comments–perhaps this stands in part because there was little, if any indication of the background and direct identity of any of the respondents within the thread. As an simple example, while reading the comments on Dr. Pachter’s site, I’m surprised there is very little indication of Nicholas Bray’s standing there as he’s one of Pachter’s students. It would be much nicer if, in fact, Bray had a more fully formed and fleshed out identity there or on his linked Gravatar page which has no detail at all, much less an actual avatar!

This post, Gowers’, and Tao’s are all excellent reasons for a more IndieWeb philosophical approach in academic blogging (and other scientific communication). Many of the respondents/commenters have little, if any, indication of their identities or backgrounds which makes it imminently harder to judge or trust their bonafides within the discussion. Some even chose to remain anonymous and throw bombs. If each of the respondents were commenting (preferably using their real names) on their own websites and using the Webmention protocol, I suspect the discussion would have been richer and more worthwhile by an order of magnitude. Rivin at least had a linked Twitter account with an avatar, though I find it less than useful that his Twitter account is protected, a fact that makes me wonder if he’s only done so recently as a result of fallout from this incident? I do note that it at least appears his Twitter account links to his university website and vice-versa, so there’s a high likelihood that they’re at least the same person.

I’ll also note that a commenter noted that they felt that their reply had been moderated out of existence, something which Lior Pachter certainly has the ability and right to do on his own website, but which could have been mitigated had the commenter posted their reply on their own website and syndicated it to Pachter’s.

Hiding in the comments, which are generally civil and even-tempered, there’s an interesting discussion about academic publishing that could have been its own standalone post. Beyond the science involved (or not) in this entire saga, a lot of the background for the real story is one of process, so this comment was one of my favorite parts.

👓 Tenured Faculty Position at Princeton University | IEEE Information Theory Society

Read Tenured Faculty Position at Princeton University (itsoc.org)
The Department of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University seeks outstanding applicants for a tenured appointment at the Associate or Full Professor level, effective as early as September 1, 2019. The search is open to candidates specializing in areas related to information sciences and systems, with strength in core fundamentals and an interest in applications areas such as networks, machine learning, energy systems, cyber-physical systems, robotics and control, wireless communications, biology, etc. The successful candidate should have a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering or a related field, demonstrated excellence in academic research, and a proven track record of teaching and advising undergraduate and graduate students (if currently holding an academic appointment). We seek faculty members who will create a climate that embraces excellence and diversity, with a strong commitment to teaching and mentoring that will enhance the work of the department and attract and retain a diverse student body. Candidates must complete an online faculty application at: https://www.princeton.edu/acad-positions/position/4801; a detailed curriculum vitae, descriptions of teaching and research interests, reprints of selected publications, and the names and addresses of three references should be uploaded as .pdf documents via the on-line application. This position is subject to Princeton University's background check policy. To ensure full consideration, applications should be received by November 15, 2018, but the search will remain open until the position is filled.
Wow! Verdu hasn’t even started experiencing entropy yet…

👓 U. confirms Verdu’s dismissal following misconduct investigation | The Princetonian

Read U. confirms Verdu's dismissal following misconduct investigation (The Princetonian)
On Friday night, Assistant Vice President for Communications Dan Day confirmed that professor Sergio Verdú was dismissed from the faculty as of Sept. 24 following a University investigation into his conduct in relation to University policies that prohibit consensual relations with students and require honesty and cooperation in University matters.

👓 Harvard Says Kavanaugh Won’t Be Teaching His 2019 Supreme Court Class | HuffPost

Read Harvard Says Kavanaugh Won’t Be Teaching His 2019 Supreme Court Class (HuffPost)
The embattled Supreme Court nominee has been teaching the class on the high court's modern history since 2009.

Following Stephen Downes

Followed Stephen Downes (downes.ca)

Stephen Downes is a specialist in online learning technology and new media. Through a 25 year career in the field Downes has developed and deployed a series of progressively more innovative technologies, beginning with multi-user domains (MUDs) in the 1990s, open online communities in the 2000s, and personal learning environments in the 2010s. Downes is perhaps best known for his daily newsletter, OLDaily, which is distributed by web, email and RSS to thousands of subscribers around the world, and as the originator of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), is a leading voice in online and networked learning, and has authored learning management and content syndication software.

Downes is known as a leading proponent of connectivism, a theory describing how people know and learn using network processes. Hence he has also published in the areas of logic and reasoning, 21st century skills, and critical literacies. Downes is also recognized as a leading voice in the open education movement, having developed early work in learning objects to a world-leading advocacy of open educational resources and free learning. Downes is widely recognized for his deep, passionate and articulate exposition of a range of insights melding theories of education and philosophy, new media and computer technology. He has published hundreds of articles online and in print and has presented around the world to academic conferences in dozens of countries on five continents.

I’d been following several of Stephen’s web properties previously, but I’m adding his Half an Hour site as well as his Mastodon instance today.

Reply to Dogfood by Rick Wysocki

Replied to Dogfood by Rick WysockiRick Wysocki (Rick Wysocki)

[...] I’ve been reading a bit about the IndieWeb movement, and am becoming increasingly interested in the possibility of a more decentralized model for distributing web content.

[...]

To make a greater effort to create or at least have some hand in designing digital tools for my own work work. To this end, I’ve begun developing a (very small scale) Jekyll template for creating and disseminating oral history archives (called Oryll Hystory). With my scholarly background in both new media and archival theory, I’m hoping to use this as a prototype for thinking through questions regarding digital archives, circulation, and public humanities work. If that doesn’t work out, it will at least be practice for a bigger and better project. Feel free to follow the Github repository for the project if you’re interested. But don’t judge me–I’m at the early stages of the project and its currently extremely basic (and doesn’t look particularly good yet either).

Welcome to the IndieWeb Rick!

I particularly love your idea of using some of your digital knowledge and tools for research and education related work. In case you haven’t found it yet there are a growing number of educators, researchers, and practitioners applying IndieWeb philosophies and principles to the education space not only for ourselves, but for the benefit of our students and others. I hope you’ll take a moment to add yourself and some of your work to the list. If there’s anything any of us can do to help out, please don’t hesitate to touch base with us via our websites or in chat.