Education | Chris Aldrich

👓 Community Review | Kathleen Fitzpatrick

Kathleen Fitzpatrick (Kathleen Fitzpatrick)

In my last book, Planned Obsolescence, I argued for the potentials of open, peer-to-peer review as a means of shedding some light on the otherwise often hidden processes of scholarly communication, enabling scholars to treat the process of review less as a mode of gatekeeping than as a formative moment in which they could learn from and contribute to their communities of practice. In Generous Thinking, my focus is somewhat different—less on the ways that scholars communicate with one another and more on the ways we invite the world into our work—but the emphasis on opening up our processes and imagining the ways that they might invite new kinds of conversations remains.

👓 Why Not Blog? | Kathleen Fitzpatrick

Read Why Not Blog? by

Kathleen Fitzpatrick (Kathleen Fitzpatrick)

My friend Alan Jacobs, a key inspiration in my return (such as it is, so far) to blogging and RSS and a generally pre-Twitter/Facebook outlook on the scholarly internet, is pondering the relationship between blogging and other forms of academic writing in thinking about his next project. Perhaps needless to say, this is something I’m considering as well, and I’m right there with him in most regards.

Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia

The blog was not just the venue in which I started putting together the ideas that became my second book, the one that made promotion and various subsequent jobs possible, but it was also the way that I was able to demonstrate that there might be a readership for that second book, without which it’s much less likely that a press would have been interested. ❧

This sounds like she’s used her blog as both a commonplace book as well as an author platform.

In fact blog posts are not the kind of thing one can detail on one’s annual review form, and even a blog in the aggregate doesn’t have a place in which it’s easy to be claimed as a site of ongoing scholarly productivity. ❧

Mine have gone more like (1) having some vague annoying idea with a small i; (b) writing multiple blog posts thinking about things related to that idea; (iii) giving a talk somewhere fulminating about some other thing entirely; (4) wondering if maybe there are connections among those things; (e) holy carp, if I lay the things I’ve been noodling about over the last year and a half out in this fashion, it could be argued that I am in the middle of writing a book! ❧

Here’s another person talking about blogs as “thought spaces” the same way that old school bloggers like Dave Winer and Om Malik amongst many others have in the past. While I’m thinking about it I believe that Colin Walker and Colin Devroe have used this sort of idea as well.

Following Kathleen Fitzpatrick

Followed Kathleen Fitzpatrick (Kathleen Fitzpatrick)

Kathleen Fitzpatrick is Director of Digital Humanities and Professor of English at Michigan State University. Prior to assuming this role in 2017, she served as Associate Executive Director and Director of Scholarly Communication of the Modern Language Association, where she was Managing Editor of PMLA and other MLA publications. During that time, she also held appointments as Visiting Research Professor of English at NYU and Visiting Professor of Media at Coventry University. Before joining the MLA staff in 2011, she was Professor of Media Studies at Pomona College, where she had been a member of the faculty since 1998.

Fitzpatrick is author of Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy, which was published by NYU Press in November 2011; Planned Obsolescence was released in draft form for open peer review in fall 2009. She is also the author of The Anxiety of Obsolescence: The American Novel in the Age of Television, published in 2006 by Vanderbilt University Press (and of course available in print). She is project director of Humanities Commons, an open-access, open-source network serving more than 13,000 scholars and practitioners in the humanities. She is also co-founder of the digital scholarly network MediaCommons, where she led a number of experiments in open peer review and other innovations in scholarly publishing. She serves on the editorial or advisory boards of publications and projects including the Open Library of the Humanities, Luminos, the Open Annotation Collaboration, PressForward, and thresholds. She currently serves as the chair of the board of directors of the Council on Library and Information Resources.

For further information, please see my CV.

I notice that Kathleen is practicing a lot of web principles similar to those in the IndieWeb community including syndication and adding syndication links, but she’s missing out on some of the additional goodies like Webmention support. Some pieces I suspect she’s come by very naturally, while others have a very micro.blog centric feel to them.

Reply to Flogging the Dead Horse of RSS by Dean Shareski

Replied to Flogging the Dead Horse of RSS by

Dean Shareski (Ideas and Thoughts)

And I think it’s true. I don’t use RSS the way I did in 2004. That said, I remember reading that blogging was dead ten years ago. And while it’s maybe not trendy, many educators have seen its value and maintained a presence. Apparently, RSS has some valid uses as well but like most everyone, I tend to use social as a place to find new and emerging ideas. But I also think using Twitter and Facebook to haphazardly find content lacks intention and depth. I also value reading a person’s blog over time to understand better their voice and context. So I’m asking for some advice on how to update my module on finding research. What replaces RSS feeds? What works for you that goes beyond “someone on Twitter/Facebook shared….” to something that is more focused and intentional?

Dean, I can completely appreciate where you’re coming from. I too am still addicted to RSS (as well as a plethora of other feed types including Atom, JSON, and h-feeds). I didn’t come across your article by feed however, but instead by Aaron Davis’ response to your post which he posted on his own website and then pinged my site with his repsonse using a web specification called Webmention. We’re both members of a growing group of researchers, educators, and others who are using our own websites to act as our social media presences and using new technologies like Webmention to send notifications from website to website to carry on conversations.

While many of us are also relying on RSS, there are a variety of new emerging technologies that are making consuming and replying to content online easier while also allowing people to own all of their associated data. In addition to my article about The Feed Reader Revolution which Aaron mentioned in his reply, Aaron Pareck has recently written about Building an IndieWeb Reader. I suspect that some of these ideas encapsulate a lot of what you’d like to see on the web.

Most of us are doing this work and experimentation under the banner known as the IndieWeb. Since you know some of the web’s prior history, you might appreciate this table that will give you some idea of what the group has been working on. In particular I suspect you may appreciate some of the resources we’re compiling for IndieWeb for Education. If it’s something you find interest in, I hope you might join in our experimentations. You can find many of us in the group’s online chat.

I would have replied in your comments section, but unfortunately through a variety of quirks Disqus marks everything I publish to it immediately as spam. Thus my commentary is invariably lost. Instead, I’m posting it to a location I do have stricter control over–my own website. I’ll send you a tweet to provide you the notification of the post. I will cross-post my reply to Disqus if you want to dig into your spam folder to unspam it for display. In the meanwhile, I’m following you and subscribing to your RSS feed.

Following Dean Shareski

Followed Dean Shareski (ideasandthoughts.org)

Someone recently described me by saying, “If you want to learn from Dean, don’t follow him on twitter but read his blog instead” I thought that was a fair statement. This is the place where I’m pretty serious, or at least focused on my passion of learning and how to make better schools for our kids. Twitter? That’s a different story.

I’m the Community Manager for Discovery Education Canada since 2012. From 2002-2012, I worked as a Digital Learning Consultant with the Prairie South School Division in Moose Jaw, SK, Canada. Previous to that I taught grades K-8 for 14 years. I specialize in the use of technology in the classroom. I hold a Masters of Education in Communications and Technology through the University of Saskatchewan. I also am a sessional lecturer for the University of Regina. Since late 2004 I’ve been immersed in understanding what the Read/Write Web is all about and how the new shape of knowledge changes how we all learn. I believe teachers and students ought to use technology to connect ideas and learners in safe, relevant, authentic ways to answer questions, share ideas and develop community. Learning can be, and should be, fun and personal. I was fortunate to be awarded the 2010 ISTE Award for Outstanding Leadership in Technology and Education. This honor is mostly a reflection of the great people I work with both within my school division and beyond. My greatest asset is that I know smart people and how to find them.

I’ve been fortunate to work with Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson in varying roles for the Powerful Learning P ractice. This company offers a unique professional learning experience for educators around the world. It has been a great learning experience for me as I help create community and learning in virtual spaces and help teachers change practice to improve learning for students.

I mostly blog here but occasionally for Tech and Learning Magazine and the Huffington Post as well as on the DEN blogs.

In 2016, I published a book called “Embracing Cultures of Joy” which details and summarizes my work and belief around a topic that best describes my beliefs around learning and community.

RSVP for DrupalCamp LA 2018

RSVPed Attending DrupalCamp LA 2018

The Los Angeles area conference for all west-coast things Drupal — July 21-22, 2018

👓 My College Degree as an Open Digital Humanities Project | Mark Corbett Wilson

Read My College Degree as an Open Digital Humanities Project by Mark Corbett Wilson (markcorbettwilson.com)

I’m developing a new model for adult learners so they can avoid the experience I had while trying to improve my skills at a Community College. Combining Self-Directed Learning, Computational Thinking, Digital Pedagogy, Open Education and Open Social Scholarship theories with Open Education Resourc...

This sounds to me to be a bit like an open digital commonplace book.

(I’m noticing, yet again, that Disqus is automatically marking any comments I make as spam.)

👓 Planning a DoOO Summer Camp – Newbies Corner | Reclaim Hosting Community

Read Planning a DoOO Summer Camp by

Alan Levine (Reclaim Hosting Community)

For participants in the eCampus Ontario Extend project, some of whom have gotten Reclaim hosting, some who will be starting. I’m planning on running a 4 week online “summer camp” workshop. This will be open for anyone who wants to get involved. It will likely be a weekly “lesson” with some activities, an intro how to video, a weekly open office hours via Zoom, and a lot of tweeting & blogging. I’m curious to hear from others who have developed intro materials what sort of topics you find are m...

👓 Domain Camp | Domains of Our Own

Read Domain Camp (Domains of Our Own)

Welcome to Domains Camp, where over a four week experience we will help you get your skills up in understanding and management of an internet domain of your own. We are running this over a series starting July 10, 2018 and is open to anyone or outside of Ontario Extend who wants to learn more about what is possible with an internet domain and web-hosting package. Our instructions will be tailored to the platform offered by our provider, Reclaim Hosting, but could be used by anyone with a host that uses cpanel as the interface.

This looks like an intriguing offering!