Reply | Chris Aldrich

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@daveymoloney I like what you've done with your WP site using the Autonomie theme to implement IndieWeb principles. If you don't mind, I have a couple of questions for you that I couldn't quite figure out. First, how are you able to selectively post from WP to Micro.blog? I know that Micro.blog allows a user to publish feeds from other sources. But you mentioned that you "some of what you post on your Microblog Statuses timeline" is also posted on Micro.blog. I'd love to know how you do that! As you know, Bridgy allows you to choose which posts to syndicate to sites like Twitter. But I've seen no way to accomplish the same thing with Micro.blog yet. Second, how did you create the Microblog Statuses timeline using Autonomie? I know that Autonomie, Indepdendent Publisher and other Indieweb-friendly themes allow for "post kinds" show up on separate pages. But you seem to be combining several "kinds" on the Microblog Statuses page. I'd love to know how you did this. My overall goal is to combine my "stream" page with my main website. But until now, I haven't seen a good way to accomplish the kind of control over my short-form posts that you have. Thanks for such a great example!

@willtmonroe You may have discovered this already, but since it went unanswered, you’ll likely find more help in the IndieWeb WordPress chat, but quickly there are some plugins for WordPress listed at https://indieweb.org/Micro.blog.

@daveymoloney’s microblog status page is most likely done by his having a page and menu link that displays the WordPress Post Format type “status” posts. (Incidentally you already have that page on your site, you just need to put it in a menu somewhere: http://willtmonroe.com/type/status/) I’d suspect that he took the RSS feed from that page and piped it into Micro.blog as well. Since you’re using Post Kinds plugin, you can do something similar using a URL format like https://boffosocko.com/kind/note,photo,like,listen/ or for porting to micro.blog using a similar feed URL like https://boffosocko.com/kind/note,photo,like,listen/feed/. You’d just need to put the names of the types you want to use/have in the list separated with commas.

Let me know if you need more help!

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Jesse Stommel (Twitter)

When you worry students won’t understand an assignment, the answer is often not to add more instructions, but to take instructions away.

Students get bogged down by all the words and minutiae we clutter assignments with. I think the best assignments are spare and evocative, not weighed down by expectations.

But this also means making sure we don’t have “hidden” expectations — making sure we are genuinely prepared for students to do something novel and unexpected. And prepared to work (or collaborate) with students at any point in the process.

I’ve seen assignment sheets for 1-page papers that were themselves more than a page. I wouldn’t demean anyone using those. As teachers, we care deeply about our work. But I’d ask whether all those words are actually helping get us or students closer to the germ of the work.

The final project for my digital studies course goes to the other end of the extreme. In the syllabus, I call the prompt “deceptively simple.” It’s just 8 words: “do something on the Web about the Web.”

When students ask for clarification, we talk about what’s possible, about all the ideas they have, even maybe imaginatively about the kinds of stuff I might do in their place. I tell them my final project is the course syllabus I’ve been building (with their help) all semester.

I don’t add more instructions. I don’t answer “do you mean,” “can I,” or “are you looking for” kinds of questions. I don’t show examples (unless students get really stuck).

The point of an assignment, for me, is not to create gotcha moments or to point students toward paint by numbers outcomes. An assignment, in my mind, should be like a canvas for students to experiment upon.

Not all assignments can be expressed in just 8 words. Some are more intricate, layering different skills atop one another. I teach with that kind of assignment as well.

As a side-note, I’ve actually stopped using the word “assignment” altogether. I say the “work of the course,” “do some stuff,” or “project” to remove transactional language like “assignment” or “submit.”

I also don’t have students “turning in” their work to just me. By whatever means I (or we) devise in a given semester, students share their work with each other (and also me) or with the world.

Me also, my instructions (across the board) have become more and more spare over the last 20 years. I have 50 students this semester, and I've gotten only about 3 questions all term about instructions or logistics.

I’ve noted before the idea of 10 word answers with relation to politics and complexity highlighting a short video snippet from The West Wing.

Jessie Stommel distills assignments down to a roughly similar 8 words, but then smartly relies on students to fill in the complexity of the idea with their own work. In the West Wing framing, he’s asking students to give the next 10 words and then again and again. Filling out the complexity of ones’ ideas is really where learning takes place.

His idea is closely related to the one I had been making about Trump’s communication style. Though even in the completely made up versions of things like the Turbo Encabulator, teachers will need to be careful about what’s coming back in the assignments.

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Jörg Wurzer (jwurzer.micro.blog)

I’m struggling with micro.blog. I have tried it since it was stsrted after the Kickstarter campaign. Unfortunately it’s not possible to get in contact with people or to reach any audience. I thnk the conceptual problem of micro.blog is, that I can’t search for interesting people and posts. Maybe it’s time to say good bye to micro.blog. My hope was to have an alternative to Twitter, without censorship and manipulation.

@jwurzer I recall that @macgenie had a good piece called Where Discover Doesn’t Help that may also be useful to you. I had responded to it with some related ideas around Micro Monday. Another good place to find people is to visit the micro.blog profile pages of people you do find interesting and then click through the “Following XYZ users you aren’t following” to see people who may be similar.

To some extent, just like you did with Twitter and all your other social networks, you’ll likely have to (re-)”build” and “discover” your audience and people you want to interact with. The nice part about it is that it’s built on open protocols, so as more and more sites and services support them, you’ll be able to interact from one place instead of the typical 4 or more.

Personally, while I highly leverage m.b. and its many discovery aspects, I do it with my own feed reader where I pick and choose who I follow (whether they’re on Twitter, Instagram, micro.blog, or their own site) and then read them all there. Then I’m using my own website to collect, write, respond, and interact. It’s taken me a while to reframe how I use the social layers of the internet, but ultimately I find it much more healthy and rewarding.

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❤️ vboykis tweeted I can forgive Twitter for stuff like,,,destroying the free world and inciting cancel culture

Liked a tweet by

Vicki Boykis on Twitter (Twitter)

I can forgive Twitter for stuff like,,,destroying the free world and inciting cancel culture, but I cannot forgive it for taking away the direct link to my profile picture, because I used that link all the time for speaking bios.
— Vicki Boykis (@vboykis) November 12, 2019

Vicki, I’m sure you mentioned it purely for your awesome and inimitable snark and you’re obviously otherwise aware… but for everyone else who’s suffering:

Why not keep your avatar on a website you own and control? If it’s at a permalink you control, you can even replace the photo and those who hotlink/transclude it will allow you to update it automatically over time. As an example, I keep one of me at https://www.boffosocko.com/logo.jpg. Having a permalink to my own avatar was the only reason I got a website, and now look what I’ve gotten myself into…

If I recall correctly, when you delete or replace those Twitter avatars, the old links go dead and they generate a new link anyway.

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WordPress

Replied to a tweet by

Tom Woodward (Twitter)

This social media data translator opens up a world of nice possibilities. github.com/snarfed/granary //cc @cogdog @J_Everhart383 @heyohbunkbunk
— Tom Woodward (@twoodwar) November 8, 2019

h/t @ChrisAldrich in the @wpcampusorg slack
— Tom Woodward (@twoodwar) November 8, 2019

All the credit really goes to Ryan Barrett and the huge open source crowd in the #IndieWeb who provide a truly magic tech layer for adding onto the #DoOO and #EdTech space. If you haven’t tried it, step on in and say hello! 👋

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👓 rapid eye movement from dominique o’brien | General Memory Chat | Art of Memory Forum

Read rapid eye movement from dominique o'brien (Art of Memory Forum)

Hi, in a TV-show about all kinds of crazy world records I saw dominique o’brien memorising 50 objects that were placed on some kind of running track. When he was doing this, his eyes moved from side to side in a very fast pace. This reminded me of an incredibly smart IT-guy (I felt like Forrest Gump in comparison) that came to our warehouse to implement a new computer system. If he was asked a very difficult question he would look up in the air and his eyes would behave precisely like those o...

Possibly tangentially related:

If you sit on a swivel chair (safer than doing the same thing standing up) and gently place your fingertips on your closed eyes while you turn around and around, you’ll be able to discern that your eyes will still exhibit saccadic movement even though you can’t “see” anything. (Not sure if this is true for the blind, but it’s worth considering who this may not be true for and why.)
Rapid Serial Visual Presentation methods for speed reading (Spritz and related apps) work well primarily because they limit saccadic eye movements which take up a proportionally large portion of your reading time. (Ultimately I think there is an upper limit to how fast one can read and comprehend and retain information.)
The visual systems of chickens are responsible for their odd walking manner in which they throw their heads forward and then move their body underneath them while their head remains stationary. Essentially while their head is moving, they’re “blind”.

Is it possible that saccades of the eye are tied into our visual processing and memory systems in a manner deeper than we’re consciously aware? Does reading on a page help our comprehension or long term memories more because the words have a location on a page versus RSVP reading methods? Do our mental visualizations (imagination) change depending on these visual/reading methods? What effects to these have on our memories?

Some interesting questions worth pondering/researching.

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👓 My Dumb Project | Kicks Condor

Replied to My Dumb Project by Kicks Condor (Kicks Condor)

A most pathetic surveillance tool.

Kicks, far from a dumb project. I remember seeing a version of your personal copy in one of your videos ages ago and thinking, “I want that!!!” Of course it may take some more development on your part or some serious coding study on mine to get this up and running for myself.

I can’t wait to see where this goes! Keep up the awesome work!

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Replied to Constantly building new memory palaces is annoying by

Ywan Müller (Art of Memory Forum)

Hello, I have a problem and I hope, you can help me. Is there a way to just memorize information with mnemotechniques without doing much work beforhand? My problem is, that I am tired of having to constantely building new memory palaces before I can memorize something. (Reusing memory palaces does not work for me, unfortunately.) Is there a technique where I don`t have to constantely memorize new loci, a technique where I can just put the infos somewhere and review them later? And if so, how does this technique work and is it efficient (a good way to memorize things)? Thanks.

In many modern descriptions of the method of loci, they’re often (unfortunately) described as places that are frequently reused as they would be for memory competitions. This makes them much tougher to use for remembering more useful things in longer term memory. As a result I use a small handful of very specifically selected places for these sorts of short term memory-based journeys. When I’m done with the specific task at hand, I mentally travel back through the journey and wash out all of those short term memories so that I can come back to them in rotation and they’re fresh and clean with many of the memories having faded out with the advance of time. Alternately peg-systems or linked story-systems can be used depending on the items being memorized.

For longer term memory, I prefer to use more everyday locations such as my home (or previous residences, schools, college, etc.) or walks around my neighborhood. This way, as I’m moving about my house, neighborhood, or other frequently visited quotidian places, I’m seeing the accumulated images and regularly re-firming them in my memory. This regular revisiting of them makes them stick in my long term memory much better. For things you want to keep for longer term, revisiting them at an hour, a day, a week, a month, and then three months with occasional annual revisits helps to keep them stored permanently in your long term memory. This method also allows you to add additional information via images over time so that when you’ve read that biography of Abraham Lincoln, for example, you can add any additional information to the loci where you stored him when you may have memorized all of the U.S. presidents in order. Lynne Kelly has a reasonably good description of this in her book The Memory Code where she discusses the timeline of history she’s created in a journey around her neighborhood.

In short, one should carefully consider the type of information one is trying to memorize, the length of time one wants to remember it, and then choose from one of the many methods for remembering it. Experience in doing this takes some time and advanced thought, but in the end will give better results.

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