Read 2020, the year of the interactive blog post by John Otander (johno.com)
Originally, MDX was mostly built for interactive documentation. It wasn’t until shortly after that we saw it start to see adoption on blogs in order to embed components.
Some of these interactive examples here look pretty cool. I wish he’d done a better job of describing MDX and what it is without having to dig around to find it.
Read Zocurelia - Inspiring Learners to Read and Discuss by Axel DürkopAxel Dürkop (axel-duerkop.de)
With Zocurelia you can increase the fun of reading online literature together. The browser tool shows the activity of a reading community directly in the context of the texts being read and discussed. This way learners can be motivated to participate and join the discussion - hopefully hypothetically. In this article I will explain my motivation, ideas and decisions that led to the development of Zocurelia.

For those interested in online reading groups, journal clubs, OER, open education, marginal syllabus, etc., Axel Dürkop has created quite a lovely little tool that mixes Zotero with Hypothes.is.

Using his online version (though the code is open source and it looks like I could pretty quickly host my own), it only took me a few minutes to mock up a collaborative space using an Econ Extra Credit group I’d tried to encourage. This could be quite cool, particularly if they continued the series past the first recommended textbook.

I could easily see folks like Remi Kalir using this as part of their marginal syllabus project and allowing students to recommend texts/articles for class and aggregating discussions around them.


First of all, I wanted to learn more about how to inspire learners to read. And this means for me as an educator to create a technical and social environment that is welcoming and easy to participate in.

Annotated on March 03, 2020 at 08:01PM

I want to have ways to show learners that I chose the texts for them, as I’m convinced that empathy is motivating.

I quite like this idea as a means of pedagogy.
Annotated on March 03, 2020 at 08:03PM

Read UTC is Enough for Everyone, Right? by Zach Holman (zachholman.com)
Programming time, dates, timezones, recurring events, leap seconds... everything is pretty terrible.
The common refrain in the industry is Just use UTC! Just use UTC! And that's correct... sort of. But if you're stuck building software that deals with time, there's so much more to consider.
It's time... to talk about time.

As programmers, we’re kind of inherently built to want the ABSOLUTE BEST HIGHEST FIDELITY FORMATS OF ALL TIME. Like dammit, I need the timestamp down to the micromillinanosecond for every cheeseburger that gets added to my bespoke Watch-The-BK-Throne app. If I do not have this exact knowledge to the millisecond of when I consumed this BBQ Bacon WHOPPER® Sandwich From Burger King® I may die. 

I totally want this as a Post Kind on my website now!
Annotated on March 03, 2020 at 07:28PM

Read Be careful what you copy: Invisibly inserting usernames into text with Zero-Width Characters by Tom Ross (Medium)
Zero-width characters are invisible, ‘non-printing’ characters that are not displayed by the majority of applications. F​or exam​ple, I’ve ins​erted 10 ze​ro-width spa​ces in​to thi​s sentence, c​an you tel​​l? (Hint: paste the sentence into Diff Checker to see the locations of the characters!). These characters can be used to ‘fingerprint’ text for certain users.

A cool little trick with text for embedded steganography, security, or other communication purposes. 

This could also be used for pseudo-private communication via Webmention even. Just hide your messages inside of public messages.

Aaron Parecki bookmark Be careful what you copy: Invisibly inserting usernames into text with Zero-Width Characters (medium.com) ()

Read Manifold Version 4.0 Overview | Building Manifold (blog.manifoldapp.org)
The Manifold team is delighted to announce the release of Manifold version 4.0. The hallmark features for this release are the addition of reading groups, which allow readers to annotate texts publicly, privately, or anonymously, and standalone mode, which allows creators to set up projects that appear without the library. We’ve also made notable strides in improving Manifold’s accessibility and are now publishing docker images to Docker Hub.
Read a post by gRegor MorrillgRegor Morrill (gregorlove.com)
I was watching the beginning of Bang Bang Con (!!Con) and they talked about their code of conduct. I liked these three tips they gave to stay in line with their values: “Avoid feigning surprise.” When someone says something like “I’ve never heard that you can do x,” instead of replying “...
Some excellent examples and advice here. Good find.
Read Pocket Casts acquired by NPR, other public radio stations, and This American Life (The Verge)
One of the best podcast apps just got bought by some of the biggest podcast producers
Owning their own pieces of distribution is going to be key to their long term interests. This is a brilliant move.
Read Public media found its answer to Spotify in Pocket Casts (The Verge)
More investment in the podcasting open ecosystem

Pocket Casts is instead committed to podcasting’s open ecosystem of freely available RSS feeds, CEO Owen Grover says.

I wish their app allowed one to actually use the podcast’s native URL(s) when sharing instead of providing a pca.st shortened URL.

Annotated on March 02, 2020 at 12:21PM

Read The mis-application of learning technologies within the context of Design Studio-led education by Adam Procter (Manifold Scholarship)
Despite the widespread application of digital technologies in higher education there is scant evidence to suggest that these have had a significant impact on student learning. (Bainbridge, 2014, p1)
Some great material here. Revisit this again soon.
Read Pete Buttigieg is ending his presidential bid by Chelsea Janes (Washington Post)
Pete Buttigieg, the 38-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Ind., who saw a meteoric rise from virtual unknown to top-tier contender and became the first openly gay candidate to make a high-profile presidential run, ended his campaign Sunday as he confronted the reality that his prospects of victory had all but collapsed.