👓 Mod 2 open v. privacy image | Katlyn Foster

Liked Mod 2 open v. privacy image by Katlyn FosterKatlyn Foster (msmartinez8118.com)
1. Here we have a teacher super excited to find open educational resources.
2. Here we have that same teacher sharing with her friends how she is going to enjoy her snow day on snapchat (thinking it is private).
3. Here we have that teacher making the news.

👓 “The Audrey Test”: Or, What Should Every Techie Know About Education? | Hack Education

Read "The Audrey Test": Or, What Should Every Techie Know About Education? by Audrey WattersAudrey Watters (Hack Education)
I want us to set the bar really high when it comes to education technology -- both in its development and its implementation. I don't think it's too much to ask. I mean, we're talking about teaching and learning here, and while I believe strongly we should all be lifelong learners, most often when we talk about ed-tech, we're talking about kids. As the Macarthur Foundation's Connie Yowell said at the recent DML conference (and I'm paraphrasing), there's value in risk-taking and failing fast and often, but not in "high stakes environments with other people's children."

Sketches of my Home and About page designs

Replied to a post by Greg McVerryGreg McVerry (INTERTEXTrEVOLUTION)

For today’s #dailyponderance I want you to put the computer away, grab some paper and pencil and map out what you think your homepage and about me page should contain.

You don’t need to be an artist, boxes and stuick figures will do.

You don’t have to be writer. Copy can come later. Think layout.

If you already have an about me and a home page sketch it out for others to see what your “prototype” looks like.

I’ve actually been doing some small revamping of both my Home and my About pages on the site recently, so this is actually a nice little exercise that’s reminding me about some of the small changes I’d like to effect. It also reminds me of some of the changes I want to make with regard to some of my menu structures too.

Lately I’ve added a bunch of different ways to slice and dice the content on my site so that readers can hopefully more easily find or discover the content they may be most interested in reading.  I’ve also been trying to pare down on the amount of information and detail which I present.

So without additional ado, here they are:

Home and About Page layouts

📺 #EDU522 Daily Update IX: Adding and removing sidebar widgets | YouTube

Watched #EDU522 Daily Update IX: Adding and removing sidebar widgets from YouTube
Depending on where you’re syndicating to and why, one could consider leaving some of these default sidebar widgets in their installation. Some folks, Aaron Davis comes quickly to mind, add titles (sometimes with emoji) to their notes, replies, RSVPs, likes, favorites, etc., which often are defined as posts which technically don’t need titles. Doing this certainly takes some extra time and work (or coding skill if you’re automating it), but can have the benefit of populating not only those widgets, but also adding a somewhat logical title to RSS feed readers and other tools which have been trained over 20 years to want titles on everything.

Recent Posts and Comments widget displays on Aaron Davis’ website

If you have the courage, certainly go title-less as it’s a whole lot easier, but there are other options if you like those sorts of touches.

📺 #EDU522 Daily Update VIII: Using #IndieWeb Post Kinds | YouTube

Watched #EDU522 Daily Update VIII: Using #IndieWeb Post Kinds by Greg McVerryGreg McVerry from YouTube
Keep in mind that you can click on the “Details” and the “Author” tabs in Post Kinds to add all sorts of additional data to flesh out the reply context for your posts. In particular many posts don’t include metadata for the Author details, but when you’re doing a quote post, it can add some additional richness to your context.

As an example, I modified the Author data for this particular post so that it shows Dr. McVerry created it and included both a photo avatar of him as well as a link to his website.

If you have some coding capabilities and want to go all-in on gaining more control over the reply contexts that Post Kinds allows, I’ve written up an outline for doing so. (I’d recommend waiting to play with it after class is over though!)

👓 Thread by @l1quidcryst4l: new to twitter?

Read a thread for people new to Twitter by jess jess (Twitter)

new to queer twitter? just made your account? came out recently? well, lucky for you, i’m going to save you a whole bunch of heartache with the official:

JESS FROM ONLINE GUIDE TO QUEER TWITTER ETTIQUITE

1. REPLYING TO SELFIES
this is everyone’s first mistake. does the poster follow you? if not: you are a “rando”. a stranger. do not tweet at them as you would a friend. what does this mean practically?
- do not proposition them
- do not make a “playful” rude joke
- do not make a sexual comment or observation

best general rule: do not place yourself in the reply. if you want to compliment someone, you can do that, but be careful with “i” or “me”.

yes, this includes “i’m gay!”. while not true of everyone, many people will be made uncomfortable by the way that places *you* into the compliment. this is okay to do with friends, but not when you’re a rando!

final note: jealousy is not a compliment! attempting to compliment them but telling them how you wished you looked like that or how much better you look is you venting your dysphoria, not a compliment, and can be very upsetting to read!

2. RETWEETING SELFIES
some people love having their selfies retweeted. some people absolutely hate it. it’s best that you know which someone is before you RT that selfie. if a selfie has 10+ RTs already you’re probably good. otherwise, if you dont know, ask first!

3. FOLLOWING LOCKED ACCOUNTS
many people have a private “locked”/“sad”/“vent” account and a private “AD”/“lewd” account

if you come across a private account and you don’t know who it is or you’re not mutuals with their main DO NOT REQUEST TO FOLLOW

4. OTHER PEOPLE’S MENTIONS
if you see two people talking in a reply chain and you don’t know either party (or if you’re being safe, both parties) DO NOT FAV OR REPLY. reply chains are a private convo between two people and many people find it very uncomfortable!

5. CAREFUL WHO YOU TAG
if someone mentions a person, especially a microcelebrity, who has a twitter account, but doesn’t use ther @, that’s probably for a reason! don’t tag someone you don’t know just because someone else you don’t know is talking about them.

6. HORNY ON MAIN
here’s a controversial one. while not everyone finds it acceptable, it’s not uncommon for queer people to be horny on their public accounts nowadays. that said, THIS DOES NOT GIVE YOU PERMISSION TO BE HORNY AT THEM.

a person having sexual content on main says “i am okay with you opting into seeing my sexuality” not “i am opting in to seeing your sexuality”. if you’re a rando, you probably shouldn’t reply with or tag someone in horny-on-main content.

7. REPLYING TO RTS
don’t make us tap the sign. if you’re going to reply to a retweet, either be 100% sure it’s Premium Content or, more safely, pull up the tweet separately so you can reply to it without including the person who retweeted it.

8. TWEETS YOU “SHOULDN’T SEE”
twitter is terrible and implements features that break ettiquite patterns. as a general rule: faving or replying to tweets of people that you don’t follow that haven’t been retweeted or visibly quote tweeted will likely make someone uncomfortable.

9. CURATE YOUR FOLLOWERS
this is more advanced, but also important. if you allow bad followers, it means that you expose those you retweet to bad followers. unless you don’t plan to ever retweet people, it’s impolite to be irresponsible about followers. what does this look like?

first, if a rando is homophobic, transphobic, racist, ableist, etc. in your mentions, block/softblock.

second, if someone breaks these rules in your mentions, gently correct them. if unsuccessful or dont have the bandwith, then block/softblock.

third, are you trans? especially a trans woman? do you post selfies? you’re going to start getting chasers! these are men who fetishize trans people/trans women and will follow you to jerk it to your selfies. it’s disgusting! (cont.)

for the sake of both those you RT and *yourself*, watch out of chasers. i vet almost every follower, but a good rule of thumb: no icon, generic male name and icon, or entire bio in language that is not your’s, means check their “Following” or

“Likes”. if they’re a chaser their likes will usually be full of pornography of trans women and their “Following” will be contain mix of both porn + non-porn accounts of trans women. BLOCK THESE PEOPLE ON SIGHT. i usually block a couple each day.

10. DON’T REPEAT YOURSELVES
this is a good rule in any twitter community: before you reply with a joke or suggestion, especially to a popular tweet or account, check the existing replies. make sure this isn’t the second (or tenth) time someone had said the same thing. i realize some of these rules are unintuitive! this is why i’m collecting them; it’s always felt a little unfair that people are expected to “just know” them. it’s ok to have messed up. many of us learned the hard way. but hopefully this will help that happen less often!

11. TAGGING OUT
almost missed a big one. if youre going to have a conversation in replies between two people who aren’t the original poster, you should remove the OP. anything more than 2 back and forths without OP and make sure you tag them out aka remove them from reply chain.

12. BIGOTS IN REPLIES
similarly, if you feel like you need to reply to a bigot in someone’s mentions, do NOT include the @ of the OP in the reply. they may have even blocked the bigot and now your replies to them are in OP’s mentions, and that is Not Good. something i’ve definitely learned from having this thread go viral is just how many people are fine being rude and making people uncomfortable because they “disagree” with a social convention

This is a great set of general rules for everyone on Twitter, not just for the particular audience to whom it’s directed. There are a few things on it that I’ve been aware of but sometimes don’t actively practice, though I’ll try to make more of an effort in future.

hat tip to Greg McVerry

Reply to dailyponderance on public reading

Replied to a post by Greg McVerryGreg McVerry (INTERTEXTrEVOLUTION)

Today’s #dailyponderance comes from us via Cheri Who read about @hypothesis in @chrisaldrich’s last #dailyponderance post. Your point to ponder what does public reading mean? Does performative nature come into play?

Join the private group Cheri created, annotate @zephoria’s first two chapters as you read, then post a reflection about the reading

I suspect that my definition of public reading is quite different than most because I’ve been actively doing it for over a year or so now. I post nearly everything I read onto my personal website, and quite often with my notes, highlights, annotations, and some brief analysis. Rarely, if ever, do people react or interact with it, though on occasion it will spark a nice, albiet short discussion. In some part, I post all of it for my own personal consumption and later search, though perhaps one day someone will come across something and it will light a bigger fire. Who knows?

It all reminds me of something my friend P.M. Forni once told me about his own writing as a scholar of the early Italian Renaissance. He said he thought it was sad that only about eleven people would ever read any of his academic writing at a very deep level, but he was far more gratified to be able to write prescriptive books on the area of civility and living a better life that were featured on Oprah and had readers in the millions. I’m happy to write on these topics and have no readers–besides myself–whatsoever.

Of course all of this to say, that as educators we still ought to provide relatively safe spaces for students to try on ideas, make arguments, and see what comes of it without damaging them in the long run.

I’ve read many online documents that have been annotated by many others, most of them in the early days of Genius.com when it was known as Rap Genius. It has been a while, however, since I’ve read something like boyd’s It’s Complicated with so many annotations by others. It is quite refreshing to see a relatively high level of work and commentary on a piece (compared to the typical dreck that one can find in most online newspapers’ comments sections.)  I suspect that for some performative nature may come into play, but I find this less of a factor on more scholarly facing platforms like Hypothesis (compared to Genius.com or Twitter). Certainly one can get caught up in the idea of becoming famous or popular for their commentary.

As boyd points out in the introduction to her book, this sort of thing seems to be common human nature:

None of the videos they made were of especially high quality, and while they shared them publicly on YouTube, only their friends watched them. Still, whenever they got an additional view—even if only because they forced a friend to watch the video—they got excited.

In the end, some of it may come down to audience. For whom are you writing, annotating, or working?  The vast majority of the time, I’m writing and documenting for myself. Anyone else that stumbles upon the conversation may hopefully only make it more interesting, but as often as not, except for an occasional class no one notices–and even then they may not publicly comment.

As for boyd’s book, I’m somewhat less than impressed. I’m aware of much of her work and appreciate the role she plays in the broader public conversation, but I’ve been far too close to the topic she’s writing about for far too long. I view it in a somewhat more historical framework and slightly different viewpoint than she. As a result, she’s not telling me much I didn’t already know or haven’t thought about for quite  a while. I suspect that my commentary in my annotations may make this a bit more clear.

Reply to Greg McVerry on Memes as Lazy Metaphors

Replied to Memes as Lazy Metaphors by Greg McVerryGreg McVerry (jgregorymcverry.com)
You could choose any picture in the world to represent you and you chose a meme… Day One We started off our #dailyponderances in #EDU522 thinking visually. Each person was asked to post a picture that represented how you felt. The funny memes flooded in I laughed, but I also grasped how frustrated...
As I’ve been reflecting on this further, it does dawn on me that on day one or two of the course many of us had probably just read the Schedule of Assignments/Workflow page of the course site, which also carries the title How The Sausage is Made.

Perhaps we all went to meme-speak because you had subtly primed us to go there? You could try a nice experiment when you teach this course again…

 

 

For those interested in misinformation, journalism, authority, trust, verification, fact checking, etc., the MisInfoCon is going on this week in Washington. Some interesting things in the Twitter feed for #misinfocon.

It’s a Hacks/Hackers project.

Some of the details might be useful for digital pedagogy settings as well. May make an interesting project for those in EDU522 especially if you’re considering the hoax website assignment?

📗 Started reading It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens by danah boyd

Read It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens by danah boyddanah boyd (Yale University Press)
What is new about how teenagers communicate through services such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram? Do social media affect the quality of teens’ lives? In this eye-opening book, youth culture and technology expert danah boyd uncovers some of the major myths regarding teens' use of social media. She explores tropes about identity, privacy, safety, danger, and bullying. Ultimately, boyd argues that society fails young people when paternalism and protectionism hinder teenagers’ ability to become informed, thoughtful, and engaged citizens through their online interactions. Yet despite an environment of rampant fear-mongering, boyd finds that teens often find ways to engage and to develop a sense of identity. Boyd’s conclusions are essential reading not only for parents, teachers, and others who work with teens but also for anyone interested in the impact of emerging technologies on society, culture, and commerce in years to come. Offering insights gleaned from more than a decade of original fieldwork interviewing teenagers across the United States, boyd concludes reassuringly that the kids are all right. At the same time, she acknowledges that coming to terms with life in a networked era is not easy or obvious. In a technologically mediated world, life is bound to be complicated.
Read introduction through page 20 of 296

6.8%

Ultimately I think I was bored after reading the table of contents. Not seeing any indication there that I might encounter any interesting new ground given my experience I may have to give up.

A short distance in seemed to confirm my initial bias, so I’ve ultimately decided to press on to something else which seems a bit more fruitful.

Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia

1 identity why do teens seem strange online? 29
2 privacy why do youth share so publicly? 54
3 addiction what makes teens obsessed with social media? 77
4 danger are sexual predators lurking everywhere? 100
5 bullying is social media amplifying meanness and cruelty? 128
6 inequality can social media resolve social divisions? 153
7 literacy are today’s youth digital natives? 176
8 searching for a public of their own 199 

Just reading this table of contents reminds me that this “analysis of teens” seems a lot like the perennial contemplations of adults who think that the generations of teenagers coming behind them is different, weird, or even deviant.

A typical case in point is that of the greatest generation looking at the long-haired 60’s hippy teens who came after them. “Why do they like rock and roll? They do too many drugs. There’s no hope for the future.” “Damn kids. Get off of my lawn!”

Is the way that current teens and millennials react to social just another incarnation of this general idea?

As I began to get a feel for the passions and frustrations of teens and to speak to broader audiences, I recognized that teens’ voices rarely shaped the public discourse surrounding their networked lives.  

Again, putting this into historical context, is this sentence different for any prior period if we remove the word “networked”?

It’s been a while, but the old saw “A child should be seen and not heard” comes quickly to mind for me.

the kids are all right  

Given danah’s age, I would suspect that with a copyright date of 2014, she’s likely referencing the 2010 feature film The Kids are Alright.

However that film’s title is a cultural reference to a prior generation’s anthem in an eponymous song by The Who which appeared on the album My Generation. Interestingly the lyrics of the song of the same name on that album is one of their best known and is applicable to the ideas behind this piece as well.

given that I was in Nashville to talk with teens about how technology had changed their lives.  

I have to wonder who the sociologists were from the 60’s that interviewed teens about how the telephone changed their lives. Or perhaps the 70’s sociologist who interviewed kids about how cars changed their lives? Certainly it wasn’t George Lucas’ American Graffiti that informed everyone of the issues?

the internet?  

What if we replaced the words “the internet” in this piece with “the telephone” in the 1960-1970’s? I wonder how much of the following analysis would ring true to that time period? Are we just rehashing old ideas in new settings?

the more things had changed, the more they seemed the same.  

When they did look at their phones, they were often sharing the screen with the person sitting next to them, reading or viewing something together.  

Over history, most “teen technology” is about being able to communicate with their peers. From the handwritten letter via post, to the telephone, to the car, to the pager, and now the cell phone.

But many adults were staring into their devices intently, barely looking up  

Socially adults have created their longer term bonds and aren’t as socially attached, so while their teens are paying attention to others, they’re often doing something else: books, newspapers, and now cell phones.

few of my friends in the early 1990s were interested in computers at all.  

I would suspect for the time period they were all sending text messages via pager.

Unlike me and the other early adopters who avoided our local community by hanging out in chat-rooms and bulletin boards, most teenagers now go online to connect to the people in their community. Their online participation is not eccentric; it is entirely normal, even expected.  

There’s a broad disconnect between her personal experiences and those of the teens she’s studying. Based on my understanding, she was a teen on the fringes of her local community and eschewed the cultural norms–thus her perspective is somewhat skewed here. She sounds like she was at the bleeding edge of the internet while most of her more average peers were likely relying on old standbys like telephones, cars, and pagers. Thus not much has changed. I suspect that most teens have always been more interested in their local communities and peers. It’s danah boyd who was three standard deviations away from the norm who sought out ways to communicate with others like herself that felt marginalized. The internet made doing that far easier for her and future generations compared to those prior who had little, if any outlet to social interactions outside of the pale of their communities.

“If you’re not on MySpace, you don’t exist.”  

In prior generations, if you couldn’t borrow dad’s car, you didn’t exist…

Cross reference the 1955 cultural touchstone film Rebel Without a Cause. While the common perception is that James Dean, portraying Jim Stark, was the rebel (as seen in the IMDB.com description of the film “A rebellious young man with a troubled past comes to a new town, finding friends and enemies.”), it is in fact Plato, portrayed by Sal Mineo, who is the true rebel. Plato is the one who is the disruptive and rebellious youth who is always disrupting the lives of those around him. (As an aside, should we note Plato’s namesake was also a rebel philosopher in his time?!?)

Plato’s first disruption in the film is the firing of the cannon at school. While unstated directly, due to the cultural mores of Hollywood at the time, Plato is a closeted homosexual who’s looking to befriend someone, anyone. His best shot is the new kid before the new kid manages to find his place in the pecking order. Again Jim Stark does nothing in the film but attempt to fit into the social fabric around him, his only problem is that he’s the new guy. Most telling here about their social structures is that Jim has ready access to an automobile (a literal rolling social club–notice multiple scenes in the film with cars full of teenagers) while Plato is relegated to an old scooter (a mode of transport focused on the singleton–the transport of the outcast, the rebel).

The Rebel Plato, with his scooter--and a gun, no less!
Plato as portrayed by Sal Mineo in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Notice that as the rebel, he’s pictured in the middleground with a gun while his scooter protects him in the foreground. In the background is the automobile, the teens’ coveted source of freedom at the time.

The spaces may change, but the organizing principles aren’t different.  

👓 Ponderance 8/6 – EDU 522 | Cooper Kean

Read Ponderance 8/6 by Cooper Kean (mrkean.com)
I am still working out the kinks of the Hypothes.is website, so i had trouble connecting my reading to my annotations, (I had made a hard copy in a lined notebook to feel like I had stepped back in time). I think there is a very big difference between free reading and reading for a purpose. In my cl...

Highlights, Quotes, Annotations, & Marginalia

I believe, and I try to emphasize to the students, that annotation is a deeply personal activity, my annotations may look different from yours because we think differently.  

We often think differently even on different readings. Sometimes upon re-reading pieces, I’ll find and annotate completely different things than I would have on the first pass. Sometimes (often with more experience and new eyes) I’ll even disagree with what I’d written on prior passes.

This process reminds me a bit of the Barbell Method of Reading
August 06, 2018 at 04:39PM

They did that to the point where  there were more asterisks on the page than stars in the sky. Despite all this, the annotations did not mean anything to the students.  

Keeping in mind that different people learn in different ways, there’s another possible way of looking at this.

Some people learn better aurally than visually. Some remember things better by writing them down. I know a few synaesthetes who likely might learn better by using various highlighting colors. Perhaps those who highlight everything are actually helping their own brains to learn by doing this?

This said, I myself still don’t understand people who are highlighting everything in their books this way. I suspect that some are just trying and imitating what they’ve seen before and just haven’t learned to read and annotate actively.

Helping students to discover how they best learn can be a great hurdle to cross, particularly at a young age. Of course, this being said, we also need to help them exercise the other modalities and pathways to help make them more well-rounded and understanding as well.
August 06, 2018 at 04:47PM

📺 EDU 522: Daily Update VI: Sending A Manual Webmention | YouTube

Watched EDU 522: Daily Update VI: Sending A Manual Webmention from YouTube

A short video on how to send a manual webmention to a WordPress site that's using the Webmention plugin.

WordPress sites also have a separate visual endpoint that can be used manually. They’re typically found at http://example.com/wp-json/webmention/1.0/endpoint.

Other manual methods for both WordPress-based and non-WordPress sites include:
http://sendawebmention.com
http://mention-tech.appspot.com/

🎧 2ToPonder Episode One | INTERTEXTrEVOLUTION

Listened to 2ToPonder Episode One by Greg McVerryGreg McVerry from jgregorymcverry.com

My first attempt at a microcast:

Don’t forget that I’m listening to content in the class as well! Perhaps this will be your first listen webmention? 😉

For badges from static sites, you could simply use raw HTML on a page like Aaron Parecki outlines.1 The “sending” site doesn’t need to be able to send webmentions although the receiving site needs to be able to receive them. You can then use a service like http://mention-tech.appspot.com/ or https://telegraph.p3k.io/send-a-webmention to have your static site send the webmention for you!

References

1.
Parecki A. Sending your First Webmention from Scratch. Aaron Parecki. https://aaronparecki.com/2018/06/30/11/your-first-webmention. Published June 30, 2018. Accessed August 6, 2018.
I had almost forgotten that it was not so long ago that I’d outlined how I use Hypothesis to own my own highlights and annotations on my website. For the benefit of those in Dr. McVerry’s EDU522 course, I’ve included a link to it here.

For those who would like to see some examples you can find several below:
Specific stand-alone highlight posts
Specific stand-alone annotation posts
Other posts (typically reads) which I’ve highlighted and/or otherwise annotated things

I created the stand-alone posts using customized post kinds using some custom code for the Post Kinds Plugin.

I’ll begin tagging some of these pieces with the tag “backstage” for those in the EDU522 class that wish to follow along with how I’ve built or done certain things. You can subscribe to these future posts by adding /feed/ to the end of the URL for this tag archive.

To some extent my IndieWeb Collection/Research page has a lot of these “backstage” type posts for those who are interested. As part of the IndieWeb community, I’ve been documenting how and what I’ve been doing on my site for a while, hopefully these backstage posts will help other educators follow in my path without need to blaze as much of it anew for themselves.

Backstage posts are in actuality a very IndieWeb thing:

As we discover new ways to do things, we can document the crap out of them. —IndieWeb.org