Feel free to make a comment. The first one I have to approve, then you are cleared for others. Below are links of stuff I found interesting this week.
After my two posts about my problems with Amazon, I am looking into ways to save my content locally. My faith in “the cloud” has been seriously shaken. The EFF and Cory Doctorow are right. Once it happens to you (losing access to YOUR information), it changes how you think and feel. Take precautions out there. The best one so far is how to back up your Kindle books. Once you get your Kindle books on your computer, you need to strip out the DRM (Digital Rights Management). I am looking into that now, and it will probably involve Calibre software. More on that later.
If you are soured on the news from last year, read 99 Good News Stories (FutureCrunch), a list about our world, our climate, our people and our economy. What is a computer? This will stretch your concept. And I am not embroidering the truth here. Space-based entertainment, a way to impress your partner. A company in Japan rocketed up a satellite full of metal balls. They can release it so it makes meteors, on cue. Stories. We think in stories. We tell stories to remember, but they control our conception. See how stories work. Roma, the greatest movie of the year, maybe of the decade. Watch it, read my post, then read Guillermo de Toro’s 10 thoughts on Twitter about his compatriot’s work (Careful. Spoilers). David Brooks is a columnist but did some teaching a while ago. He writes about emotion and learning. Facebook has a thing where you post your own picture from 10 years ago and from now. There is no ulterior motive, right? (Wired). Nicolas Carr (famous for the book about how Google is making us stupid) reviews Shoshana Zuboff’S book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, which looks like a better read. He makes it frightening, but this time it should be (Los Angeles Review of Books). Amy Brooks has no arms or legs. But she has a website and YouTube channel and shows us what persistence is like. Learning styles have been pretty well debunked by psychologists, but teachers haven’t listened and continue to hang on to the theory. Is this a Neuromyth? New learning and teaching for 2019 includes a report by Open University on 10 new ideas. I like the ones about Place-based learning, roots of empathy, action (not active) learning, and am curious about drone-based learning and virtual studios. 45-page pdf. Retirement communities on campus is an idea that could revolutionize Japan. It is already being done in the US, but it ain’t cheap (Bryan Alexander). Good listeners (and voice analyzers) get information from more than just words. See how much you can and can’t hide about your feelings (BBC). Are you on task? Are your students? The problem is that sometimes being on task is not such a good thing.
Tools: Brainstorming at tricider recommended to me by a friend. Group decision-making with Loomio, it works. Free for groups of 5 or less. Spoken word LP albums which you can listen to online. Examples: Voices of History, with leaders speaking in crisis, Martin Luther King, Ronald Reagan. Not just English, either. (BoingBoing). Studs Terkel is the best interviewer of the 20th century (Terry Gross can have the 21st century). The archives have 1,200 interviews. Studs lived in Chicago, my home town and the most American city in the US.
Coming: A post on Bandersnatch and Interactive Fiction. Soon, I swear!
