When Teachers Demand to Be Co-Creators, Not Consumers – EdTech Researcher – Education Week

I’d like my students to be co-creators, too. The richest exchanges on day two of the Hewlett Open Educational Resources Grantee Meeting came from those who challenged the fundamental premises of the meeting. In designing the meeting, Berkman staff imagined three groups: Learners, Facilitators (teachers, librarians, coaches, educators, etc.), and Builders. They assumed a kind…

Context for Hayles, My Mother was a Computer (Ch 3 & 4)

My undergraduates are working their way through N. Katherine Hayle’s My Mother Was a Computer. They told me that they benefitted from the notes I wrote the other day, so I’m continuing the effort.   In Chapter 3, Hayles reminds us that the “worldviews of speech, writing, and code” are not merely theories, they are…

Woodward and Bernstein: Could the Web generation uncover a Watergate-type scandal? – The Washington Post

Yale journalism students say they could have easily broken the Watergate scandal themselves, simply by Googling for keywords. “This is Yale,” Bernstein said gravely. “That somehow the Internet was a magic lantern that lit up all events,” Woodward said. “And they went on to say the political environment would be so different that Nixon wouldn’t…

Creepy Treehouse

The canonical definition of “creepy treehouse” was written by Jared Stein in 2008. Here’s an excerpt: n. A place, physical or virtual (e.g. online), built by adults with the intention of luring in kids. Example: “Kids … can see a [creepy treehouse] a mile away and generally do a good job in avoiding them.” John…

Context for Halyes, My Mother Was a Computer

Hayles is an established authority on a humanities-centered approach to human-computer interactions, and My Mother Was a Computer (2005) is her third book on the topic. At times she writes with the expectation that her readers already know some foundational topics that she may have spent more time introducing in her previous books. In the…

The Next Time Someone Says the Internet Killed Reading Books, Show Them This Chart

Looks like this blogger presented the chart as an implicit argument about the quality of literature being read today, rather than the quantity. We were a civilized civilization. This was before the Internet and cable television, and so people had these, like, wholly different desires and attention spans. They just craved, craved, craved the erudition…

York Crucifixion of Christ (Toronto, 1977) 2 of 4

Christ willingly stretches himself down on the cross. Surprised, one of the soldiers observes: “Behold, himself has laid him down,/and bent his back unto this tree.” From one of the first web pages I created, for an academic article about a computer simulation of the epic medieval Christian pageant the York Corpus Christi Cycle. The…

Chicago State University tries to limit speech

According to my 9yo daughter, “It’s completely and utterly stupidulous.” Pancho McFarland, an associate professor of sociology at Chicago State, fears the policy could restrict all types of communications by professors, including speaking engagements. “It will put a chilling effect on our ability to speak in a number of venues,” he said. “It is part…

There are giant feathered tyrannosaurs now… right?

Regular readers will perhaps know that I (and others) have been saying for a while that Mesozoic Earth was not the global hothouse that many have long assumed. There’s evidence for cool continental interiors and poles during parts of the Jurassic and Cretaceous (Barron & Washington 1982, , Sloan & Barron 1990, Sellwood et al.…

3 Major Publishers Sue Open-Education Textbook Start-Up – Wired Campus – The Chronicle of Higher Education

“Whether in the lecture hall or in a textbook, anyone is obviously free to teach the subjects biology, economics, or psychology, and can do so using, creating, and refining the pedagogical materials they think best, whether consisting of ‘open source educational content’ or otherwise,” it reads. “But by making unauthorized ‘shadow-versions’ of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works,…