531 Matching Annotations
  1. Jul 2019
    1. It requires me to make fewer assumptions about the audience.

      Ditching our assumptions is a huge challenge, especially because we don't always realize that we're even making assumptions

  2. Jun 2019
    1. Assessment and reassessment are part of any well-designed game because playersneed feedback to know if goals and tasks are complete. The fact that the player hasreached particular goals in a game could be in itself a useful assessment of theplayer’s status and learning needs.

      Speaks to the importance of recognition.

    1. game-based learning processes are demanding on teachers, requiring them to take on many different roles, each of which requires a specific skillset. Integrating games into formal educational settings is a laborious and complex process. This is partly due to the fact that schools are not structured for game-based learning, making the process an up-hill struggle, but it is also due to games not being sufficiently accommodating for the needs of teachers or the many characteristics an educational context may have. For game-based learning to move forward, teachers need to have a better understanding of games and how to work with them, and game creators need to understand teachers’ working conditions and know how to accommodate for the varying characteristics of formal educational settings with their products.

      Importance of empathy for game designers and of understanding of expanded roles for teachers. Both knowing what they are getting into will impact success factors.

    2. The skillsets needed to perform the roles well were also found to be quite diverse as they involved technological know-how, gaming literacy, subject matter expertise, and naturally a strong pedagogical foundation

      It takes a lot more than a game idea for teachers to be effective in supporting game-based learning

    3. The heterogeneity of a K-12 classroom as a gaming audience cannot be understated. Each individual student has their own levels of gaming literacy, gaming preferences, subject matter knowledge, motor skills, motivations to play and learn, socio-economical background, and general interests.

      Just because they are young does not ensure gaming literacy.

    1. His tie formed a knot that can only be described as spectacular.

      If a man's tie knot can get a sentence in an NYT profile, perhaps it is a life skill worth teaching kids who want to gain any advantage they can. I wonder if there might be a Badge for that?

  3. Apr 2019
    1. we ask: how much time do kids spend with media?

      Do we agree that this is the "wrong question" to be asking? Is it about how much time we spend or is it about the how we engage during that time?

    1. Social-emotional learning (SEL) skills can help us build communities that foster courageous conversations across difference so that our students can confront injustice, hate, and inequity. SEL refers to the life skills that support people in experiencing, managing, and expressing emotions, making sound decisions, and fostering interpersonal relationships.

      Language to describe SEL in concise, digestible and meaningful ways is super helpful and itself an overlooked tool in leading SEL.

    1. Thinking strategically about who to include and what their role will be is the difference between “a badging initiative” and competency-based learning

      The authors already advocated for putting in the time to get this right and this is a strategy that will definitely create grind and speed bumps. But including diverse and even unexpected stakeholders is an investment in going slow now in order to go fast later. Especially in the case of pushback, I'd rather have it early from someone who is engaged as a co-designer than later from the same person whose role is instead that of defiant resister to change.

    2. not merely assigned for compliance purposes

      This is a risk factor for any system attempting to help people learn and grow. Specific to digital badge credentials, this approach is a miss because it fails to harness the transformative potential of badges and instead recycle a strategy that we know doesn't work and simply dress it up in the sexy new suit of badges.

    3. Here are some questions worth asking:

      Wise to take this sort of ecosystem approach, not just badge system approach

    4. may see the process as unnecessary, overly gamified or juvenile

      One thing I've noticed people doing (and adopted myself) to inexpensively address this is to avoid using the word 'badge' in isolation from the word 'credential'.

    5. encouraging learners to pursue badges and not skills

      Important point here. They don't have to be mutually exclusive however, and one challenge is in marrying these two.

    1. As white people, are we guilty of the sins of our forefathers? No, I don’t think so. But are we responsible for them? Yes, I believe we are.

      This is put so well! A lot of us well-meaning white people are struggling with the discomfort of owning racism and for a lot it comes down to not understanding the rhetorical point. Korver really makes the argument conceptually accessible here.

    2. Not just for our own actions, but also for the ways that our inaction can create a “safe” space for toxic behavior

      History has shown us the consequences of silence and not standing up to hate. Inaction in the face of hate is often just as bad as celebrating it because it goes unchecked.

    3. There’s an elephant in the room that I’ve been thinking about a lot over these last few weeks. It’s the fact that, demographically, if we’re being honest: I have more in common with the fans in the crowd at your average NBA game than I have with the players on the court

      This cuts back to when Korver reports other players sharing they felt like they were "in a zoo"

  4. Mar 2019
    1. place– based learning

      Does "place-based" have to be physical? Can it be a mixed reality or even exclusively a digital space?

    2. perspective recognition, concerned students’ ability to examine contro-versial issues from multiple perspectives

      Why might we agree/disagree that this is a core skill of today's media literacy landscape?

    3. Not only were students involved in co– designing their learning experiences (e.g., by helping decide the places and issues we studied), they also had autonomy when deter-mining the content and goals of their final designs

      If the students designed the content and goals, do we think it fell short of, met or exceeded the rigor of what this unit would have looked like in a more traditional learning setting?

    4. Second, students hoped the story would lead to an immediate action, with visitors making an informed decision whether or not to sign the petition

      This is where we get into Connected Civics

    5. AR

      AR = Augmented Reality

    6. Fieldwork

      You will be doing this for your DML Case Study

    1. Phones aren’t necessarily disruptive to learning, simply disruptive to the order of the typical School classroom

      Do we agree with this? Are phones the problem or the learning structures that fail to involve phones?

    2. a hierarchical model of delivery and adoption has narrow bandwidth; if change comes from the top, that limits the diversity possible of what is delivered to the masses. It is as true with educational materials as it is for television broadcasts.

      Traditional, top-down delivery of learning will always struggle to be flexible compared to what we can do when learners drive the learning itself

    1. Simplicity of storytelling. Writing about learning too often hides meaning within specialist jargon. Myself, the other editors, and our authors have tried our best to avoid this trap, describing the relevant goals and approaches in each project in everyday language as much as possible. These stories should be accessible to those without significant technological expertise or degrees in Education

      INTE 2500 students: THIS RIGHT HERE. When you are writing for this course, be sure to include what the rubric grades you on AND strive for a simple, storytelling voice that engages readers!

    2. Avoid authoritarianism

      Is this a service or disservice to readers? Should experts be taking a step back and allow readers absolute control of learning and interpretation or should they assert their authority?

    3. t is refreshing to see people working together across traditional divides.

      What are examples that you've noted of this in your own learning experiences?

    4. Mobile media learning includes the instant and ongoing connection of handheld devices to online information and communication for personal growth and increased agency within professions and communities of practice

      How might we re-phrase this in our own words?

  5. Feb 2019
    1. attempting to solve this by focusing on supporting titles that are low cost or free to play, that already have more diverse audiences and — importantly — we have decided to focus on playing a collection of games as a triathlon instead of a single game during each esports tournament

      Good to know there are active attempts at solutions already. Hope even more ideas rise to surface!

    2. If esports is the new football, then internet bandwidth is the new football stadium. Without a big enough field, schools aren’t even able to play the game, let alone attract the right players, recruiters and donor funds

      Great analogy.

    3. Esports tournaments can be decided in fractions of seconds as one player shoots, jumps or races to their goal. Schools without adequate bandwidth, with slower computers and without access to premium esports titles (some of which may cost $60 per license) all find themselves at a disadvantage

      This could mean that students in rural areas with slower internet are also potentially left behind.

    4. ll of these are awarded as merit scholarships, thereby skirting around Title IX protections and oversight for the student athletes involved. There is also little public information available on the financial details of university esports portfolios

      So access isn't just about socioeconomic conditions but gender as well.

    5. nearly 400 million viewers worldwide that is growing by leaps and bounds every year

      Huge number of viewers in 2019. Where will this be in 2025?

  6. Jan 2019
    1. employ a longer response ‘wait time’ habit before commenting or liking; take a break altogether from liking things on social media (no likes, stars, or thumbs ups)only posting comments that ask curiosity-driven questions

      I'm curious to learn from reflections of anyone who attempts these actions!

    1. With $50 million going to people who do not have contact with students, the data belies the district’s branding of “Students First” and “Team DPS.”

      The bias that has been cited by critics wishing to undermine the general argument of this article (and similar articles, blogs, social media claims, etc), is that figures being shared for expenditures on non-teaching staff are misleading because they include funding positions such as nurses who are in schools every day providing vital services directly to students. I believe this is critique is factual.

      On the other hand, there are claims that the total amount spent on administrative staff is dramatically under-reported as DPS classifies certain staff as school-based who in fact serve in roles that are central admin in nature. Whether this is intentional deception or aligned with standard accounting practices probably depends on who you ask. Either way, I believe this claim is also true. At the risk of offering annotations that qualify as "what aboutism" I include the point here because it is possible that the amounts that critics cite as being spent on staff that do not interact with students may actually be significantly less than what DPS is actually spending.

    2. in early 2008, there were only three people handling press relations for the district. There are now eleven–making $700,000 a year. The full communications shop numbers thirty-seven, with a payroll of nearly $2 million.

      In an age of shrinking News Room budgets, there is huge power to having a strong Communications department as reporters of local news can be reduced to writers who are expected to crank out an unrealistic amount of content and therefore rely on press releases for turnkey stories. I have first-hand knowledge of this dynamic: when I worked a marketing internship, I saw my exact language appear in the local paper under a reporter's byline multiple times.

      While there is clear benefit to the District's administration when it comes to exerting ownership of the public narrative, it is worth asking how this serves students and whether it is in fact in the public's best interest to use public funds in order to manipulate the news coverage the public relies on for learning about the district's efficacy in educating area youth.

  7. Dec 2018
    1. This research is methodologically different from previous research as it introduces the use of a Twitter Direct Messaging Interview protocol, an innovation that may be of use to researchers in many other fields

      Interesting protocol. Appreciate the diagram being included.

    2. To evaluate membership to a community of practice by educators on Twitter, McLeay (2008) used three terms defined by Wenger (1998): mutual engage-ment (the negotiations among the members of the com-munity and how this participation binds them together), joint enterprise (the shared understanding of their goals), and shared repertoire (a set of communal resources used to reach the goals of the shared enterprise)

      Community of Practice criteria. Interesting

    3. although they were not aware of being read by students or management, they were aware of the possibility and maintained a very professional tone in their tweets. Being in a public arena had an effect on what the interviewees tweet, with many stating that they were careful about what they tweeted or retweeted

      Is this a condition we should accept or are their speech concerns that are being unfairly forfeited?

    4. stated that they would describe the #MFLtwitterati as a community, citing reasons such as a common purpose, support, shared resources, and dialogue.

      This aspect of "community" is crucial. Most hashtags on twitter are temporary townhalls that are mostly occupied by people with megaphones clamoring for attention. They are absent dialogue and engagement, and have no aims of sustained exchanges.

    5. he concluded that the #MFLtwitterati feel they are part of a large group of like-minded colleagues where they can share their classroom experiences and be supported when experimenting with new ideas; can reflect on their own practice through informal discussion with others and feel they have become better teachers as a result, always open to new ways to improve; find it eas-ier to keep up to date with the latest resources, national news, government documents, Ofsted initiatives, links to useful blog posts, etc.;

      List goes on. These are important Community of Practice characteristics. For INTE2500, examples here align with discourses exhibited within affinity spaces

    6. highlighted the access that Twitter provides to the perspectives and experience of veteran teachers. Pieterse and Peled (2014) set up a Twitter practice where teachers in training shared experiences with fellow students and mentors with very positive results, as did Lord and Lomicka (2014)

      This might be a transformational aspect of the Twitter PLN: pre-service and early career educators have expanded access to veteran educators while all educators experience democratized access to being the ones offering supports. In many cases, our ideas will be received and interpreted on their merit alone, as those reading might not always take the time to click and view the age, experience, location or other demographic details about the person sharing their ideas.

    7. list the following steps to becoming an educator curator: finding content, selecting (depending on quality, relevance and originality), edito-rialising (by contextualizing, summarizing, and/or add-ing your own perspective), arranging, creating, sharing, engaging with others, and tracking that engagement.

      The editorializing is an important piece to intentionally probe. A lot of content gets RT'd based on a headline for an article that the curators haven't actually read. This "guided by gut intuition" style of curation is a real thing whether we like it or not, so the real question is "so what?" Also, the final point about "tracking that engagement" is worth exploring: what role does a curator's self-interest in measuring impact play in assessing their curation?

    8. Over 4.2 million daily tweets are reported to be from educators (Hill 2014), who share their work

      These are 2014 numbers so volume is likely far greater today. This speaks to Twitter as an affinity space for educators as being a very large one.

  8. Nov 2018
    1. ngagement in participatory politics was equitably distributed across racial groups

      Often times, race does play a role. Why do we think participatory politics seems to be unimpacted by race?

    2. youth who infrequently engage in such interest-driven online activities reported engaging in 1.2 political acts in the past year, while those who were highly involved in nonpolitical interest-driven activities averaged 4.5 political acts (

      Why do we think this is?

    3. what appears on the surface to be a matter simply of humor or fun (playing games or circulating memes on Facebook) may in fact be an appropriation of pop culture for social change (taking advantage of the networked popularity of games and memes on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr to circulate and raise awareness of a low-resourced organization

      So, does activism need to "look like" activism?

    4. Many youth, for example, participate in online communities that share interests in hobbies, sports, or comparable topics often associated with popular culture.#This participation provides them with opportunities to create, critique, and share work while expanding their social networks and developing a variety of online participatory skills (see Ito et al. 2009, Jenkins et al. 2009). Interestingly, studies of o!ine extracurricular activities indicate that such interest-driven activities provide youth with opportunities to develop civic skills—how to speak in front of a group, how to plan collective undertakings, how to mobilize others—and productive norms of behavior within organizations and social networks.#These, in turn, have been found to promote later civic and political engagement (

      Online vs Offline participation and consequences

    5. hat is, while seeking out political information is important, we do not regard consumption of information as a form of participation. It is when one circulates political information or shares one’s perspectives on it that the activity becomes participatory. I

      This is an important distinction. How do we know when we have gone from consumption to participation?

    1. affinity group. Fellow artists? Check! Cat people? Check! Nintendo fans? Check! It helps getting feedback or reading people’s comments & reactions to my work.

      This would be better presented as bullet points and you could dive a little deeper with examples, media and links to each.

    2. tarting an art blog

      Link???

    3. link

      This is a place where you could include a screen shot of the tumblr post that taught you this.

    4. browse through the forums until I find a solution

      What is this an example of? What terms does this class use to describe these relationships?

    5. majority

      citation?

    1. older literacies

      Explain how!

    2. Outside sources

      In Mr. Blume's class, did you find other outside sources? YouTube? Articles? Blogs? Noticing things from class in movies you watched with friends?

    3. YouTube

      Good opening paragraph. Please proof read! Also, you take a pass on including citations from our readings. Perhaps revisit the quote cards from the first weeks.

  9. Oct 2018
    1. Participation Gap

      When you were in high school, did you see this play out in classes when assignments required students to be online even though different students had different levels of access to be online?

    2. Low-income and less-educatedcitizens, as well as recent immigrants and those less proficient in English, have far less voice in the political process

      What do the authors think is needed to help ensure that low income and less-educated citizens have a voice in their process?

    3. It makes sense for policymakers and educators to amplify such efforts and to be sure that the civic dimensions of media literacy (learning how to critically assess media, to produce compelling and informed media tied to societal issues, to engage in dialogs in a respectful manner, for example) are included in these efforts

      Do we agree with making this Literacy a priority? How should it be done?

    4. hen the video games provide civic learning opportunities by focusing on societal issues or placing the player in the role of a political leader, playing video games is strongly associated with offline civic and political activity and commitments

      What might be policy recommendations for schools and governments based on this finding?

    5. Games for Change
    6. more likely to seek online sources of political information, to give money to a charity, to beinterested in politics, to protest or demonstrate, and say that they had persuaded someone to vote in a particular way

      (quote begins on prior page) So what's the difference here? The survey found that game play is NOT predictive of engagement but that this kind of game play does make an impact. What do we think is going on here?

    7. This supports the idea that as youth have opportunities to learn how to engage in online, they become more likely to do so
    8. One interesting initiative is “The Change Society” –a subgroup of older teens in the YouMedia fold who work with one of the organization’s mentors to create media pieces (music, poetry, video) with a focus on civic engagement.
    9. we found that young persons’ non-political, interest-driven participationwas a strong predictor of their civic participation

      So to get people involved in cicic participation, where does this suggest we start?

    10. we found that young persons’ non-political, interest-driven participationwas a strong predictor of their civic participation

      So to get people involved in cicic participation, where does this suggest we start?

    1. Nerdfighters are a community of mil-lions that has grown up around video blogging brothers John and Hank Green and definesitself as working together to “decrease world suck.”
    2. Not all forms of participatory politics are tiedto a deeply felt interest; signing an online petition or liking a cause of Facebook areexpressions of civic agency and potentially impactful (Earl,2013), though not necessarilytied to a personal interest, social bond, or affinity network

      Important distinction here.

    3. As pictured inFigure 1, “Connected civics” is a way to describe the learning that takesplace at the intersection of three realms of activity: young people’s agency within peercultures and public spheres; their deeply felt identities, interests and affinities; and civicengagement and opportunity.

      3 intersecting realms of activity that make up Connected Civics

    4. We want to be clear here that by highlighting affinity as a driving force among, forexample, fans of Harry Potter advocating for fair labor practices and, for another exam-ple, undocumented youth fighting for their own rights and dignity, we do not mean to cre-ate an equivalency between the two (

      "Affinity" will drive connected civics participation AND it's important to recognize that there are significant differences between the affinities. They aren't all the same and even when they are aimed at making the world a better place, we need to be careful with comparisons that can lead to weighing or valuing the efforts as this can quickly lead to problematic and harmful practices.

    5. efficacious

      fancy way of saying "effective"

    6. Young people continue to value their interestsin slam poetry, for example, or gaming,or comics, or reading and writing back into wildly popular texts likeHunger Gamesfortheir own sake and not just to the extent that these activities advance a civic or politicalagenda

      So you can be something of an activist even if you don't consider yourself to be an activist or your goals and motivations have nothing to do with connected civics. What are the implications then for personal responsibility? If I'm not trying to be an activist but others look to me in that light, do I have a responsibility in my own actions to consider how they might reflect on the community I'm (unintentionally) serving?

    7. As articulated within the framework of participatorypolitics, these activities can involve: production and circulation of information about amatter of public import; carrying out dialogue and feedback related to that issue; investi-gating topics that are consequential to the community; using that information to holdaccountable people in power; and mobilizing others on questions of justice, rights, andequality

      Good explanation here of "participatory politics"

    8. Simplycirculating civic content among peers does not necessarily do much of anything for thepeople who hit “share,” nor does it necessarily advance the set of concerns they aim toaddress (though it can, and sharing information can sometimes be anything but simpleand carry serious risk). The overwhelming dataflow that results can sometimes blur spe-cific political messages and distract from the arduous work of organizing sustained, con-nected action; in other words, as Jodi Dean (2005) has argued, the waves of content canstart to feel like part of a never-ending stream. Thus, we need to actively support learningand consequential connections between spaces of youth cultural production, their agency,and their civic and political worlds

      Are the authors asserting academic observation or their own hopes here? They seem to advocate for more than just trying to create a flood of viral content in order to make a difference that is meaningful. This was written over 10 years ago...do we think the reality of today confirms their view?

    9. Through remix and other forms of media appropriation, popularculture fans and other consumers can exercise citizenship and create frameworks foractivism

      Think political memes.

    10. Young people producing thesepractices are often expressing and in some cases organizing resistance to institutions andideologies they deem problematic, obsolete, or oppressive

      A lot of connected civics isn't just about supporting what we are with; it's about organizing opposition to what we're against.

    11. identifying the features of environments that build consequential connections ratherthan the “in the head” work (for example, knowing who controls the judiciary branch orwhich party holds the majority in the U.S. Senate) that very often draws attention withindebates about the state of civic education or youth political participation

      Connected Civics isn't about knowing facts about civic institutions or laws, it's about actually doing something and believing that it's meaningful.

    12. 3. by developingcross-cutting infrastructure, young peopleoften working in collabora-tion with adultsinstitutionalize their efforts in ways that make a loosely affiliated net-work into something that is socially organized, self-sustaining, and recognized as such bythose outside the original interest-driven community

      It's almost like saying that connected civics efforts that possess this "cross cutting infrastructure" can help participants gain greater sense of meaning. As the effort grows beyond and outside of the original community, participants may begin to feel that they are having a greater impact and making a real interest, which itself will drive continued and increased participation.

    13. 2. throughshared civicpractices, young people lower barriers to entry and multiply opportunities for young peo-ple to engage in civic and political action that can be temporary or more lasting in nature

      Making involvement easy for people with commitment issues

    14. We propose “connected civics” as a form of learning that mobilizes young people’sdeeply felt interests and identities in the service of achieving the kind of civic voice andinfluence that is characteristic of participatory politics. Of course there is nothing newabout the idea that interest, affinity, and identity are drivers of political action, but toooften when it comes to learning, we can default to civic educational experiences that failto tap the kinds of cultural practices young people produce through their everyday sym-bolic expression

      Does this feel different than Civics learning from your own middle or high school classes?

    15. Those whostart off with civic and political commitments bolster those efforts by linking them to par-ticipatory culture.

      What might an example of this look like?

    16. same skills and dispositions areindispensible within “participatory politics”

      Do you agree that your everyday online activities are actually helping you to build skills that will be valuable in the realm of participatory politics?

    17. hey can “hang out” together while physicallyapart, sharing photos, videos, captions and comments all throughout the day and night;and they can “geek out” together by swapping ideas, techniques and critiques related toprojects that tap their deepest interests and aspirations

      We read this in class earlier in the semester so I hope it's familiar. Also, note that technologies allow us to be together even when physically apart. Where have we seen examples of this in the real world and why does it matter?

    18. young people todayare engaging in new forms of politics that are profoundly participator

      It's not enough to know about politics, young people want to be involved.

    1. The students have first to gain an under-standing of where the food comes from and make decisions about what can be on the menu at what part of the year. During the last two weeks of the course, students create lunch for the entire school, applying math and science concepts

      Learning is unsheltered by the silo of a given content area. Here, students are hooked on the food yet meaningfully apply concepts of math and science (plus marketing, history, research skills and writing!)

  10. Sep 2018
    1. 400 Fortune 500 CEOs. They found that 75% of long-term college and career success depends upon developing soft skills.

      Unclear methodology but even if the numbers are off, it's clear that leaders at our biggest companies value these skills that, right now, are not reliably communicated as a part of learner narratives.

    1. But you can see how other editorial dynamic insertion frameworks can be designed and executed. For example, in theory, the tech allows for better targeting, and as such, if you could reliably identify the location of a listener, you could deliver editorial programming or journalistic information to that person specific to her city, town, or state

      There's a lot of power inherent in this and we are wise to pay attention to how that power is used. Will we observe it deployed for good? Will the exercise of these powers be intentional and self-aware? Will average users have agency in determining how technology like this impacts them? Will average users even be afforded awareness of when they are impacted?

      As emergent as Information Literacy is as a concept and societal imperative, it will be a steep challenge to keep up with rapid technological evolutions like this in order to empower us as content consumers to at least possess awareness around how and why we are targeted.

  11. Aug 2018
    1. But if I'm challenging myself in the studio, I want to challenge you as well.

      @inte2500 As consumers, readers are historically aware of creators attempts to push them, to challenge them, to grow them in some direction. How might pushing this intention across borders to other mediums like music, gaming, etc, reflect the "new ethos stuff" of New Literacies?

    1. Novice, Advanced Beginner, Competent, Proficient and Expert

      Raises consideration: pivot from age-band system to proficiency band system? Add in proficiency to existing age-band construct?

    2. meaningfully applied regardless of age/grade

      Validates APS approach.

    3. 20 core skills

      Adopting these will look very different but digging in we can see that a transition would be minimally disruptive for teachers we serve bc of how similar they are.

  12. May 2018
    1. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here and it’s getting more sophisticated every day. But AC – Artificial Creativity – barely exists.

      My understanding is that AI is informed by rules and patterns. Creativity relies on pushing beyond the fences that are limiting constructs to our thinking. In a sense, it is at its best when the rules are broken and patterns not adhered to.

    1. We knew that we were tied to him, that his physical destruction was our physical destruction, because if the black God, who made the zombies dance, who brokered great wars, who transformed stone to light, if he could not be beautiful in his own eyes, then what hope did we have—mortals, children—of ever escaping what they had taught us, of ever escaping what they said about our mouths, about our hair and our skin, what hope did we ever have of escaping the muck?

      I remember being a kid and wrestling with Charles Barkley declaring, "I am not a role model." He had a point, I thought, that he didn't ask to be a role model so why should he have to be? Why couldn't he just be a great basketball player? Coates, in this passage, helps me see why. Some people who reach greatness don't just reach greatness, they embody the very hope of achieving greatness for whole communities. These greats don't ask for their station but there it is, along with the accompanying responsibilities, and it doesn't matter whether or not it's fair, people are counting on them.

  13. Jan 2018
    1. Studies have shown that over 90% of the media’s coverage

      Citation? Especially given the context of this entire page, one might expect a commitment to faithfully demonstrate factual integrity.

  14. Nov 2017
    1. It is a threat to AAPL itself, because they are behind the other giants when it comes to big data collection and its uses

      This seems presumptuous. The company that was until recently the most valuable in the world has been in a lot of pockets for a decade collecting tons of data. To think Apple would have taken a complete pass on operationalizing that data strikes me as wishful thinking.

  15. Sep 2017
    1. The major situations for growth mindset are: When we do not know an answer When we make error When we experience failure When we are anxious.

      Moments that are prime for "Growth Mindset"

    1. having all students select an online game, app, or learning module from a pre-determined list is not really student choice—after all, someone else curated the list. While it’s a step in the right direction, allowing students time to explore and make choices for themselves bears a stronger connection to personalization

      How do we reconcile student choice to make learning personal with frequent need to scaffold choice (in this case, through curation) for learners who are still in effect learning how to learn and need support?

  16. Apr 2017
    1. “I got a badge and I shared it on my Twitter account, and people came out of the woodwork,” she said, adding that, “having IBM’s name on there was important.”

      Real world validation of ENDORSED credentials

  17. Mar 2017
    1. Corporate thought leaders have now realized that it is a much greater challenge to actually apply that data. The big takeaways in this topic are that data has to be seen to be acknowledged, tangible to be appreciated, and relevantly presented to have an impact. Connecting data on the macro level across an organization and then bringing it down to the individual stakeholder on the micro level seems to be the key in getting past the fact that right now big data is one thing to have and quite another to unlock.

      Simply possessing pools of data is of limited utility. It's like having a space ship but your only access point to it is through a pin hole in the garage wall that lets you see one small, random glint of ship; you (think you) know there's something awesome inside but that sense is really all you've got. Margaret points out that it has to be seen (data visualization), it has to be tangible (relevant to audience) and connected at micro and macro levels (storytelling). For all of the machine learning and AI that helps us access the spaceship, these key points are (for now) human-driven.

  18. Feb 2017
  19. Jan 2017
    1. we realize that we need to connect purpose to student data.

      Important to consider what student data is used in seeking connections. If a teacher is credentialed for an SEL competency, for example, do we seek validation in students' reading scores or other metrics like student surveys or cortisol levels?

    2. requires completion

      I'm excited to learn from them how they avoided this feeling like "seat time" equivalent

    3. This sometimes made it difficult to give timely and effective feedback. Gathering work and managing feedback can be a chal-lenge for any teacher, whether in the classroom or in professional learning, but being able to anticipate crunch times could have helped us facilitate our workflows more efficiently

      Begs the question: in designing the process, how do we ensure the needs we are addressing are those of our adult learners WHILE creating sustainable implementation practices? (In other words, how do we check ourselves and designing as though the evaluator is the primary user?)

    4. a struc-ture that includes established target dates for submitting work is also necessary

      Is this objective fact or a subjective call?

    5. hose levels are broken down into smaller chunks or modules.

      Granular approach,,,

    6. to appeal to the intrinsic motivation that autonomy provides

      Worth being aware that this is a choice; how we appeal to intrinsic (and/or extrinsic) motivation is something about which we can and should be intentional.

    7. symbols that represent discrete academic achievements or valued skills not represented by course outcomes or a degree.

      Important to note that this is not a redundant effort that simply gives a new name to a familiar practice; aim is to notice and name skills and achievements currently absent from the narratives of who we are as learners and achievers.

    8. aspirations

      What's good for the goose... We expect teachers to help students articulate and plan for achieving their dreams. Intrigued by their approach to using Badges to help do the same for teachers

    1. performative publishing

      This term is new to me. It really catches my attention while at the same time making me wonder whether there is such a thing as a published text that is not performative. Is the act of publishing - even if as an annotation in the margins of a niche academic journal where it is unlikely to ever be discovered by another set of eyes - inherently performative, regardless of author intent and potentiality for audience?

  20. Dec 2016
    1. Comments sections have served this purpose in the past to an extent, but we might think of web annotation as an evolution of (rather than proxy for) page-bottom commentary.

      This strikes me as a key factor in web annotation reaching the mainstream, especially in education. When an educator asks, "How is this significantly different from leaving comments at the end of an article?" it will be helpful to have a concise, comprehensible and convincing response. When I speak about this, I focus on the "contexting" that web annotation facilitates and the potentiality for authentic audience and dialogue. The problem with both of these points is that a critic can (rightly) respond that existing page-bottom commentary can already allow a degree of both of these.

    2. However we may define open in the context of web annotation

      Just as there is ambiguity around defining a word as simple as open this conversation hints at an emerging struggle with a shared meaning of annotation. As Remi points out, the traditional view of annotation is as a tool acting in service of reading comprehension. What we are talking about goes beyond that.

      While Merriam Webster and other disseminators of meaning can add extra definitions to their dictionaries under the word 'annotation', I wonder if an easier path to meaning making might be through using different words. There's a risk that it only leads to complications and muddying the waters over semantics but is it worth considering? I describe it as uptexting (not sure if I thought of that on my own or borrowed from someone else). I've heard University of Texas' Carl Blyth describe this as Social Reading and am drawn to this term because it captures the community aspect and might be less confusing because it doesn't seek to reappropriate an existing, commonly held definition.

    3. allowed students to attach a preset (though variable) set of terms to specific selections of text. It touts itself as a critical reading tool but in fact delimits the variability of a reader’s response to a text, not to mention a teacher’s approach to textual analysis.

      Allow me to push back a bit here. While the "canned responses" could, in some environments, build fences around student creativity and expression, it does not have to. From my limited play in the Ponder sandbox, I noticed that students could click on the canned responses OR offer their own annotation just like with Hypothes.is (though I am not sure if the annotation is limited to text). Also, I perceive the canned responses as allowing for scaffolding for younger readers and second language learners.

    1. Prestige networks replicate prestige.

      This is such a powerful point. I have a degree from a prestigious university on my CV and it serves me well as a networking device: it raises eyebrows, has gotten me interviews and occasionally impressed others.

      While the author leans on this point seemingly to the detriment of Badges/Credentials, I see this key factor in inequity as being precisely why we DO need Badges and Credentials as they can serve to communicate to colleges and employers that earners deserve their consideration (even if they didn't attend a prestigious college). For example, the free language learning app Duolingo is planning to offer English proficiency exams with the hope that they will be able to provide for a fraction of the current cost a trusted and validated credential that college applicants from outside of the United States can use when applying to U.S. colleges.

    2. “Of the 11.6 million jobs added since the rebound took hold in 2010, about 99 percent – or 11.5 million jobs – were filled by people with either at least some college education, a bachelor’s degree or better.”

      For the lip service we pay to "college and/or career ready," this stat should give us pause, especially when informing students and parents about their educational options.

      One contrarian question I do have to this data point: is part of the low numbers due to lack of skilled applicants? In applied manufacturing, for example, we hear about a surplus of jobs and a shortage of skilled labor so I wonder whether the 99% of jobs going to those with college education is at least a bit misleading on that account.

    3. What’s a scam, what’s a crime, and – despite increasing tuition rates and growing student loan debt – what’s a “real university”?

      This is a really profound question and has me doing a lot of thinking. Even more so because I thought this line would be an entry point to discussing the positive potential impacts of Credentials, not a jumping off point to a stance that is far more critical of Credentials.

  21. Nov 2016
    1. relationship between literacy and documenting learning

      Interesting! I normally think of literacy as more of an act of consumption and now she is challenging my thinking to expand to include documenting (and curating?!?!) as anessential element of literacy.

  22. Sep 2016
    1. Quiver

      Another great resource for ss to actually own the VR content creation is Aurasma

    2. Duolingo

      Duolingo is cool on so many levels. After watching the founder's TED Talk, you'll start to see why!

    3. To be clear, that free time doesn’t have to be spent online. Although the suggestions I’ll make here are, great alternatives can include drawing, creating with Legos or Play Doh, or more!

      Matt is spot on here that this approach to learning can be powerful in both physical and digital learning spaces.

    4. To be clear, that free time doesn’t have to be spent online. Although the suggestions I’ll make here are, great alternatives can include drawing, creating with Legos or Play Doh, or more!

      There is such a huge opportunity for us to help learners shift their thinking of this structure from "free time" to "self-directed" or "inquiry time"...the freedom is not in the time but in the permission learners have to shape the learning.

  23. May 2016
    1. Hall of Fame

      A player must be retired for at least 5 years before becoming eligible to be voted into the Hall of Fame.

    2. look at guys my size

      He's not just called Papi (a popular and common expression in his native Dominican Republic), but Big Papi for a reason: He's a big man.

    1. a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, searching and maps

      Amazing that apps were not a feature promoted in the first announcement about the iPhone.

    1. As the team moves forward with the program, there are still questions that need to be answered.

      I appreciate the way that Ben is transparent about this being the tip of the iceberg.

    1. Grant's points here are great and his reputation in this space is well-regarded. It should be noted that there is also evidence from Gallop indicating that when people believe their supervisor focuses on their strengths, it can almost eliminate active disengagement in the workplace.

  24. Apr 2016
    1. We need to see design thinking as something that transcends subjects.

      Couldn't agree more. That student John mentioned at the TEDx event didn't see himself in the makerspace because our narrow definition wasn't including the Theater (scripting, stage crafting, prop mastering, etc) under the makerspace umbrella.

    2. Learning and achieving need not be limited to the artificial confines of walls and bell schedules. As John points out, this understanding is a more essential resource than any shiny equipment.