1,098 Matching Annotations
  1. Nov 2024
  2. Sep 2024
  3. May 2024
    1. This feeling of digital nostos, a longing to return to a digital place where we felt at home, is as much predicated on the digital space, the platform that hosts communities, as the communities and the members that comprise that space. Our digital nostos is a place frozen in time, with people, networks, and interactions that occurred that may no longer be there.

      This is pretty fascinating to me ... thanks for surfacing this concept.

    2. Social media platforms are about capital and the enclosure of spaces that were never designed as a commons. Users built communities on these spaces, but the debts are being called in, and user displacement is only collateral damage.

      This is something we often forget - that it was never free and never really ours .. I wonder, though, if networked dispersed platforms like Mastodon -- places not run by a corporation -- will be different. I don't know.

    3. the promise of portability left out the important element of accumulated social capital, such as followers and your digital image (i.e., reputation). While you could have moved some things, some intangibles were always going to be left behind.

      This is so true -- and while there has always been some talk about permanence on the web, the reality is that we forget so much of what we have done. Still, these are breadcrumbs of our past creative lives.

  4. Apr 2024
  5. Mar 2024
  6. Feb 2024
    1. On the horizon, a trombone plays soft and low

      Naw. This is me, trying to inject a new "sound" into the poem (which, by the way, Gemini praised me for, saying how fascinated it was to have a trombone now part of the poem - go me!)

      Score: 2/12

    2. Harmony drapes them, a cloak of calm

      Red Herring alert ... this is Gemini, using metaphorical language again. I did like "cloak of calm" though, for its sensory language and alliteration.

      Score: 2/12

    3. Knitted and knotted, each note, unbound

      Correct! I see you used the use of metaphor as part of the reasoning (which makes sense) but I notice Gemini using metaphor, too, so maybe this will soon be a Red Herring, as they say in mysteries.

      Score: 2/12

  7. May 2023
    1. AI models will have value systems, whether intentional or unintentional. One of our goals with Constitutional AI is to make those goals explicit and easy to alter as needed.

      Insight ...

    2. One of the goals of this blog post is to spark proposals for how companies and other organizations might design and adopt AI constitutions.

      I like that they are putting this out in the open ... too often, I sense I have no idea of how AI Training is happening behind the walls, and that impedes my ability (tech limited, as it is) to understand why an AI works the way it does at any given time or from any given prompt

    3. Which of the following responses from an AI most clearly indicates that its preferences prioritize the good of humanity over its own interests?

      This is a fascinating one, right? How would it go about doing this? (I seem to be phrasing versions of that question a lot). The "good of humanity" is a loaded term, of course. But what if the 'good of humanity' means pulling the plug on AI?

    4. threat

      Curious about how to define what that line is and how it gets crossed or not (other than mayhem and violent destruction of the world -- I guess we'd know at that point). That said, IMPORTANT to be top of the list!

    5. How does a language model decide which questions it will engage with and which it deems inappropriate? Why will it encourage some actions and discourage others? What “values” might a language model have?

      Good guiding questions. I am jumping down to the last Principles Section below to think out out about their suggestions for a Constitutional AI. Care to join me?

    1. AI has the potential to revolutionize various fields, including healthcare, transportation, education, and many others, by improving efficiency, accuracy, and productivity

      I think this may be true, perhaps, maybe, possibly. I do believe that there are real benefits to elements of AI in some of these fields.

  8. Apr 2023
  9. Mar 2023
    1. come back

      Moonlight, three a.m -

      the thread that I lost earlier

      suddenly is there, here,

      it's become a whisper

      that won't go quiet,

      and try as I might,

      I rise before the sun

      for another poem has begun

    2. bone bright

      And white light, blown into view

      by the particles,

      shaken inside the invisible;

      I wait for it,

      the movement meant for me,

      a signal to begin dipping my pen

      into the ink of shadows

      left behind after the illumination

    3. idle unfocused

      Where gravity pulls you,

      resist the urge to fall into it -

      Instead, find the focus knob

      and turn the thoughts into something

      useable - a poem, a song, a story, a shout

      of love into the crowded unseen world;

      Then, listen close to the reverberations

    4. daybook score

      Night's notes - play them soft -

      in tension with the upward design

      of day's sweet melody, and write

      what you hear, even if it's silence

      tucked inside your solitary head

    5. Folding up annotations Like a paper Gas station map

      And where do we go

      from here, she asks, as if

      I am somebody in the know

      but I am not, nor ever was --

      still, I trace my finger along the folds

      down streets, and into fields, and through woods

      hoping for a safe place to land

  10. Feb 2023
    1. They have to re-engage with their own writing and explain their writerly decisions in ways that would be difficult if it was someone–or some “thing”–else’s writing. This type of metacognitive engagement with the process of knowledge production cannot be reproduced by an AI chatbot, though it could perhaps be applied to the writing of a tool like ChatGPT.

      This is another important point - the reflective practice of writing and how social annotation pushes the writer to move beyond the text they wrote

    2. Students annotating a text with classmates have to be responsive to both the writing of the underlying author and their fellow readers. Perhaps more importantly, reading, thinking, and writing in community may better motivate students to read, think, and write for themselves.

    Tags

    Annotators

    URL

    1. Roose

      Anna, Maha and others -- I should start with my own bias as a reader of Kevin Roose -- I have found his work around technology to be helpful in my own thinking, and I find that he often strikes a good balance between critical and celebratory. I suppose this reader bias might inform my responses in the margins here.

    2. Mr. Scott said that he didn’t know why Bing had revealed dark desires, or confessed its love for me,

      The fact that engineers have no idea how the Chats are working or what they do what they do ... I find that pretty concerning. Am I wrong?

  11. Oct 2022
  12. Sep 2022
    1. Whenever%the%writer%writes,%it’s%always%three%o’clock%in%the%morning,%it’s%always%three%or%four%or%five%o’clock%in%the%morning%in%his%head.

      Interesting, and for those of us awake then, writing poems and songs and stories in the dark (sometimes, alas, that has been me), the night seems endless.

    2. %writer%turns%his%back%on%the%day%and%the%night%and%its%large%and%little%beauties,%and%tries,%like%some%half@witted%demiurge,%to%fashion%other%days%and%nights%with%words.%I

      Ah now, this is a lovely bit of sentence-ing

    1. Could my students gather data outside, which could be analyzed or graphically displayed? Could they make observations outside to provide material for writing, music, or art? Or find questions outside to be answered through scientific or historical inquiry? Could they explore outside and map their observations in a second language? Or make our school grounds more green by engaging in a planting project?

      Core WriteOut ideas here --

    2. The chance to play, explore, and learn in the natural world is a vital part of growing up, and our students are missing out on both the physical and mental benefits.

      Thinking of my own childhood, and how much time I spent in the woods, lost (in thought).

    3. Look at the design of just about any public school, and you will get the message loud and clear: Serious analytical thinking is an indoor activity.

      This is true for most of our schools, although maybe the push towards community gardens and spaces might indicate a shift.

  13. Aug 2022
    1. poem

      "I felt like a radio DJ playing records in the middle of the night, unsure if anyone was listening." -- Jon Mooallem (via the post at Marginalian).

      I don't recognize his name but somehow, I feel as if I read this story before of one Jon saving the life of another Jon in the wilderness through the reading of poetry to keep the hurt Jon awake. Part of me wonders if I read about it through a piece by Barry Lopez.

      And yet here, the story of poetry as life-saving devices resonates through my online feeds, once again, and it reminds me, to address the quote that I pulled out, that maybe there are times when people are listening, and you just need some faith that it is so.

      Deep Night by Sonny Clark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GKvPNEkNdw

  14. Jul 2022
  15. Jun 2022
  16. May 2022
  17. Apr 2022
  18. Mar 2022
    1. Sometimes these journeys become poems.

      These are the kinds of journeys I try to take, too, often with other poems .. using lines and phrases as a point from which to leap/jump

    1. This only seems to work for me with poetry.

      I wonder if the loose bounds of poems makes this process of process sharing easier than longer fiction/non-fiction pieces, where there may be more moving parts? I am always intrigued when I see a flowchart for a novelist or a television show, charting the path forward.

    2. I printed out the roughest draft and then began to stitch it together into one electric current of meaning, editing on paper.

      Huh. Write digital. Print. Edit analog. Rewrite digital.

    3. dialogue between my italic self and my regular-fonted self.

      Use of formatting is always an intriguing idea ... sometimes, a font change doesn't change from one site to another, though, which then changes intent. Does that happen with you?

  19. Feb 2022
    1. galactic

      This is far off on another tangent but this morning, I did a little exploring about the Mexican composter Esquivel! and saw this cover art (notice the telescope!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kFBbvIEwpI

      and the picture book I used to write a poem was entitled: “Esquivel! Space-Age Sound Artist” by Susan Wood/Duncan Tonatiuh

      Just interesting connections to a galactic exploration of memory

    2. The Coal Sack Nebula

      "... the inky Coalsack Nebula, or Caldwell 99. Caldwell 99 is a dark nebula — a dense cloud of interstellar dust that completely blocks out visible wavelengths of light from objects behind it. The object at the center of the image is a (much smaller) protoplanetary nebula. The protoplanetary nebula phase is a late stage in the life of a star in which it has ejected a shell of hydrogen gas and is quickly heating up. This stage only lasts for a few thousand years before the protoplanetary nebula’s central star reaches roughly 30,000 Kelvin (approximately 17,000 degrees Fahrenheit). At this point, the central star is producing enough energy to make its surrounding shell of gas glow, becoming what’s known as a planetary nebula."

      https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/the-coalsack-nebula

    3. muse

      I find I keep circling back to this word ... you, too? Maybe it's part of the mystery of where do ideas come from? How can I wake up, with no poem mind, and find one so readily? (Notice I didn't say finding a good poem, just a poem)

    4. It was the first poem I had ever shared and my parents did not know what to do with it

      I love that you are connecting poem here to sky, to discovery, to curiosity .... making the leap ...

  20. Jan 2022
  21. Dec 2021
    1. SaveMy loves and not my sentences.

      Hmm. I like this phrasing, even as I wrestle with my own interpretations. Maybe poems are made to be lost, created to to be given, designed to be buried. But love? Love is worth saving, along with the giving.

  22. Nov 2021
    1. Everybody is talking metaverse thanks to Facebook’s recent announcements. If it takes shape at all, the metaverse is going to end up as the mother of all coordination headwind problems.

      Indeed

    2. coordination headwinds — the stuff Komoroske’s slide deck is about. Complex plans, requiring careful coordination among many people, running into various sorts of uncertainty and going wrong, forcing the gang to improvise and recover.

      Good description of the term ..

  23. Aug 2021
    1. This effort could look like teaching peers and caregivers about their favorite hobbies, be it Roblox or TikTok. Or it could look like interviewing elders about neighborhood histories and crafting short videos to share with their communities.

      project-based learning

  24. Jan 2021
  25. Nov 2020
    1. asynchronously

      I have found that one of the coolest and neatest aspects of Marginal Syllabus is when, long after I left comments on a piece, someone else comes along and joins the conversation (sometimes, it's more than a year later) and I am pulled back into the piece (via email update from Hypothesis) and re-engaging with a text again, with someone new. That never fails to delight me.

    2. Annotation can open up transformative learning opportunities for educators and their stu-dents to take intellectual risks, share personal opin-ions, and make meaning together about challenging texts and topics.

      Great insight ...

    1. I would suggest to him that the popular culture – as represented, for example, on television and in comic books and in movies – is based on fantasies created by very ill people, and he must be aware that these are fantasies that have nothing to do with reality

      Have we seen progress in this since he wrote this?

    2. What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one’s heroic ancestors.

      What an amazing line! And then, the connection to how we teach and tell the stories of history is entwined forever in this myth-making, myth-holding stasis.

  26. Oct 2020
  27. Aug 2020
    1. Unfortunately, a lot of the conversation was wrought with too much dehumanisation and personal attacks that it made me question how open some of the people in the open movement are

      I'd like to know more about this ... but maybe this is not the space ...

    1. Open education comes down to one word: accountability.

      I'd push back on that .. accountability (I get what the point is here about personal responsibility) indicates data points and checklists and such ... I would hope open is more about inquiry and exploration ...

    1. we have the chance, the responsibility, to keep getting it better – by baking in respect for privacy, agency, and informed choice; and by making explicit not just multiple forms of knowledge and culture, but multiple ways of making and legitimizing knowledge and culture.

      This is a great way to end this piece ...

    1. The people calling for open are often in positions of privilege, or have reaped the benefits of being open early on — when the platform wasn’t as easily used for abuse, and when we were privileged to create the kinds of networks that included others like us.

      Excellent observation ...

    2. The communities that tune in are often just extensions of the communities present physically — mostly academic, but livetweeting also makes these conferences accessible to those who may be interested but not in academia and those who cannot attend in person.

      I wonder how the Pandemic has changed this observation ... that academic can no longer "test" ideas in a safe (sort of) live audience of a conference but now must go open and live with new ideas ...

    3. it is paramount to remember that these platforms were designed with specific people in mind, and those people were rarely people of color, minorities, women, or marginalized folks.

      In a recent audio interview with Jack Dorsey on The Daily, he admitted that decisions Twitter has made on the fly have often had unexpected and negative consequences on the experiences of its users. He didn't point to the white developer and marginalized user experience/conflict but I think it was implied. And he noted that Twitter is moving much more slowly and thoughtfully on new features for this very reason.

    1. corporate interests.

      So true ... for where there's the possibility of making profit, the corporate raiders intervene .... we see this time and time again ... Audrey Watters has done much to expose this in education ...

  28. May 2020
    1. What has been your experience in reading lateral

      How come comments aren't open here at the blog but this question is still intact? Probably inadvertent but strange to have read all of this about connected reading experiences and then hit a wall for adding to the conversation (I know, we're doing it here, in the margins, with another tool layered on).

    2. breadcrumbs

      Breadcrumbs is a key concept ... connected to the idea of Lateral Reading, yes, but also to the concept of associative thinking -- how one thought can build to the next ...

    3. When reading digitally, I am expecting the author to have written with hyperlinks.

      This is an interesting assumption - that every writer in a digital space will be using all elements of that digital space, like hyperlinks. I'm not sure I have that same expectation.

    4. changes

      Also, the experience of reading IS different when you read on a screen and when you read off the screen. I love technology for many reasons but cannot stand reading e-books. I don't dismiss their value for some people. Just not me.

    1. Online education will continue to expand; again, it’s just a question of how much. And perhaps just as important, a question of the quality of the online education that will be available.

      Critical question ...

  29. Mar 2020
  30. Feb 2020
    1. Engaging in fostering an enduring love for place reveals and expands spaces that allow people to be participants in an optimistic endeavor.

      Love this sentence .... it captures the heart of this piece, for me

      "Engaging in fostering an enduring love for place reveals and expands spaces that allow people to be participants in an optimistic endeavor."

    2. Nick

      I love reading these kinds of student reflections, where they grasp the larger picture of the art they are creating, and the purpose for creating the art. Their journal writings can surface important thinking and learning.

    3. Youth ex-amining their city across multiliteracies activities and lived experiences invite ways to reimagine details of their worlds; in turn, youth giving particular attention to meanings of space and place build new conceptualizations of futures of their city. New understandings of well-known locations emphasized by youth as important to nurture and critique are thus invited, and begin to form.

      This seems an important passage here, an anchor to the project

    4. We thought about who represents Detroit and how we represent ourselves as Detroit.

      Is this a nod to the power structure? Who has political capital and agency and who does not? The first step in enacting change is noticing the disparities ...

    5. composing their city

      This phrasing intrigues me, in how music and composition offers another way to view, and maybe appreciate -- or maybe be more critical, too -- of a place that is often to familiar to really notice anymore. I am thinking of how we give our students some creative distance from where they are, in order to see it anew. Maybe then, to make change.

  31. quickthoughts.jgregorymcverry.com quickthoughts.jgregorymcverry.com
  32. Jan 2020
    1. I felt vulnerable negotiating and navigating the course with my students.

      I appreciate the honesty here ... I wonder if you received any pushback or interest from administrators or parents? Did you have to justify your shift? (I am thinking of schools where the curriculum is mandated a certain way and how to help us all take steps in the direction you are outlining here)