8 Matching Annotations
  1. Mar 2017
    1. I think Nvivio is far too expensive for academics. Zettelkasten interesting, but it does not recognize the url from DEVONthink and Sente (I do link to the source in each note). In addition, it is developed by a single programmer. My approach is as follows. Highlights and notes prepared in Sente or Skim are exported to DEVONthink using these scripts: https://github.com/RobTrew/tree-tools/tree/master/DevonThink% 20scripts . Then in DEVONthink I add tags to each note, and sometimes create links between them. The result is similar to Zettelkasten, but with cross-links and power of DEVONthink’ artificial intelligence (searching using a variety of Boolean operators, see and also, etc).

      I think I will try to be more systematic about adding tags to notes in DevonThink. Another DT trick is to make Annotation documents that are automatically linked to the originating document.

    2. By then end of my PhD, I had over 800 documents in my Sente library incuding journal articles and full books, many with highlights and notes. How am I supposed to find interesting bits related to one concept, idea or topic? My highlights and notes are there somewhere in those documents but there is no easy way of tracking them down and working with them. They are searchable or can be made searchable (see Jeff Pooley’s guide  on Macademic here), but that is often not very helpful. I would for instance like to see them in one place organized according to some logic. My current practice is that I make the highlights in Sente for any potential future use and at the same time I copy the text (quote) to Scrivener with the citation info and keep these snippets organized there. I would for instance have a card for ‘innovation (def.)’ in which I would only collect various definitions of innovation from the sources I read.

      Interesting process. I have tended to export all notes from one reference in a batch, and then organize them in DevonThink. In theory, this process is more efficient (I think) because I can process large numbers of notes in one go without constant app-switching. On the other hand, though, the method outlined is wonderfully direct: when you find information you need, you put it where you're going to need it.

  2. Jul 2015
    1. Whether or not you take a constructivist view of education, feedback on performance is inevitably seen as a crucial component of the process. However, experience shows that students (and academic staff) often struggle with feedback, which all too often fails to translate into feed-forward actions leading to educational gains. Problems get worse as student cohort sizes increase. By building on the well-established principle of separating marks from feedback and by using a social network approach to amplify peer discussion of assessed tasks, this paper describes an efficient system for interactive student feedback. Although the majority of students remain passive recipients in this system, they are still exposed to deeper reflection on assessed tasks than in traditional one-to-one feedback processes.
    1. A bias is simply a leaning—a tendency to promote one set of behaviors over another. All media and all technologies have biases. It may be true that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”; but guns are a technology more biased to killing than, say, clock radios. Televisions are biased toward people sitting still in couches and watching. Automobiles are biased toward motion, individuality, and living in the suburbs. Oral culture is biased toward communicating in person, while written culture is biased toward communication that doesn’t happen between people in the same time and place. Film photography and its expensive processes were biased toward scarcity, while digital photography is biased toward immediate and widespread distribution.

      Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age, Douglas Rushkoff

    1. “Real-time data and quantitative benchmarks are the reason why gamers get consistently better at virtually any game they play: their performance is consistently measured and reflected back to them, with advancing progress bars, points, levels, and achievements. It’s easy for players to see exactly how and when they’re making progress. This kind of instantaneous, positive feedback drives players to try harder and to succeed at more difficult challenges. That’s why it’s worth considering making things we already love more gamelike. It can make us better at them, and help us set our sights higher.” (Jane McGonigal, Reality is Broken)

      Full book title: Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World.

    2. Many subjects and ideas link together Leveling-up in one area can mean also leveling-up in another You don’t have to learn everything about a subject The learner (with some prompting) can decide the learning goal It’s OK to jump around a bit while learning
    3. While I’d struggle to tell you how I learn best, there is one question that I’d always be able to answer enthusiastically: What would you like to learn next? Right now I’m learning JavaScript and have plans to give Spanish another go. I should probably pick up those guitar lessons again soon as well. Thankfully we live in a time when it’s trivially easy to gain access to resources and to learning activities. The problem is finding out the ones that work best for you. Perhaps that’s why we carry around in our pockets devices that can access pretty much the sum total of human knowledge yet use them to LOL at amusing pictures of cats. What are the barriers here? I’d suggest there are three main ones: 1 Curriculum - the series of activities that build towards a learning goal 2 Credentials - the ability to show what you know 3 Community - the cohort of peers you feel you are part of, along with access to ‘experts’

      How do I learn best? What resources are the best ones for me?