I was privileged to lead a sectional at the WELS EdTechLead Summit this week and I have finally posted the presentation on this site. It was a lot of fun to be able to talk briefly about team chat platforms and just to show off some of the myriad of options available.
I am hoping to be able to record the presentation and post that in the future, but for right now it is just the slide deck. Thanks!
Apple Music Gains Soundtracks for Every Main Entry in the Final Fantasy Series by Mitchel Broussard
Alright Nintendo, the ball is now in your court. Work on licensing your huge backlog of soundtracks to various streaming services and get it done yesterday.
At least I know what I will have on in the background while I am working at home for a good long time.
Let Children Get Bored Again by Pamela Paul
The ability to handle boredom, not surprisingly, is correlated with the ability to focus and to self-regulate.
I can think of many boring summers on the farm and the endless number of books I ended up reading. I am very thankful for those uninterrupted stretches afforded me by my parents.
79. Self-Learning vs. Online Instruction
Research shows that online classes are most effective when there is substantial interaction among the students and between the students and the instructor. In this episode, Dr. Spiros Protopsaltis and Dr. Sandy Baum join us to discuss the possible adverse effects of proposed changes in federal regulations that may reduce the extent of this interaction.
This is a great episode which talks critically about how online education programs can also fail those same people they are meant to serve. For me, lost in some of the discussion around “access” is that online programs have allowed professionals like myself to pursue higher education degrees when I would have just stopped otherwise.
A lot of time and ink is given to other communities, and rightly so, but I am very thankful for the online opportunities that I have been given and is part of the reason that I continue to teach online as well.
scale is the enemy by Alan Jacobs
But that’s a feature, not a bug. Scale — as-big-as-possible, universal-not-local, something-for-everyone scale — is the enemy.
I am coming around to this way of thinking in many aspects of life … and even technology.