Work

I was off for most of the week, but went in on Friday to wrap up some stuff. The whole “take a vacation but don’t actually go anywhere” thing is actually kind of awesome. No pressure to get my money’s worth out of a Big Fancy Vacation. It was the most relaxing 2 week vacation I’ve had (but I’d still rather have spent it in Kauai…)

Looks like I’m going to be presenting at the MIIETL 2015 Research on Teaching and Learning Conference at McMaster in December. I’ve never been, and am looking forward to visiting a new-to-me campus.

And preparations for Congress 2016 are starting to ramp up. Campus is going to be kind of crazy with 8500 visitors for a week or so.

• Heath McCoy: Congress 2016 will take a village 

Read

Edtechstuff

• Alan Levine aka CogDog: +/- memorable (my ***x talk) 
• Audrey Watters:
  • The Web We Need to Give Students 
  • The Algorithmic Future of Education 
• Campus Technology:
  • California State University System Makes E-Portfolios Available to All Students and Alumni 
  • Flipped Classes Continue Evolving at Stanford and Harvard 
  • Penn State Technology Allows Faculty and Students to Build Their Own Textbooks from OER 
• David Kernohan: A triangle of institutional innovation 
• Harold Jarche:
  • an unstoppable force for change 
  • leadership archetypes 
• Adam Croom – Indie Music and EdTech (or Indie EdTech) — Medium 
• Joshua Kim: Trying to Make Sense of dLRN 2015 
• Martin Weller: Half awake in our fake empire 
• George Veletsianos: Making sense of the Digital Learning Research Network gathering (#dLRN15) 
• Ted Curran: PROsocial Deconstructivism (a response to last week’s post by Michael Feldstein The Rise of Antisocial Deconstructivism -e-Literate )
• Tom Woodward: WordPress Reflection Plugin – Step 1 – Counting Links 
• Rebecca Nelson: Pseudonyms 2.0: How Can We Hide Participants’ Identities When They’re on Pinterest? 
• Stephen Downes: Beyond Instructional Design: Open Spaces and Learning Places 
• via Stephen Downes: Epic slide deck from former Yahoo board member lays out the future of tech and media 
• Bryan Ollendyke: Flipping your conference 

Otherstuff

• Alec Couros: Romance Scams Continue And I Really Need Your Help
• Brent Simmons: When the Weapon Was Pointed at Me 
• Scott J Grunewald: Was Consumer 3D Printing a Fad or Were People Just Expecting Too Much? Hint: It’s Option Two 
• CBC Radio: The 6-hour workday: Too good to be true? 
• Randall Munroe:
  • Overthinking 
  • Human Subjects 
• Marc Bousquet: A Ph.D. should result in a tenure-track job, not an alt-ac one (essay)  – I disagree. Many ways to contribute. I’m not interested in a tenure-track position, but am interested in a doctorate degree. Why exclude?
• Dan Goodin: With goal of universal HTTPS, Let’s Encrypt reaches important milestone  – only a couple of months until general availability. I’m hoping to use it for everything I host on my Reclaim account.
• Hacking the planet
  • Amy X. Wang: September was so insanely hot, it set a 136-year record 
  • The Associated Press: Global warming will hurt most economies, but boost Canada’s, study says 
  • Jason Kottke: How climate change will affect world economies 
• Zygote Quarterly: zq issue 14, vol. 3 – 2015  – beautiful, interesting magazine on biomimicry. Not a fan of the magazine-player wrapper, but it’s worth the hassle.
• OMNI ePublish: The Key To The Computer Revolution Was Unifying Functions 
• Hacking Fitbit
  • Fitbit trackers can be hacked in ’10 seconds’ awesome. unsecured bluetooth on wearables. even though the fitbit itself is encrypted, the device isn’t. somehow. (I asked Fitbit, and they kind of responded.)
  • Bruce Schneier: Hacking Fitbit  – we’ll see much, much more of this stuff as wearables and The Internet of Things™ become pervasive. Make the world digital and connected, and it becomes hackable (or crackable).
• Cory Doctorow: Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “Between the World and Me” is the next book you should read 
• Matthew Francis: If we met new life—on this planet or the next—would we know it when we saw it? 
• CBC News: Justin Trudeau answers B.C. voter’s widely shared Facebook letter 
• Hypothesis | The Internet, peer reviewed. Via Tressie. Great looking web commentary tool.
• Decentralization cannot be marketed – The hi:project via Bryan Ollendyke

Other

I was kind of getting used to the rhythm of hanging out at home with The Teen™ and The Pup™. They’re both growing up pretty fast.