content curation

check out my storify!

https://storify.com/daisylevy/curate-wha

going analog in yer social media

this is the SVC Identity Tapestry, a thing we did at the beginning of last academic year, in September 2013.  i call it a thing in the colloquial sense of it, for it was, indeed, a thing. it involves art, personal reflection, story telling, interactivity, social negotiation, aggregation and curation, attention, and as we were using our hands and our fingers (also, often referred to as digits), you could even understand this as a mode of digital communication.

so imma just leave this right here. as a question. a rhetorical one, even.

apps for that? but not for this?

technology in the classroom. i think about it all the time, and sometimes not so fondly. i'm kinda an old school girl, having grown up in the 70s, before all this digital wonder we have now.

but i'm also a new school girl, given that i went back to school in the 21st century, when everyone had computers, and then came facebook, and then came ... well, here i am.

and i don't buy the argument that tech is making us dumber. what i do buy however, is something a little more complicated, and that's that tech doesn't replace humanity - not of teaching, not of learning, and certainly not of living in this world.

this morning, this came up in my facebook feed (and yep, i'm one of those, who checks facebook first thing in the morning. see? new school/old school). at the center of it is this idea of "app-transcendence":

"when you put the apps away and use your own wits, not someone else’s.” To help kids get to that point, [Howard] Gardner suggests that teachers and parents “ask who created the technology and for what purpose, to what extent is it flexible, to what extent are the data produced going to be used by the manufacturer and the creator? In other words, interrogate the technology, interrogate the software. The existence of it is nice, but that’s not a mandate to use it.”

 what follows in the article is a pretty interesting list of ways to keep the person in the technology. for those who know me already, this is not an unusual thing for me to say. "we're all people" i'm notorious for insisting in the classroom. "act like a person.'

what does it mean to act like a person? it's possible i'm a little obsessive on this point, but for good reason. there are all kinds of ways we are encouraged or supported, or pressured even, to distance ourselves from our personhood. and i am nearly sure that this is where the fear of technology making us dumb stems from. it's too easy to live our lives and never have to answer, personally, for what we've lived, or done, or said.

even as teachers.

so, yeah, there may be an app for that, for everything you can imagine wanting to do in your classroom. but without your person behind it, it's not really that useful.

screen free?

My friend and colleague, Margaret Price shared this project on facebook a couple weeks ago, and I'm dying to give it a whirl.

What does it mean, first of all, to ask students in a SOCIAL MEDIA class to stay away from all screen life for FOUR WHOLE HOURS? I mean, srsly. And I'm particularly interested in the documentation of it all-  the reflection of course, cuz you know I'm a reflection girl. But the pictures, the pictures are cool too.

So, look forward to this, y'all. I dunno when, but we're gonna join in. :)

... and GO.

Once you have done some work with your blog set-up, it's about time you did a little writing, huh?

So, get rolling. As a new site, it's probably a good idea to think about how you want to introduce yourself, or your blog to whoever is going to read it.

Crafting a blog post may seem like a "free" exercise, and in some ways, it is - it's certainly less constraining than other kinds of writing. But it's crafted, just the same - it's not an essay, not a letter, not a status update even.

It's its own thing.

On your mark, get set ... GO.

Blogging, continued

So, now that you've set up your site, I encourage you to indulge in your design sensibility. You may have already done more or less of this, but just in case, here's a list of some things to factor in the set- up:

• What color schemes are you using for all aspects of your blog? You can play with colors for just about every aspect - text, headers, backgrounds, borders around boxes, hyper links, visited hyper links, hovered over hyper links, the list goes on. Resist just using the default, but also make some good decisions about readability, contrast, establishing patterns to assist your readers, etc.
• Just as you can manipulate color schemes, so too can you play with fonts. FOR EVERYTHING. Here too, you can create moods and intentions by making unique design choices. One note: it may be tempting to use lots of different fonts, but make sure that the usability is strong, and doesn't make your reader seasick. :)
• Give your blog a cool title, and also a sub-header, or description. Distinguish it.
• What sizes do you want things to be? This includes fonts, of course, but also, you can probably manipulate the sizes of the boxes, or chunks of information you include. 
• Do you have an "About me" page, or section? You should.
• What do you have in the footer of your blog? What do you want there?
• What widgets (blogspot calls them "gadgets") do you want to include? Share buttons? Like buttons? RSS subscription buttons? Search boxes?
• HAVE A BLOG ROLL and RECOMMENDED LINKS section.

Welcome!

Today, we blog!

Inspired by Howard Rheingold's chapter on participatory power, I thought we might use blogging as a kind of first hand, experiential, playground, application type exercise.

I'd like us to use these blogs from now through the end of the semester, to - as CJ and some others suggested with the digital identity project - give us more time, like, real time to develop this space and community, as it really does.

My suggestion to you, is to do some reading of blogs. What kind? Any. What's interesting to you? Go out there (well, here) to the Internets, and see what you develop.

Think about who you might like to be talking to - generally - knowing also that there are many other folks who may come across your blog that you can't imagine yet.

What do you want to talk about? Who else talks about these things? Where do they do it?

And also, set up your space - make it yours. Design it as you like, give it a title that's yours and yours alone.

PLAY WITH IT.

(more to come)