Walking the Highline in NYC

NYC and #walking the #city

Teaching for Life

Having recently written about some of the physical challenges I am beginning to have with walking, it seems odd, even to me, that today’s post is about walking. But this is not about walking just anywhere; its about being on the amazing High Line in the heart of the Meatpacking District of Manhattan.

The Highline is an amazing architectural accomplishment that you can read about online. It was created by two New Yorkers who had a vision for this abandoned, 30-feet-above-ground train track that once served as transport for the products of the meatpacking industry in mid-Manhattan.

For me, the Highline ranks right up there with the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, and Ellis Island as a destination for those seeking the “best” of NY experiences. Created for the public, it now serves millions of visitors annually as it has become one of the most popular attractions in…

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Yuma County, CO Now Live on RealWare!

re-blogged for the Yuma County Colorado sunset

CCI Software

Matt Smyrl, CCI Project Manager, announced last week that the Yuma County, CO Assessor’s office is now live on RealWare!

Thank you to Yuma County for choosing CCI and for your efforts during the converstion.

Special thanks to the CCI RW team (Jennifer, Chip, James and Maya)!

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Imagining the future of museums: winners from the AAM contest

Bryan Alexander

What will museums become in the future?
To explore this question the Center for the Future of Museums sponsored a story competition.  Creators had to imagine what the future of education could look like, with museums playing a leading role: “Tell us a story…about a future of education in which museums play a starring role.”

(Full disclosure: I helped judge the contest)

The resulting narratives imagined diverse futures, including multiple generations using virtual reality, autonomous historical characters, a megadatabase, augmented reality gallery installation tests, a new form of robotic displays,   One peered into an inbox 25 years from now.  Click here to see the winners, along with all of the other creative submissions.  That’s a lot of imagination and innovation at work – go explore!

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Non-conformists as change agents

Minding the Workplace

ProPublica, the non-profit public interest news organization, recently did a neat little feature on Dr. Adam Grant’s (U.Penn/Wharton) new book, Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World (2016). Here’s the lede by Cynthia Gordy:

In his new book, Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, Adam Grant examines the circumstances that give rise to truly original thinkers and groundbreaking ideas. Throughout Originals, the Wharton School of Business professor shares stories from the fields of business, politics and sports, and his chapter exploring the psychology of speaking truth to power – whether it be federal whistleblowers, or a middle-level employee with an innovative idea – holds several lessons for investigative journalists and the people on which they report.

The feature includes a podcast with Dr. Grant interviewed by ProPublica reporter David Epstein. Here are some of the highlights:

• On lower-level workers facing backlash for making suggestions: “People often confuse power and…

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This week’s Forum features Jim Groom and radical digital learning

Bryan Alexander

This Thursday on the Forum we have the one and only… Jim Groom.

If you don’t know Jim, he’s one of the first and longest-running edubloggers, having written at Bavatuesdays for more than a decade.  There you can find his thoughts on the intersection of education and technology, with a strong helping of culture high and low. At the University of Mary Washington Jim inspired the edupunk movement, and then invented and taught the famous digital storytelling counter-MOOC DS106.  He also kicked off the Domain of One’s Own movement.  And now he’s moved to Italy, where he helps run the innovative and excellent Reclaim Hosting company.  A brilliant man, a ferocious innovator, a generous collaborator, and a good friend.

I plan on asking him about the Domain of One’s Own idea and practice, which should lead to a discussion of Reclaim Hosting, and from that point on to…

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Threat to openness: managing access to public archives

Thoughts on management

Portrait of Henri Bergson by J.E. Blanche 1891 to illustrate Henri Bergson article. Uploaded from http://www.marcelproust.it/gallery/bergson.htm (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In November 2015, I attended the Threats to Openness conference held at Northumbria University. The conference had a specific aim “discuss the growing threats to citizens’ rights to access public archives across the digital world.” Although we did not discuss what was meant by openness, it was understood mainly to be defined by the right of access or the right to access public archives. However, this provides only a limited sense of how openness was used during the conference. Participants and speakers regularly referred to difference between access and openness noting that they were often confused. One does not always imply the other. As openness can be understood differently, the threats to it will vary with responses that can potentially conflict with efforts to help with access. What was missing…

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Beware Educational Alphabet: ADHD, RSD, ASD, OSD, EAA

radical eyes for equity

What do a medical diagnosis and education reform have in common?

Two things: (1) complex matters reduced to a few letters, and (2) failing children.

First, consider ADHD. Below are some readings to help interrogate how this diagnosis has many significant problems, misdiagnosis and over-diagnosis among them, some of which are related to the high-stakes accountability movement in education:

• Medicating ADHD in the Brave New World of High-Stakes Accountability
• Don’t Rush to Saddle Children With the A.D.H.D. Label, Donna Ford
• Worrying Disparities in Diagnosis of Black and White Children, Keith B. Wilson
• Failure to Conform Accounts for Most A.D.H.D. Diagnoses, Susan Hawthorne

Next, a growing list of alphabet (toxic) soup is assaulting our schools and students under the umbrella of “state takeover” approaches, targeting mostly high-poverty and racial minority schools.

RSD, ASD, OSD, and EAA—among others—have gained political momentum built on propaganda and not results. Below is a reader addressing the failures…

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Digital vs. Information Literacy

Designer Librarian

Have you ever wondered just what the difference is between digital and information literacy? Or how they are connected to each other? Those are important questions because for librarians, the conversation is almost always about information literacy, and digital literacy sometimes takes a backseat to that. In this post, I’m going to talk about the integral relationship between the two and how we can’t even think of teaching information literacy without also recognizing digital literacy (along with all the other ‘literacies of information’).

First, I think it helps to understand the concept of literacy in general. Digital and information literacy (and all the other literacies) are rooted in the sociocultural view of literacy as a set of social practices. If you want to learn more about that, I recommend reading The New London Group’s A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures, an article that appeared in the Harvard Educational Review…

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10,000 Characters

edifiedlistener

How many words might that add up to? How many pages? How many minutes of reading would that entail?

Like many other Twitter users I have some feelings about the lifting of the 140 character limit and potentially expanding it to up to 10,000. I had and have feelings about the shift from favorites as stars to hearts indicating a “like.”

I read the articles and posts describing Twitter’s downfall, death, corruption and fight for survival because this is the social media space that best meets my needs so far. And every time I feel myself about to say something sentimental about how and why I “care” about Twitter, I slap myself upside the head and remind myself that like hundreds of other corporations this is one more that is aiming to generate shareholder profits via my ongoing display of “care”: filling their platform with thousands of data points per…

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Fine podcasts for 2016: a mega-list of what I’m listening to

What a treat! I’ve caught the podcast habit and have been bookmarking online radio and podcast link bundles. This is a most welcome addition to the collection.

Bryan Alexander

2015 saw a rebirth of interest in podcasts, and 2016 may well see an even larger podcast world.  This is very exciting, and heartening to long-time podcast obsessives like myself.

In that spirit let me share which podcasts I’m listening to, updating my 2013 list.  Now I’m arranging these into headers: current podcasts, archived or dormant shows, followed by a note on my current listening technology and practice.  The first category gets sub-headers, under which are programs in alphabetical order for convenience (yes, maybe my habit is out of control, and this is less a post and more a plea for help).  I note unusual features when they appear, like published transcripts, and I’ll try to note which ones I’ve been on.

What’s not on here: music podcasts, which are different creatures.  Most NPR podcasts, because everyone talks about them.  Old-time radio (OTR), because although I adore it, this…

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