Writing
Essays, notes, and reflections on literacy, technology, education, and the systems shaping how we read, write, and learn.
- Karpathy Found the Pattern. Educators Have Been Teaching It for Years.
How Karpathy's LLM wiki pattern maps onto educator knowledge work and local AI systems.
- Writing Is a Process. So Is Losing Your Voice.
Why I use AI to mirror my voice without outsourcing the thinking that happens in drafting.
- How You Can Actually Tell Which AI Model You’re Using
Practical ways to tell which AI model you are using when platforms and models stay opaque.
- Why AI Models Lie About Their Own Version
Why language models confidently misidentify themselves, and why that matters for AI literacy, trust, and how we evaluate these systems.
- AI Literacy Beyond Tools: Helping Learners Think With (Not Forfeit Thinking To) AI
Notes from a March 2026 talk on helping learners use AI without surrendering judgment, agency, or responsibility.
- What Building TrustSense Taught Me About Where Local AI Actually Is Right Now
What building TrustSense revealed about the current state of local AI: the model is easy now, but the real challenge is system design and trust.
- Thinking Out Loud: What Self-Hosting Is Teaching Me About Computational Thinking
What a self-hosting project taught me about computational thinking, risk, tradeoffs, and reasoning carefully through technical decisions.
- Under the Hood: Setting up a Self-Hosted Jitsi Server on Reclaim Cloud
How I took a one-click Jitsi install on Reclaim Cloud and turned it into a secure, branded, production-ready video conferencing setup.
- Beyond Zoom: Why We Took Control of Our Video Conferencing with Jitsi Meet
Why InitiatED moved from institutional Zoom to a self-hosted Jitsi server as part of a broader commitment to digital sovereignty.
- The Door Was Never Locked
A reflection on how default digital tools became invisible infrastructure, and why sovereignty starts by questioning what we were told to trust.
- AI Literacy, AI Illiteracy, and the Trouble With Naming the Gap
Why the phrase "AI illiteracy" sounds useful at first, but may distort how we think about literacy, access, and responsibility.
- Finding the “Goldilocks Zone” for AI in Curriculum: Logistics, Not Logic
Why the hardest part of bringing AI into curriculum is not logic or pedagogy, but the logistics, shame, and practical constraints educators actually face.
- Why We Need Better Language for AI (Even When the Models Won’t Tell Us What They Are)
Why collapsing every generative system into "ChatGPT" weakens our thinking about AI, learning, and what these tools actually are.
- Ungrading 2.0: Labor, Agency, and the Research Archive
A follow-up on ungrading that argues removing grades is only the beginning; agency requires labor, structure, and support.
- From Ungrading to Infrastructure: What I Learned When I Stopped Grading
What I learned when ungrading stopped being a rejection of points and became a question of infrastructure, power, and student support.
- The Digital Shredder: Signal Disappearing Messages
Why disappearing messages in Signal are less about secrecy and more about reducing the amount of sensitive data you have to protect.
- The Private Cloud: Building a Front Door for My Homelab
How I turned a pile of local services into a coherent private cloud with domain names, HTTPS, and a real front door.
- Trust But Verify: Safety Numbers In Signal
What Signal safety numbers actually do, and how to think about them without panic, jargon, or blind trust.
- Lock Your Digital Front Door: Signal Registration Lock
A practical guide to Signal Registration Lock and why one small setting can protect your account from SIM-swap style attacks.
- The Digital Envelope: Why Signal Is Different
Why Signal feels different from regular messaging apps, and how to explain end-to-end encryption in concrete, human terms.
- What Does It Mean to Be a Live Human Signpost?
A reflection on Vincent Harding's idea of the live human signpost and the quiet people who help others keep moving.
- You Downloaded Signal. Now What?
A friendly starting point for people who downloaded Signal and want to know what to do next, and why it matters.
- Taking Back Control: Why Digital Sovereignty Matters
Why convenience stopped being enough, and how digital sovereignty became a more useful frame for thinking about platforms, data, and control.
- Agency Looks Like Friction: What I Learned Tracing the “Human-in-the-Loop”
Why agency in AI work often feels like productive friction.
- What Educators Should Teach Now: Digital Literacy for the Sovereign Web
What digital literacy should become in a platform-dominated web, and why educators need to teach for sovereignty, not just participation.
- We Don’t Need a New Internet. We Need to Leave the Silos.
Why the internet itself is not broken, and why the real task is leaving platform silos rather than inventing a whole new web.
- Why Digital Sovereignty Still Matters: Even If We’re All “Renting” the Internet
A response to the idea that true sovereignty online is impossible, and an argument for why partial control still matters.
- Privacy vs. Security in 2026: Why the Distinction Matters More Than Ever
Why the old privacy-versus-security distinction no longer goes far enough in a world of AI, surveillance, and predictive systems.
- The Illusion of Simplicity
Why checklists feel reassuring in complex digital systems, and why they often fail when what we really need is literacy and judgment.
- From Scrap Hardware to Stable Proxmox: Building the Core of My Homelab
How I went from thrifted hardware and confusion to a stable Proxmox base for the rest of my homelab.
- We’ve Been Thinking About Prompts All Wrong
Why prompt engineering is less about crafting perfect inputs and more about orchestrating an ongoing dialogue with the system.
- The People Who Help Us See Clearly
A meditation on the everyday people who steady communities by helping others see clearly when things get hard.
- Building Human-Centered Digital Communities
How to build digital communities that support people, not just platforms.
- Designing for Trust: Privacy, Safety, and the Social Contract Online
What it means to design online communities around trust, safety, and shared responsibility instead of just technical features.
- Federating the Self: Openness, Privacy, and AI in the Garden
What it means to federate your self across website, newsletter, and notes.
- From CV to Living Web: Rewilding My Digital Identity
Why a living web presence should be more than a static CV.
- The Metal Box: Building My Proxmox Homelab
A real-time, messy walkthrough of building a Proxmox homelab.
- The Difficulty of Hope Right Now
A reflection on holding onto hope when things feel hard.
- Building a Newsletter That Grows: From Linear Issues to a Living Knowledge Garden
How Obsidian can turn a newsletter into a connected knowledge garden.
- From Subsonic to Plex: My First DIY Server
How my first DIY server kicked off a homelab journey.
- Privacy Isn’t Optional: The Expanding Data Dragnet in K-12 and Higher Education
Why privacy matters when data collection feels routine.
- When Your Campus ID Moves to Your Phone: Questions We Should Be Asking
What to consider when campus IDs move onto your phone.
- How I Wrote This With AI
How a homelab project became an experiment in writing with AI.
- Why I Built a Homelab (and Why You Might Want To)
Why building a homelab helps me understand the systems I rely on.
- Mastering Your Local AI: Beyond the Basics
How to move from running local AI to using it well.
- How to Run Your Own AI Models: Getting Started with LM Studio
How to get started building your own local AI sandbox with LM Studio.
- Your Personal AI Sandbox: What It Really Means to Run Models Locally
Why it's time to start experimenting with your own personal AI sandbox.
- Cracking Open AI Models: What AI Intelligence Actually Looks Like
What the files inside a local AI model actually do.
- Seven Critical Decisions to Make When Trying New AI Tools
How to evaluate new AI tools before you trust or buy them.
- What’s Actually Inside an AI Model? (It’s Not What You Think)
Why understanding the structure of an AI model matters.
- The Day AI Analyzed My Entire Knowledge System: MCP + Obsidian in Action
What happened when I connected an AI to my personal knowledge system.
- The Evolution of Digitally Literate: 10 Years of Newsletter Growth and Lessons from the Vault
How a newsletter grew into a larger digital literacy project.
- The Bridge Between AI and Your Tools: Understanding MCP
What MCP makes possible when AI can inspect your actual notes.
- Turning Your Knowledge Into Your AI’s Superpower: Understanding RAG
What RAG is and how it helps AI answer from your notes and sources.
- The Bridge Between AI and Your Tools: How MCP Unlocks Personal AI for Everyone
How MCP extends personal AI beyond a single tool or platform.
- How My Digital Garden Supports Digital Literacy
How a digital garden can help ideas grow and support digital literacy.
- Reclaiming Our Tools: Why We Can’t Opt Out of the AI Future
Why we should reclaim our tools instead of letting them control us.
- The Myth of Optimization: What Tech Worldviews Leave Behind
What gets lost when technology treats optimization as the default value.
- AI and the Human Question: What Are We Really Trying to Fix?
A question about what problem AI is really trying to solve.
- Beyond Language: Why Educators Have a Hidden AI Superpower
Why educators have a hidden advantage when working with AI.
- The Linguistics Advantage: Why Language Skills Are the Secret to AI Mastery
Why language skills are key to getting better results from AI.
- The Unwritten Code: Rethinking AI and Technology Through Hidden Ways of Knowing
Why not all knowledge can be reduced to written code.
- A Toolkit for the Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) Classroom
A practical toolkit for bringing human judgment into AI-supported teaching.
- Building a Second Brain with Google Keep, Drive, and NotebookLM
How Google tools can support a second-brain workflow.
- The Pedagogy of the Prompt
How prompting works as a pedagogical conversation with AI.
- Designing Loops Worth Living In
How to design AI loops that keep human flourishing at the center.
- Being the Human in the Loop
What it means to stay responsible and human in AI-assisted work.
- Reimagining AI in Education: Embracing the Violin of Cognitive Amplification
How AI can amplify human thinking in education.
- Framing the Dilemmas: AI and the Future of Education
The key dilemmas that shape an honest conversation about AI and education.
- Reimagining AI in Education: From Threat to Cognitive Amplifier
How educators are thinking about AI and the future of learning.
- Making My Digital Garden Interactive
How I turned my digital garden into an interactive knowledge space.
- Preparing Pre-Service Teachers for an AI-Integrated Future
How to prepare future teachers for an AI-integrated classroom.
- Pioneering AI Policy in Education
How one school of education is shaping AI policy for teaching and learning.
- Exploring Student Perspectives on Generative AI: A New Set of Reflection Questions
How students think about using generative AI in coursework.
- Why Now Is the Moment to Back Up the Web
Why backing up the web matters for memory, research, and history.
- Growing Ideas in Public -How I Built My Digital Garden with Obsidian
How I built and published my digital garden with Obsidian.
- Introducing My Digital Garden: Where Ideas Grow
An introduction to my digital garden and how it works.
- One AI Isn’t Enough: Unlock Richer Insights with Multiple Perspectives
Why AI research works better when you use multiple perspectives.
- Exploring the Integration of AI in Education: Skills, Knowledge, and Practices
How AI literacies fit into education and classroom practice.
- Privacy Fatigue Managing Digital Burnout in a Hyper-Connected World
Why constant privacy management can wear people down online.
- Digital Resilience Staying Strong in a Digital World
How to stay steady when digital systems fail, overload us, or expose us to risk.
- Navigating the AI Landscape
How to choose the right AI tool for your needs.
- Disruptive Innovation: DeepSeek’s Foray into the American AI Market
What DeepSeek's rise says about competition and disruption in the AI market.
- Why Participatory Action Research? Building a Methodology That Centers Teachers’ Voices
Why participatory action research centers teachers' voices.
- Exploring Generative AI in Education: Seeking Your Feedback
How generative AI is reshaping education and learning practice.
- Behind the Scenes of My Obsidian Vault: A Knowledge Management Tour
A tour of an Obsidian vault and the knowledge practices behind it.
- From Clutter to Clarity Streamlining the Newsletter with AI
How AI helped turn a newsletter archive into a connected system.
- Why Blanket Bans on Tech in Schools Don’t Work: An Argument for Educating Responsible Usage
Why blanket bans on classroom tech often miss the real issue.
- Generative AI as a Critical Friend Redefining Collaboration
How generative AI can act as a critical friend in writing.
- Designing the Structure of My Digital Garden
How to structure a digital garden with folders, tags, and note stages.
- Tools I’m Using to Build My Digital Garden
Which tools best support a flexible digital garden workflow.
- Why I’m Repurposing My Newsletter and Notes
Why I’m turning newsletters and notes into a digital garden.
- What is a Digital Garden
What a digital garden is and why it matters.
- Bridging Social-Emotional Learning and AI: Fostering Empathy in the Digital Age
How AI can support SEL and empathy in digital classrooms.
- Human-in-the-Loop Computing: Enhancing Social-Emotional Learning with AI and Human Insight
How human judgment fits into AI training, validation, and adjustment.
- What is AI - A Simple Guide for Students
A student-friendly introduction to what AI is and how it works.
- Understanding the Power of Social and Emotional Learning in Education
Why social and emotional learning matters as much as academics.
- Me, Myself, and AI
A playful look at generative AI and the question of selfhood.
- Experiential Learning and Its Synergy with Artificial Intelligence
How experiential learning and AI can work together in practice.
- Experiential Learning and AI - Redefining Education Through Immersive Experiences
How experiential learning and AI could reshape education.
- Harmony Over Heroism - Why the Republic Does Not Need Geniuses
Why civic progress depends on coordinated work, not lone heroes.
- Breaking Out of Our Own Biases: A Journey to Self Awareness
How to notice your own biases and widen your perspective.
- Shifting the Blame: The User vs Developer in Digital Spaces
Why good systems blame design less and users less often.
- Embracing Parenthood: Facing Life Through the Eyes of a Child
A reflection on parenthood, hardship, and daily resilience.
- Understanding Privilege in Arguments - Principles vs Personal Opinions
How privilege can reshape arguments about social inequality and identity.
- Navigating the Digital Landscape - Enjoy Screens, But Not Too Much, Mostly Together
How to find balance, safety, and agency in a screen-filled world.
- Transitioning from Turning on Each Other to Turning Towards Each Other
How empathy helps shift conflict toward connection.
- The Role of Education and Research in Confronting Harmful Discourses
Why educators and researchers should help confront harmful discourses.
- The Case for Running AI/ML Models Locally
Why running models locally is worth learning and experimenting with.
- The Art of Serial Focusing - Mastering One Thing at a Time
Why focusing on one task at a time can reduce stress and improve productivity.
- Navigating New Realms - Generative AI and Literacy Education
How generative AI is reshaping literacy education and classroom practice.
- Archiving Your WordPress Blog - A Smoother Transition to Obsidian with ChatGPT
How ChatGPT can help archive a WordPress blog into Obsidian.
- Leveraging Generative AI for STEAM Education - A Wicked Problem Assignment
A wicked-problem STEAM assignment for using generative AI to analyze complex issues.
- Redefining Education – Equipping Students for a Complex Future
Why education needs to adapt to a more complex, rapidly changing world.
- Navigating the “Self” in the Age of AI: A Journey into Generative Horizons
How AI changes the way we think about the self and our work.
- Exploring Humanity Through a Galactic Lens
What Children of Time reveals about humanity, evolution, and power.
- The Evolving Digital Commonplace Book
How a digital commonplace book can evolve over time.
- What Do People Do Better Than Computers? The Human Edge
What humans still do better than computers and why it matters.
- The Online Misinformation War: Navigating a Cacophony of Competing Narratives
How misinformation spreads online and why readers need stronger habits.
- Reckoning with Slavery’s Legacy Across America
A short reflection on Clint Smith's How the Word Is Passed.
- Unlocking Your Inner Genius with the Feynman Method
How the Feynman method can help you learn and explain ideas better.
- Down the QAnon Rabbit Hole
How QAnon grew from fringe internet spaces into a political force.
- Crafting Atomic Notes for a Connected Knowledge Base
How atomic notes can make a knowledge system more useful.
- Boost Your Learning Through Effective Note-Taking
How smart note-taking can improve learning and thinking.
- The Scientific Method and Doing Research
What it really means to do research well.
- Extending the Attribution of Consciousness to AI
What AI can and cannot tell us about consciousness.
- Small Websites, Big Connections: Understanding the Fediverse
What the fediverse is and why people are moving there.
- Examining Human History and Evolution in Sapiens
What Sapiens reveals about human history, evolution, and power.
- The Complex Role of Social Media in Protest Movements – A Review of Twitter and Tear Gas
A look at Twitter, protest, and the fragility of networked movements.
- Fostering Creativity and Innovation: Defining the Learning Competencies for Ohio’s Graduates
How creativity and innovation can be taught with technology.
- Innovating for the Future: Rethinking Technology Skills Instruction for Students
Why schooling should prepare students for an uncertain future.
- Seeking Feedback: Questions to Critically Examine Our Technology Use
Questions for thinking critically about your own technology use.
- Minimal Computing for Collaborative, Equitable Digital Scholarship
How minimal computing can support equitable, sustainable scholarship.
- The Dangers of Unchecked Algorithms – A Review of Weapons of Math Destruction
A brief note on the harms Cathy O'Neil identifies in algorithms.
- The Allure and Risks of New Edtech
The promise and risks of educational technology in today's classrooms.
- The Power of Empathy in an Age of Division
Why empathy matters in a divided, trauma-shaped world.
- The Digital Commonplace Book: Challenges and Opportunities in the Information Age
How a digital commonplace book can help organize ideas.
- Noah Hawley’s Dystopian Thriller Anthem – A Review
A quick take on Noah Hawley's novel Anthem.
- Examining White Privilege and Racism – A Review of White Fragilty
A reflection on Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility.
- Unpacking Economic Inequality, Market-Driven Education, and Privatization: Implications for Ethical Media Consumption
How media literacy connects to economic inequality and market-driven education.
- Aligning AI With Human Values and Interests: An Ethical Imperative
Why AI systems should be aligned with human values and public interest.
- Bending the Rules: A Review of Bruce Schneier’s Insightful Book ‘A Hacker’s Mind”
What A Hacker's Mind reveals about systems, power, and exploitation.
- Navigating the Impact of Capitalism on Education and Technology: A Lexicon for Thoughtful Discourse
How capitalism shapes what we build, buy, and believe about edtech.
- Embracing the Digital Frontier: Challenges and Opportunities of Online Phonics Modules for Pre-Service Teachers
How online phonics modules can support pre-service teachers.
- A Thoughtful Look at How New Technologies Are Reshaping Our World
A takeaway on how new technologies reshape society and power.
- Integrating AI in K-12 Education: Navigating Ongoing Debate
Why K-12 AI adoption needs balance, ethics, and human judgment.
- AI and the Art of Writing: Balancing Innovation with Tradition in Education
How AI changes the writing process and what schools should do about it.
- Bridging the Divide Between Code and Conscience: Navigating the Intersection of Algorithms and Ethics
How code and ethics shape media and information literacy.
- Education’s Essential Role in the AI Revolution
Why education has a central role in the AI revolution.
- Navigating the Future of Media and Information Literacy: A Transdisciplinary Approach
How media and information literacy can keep pace with a changing web.
- Safeguarding User Data in an AI-Driven World: Ensuring Trust and Privacy Online
How AI can help protect user data in a breach-prone digital world.
- Finding the Perfect Match: A Guide to Testing Different AI and LLM Models for Your Dataset and Purpose
How to choose among AI and LLM models for a specific use case.
- Building an AI Tool to Safeguard Against Cyberattacks: The Quest for Trustworthy Data
How trustworthy data shapes AI tools for detecting cyberattacks.
- Building an AI Tool to Identify Trustworthiness Online: Steps and Considerations
How to build an AI tool that helps identify trustworthy information.
- Introducing TrustSense: Your Safeguard in the Digital World
A fictional AI startup pitch about trust, safety, and authenticity online.
- CollaboraThink: Using AI to help people brainstorm and make decisions
How AI can help people brainstorm and make decisions together.
- The Future of Education in the Age of AI
How AI is changing education, teaching, and learning.
- The Power and Perils of Generative AI in Education: What You Need to Know
What educators should know about the promise and risks of generative AI.
- How Will AI Impact the Job of Educators?
How AI is changing the work teachers do and what that means for education.
- Understanding Theory of Mind in AI: Implications and Limitations
What theory of mind tests can and cannot tell us about AI.
- What Is Your WHY?
Why education can be a meaningful path for positive change.
- Rethinking Academic Rigor in the Higher Education Classroom
How to think about academic rigor as a condition for learning.
- Revolutionize Your Presentations with AI-Generative Tools
How generative AI tools can change the way presentations get made.
- The Role of AI in Online Reading Comprehension: A New Literacies Perspective
How AI fits into online reading comprehension and new literacies research.
- Introducing Pre-Service Teachers to Virtual AI Assistants
How to introduce future teachers to virtual AI assistants.
- Towards Transformative Socioemotional Learning
How digital literacy, identity, and SEL can support post-truth classrooms.
- Privilege and the Future of AI in the Classroom
How privilege shapes the future of AI in classroom settings.
- Watching AI Virtual Assistants Grow Up
How AI virtual assistants are evolving in public view.
- The Challenges of Becoming a Manager vs. Maker in the Age of AI
How AI pushes knowledge workers to balance manager and maker modes.
- Moving From Search to Answers With Bing and ChatGPT
How Bing and ChatGPT are shifting search toward generated answers.
- Make Your Next Conference Proposal a Smash Hit with an AI Writing Assistant
How an AI writing assistant can help draft a conference proposal.
- Making Sense of ChatGPT and GPT-3
How ChatGPT changes classroom conversation and why the underlying model matters.
- Digital Wildfires: Tending to Social Media in the Classroom
How to tend to social media and critical media literacy in class.
- Gamify Your Learning Process With Habitica
How Habitica turns habits and tasks into a gamified learning system.
- Transdisciplinarity as a Gateway to Critical Literacy
How wicked problems can open critical literacy across disciplines.
- Blending Practices, Skills, and Content in Teaching and Learning
How teaching can blend practices, skills, and content across disciplines.
- Wicked Problems
What wicked problems are and why they resist simple solutions.
- Considering the Post-COVID Classroom
What the post-COVID classroom changed and what still needs attention.
- Taming the Digital Dragon
Why the addiction frame can distort how we talk about tech use.
- Student Privacy and Pandemics: Understanding and Reducing Privacy and Security Risks
How the pandemic changed the stakes for student privacy.
- Towards a New Normal: Motivation & engagement in digital spaces
What a new normal might mean for teaching after the pandemic.
- Bearing Witness
A personal reflection on grief, ceremony, and bearing witness.
- Guidance on Planning and Building an Organization’s Website
How to plan a website that serves members instead of just existing online.
- The Metaverse and the Future of the Internet
How the metaverse could reshape the internet and its risks.
- Why Can’t We Agree On What’s True?
Why digital platforms make consensus about truth harder to reach.
- The Beginning Will Suck
Why starting a new project often feels messy before it gets better.
- Sharpening the Saw of the Knowledge Worker
How knowledge workers can improve their information workflow.
- Developing a Culture of Inquiry
How to build a classroom culture that supports inquiry.
- Sharing What You Love
Why sharing what you love can make teaching more meaningful.
- Think Of Your Life In Chunks
Why long-term thinking works better when you break life into chunks.
- Assessing My First Attempt at Ungrading
What I learned after my first semester of ungrading.
- Mind the Gap
A reminder to close the gap between values and behavior.
- Becoming a Student Privacy Expert
How a student privacy program can deepen privacy expertise.
- Ctrl-Alt-Del: Games, Society, Intersectionality, & Toxic Technocultures
A course centered on identity, race, equity, and inclusion in gaming culture.
- Ungrading: Towards a Culture of Vibrant & Equitable Intellectual Discovery
How ungrading can support more equitable intellectual discovery.
- From Crackpipes to Criteria to Critical Pedagogy
How ungrading feedback pushed me toward more critical pedagogy.
- What You’ll Need For Mobile Vlogging
What you need to start mobile vlogging.
- I’m Teaching Myself TikTok
What it means to teach yourself TikTok as a networked learning project.
- The Best Questions Are Naive Questions
Why naive questions can lead to better thinking and discovery.
- Why I’m Exploring Ungrading
Why I started exploring ungrading in my courses.
- How to Talk About Mental Health
How to talk about mental health with care and clarity.
- Getting Started With Ungrading
A starting point for rethinking assessment through ungrading.
- What will digital life be like in 2035?
What experts think digital life may look like in 2035.
- Create a Personal Webpage Using GitHub Pages & Jekyll
A beginner-friendly guide to building a personal webpage with GitHub Pages.
- There Are Always Two Paths
Why crisis often leaves us with more than one path forward.
- Thank You. I’m Sorry.
Lessons learned from a conversation about race and community.
- Digital Literacy: Developing Critical Thinking
How digital literacy and critical thinking support stronger reading online.
- Consume. Curate. Create.
A simple framework for moving from consuming to creating online.
- Memoir and the Creative Process
How memoir can help make sense of mental health and the creative process.
- Mental Health and Depression
How trauma and depression affect learning, life, and well-being.
- Developing An Attitude of Gratitude
How gratitude can support well-being and empathy.
- Risky Business
Why the pandemic exposed how much schools support communities.
- Shine
A short reflection on gratitude, resilience, and showing up.
- The Harm in Do No Harm
Why 'do no harm' can be an incomplete guide for action.
- Intersectionality In Educational Technology
Why intersectionality matters in educational technology work.
- Computational Thinking for the Educator & Researcher
How educator-researchers can think with computational thinking.
- Carriage House Flooring
We recently moved to our new home, and as a result we have a lot of new projects to complete.
- We Shape Our Tools and Then Our Tools Shape Us
How behaviorism still shapes classroom tools and student behavior.
- Digitally Literate English Language Learners
Why digital literacy research needs to include multilingual learners.
- Healthy Avatars and Sick People
How digital health systems can both improve care and create new risks.
- Repurpose & Reshare Your Talks on Social Media
How to extend the reach of your talks by resharing them online.
- Home Automation Goals
A look at home automation goals after moving into a new house.
- Privacy Or Power?
A reflection on student privacy, expertise, and the tradeoff between privacy and power.
- The “How” of Teaching Will Forever Change…We Now Need to Change the “Why”
Why 'back to normal' may not be the right goal after COVID.
- Tidying Up My Digital Practices
A reflection on cleaning up scattered digital habits, clarifying where different kinds of work belong, and building a more coherent publishing practice.
- My Ratio of Signal to Noise
How to keep your digital life organized without losing the signal to noise.
- Breaking Down the Misinformation & Disinformation Ecosystem
A framework for distinguishing misinformation from disinformation online.
- Writing Myself Into Existence
Why writing has become a way of making sense of my life.
- What Should We Demand of Tech
What we should expect from technology as users and citizens.
- Toward an Internet Bill of Rights
Why the internet needs a shared bill of rights.
- Guides In The Monster Factory
Lessons from Vinay Gupta's 'Monster Factory' interview.
- Are You Guilty of ‘Orbiting’?
A look at orbiting, ghosting, and the weirdness of digital social distance.
- When Planning Becomes Procrastinating
How planning can turn into procrastination when perfection gets in the way.
- Transform a Chore Into a Choice
How to turn obligation into agency by reframing a chore as a choice.
- Technology, Instruction, Learning in Teaching (TILT) Student Survey
Why the TILT survey matters for student experiences with instructional tech.
- Finding Value in Life
How to notice value and meaning in everyday life.
- Technology, Instruction, Learning in Teaching (TILT) Faculty Survey
Why the TILT survey matters for faculty use of instructional tech.
- Bots, Disruptors, and Frictionless Interactions
How bots, friction, and human touch shape the user experience.
- Development & Validation of the TILT Survey
How the TILT survey was developed and validated.
- The Future Includes Human Teachers
Why human teachers still matter in an AI-shaped future.
- Documenting Instructional use of Technology in Higher Education
How educators can document and study instructional technology use.
- Diamonds and Glass
How diamonds and glass illustrate pressure, beauty, and strength.
- Seven Steps to Chunking Content
How chunking helps people remember and process information.
- Threshold Concepts
How threshold concepts change the way people learn.
- First Principles Thinking
A simple take on first-principles thinking for digital literacy work.
- Narrative for Tenure & Promotion
Selected materials from my tenure and promotion packet.
- Leadership Roles, Skills, and You
What makes a worthwhile leader and the roles and skills behind it.
- Remembering in Digital Contexts
How digital residue changes the way we remember people after they die.
- Ten Rules for Innovative Dissemination of Research
How to share research more creatively and reach wider audiences.
- Cognitive Bias & The Sunk Cost Fallacy
A simple look at sunk costs and the difficulty of starting over.
- Using Twitter for Teaching, Learning, and Socializing
How Twitter can support teaching, learning, and social connection.
- Teaching in the Time of COVID
How teaching changed during COVID and what that revealed.
- Make Time for Self-Care
A brief case for self-care as a practice that supports mental, emotional, and physical health.
- Accessible and Approachable
How scholars can make their work more accessible and approachable.
- Monkeys Throwing Feces
A candid look at parenting, conflict, and the messy work of change.
- Fit Versus Fit
Why credentials help, but values and lived fit matter too.
- Luck, Preparation, and Opportunity
A reflection on how preparation and opportunity shape what we call luck.
- Before You Post That Hot Take
Why impulsive hot takes can make online moments worse.
- Residue of Learning
Who owns course content after class ends, and what learning residue remains?
- From Trash to Treasure
How a hard semester turned into a lesson in recovery and reflection.
- How are you complicit?
A hard question about how we help create the conditions we resist.
- How To Write a Blog Post
A practical guide to writing and publishing a blog post.
- Technology is a Tool, Not the Strategy
Why technology should support a strategy, not become the strategy.
- Considerations of Death
How technology and social networks shape our views of death.
- Information Technology Addiction
A caution against overusing the language of addiction when talking about tech use.
- Well-Being in a Digital World
What happens when you step away from social media but not the web.
- Sharpen Your Saw
Why sharpening your saw means protecting time to renew yourself.
- Shades of Gray
Why life is often more shades of gray than black and white.
- Trust, But Verify
Why verification and reputation matter in online information.
- Little things add up to big things
How small habits add up to big changes over time.
- Learning Strategies
How students use learning strategies to organize and improve study.
- From The Block Up
How young people are building change from the ground up.
- Hacking Happiness in the Information Age
How screentime, habits, and balance shape digital well-being.
- How to Give Accurate & Critical Feedback
Why feedback works better when it is accurate, direct, and constructive.
- Be joyful, loving, & explosive
A Bradbury quote about joy, love, and creative energy.
- Stop overscheduling
Why too much on your calendar can lead to burnout.
- Hell Yeah…or No
A simple filter for deciding what’s worth your time and energy.
- Speak To An Audience
Why speaking to one specific audience makes writing stronger.
- Becoming Self-Actualized
A reflection on self-actualization, freedom, and long-term purpose.
- Begin Owning Your Online Content
Why owning your online content starts with having a home base.
- Are you busy or productive?
A quick check on whether you're busy or actually productive.
- Engaging With Activist Texts in Learning Environments
How activist texts can support learning and social change.
- Live an Antifragile Way of Life
What antifragility means and why growth can come from disorder.
- How to Know You’re Not Insane
A reflection on gaslighting, mistrust, and feeling unmoored from reality.
- Doors of Perception
How perception shapes what we think is true and why that matters.
- What’s Next?
What comes next after receiving the Divergent Award during COVID.
- Combating Misinformation & Disinformation
How to tell misinformation and disinformation apart online.
- When Critical Evaluation Goes Too Far
When critical evaluation goes too far and starts to flatten nuance.
- Play “What’s The Rule?” to Develop Computational Thinking
A simple game for helping children notice patterns and think computationally.
- Seeing the change in the world
How our beliefs shape the way we see change in the world.
- Innovation & Execution
Why innovation matters less without execution.
- How to Cultivate Self-Awareness
A short guide to cultivating self-awareness through digital identity work.
- Look For The Good Apples
What strong groups do differently, and how to build them.
- Fail Hard
Why failure can be a useful part of ambitious goal-setting.
- Computational Thinking
How computational thinking helps people solve problems more systematically.
- Protect Your Center
Why protecting your center matters when opportunities pull you outward.
- Be the Documentarian of Your Life
Why documenting your life can help you think more clearly and learn from mistakes.
- The Doorway Effect
Why the doorway effect makes us forget what we meant to do.
- Writing For Yourself
Why writing for yourself is often the best way to find your voice.
- Work like a maker, not a manager
A reminder to protect maker time instead of over-scheduling like a manager.
- How & Why You Should Dox Yourself on the Internet
Why learning how doxing works is part of staying literate online.
- Building Up Your Digital Identity
How to start building your digital identity from the ground up.
- Come Badge With Me
Why digital badges can recognize learning across formal and informal contexts.
- Trouble Sounding Stupid
Why sounding stupid can be part of learning and building identity.
- Sitting Between Life and Death
How digital life reshapes grief, memory, and the spaces between life and death.
- Exposure Builds Credibility
Why sharing your work builds credibility over time.
- Trading Up The Chain
How misinformation and speculation move up the media chain.
- Control Your Controllables: Preparing for the Post-COVID Classroom
How to focus on what you can control in a post-COVID classroom.
- What’s on the other side of failure? Nothing
A reminder that failure is often just part of learning to play.
- Value In Finishing
Why finishing matters more than starting when work gets hard.
- De-hypnotizing ourselves
A reflection on waking up from inherited beliefs and assumptions.
- Become a Digitally Literate Educator
In 2016, I joined the One Side Project Challenge. The project brought together a number of creators from around the globe, created a private space for idea…
- On Living Well
A reflection on living well instead of just living longer.
- Our Experience With COVID-19 Tests
What our family learned from getting COVID tests and antibody tests.
- Pause & Reboot
A reminder to pause, reboot, and notice the mind at work.
- Stop Waiting for “What’s Next”
Why waiting for what's next can keep you from actually living.
- Are you on offense or defense?
A reminder to stay on offense when setting and pursuing goals.
- Joy, Love, & Aesthetic Fulfillment
How joy, love, and aesthetic fulfillment fit into literacy.
- Ikigai
A reflection on ikigai, purpose, and what you want from your work.
- Re-Examining My Social Signals
A reflection on stepping back from social signals for a month.
- Be The Expert
A reminder that expertise is built by making and learning from mistakes.
- Using Graphic Novels in Your Classroom
How graphic novels can support adolescent literacy and classroom discussion.
- Humans Have Bodies
Why embodied, offline life still matters in a digital age.
- My DIY Peloton
A quick look at Peloton and the appeal of connected fitness.
- Going high tech without losing high touch
How to stay high-tech without losing the human side of teaching.
- Is social media bad for us?
A look at social media, screentime, and the mental health conversation.
- Gone for a minute
A brief note on stepping away from social feeds.
- Four Levels of Real World Home Classrooms
How home classrooms change when learning moves online.
- Do The Work
How to turn anti-racist intentions into sustained action.
- Soundtrack Of Your Life
How music becomes the soundtrack for memory, feeling, and identity.
- Teaching When Things Go Sideways
How to keep teaching when everything goes sideways.
- Building Ethical Communities
How to think about building ethical online communities.
- Talking to youth about privacy, security, & digital spaces
How to talk with youth about privacy and security in digital spaces.
- Use GitHub Pages & Jekyll to host a podcast
How to use GitHub Pages and Jekyll to host a podcast.
- A Turning Point
How poetry can mark a turning point in a collaborative project.
- Three steps needed to empower students (& educators) as critical digital readers & writers
How readers and writers need new skills for the web.
- On Digital Life & Well-Being
How digital life and well-being connect in future-facing research.
- Balancing Open Scholarship & Self-Plagiarism
How to balance open scholarship with the demands of tenure and promotion.
- Shape of My Story
How poetry and performance shape a community storytelling project.
- Blogging as an Open Scholarship Practice
Why blogging is a practical open scholarship habit for researchers and educators.
- Recognizing the details
How close reading and detail work shape a poetry-making practice.
- Where I’m From
How poetry can help people tell where they come from.
- Where I Begin
How a poetry project uses voice, performance, and shared making.
- Explain who are you…to this day
How poetry can be used to ask and answer identity questions.
- Talking to Children about Technology, Social Media, & Algorithms
How to talk with children about tech, social media, and algorithms.
- Revolutionary Poets Society
How a slam poetry course helps students respond to the moment.
- Truth, lies, & learning in an online disinformation war
How disinformation war reshapes learning, truth, and safety online.
- Six criteria used to describe assessments
What criteria can help you describe and evaluate assessments.
- Journaling as a means to scaffold & assess learning
How journaling can support reflection, assessment, and learning.
- Formative & Summative Assessments
How formative and summative assessments support learning.
- Digital Storytelling
How digital storytelling can transform classroom learning.
- Storytelling
Why storytelling still matters for identity and meaning-making.
- Help define digital literacy
A call to define what it means to be digitally literate.
- What is digital literacy?
What digital literacy means and why the web is now a core text.
- Critical Media Literacy
Why critical media literacy is essential for online life.
- Semi-Permeable Membranes as Digital Learning Spaces
Why failure can be part of learning and knowledge growth.
- The case for anonymity online
Why anonymity can still matter in online spaces.
- Social Scholarship: Educators in digital, social spaces
How social scholarship prepares students for networked civic life.
- Critically evaluating online information while under attack
How to help readers evaluate online information under pressure.
- The most valuable thing on the Internet is your attention
Why your attention is the most valuable thing on the internet.
- The Black Box & Educational Technologies
Why educational technologies often feel like black boxes.
- Digital Literacies and the Skinner Box
How behaviorism still shapes digital literacy and classroom technology.
- How to respond to trolling behaviors
How to respond when trolling shows up online.
- Why people troll others online
Why people troll online and how those behaviors work.
- Online disinhibition effect
How online anonymity can lower social restraint and distort behavior.
- Why do people say things online they would never say face-to-face?
Why people say harsher things online than they would face to face.
- Screentime guidelines for children & adolescents
How screentime looks different for children and adolescents.
- Child-Computer Interactions in early childhood
How child-computer interactions fit into early childhood learning.
- Exploring temporal patterns Playing with data visualization & social media analytics
How to think about temporal patterns in qualitative research.
- Digitally Native Scholarship
How open scholarship changes when research moves online.
- What is trust in digital, hybrid, & physical spaces?
How trust works across information, organizations, and relationships.
- B-Tags, Photos, Technology & Surveillance
How photos, tags, and technology can become tools of surveillance.
- Assistive Technology
How assistive technology is adopted and supported in schools.
- Encountering harmful discourses in the classroom
How educators can respond when hate and harmful discourse enter class.
- Making sense of teaching, learning, & assessing with technology
How technology shapes teaching, learning, and assessment.
- Three examples of annotations, bookmarking, & sharing in my digital commonplace book
Three ways annotations and social bookmarking can support networked learning.
- What is IndieWeb & why should you care?
A plain-language introduction to the IndieWeb and what it offers.
- Interviewing my digital domains
A reflection on what it means to own a domain, build a home on the web, and keep shaping that space over time.
- Possible cultural & technological futures of digital scholarship
How IndieWeb ideas might reshape digital scholarship and citations.
- Blogging, small-b, Big B
Why blogging matters for open identity, learning, and the difference between small-b and Big B blogging.
- Identifying what we can control in our own lives
A reflection on control, influence, and where to focus your energy.
- Better visions of ourselves: Human futures, user data, & The Selfish Ledger
Why ubiquitous tech should help us build better versions of ourselves.
- What is “Critical Pedagogy”?
How critical pedagogy differs from critical literacy and why it matters.
- What is “Critical Literacy” in Education?
Why critical literacy shapes my teaching, research, and worldview.
- Practicing what you preach
A reminder that leadership means aligning your actions with your principles.
- Switching up my signals
Why I changed my relationship with social networks and digital spaces.
- Viewing your life as a project
A Stoic view of life as an ongoing project of ethical self-development.
- Moving beyond survival
A reflection on awareness, contemplation, and moving beyond survival.
- What is “empowerment” in education?
A reflection on why empowerment keeps showing up in my research and teaching.
- How to have a good life and be happy
A first-principles take on what it means to have a good life.
- Meaning making while reading online
How online algorithms shape meaning-making and reading.
- Text tradeoffs as we move from print to pixel
How text changes as literacy moves from print to pixel.
- Examining your impressions
Why first impressions can mislead and how to think more critically.
- The Cambridge Analytica scandal
What Cambridge Analytica reveals about data, politics, and manipulation.
- Rating the relative hotness of digital literacy
A playful look at the heat and urgency of digital literacy.
- The four types of online discussion. Where are you?
How online discussion takes different forms across platforms.
- What is creativity?
What creativity means and how useful ideas get made.
- Memento Mori: Learning about life, by knowing you will die
A reflection on grief, memory, and the reminder that we all die.
- “Tell me about yourself” in a critical autoethnography
How critical autoethnography connects identity, culture, and reflection.
- Living in agreement with your personal nature
How to live in agreement with your values and daily actions.
- Embedding STEAM into K-8 classrooms
How STEAM can help younger learners connect school and life.
- The Four Step Process Needed to Write an Annotated Bibliography
How to write an annotated bibliography that evaluates sources well.
- Creating a strategic plan for your life
Why a strategic plan should shape more than just the next task.
- Developing a personal vision statement
How to write a personal vision statement that guides choices and action.
- Eight steps to write a literature review
What a literature review is and how it maps the state of knowledge on a topic.
- Negotiating the positive & negative as a citizen of the world
How internet-connected life reshapes our role as global citizens.
- Assessing students as they read, research, & respond in Hypothesis
How I assess student work with Hypothesis.
- Cold brew coffee
A personal take on coffee, making, and the rituals that start the day.
- Developing resilience and preparing for adversity
How resilience and adversity shape growth, learning, and recovery.
- Take the time to review and reinforce your digital hygiene
How to protect your accounts, devices, and personal data online.
- Encrypt your devices
Why device encryption belongs in your annual security checkup.
- Lyrics, Performance, & Power
How lyrics, performance, and poetry can build student power.
- Protect your connection to the Internet
How to protect your internet connection and reduce exposure.
- Review & Revoke Social Logins & Third Party App Access
Why social logins can create privacy and security risks.
- Clean out your browser extensions
How browser extensions can affect your privacy and security.
- Backup your digital information and devices
Why backing up data should be part of your annual digital hygiene.
- How to use two factor authentication to protect yourself online
A practical reminder to audit your digital hygiene and enable two-factor protection.
- Three steps to develop a system to take control of your passwords
How to manage passwords with less risk and hassle.
- Understanding the differences between privacy and security
How privacy and security differ, and why the distinction matters online.
- Everything you need to know about encryption but were afraid to ask
Why encryption matters even when it feels inconvenient.
- Oppositional Conversational Style
What oppositional conversational style looks like in conversation.
- How to debate in real life
How to handle real-life debate with more care and insight.
- Using a daily gratitude journal to start your day
How a daily gratitude journal can steady your morning.
- Using logic models to organize grant proposals
How logic models help clarify what grant proposals can do.
- Wisdom is Tolerance of Cognitive Dissonance
How cognitive dissonance shapes judgment, wisdom, and learning.
- Information Without Emotion is Rarely Retained
Why emotion helps information stick in learning.
- Goals, Strategies, Objectives, & Tactics
A simple framework for turning a plan into goals, strategies, objectives, and tactics.
- Slow is Smooth. Smooth is Fast.
Why slower, careful work can be smoother and faster overall.
- Control Your Controllables
Why focusing on controllables can reduce stress and improve flow.
- Understanding key differences between divergent & convergent thinking
How divergent and convergent thinking work together in learning.
- The First Principles of Being Digitally Literate
How first-principles thinking can strengthen digital literacy.
- The three types of web pages you’ll find online
A simple guide to three types of web pages.
- Sincerity and Truth in Labeling of Online Information
How to judge credibility and sincerity in online information.
- Using Constraints to Build Creative Confidence & Divergent Thinking
How constraints can build creative confidence and divergent thinking.
- Making healthy skepticism happen in teaching and learning
How healthy skepticism helps us evaluate information online.
- Develop an assessment of critical online information literacies
How to assess whether online information is credible and useful.
- Develop a criteria for critical evaluation of online information
How to help students evaluate online information more critically.
- Internet Inquiry Projects
How WebQuests can evolve into deeper internet inquiry projects.
- Stop Motion Animation, Creativity, & Divergent Thinking
How stop-motion animation can support creativity and divergent thinking.
- What To Do With Your Kids During the Summer: Read, Write, Play, & Hack
How families can think about learning and enrichment over the summer.
- Three Stages to Become a Digitally Agile Researcher
How researchers can build digital agility for more effective, connected work.
- What You Need to Know About “Acceptable Use Policies”
What acceptable use policies are really trying to protect.
- What is Missing from the Mozilla Web Literacy Standards?
What web literacy standards still leave out.
- Three things I’ve learned by writing a newsletter
How I write and send my weekly newsletter.
- Stop Motion Movie Creation in Early Childhood Education
How stop-motion projects can support early childhood learning.
- Reflecting on My StrengthsQuest Report
Why we're using Gallup StrengthsQuest across the institution.
- Three questions to consider as you develop an awesome newsletter
How I build and send my weekly Digitally Literate newsletter.
- Becoming Literate Digitally in a Digitally Literate Environment of Their Own
Why students need a personalized online space to become digitally literate.
- Building a domain of your own: Selecting a WordPress theme
How to choose a WordPress theme when building your own domain.
- Building a Domain of Your Own: Installing WordPress
How to install WordPress as part of building your own site.
- How to register a domain and host your own website
Why hosting your own website is the best way to own your content.
- Private online research & discussion using Hypothes.is groups
How Hypothesis can support annotation and peer review in the classroom.
- Develop Your Own Personal Cyberinfrastructure
How to build a personal cyberinfrastructure for digital identity and control.
- Three steps to identify and develop your digital identity
Three steps for becoming a more digitally agile educator.
- Don’t click here: Facebook, algorithms, & articles you’re not meant to see
How Facebook's algorithms shape what you see and what gets hidden.
- Developing a domain of one’s own for pre-service educators
How pre-service educators can build a domain of their own.
- Three steps to move students from readers to writers of digital content
Why students need to move from consuming to creating digital content.
- A grant proposal for the ELATED (English Language Arts & Technology in Education) Project
Submitted materials for the Project Elated grant proposal.
- Moving from digital portfolios to a domain of one’s own
How digital portfolios can support identity, reflection, and learning.
- Vertical Teams and the Open Organizational Structure of BadgeChain
A look at BadgeChain's organizational structure and evolution.
- BadgeChain Annual Report (2015-2016)
A review of BadgeChain's work over the past year and what's next.
- Four steps to conducting action research in the classroom
How action research helps teachers solve classroom problems.
- Simple Steps to Writing Good Research Questions
How to write strong research questions that guide inquiry.
- Three reasons to become a digitally agile researcher
Why researchers need to stay digitally agile as tools and networks evolve.
- Doug Belshaw Brings Blockchain Thinking to the Badge Summit
Doug Belshaw's Badge Summit keynote through a blockchain lens.
- Three steps to become a digitally agile educator
Three steps to become a more digitally agile educator.
- BadgeChain Reads – A Next-Generation Smart Contract and Decentralized Application Platform
Welcome to the second round of BadgeChain Reads.
- BadgeChain Reads – Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System
Welcome to the first round of BadgeChain Reads.
- Fostering online research & discussion using Hypothesis
How Hypothesis supports online annotation, research, and discussion.
- Podcasting
How podcasting uses RSS and why a website still matters.
- Bots and the Future of Education
An early look at conversational bots in education, and why new interfaces always demand new literacies, habits, and forms of judgment.
- Digital portfolios
What digital portfolios are and why they matter for learning and identity.
- Becoming digitally literate in a domain of one’s own
How a domain of one's own supports digital identity and ownership.
- Blockchain and Open Badges in Higher Education & Research
How blockchain might affect open badges in higher education.
- What is Blockchain?
A plain-language introduction to blockchain and its possible uses in education.
- Engineering education, design, STEM, & literacy
What an engineering education interview says about STEM, design, and literacy.
- How to plan, present, & survive a Pecha Kucha style presentation
How to plan and deliver a concise Pecha Kucha presentation.
- Scaffolding Online & Blended Learning in the Higher Ed Classroom
How to scaffold online and blended learning in higher ed.
- Cognitive Authority, Digital Badges, and the Oracle of the Blockchain
How digital badges raise questions of value, credibility, and trust.
- Preparing Students to be Literate Digitally in a Digitally Literate Environment of Their Own
How students can become digitally literate in a connected environment.
- Digital Portfolios + Open Badges + Blockchain = Personal Learning Ledger
How digital portfolios, badges, and blockchain might connect.
- How to Find Creative Commons Licensed Images and Cite Them Correctly
How to find CC-licensed images and cite them correctly.
- Lightweight Blogging, Publishing, and Sharing Using Known
A look at Known as a lightweight publishing platform for people who want a simpler way to blog, share, and own their work online.
- How to teach and connect in online, networked learning spaces
What educators are really learning in open online spaces: how to make, share, connect, and participate with confidence in networked publics.
- Implementing Transmedia Storytelling
How transmedia storytelling helps educators connect learning across disciplines and media.
- Using Blogs (and Medium) to Create a Fishbowl Discussion for Project Planning
How blogs and platforms like Medium can support a more open, participatory fishbowl discussion for project planning and collaborative thinking.
- Helping Educators Become Digitally Literate
How to help educators become more digitally literate.
- Work With Cool People on Stuff That You Love
Why working with cool people matters more than status or hierarchy.
- Using Slack & Trello to Organize a Podcasting Series About Literacy Education & Research
How Slack and Trello can organize a collaborative podcast series.
- A New Hope: Negotiating the Integration of Transmedia Storytelling & Literacy Instruction
How transmedia storytelling supports literacy instruction across media.
- Transmedia Storytelling
How transmedia storytelling spreads a narrative across multiple media channels.
- The Challenge of Open, Online Scholarship in Academia
How open scholarship can fit the culture of academia.
- Moving Toward Transparency in Higher Education
Why transparency matters in higher education and where the system still hides information.
- Screencaptures & Screencasts in Education, Assessment, and Research
How screencasts can improve assessment and support multimodal learning.
- Allow it to be YouRTube: Planning, recording, & sharing video content online
How students learn and share through online video.
- Building Critical Media Literacy in the Deictic/Ambiguous Nature of Online Text
How critical media and web literacy reshape what we mean by text.
- Publishing Your Content Online and Syndicating it Elsewhere
How to publish content online and syndicate it across platforms.
- Request for Comments & Feedback on Web Literacy Version 2.0
A request for comments on Web Literacy version 2.0.
- Getting Started in Medium: Long form response and advanced writing practices
A look at advanced writing techniques in Medium.
- Getting Started in Medium: Reading, annotating, commenting, and recommending
A beginner's guide to reading and writing in Medium.
- Web Literacy Map: Read, write, & participate for a better web
A video overview of the web literacy map up to version 1.5.
- The 30 Day Challenge
As humans, we regularly
- Meditation, Mindfulness, & Gaining Headspace in My Workflow
How meditation and mindfulness can improve your workflow.
- Introducing Web Literacy – Reading, Writing, & Participating
How web literacy supports reading, writing, and participation.
- Using Vialogues to Scaffold Student Use of Video and Dialogue in the Classroom
How Vialogues can support video-based classroom discussion.
- Tweaking WordPress to Scaffold & Empower Your Readers
How WordPress tweaks can help readers navigate and contribute.
- Computational Participation: Coding and Programming as Literacy Activities
How coding and programming can function as literacy practices in classrooms.
- Scaffolding students (and educators) as they consume, curate, & create online
How to move students and educators from consuming to creating online.
- Describing the Complex Systems that Influence & Guide My Workflow
How the systems around us shape the way we work.
- Play With Digital Media, Stop-Motion Animation, & Vine to Earn the #VineOff Badge
Why stop-motion and Vine are useful ways to play with digital media.
- Understanding the Next Steps With the Web Literacy Map
What comes next for the Web Literacy Map.
- Deconstruct My Digital Identity Through a Glitch Remix Video – #CLMOOC Make Cycle 1
How a glitch remix helped me deconstruct my digital identity.
- Why You Should Build and Maintain Your One Space on the Internet
Why every educator should build and maintain one home base online.
- Continued Thoughts on Getting Things Done with Kanban and Trello
Continued reflections on Trello, Kanban, and getting things done.
- Critique and Construction of This Website
How building and breaking your own site helps sharpen your critique.
- Noticing and Naming Elements When You’ve Been Hacked
How to notice, name, and respond when an account has been hacked.
- Video Overview of the Online Research & Media Skills MOOC
A video overview of the ORMS MOOC and the model's three main cornerstones.
- Creating and Sharing Multimodal Tutorials to Scaffold Learners
How multimodal tutorials can help learners navigate digital tools.
- Guiding Students as They Explore, Build, & Connect Online
How students can explore, build, and connect more skillfully online.
- Hybrid & Blended Learning: Modifying pedagogy across time, place, path, & pace
How hybrid and blended learning change pedagogy across time and place.
- Literacy Instruction & Learning in Virtual, Blended, & Hybrid Learning Environments
What literacy research says about virtual, blended, and hybrid learning.
- The Life and Death of a Literacy & Technology Program
What the IT&DML program was and why it mattered for hybrid learning.
- Developing & maintaining learning connections online in a networked learning project
How to use the internet as a site for self-directed learning.
- Developing & Expressing Your Teaching and Research Philosophy Using Digital Tools
An assignment prompt and example structure for sharing a teaching and research philosophy online.
- Zainab Oni
An overview of digital badges and their uses in teaching and learning.
- The Voyage of the Anti-Hero, Barton Miki
A reflective piece on digital identity, unfinished work, and the fear of leaving imperfect traces of yourself online.
- Digital Badges: Recognizing, Assessing, and Motivating Learners In and Out of School Contexts
An overview of digital badges as evidence, assessment, and motivation.
- Digital Badges Overview
An overview of digital badges in teaching and learning.
- What Can We Learn From Dreams?
A personal reflection on dreams, grief, memory, and the way old losses continue to shape the stories we tell about ourselves.
- Survey of Literacy and Identity within Digital Environments (SLIDE) instrument
A record of the Survey of Literacy and Identity within Digital Environments, used to study how educators build identity and participate in open online spaces.
- Request for Comments on the Web Literacy Map (Version 1.5) Skills
A request for comment on web literacy map skills version 1.5.
- I’m a Webmaker: I build and break things online
A short argument for humility, experimentation, and learning in public from someone who builds, breaks, and figures things out on the open web.
- Learning Pathways, Badges, and Models in the Web Literacy Map Development
An overview of web literacy map pathways, badges, and privacy work.
- Digital Literacy Practices for Working With English Learners (ELs)
How digital literacy practices can support English learners.
- Grokkability, Ontology, and the Nomological Network
Why the real value of web literacy work comes from digging into one competency at a time.
- Building Your Front Door, or Hub for Digital Learning Spaces
How to think through the purpose, audience, and structure of an online hub that can serve as the front door to your digital identity.
- The Front Door to My Digital World
Why I think of a website as the front door to a digital life, and how that metaphor shapes the way I build and share online.
- Multicultural Education and Multiliteracies: Exploration & Exposure of Literacy Practices with Preservice Teachers
How hybrid learning and Google+ discussion shaped a multicultural literacy study.
- Toward the Development of a Web Literacy Map: Exploring, Building, and Connecting Online
Responses to Mozilla's Web Literacy Map from a Literacy Research Association session.
- A Response to a Request to Ban Handheld Devices for Children Under 12
A balanced response to calls for banning devices for children under 12.
- Social Scholars: Educators’ Digital Identity Construction in Social & Connected Online Learning Environments
Research materials and findings from a study of how educators construct digital identity and participate in social, connected learning environments.
- Teaching, Learning, and Sharing Openly Online
What open teaching and learning ask of teachers and students.
- Letters in Support of the UNH Education Department
A collection of letters supporting the UNH Education Department.
- Community Survey – Help Develop the Web Literacy Map 2.0
A community survey to help revise the web literacy map.
- Empowering Learners in the Reader/Writer Nature of the Digital Informational Space
How readers can become writers in digital informational spaces.
- Continued Exploration and Development of Digital Badges
TL;DR version: An update in my continued exploration and development of a digital badging system. At this point
- Where Do We Stand With the Mozilla Web Literacy Map?
Where the Mozilla Web Literacy Map stood at a key transition point.
- Come join us for the Online Research and Media Skills (ORMS) MOOC
An invitation to join the Online Research and Media Skills MOOC.
- Evolution of a Syllabus on New Literacies Research and Practice
A revised syllabus for a New Literacies course.
- Apply a Creative Commons License to your Digital Learning Hub
How to add a Creative Commons license to your digital learning hub.
- My (Current) Thoughts on the Mozilla Web Literacy Initiative
My current thoughts on where the Mozilla Web Literacy initiative is headed.
- Google Groups as a Private, Personal Learning Network
How Google Groups can support a private learning network.
- Collaborative Summer Read – The Information: A history, a theory, a flood
How a collaborative summer read can support shared learning.
- Creating and Sharing Your Ideas Online With Others
How I think about sharing ideas across Google+, Twitter, and Facebook.
- Maker Space Activities Using Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs)
How LED maker activities can be used to tell stories with light.
- Building a “Blogosphere” for Program and Student Evaluation & Communication
How blogs can support student evaluation, reflection, and communication.
- Creating and Sharing Your “One Page” on the Internet
How to create a one-page hub for your online identity.
- Help Debunk the Digital Native Myth
Why the digital native myth still needs to be debunked.
- Create a Game or “Choose Your Own Adventure” Using Google Forms
How Google Forms can be used to create a simple choose-your-own-adventure game.
- The FacePalm Social Mood Experiment
A satire of Facebook's mood experiment using Google Forms.
- Facebook’s Secret Mood Experiment and the Challenges of Living Online
How the Facebook mood experiment raised questions about online ethics.
- Work Habits of the Digital Native
How a reading association workshop explored digital texts, tools, and workflows.
- Literacy practices in an open, networked, collaborative learning space
How literacy practices change in open, networked learning spaces.
- Safety, Identity, and Literacy in Online Spaces
Why safety, identity, and literacy are inseparable in online spaces.
- IT&DML Syllabus for Critical Issues & Research in New Literacies
The syllabus for IT&DML critical issues research in new literacies.
- Course Sequence & Syllabi for the Instructional Technology & Digital Media Literacy Program
An overview of the IT&DML program sequence for educators.
- Engaging Learners in Inclusive, Participative, & Connected Instruction
How inclusive, participative, connected instruction can use technology well.
- Application for the Web Literacy Ninja Badge – Donatello of the Web Lit Ninja Turtles
My application for the Web Literacy Ninja Badge.
- Open is Serendipity
How open learning creates serendipity in online spaces.
- Second Annual Print to Pixel Unconference – May 3rd, 2014 #print2pixel
Come join us for the second annual Print to Pixel Unconference.
- The Digital Texts and Tools Online Repository
How an open repository can help archive teaching and learning materials.
- TechTalk 004 – RapGenius and PoetryGenius
Why annotation platforms like Rap Genius and Poetry Genius mattered as early experiments in social reading, commentary, and connected learning.
- Teachers May Hold the Key to the Past, Present, and Future of Web Literacy
Why teachers are central to the past, present, and future of web literacy.
- LRA: Research to Practice 004 – Gender as a Lens
Episode 004 of the LRA: Research to Practice Show was held on Monday January 17th from 7:008:00 pm.
- Creating & Delivering a Pecha Kucha Style Research Presentation
How a Pecha Kucha format can sharpen research presentations.
- Looking at Student Work to Identify Deeper Learning
How to spot deeper learning by looking closely at student work.
- The Curious Case of Mr. Adair & The Count of Monte Cristo
A personal story about procrastination, reading, and one early learning experience that still shapes how I think about teaching and growth.
- TechTalk 003 – Twitter, Vine, Instagram, & the #WALKMYWORLD Project
A practical overview of Twitter, Vine, and Instagram as creative and participatory tools for educators working in open online spaces.
- LRA: Research to Practice Episode 003 – Writing and Multimodality
Episode 003 of the LRA: Research to Practice Show will be held on Monday January 13th from 2:003:00 pm.
- Multimodal Information and the Future of Writing
How multimodal information is changing the future of writing.
- Responsibilities of Academics and Scholars in Writing and Publishing Online
What academics owe readers when they publish their work online.
- Open Access Writing, Publishing, and Sharing
How open access shapes writing, publishing, and sharing.
- Social Networking and Writing Documentary Poetry
How social networking and poetry can come together in classrooms.
- Empowering Students in the Reader/Writer Nature of Online Information
How to help students read and write more actively online.
- TechTalk 002 – Twitter, ‘Twitteracy’, and Connected Educators
A TechTalk on Twitter, twitteracy, and connected educators.
- A Device Agnostic Policy that Allows for Ubiquitous Access to My Content
How to make your content accessible across devices.
- Blended or Hybrid Learning Environments
What makes a strong blended or hybrid learning environment.
- LRA: Research to Practice online video initiative
Launching an LRA research-to-practice online video initiative.
- Post, Promote, and Protect Your Content Online Using Creative Commons Licensing
How Creative Commons helps you share and protect your content.
- Launching the Networked Learning Collaborative
Why the Networked Learning Collaborative was created.
- Beta Testing of the Online Research and Media Skills MOOC
What to expect as we beta test the ORMS MOOC.
- Using Online Resources and Google Scholar to Conduct Research in the Classroom
How to use Google Scholar and online tools for classroom research.
- Opportunities to Enhance Online Discussions & Collaboration Using Google Hangouts
How Google Hangouts can enhance online discussion and collaboration.
- Thinking and Talking About Open Badging Initiatives…and the Failure Badge
What an open badge initiative can learn from failure.
- Digital Texts and Tools to Support the Writing Process
A look at digital texts and tools that support my writing process.
- Synthesis of Argumentation in Online Informational Text
How to synthesize argumentation in online informational texts.
- Why in the World Would You Build an Open Educational MOOC?
Why build an open educational MOOC in the first place?
- Value, Cognitive Authority, and Digital Badges
How cognitive authority shapes decisions about digital badges.
- Day Five at the MA New Lit Institute – Digital Texts and Tools are a toybox, but what if we want a sandbox?
Notes from the final day at the MA New Literacies Institute.
- Day Three at the MA New Lit Institute – Interestingness and Computational Culture
Notes from day three at the MA New Literacies Institute.
- Day Two at the MA New Lit Institute – Teachers Like to (Need to) Play
Notes from day two at the MA New Literacies Institute.
- Day One at the MA New Literacies Institute – ChalkBoardMan Moving From Print to Screen
Notes from day one at the MA New Literacies Institute.
- Considerations on Hosting an Open Badging Initiative
Key lessons from hosting an open badging initiative.
- Mozilla Web Literacy Formal Request for Comments (RFC)
A look at Mozilla's web literacy RFC and what it means for shared standards.
- Challenges in Launching and Hosting an Open, Digital Badge Initiative
Lessons learned while launching and hosting an open digital badge initiative.
- Develop Your Own Personal Learning Network Using Twitter
How educators can use Twitter to build a personal learning network.
- Digital MacGyver: Pocket & the Ability to Read it Later
A pocket guide to the tools and tricks I use to get work done.
- Creative Commons Licensing of Open Educational Content
A quick guide to Creative Commons licensing for open educational content.
- Innovative Teaching and Learning with Digital Media Texts, Tools & Technologies
How digital media texts and tools can support innovative teaching.
- Overview of Online Research & Media Skills Model, MOOC, and Badges
An overview of the ORMS MOOC and its badge system.
- Chrome Extensions to Protect Yourself as You Search and Sift Online Information
How to protect your data while searching and browsing online.
- My Philosophy, or My “Credo” in Research, Teaching, and Learning
My teaching and research credo, shaped by connected learning and launching IT&DML.
- Unpreparing for an Unconference
What unconferences are and how participants shape the agenda.
- Global Youth in the Digital Age
How global youth navigate engagement in a digital age.
- Make With Me – Digital Badges
What digital badges can offer learners in a connected learning context.
- Experimenting With Stop Motion Animation in the Connected Learning MOOC
Why stop motion animation is a useful connected learning activity.
- Design Evolution of the Graphics in an Open Badge Initiative
How the graphics for our open badge initiative evolved over time.
- Help Create a Web Literate Planet With The Mozilla Web Literacies
How the Mozilla Web Literacies project helps build a web-literate future.
- Preparing to “Launch” Our Open Badging System
What goes into preparing to launch an open badging system.
- Privacy, Identity, & Protecting Yourself (and Your Students) Online
How privacy and identity shape safety for you and your students online.
- Open Badges Initiatives and Teacher Preparation Programs
How open badges connect to teacher preparation programs.
- Reflections on Revisions Needed for an Open Educational Resource
What needs revision after launching an open educational resource.
- Notes as We Frame an Open Badge Initiative for Teachers Using Technology
Notes on framing an open badge initiative for teachers.
- Embedding New Literacies in the Common Core State Standards
How new literacies fit into the Common Core State Standards.
- Embedding Technology Instruction in Common Core State Standards – A “MOOC”
How the ORMS class embeds new literacies into the CCSS.
- Working Individually & Collaboratively While Constructing Online Content #teachtheweb
How to balance solo and collaborative work while making online content.
- Towards a System of Open Badges for Teachers & Technology Use
How open badges can support teachers trying to use technology.
- Empowering Students in the Reader/Writer Nature of the Web #teachtheweb
How making, connected learning, and critical literacy support student agency.
- What kind of thinking is involved when you Make? #teachtheweb
What kinds of thinking happen when you make content online.
- Spending a Little Time “Making” the Web
Why participating in Mozilla's Teach the Web work matters for digital literacy.
- Preparing Teachers & Students for Web Literacies
How Mozilla's web literacies work can help teachers and students learn the web.
- Keynote at the Literacy and Learning Conference
A keynote on the Common Core and new literacies.
- Inquiry and the Learning Process
Why inquiry matters in teaching, learning, and educational technology.
- Surviving a Campus Shooter
Why campus safety training matters for faculty and staff.
- A Tale of Two Wikis: Open & Closed Learning Management Systems
How open and closed wiki systems shaped my classroom workflow.
- Towards a Framing of Web Literacies
How web literacies can be framed as explore, create, connect, protect.
- Backyard Science – The Rocket Report
A backyard rocket project and what it shows about learning.
- On Digital Learning Day…Please Also Celebrate Analog Learning
Why digital learning should still leave room for analog learning.
- Teaching Online and the Time of Screencasts
Why screencasts work well for online teaching and learning.
- Producing and Sharing Online Screencasts to Support Learners
How screencasts can teach procedures better than text alone.
- Exploring Growth in Teacher Dispositions through the use of Visual Analogies
How visual analogies can help explain teacher growth.
- How I Write: Research, Collaboration, and Communication using online tools
How online tools support research, collaboration, and writing.
- Negotiating The Intersection of Literacy and Technology
How literacy and technology overlap in classroom practice.
- Construction and/or Creation of Online Content
How online content construction expands beyond online reading comprehension.
- How and when will students and I interact? #blendkit2012
How blended learning changes when and how instructors and students interact.
- Writing & Technology Book Chapter Proposals
A call for chapter proposals on writing and technology.
- What will my blend be?
How my first MOOC shaped my thinking about blended learning.
- Facilitating Critical Evaluation Skills through Content Creation: Empowering Adolescents as Readers and Writers of Online Information
My dissertation on critical evaluation and online content creation.
- When did “HACK” become a bad word?
Why 'hack' has become a bad word in some professional spaces.
- Student Responsibilities and Educational Technologies
What students and teachers owe each other when using educational technology.
- Storify and Curiosity
A quick test of Storify and the role of curiosity in trying tools.
- Teacher Responsibilities & Educational Technologies
A reflection on teacher responsibility when using educational technologies.
- Responsibility and Educational Technologies
A reflection on teacher responsibility when adopting educational technology.
- Preparing for the MA NLI 2012
We are quickly approaching the week of festivities for the Massachusetts New Literacies Institute 2012.
- iPads and our work in the Education Department
What we learned after putting iPads into the Education Department's everyday work.
- I Blog…therefore I am…
Why blogging helps us think, write, and share online.
- Copyright, Questions, and Open Source Education
A note on copyright questions in open-source education.
- Google Forms and Online Survey Tools
How Google Forms can be used to build simple online surveys.
- Noticing, Naming, and Navigating
How students can notice, name, and navigate online texts.
- Online Research and Media Skills…and Elementary School
How elementary students can build research and media literacy skills.
- Google Drive, Dropbox, & Cloud Storage
A quick look at cloud storage, backup, and Google Drive.
- Administration and Technology
How administrators can use technology with more care and context.
- Open Badges in Education
A look at how open badges fit into education.
- Voicethread and Picture Books
How VoiceThread can support reading and response around picture books.
- Creating and Curating Your Digital Identity
How to create and curate a stronger online identity and brand.
- Time and Distractions While Reading Online
How time and distraction shape reading online.
- Millennials and Their “Hyperconnected” Lives
How hyperconnected life shapes the literate lives of Millennials.
- Creating a Culture of Online Learning
How to build a classroom culture around online learning and student blogging.
- Teens, Cyberbullying, & Social Networks
What research says about teen behavior, cruelty, and cyberbullying online.
- Poetry, Digital Media, and Mobile Phones
How poetry, digital media, and mobile phones intersect in learning.
- The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus Saga Continues…
Why the tree octopus saga still matters for online literacy.
- Scaffolding Early Learners as they Search & Sift Online Information
How to scaffold young learners as they search and sift online information.
- A Response to My Earlier Thoughts on Raising a Digital Native
A follow-up reflection on raising a digital native.
- Raising a Digital Native
How early literacy and digital life shape a child’s development.
- The Digital Coursepack
How a digital coursepack can support classroom learning.
- What to Think While Thinking Critically Online
What to think about while reading and evaluating information online.
- Is Your Acceptable Use Policy Acceptable…Or Not?
How acceptable use policies shape classroom technology decisions.
- What is New Literacies?
A simple explanation of what new literacies means.
- Article Review and Study Design Task for My Comprehensive Exams
My article review and study design task for comprehensive exams.
- Philosophy and Pedagogy Statement Task for My Comprehensive Exams
My task for the Statement of Philosophy and Pedagogy portion of the Comprehensive Exams is included below. I have embedded my response at the bottom.
- Syllabus Response Task for my Comprehensive Exams
This is the task I received for one part of my Comprehensive Exams. Below I have embedded my response to this task.