as if
Author: tmulligan
Circumscribing Spaces
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The Valdosta School
To: My Dear Students
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Seemingly mechanical and relatively unintimidating, can the practice of assembling collections of concepts and terms related to content areas of interest— of building taxonomies— be harnessed to render accessible, navigable the intellectual spaces we wish to explore?
Time to (re)design and glean those punked out immersive best practices.
Petty Authority
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Evil involves forethought.
It’s all in the planning.
The ultimate futility of bureaucracy
(when it distracts from and derides collaboration and community)...
Zero-Barrier Data Collection
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Problem: the contemporary lust for data, in combination with the relative immaturity of collection tools and prevalence of ill-conceived implementations, has led to atomization of otherwise useful bits of raw information into indecipherable piles of, at best, unintelligible, misunderstood, and therefore largely unactionable factoids.
Insight: by limiting user prompts to core questions and providing fluid one-click access to related topic questions, the coherent mental map of topical and thematic interrelationships necessary to engage in the process of reflective writing— an intensive cognitive process requiringsynthesis, articulation, and ultimately, empathic consideration— can be supported and, perhaps, enhanced.
Solution: separate and minimize the architectural constraints (i.e. mechanisms of data pre-structuring or pigeonholing if you prefer) at ingress and introduce an initial analytical pass after the input stage is completed to map provided responses to expected/required structure.
(re)search!
Friday, July 29 2019
The Valdosta School
To: recipient
Re: (re)search
@TM
#123
#hashtag
<< #820 >>
820
“it creates an environment where people need to talk to each other to get the whole story.”
Space is the place for re-search. A distraction-free oasis capable of creating the conditions for systematic intellectual inquiry about important questions.
How to focus and operationalize the wisdom of crowds? Crowds that are now equipped with smartphones?
> polls
> unannounced quizlets
> participatory problem solving tasks (scavenger hunts, etc.)
> use time constraints and competition to keep kids on task
Atomize! Reify. explode > recombine | divergent > convergent
An experiment in collaborative knowledge-making, Dig! is about conducting research in bite-size doses of insight through an iterative process of aggregating, analyzing, and curating fragments of accumulated information.
An oasis in a torrent of information overload and meaningless repetition, Dig! is a knowledge repository that aims to be the antidote for two world weary academics prone to intellectual pursuits rather than clerical whack-a-mole.
The Thread of Continuity (revisited)
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The Valdosta School
To: recipient
Re: subject
@TM
#threadofcontinuity
< #256
TBD >
What are the various flavors of continuity? And how best to represent them in graphic form? Below are icons created for the Dig! deck to represent the various continuity relationships players are challenged with creating when playing a card.
Describing, Not Prescribing
Friday, July 29 2019
The Valdosta School
To: My beloved students
Re: Getting unstuck
@TM
#tools
< post001
post003 >
And taxonomies are useful. Circumscribing intellectual spaces, defining terms, and so on.
The value of tasking students with the seemingly mechanical and relatively unintimidating challenge of assembling collections of terms related to a content area has succumbed to disruption through edupunked supportive networks delivering high quality content that meets many curricular objectives. Time to (re)design and glean those punked out immersive best practices.
Hearsay
Friday, July 29 2019
The Valdosta School
To: recipient
Re: subject
post_002
@handle_if_appropriate
#hashtag
< post_001 | post_003 >
Etymologies are often revealing, but WTF?
Sleight of Hand
Friday, July 29 2019
The Valdosta School
To: recipient
Re: Driving wow
@tmulligan
#hashtag
who?
what?
where?
when?
how?
Aha! moments are fewer and rather between, but there are numerous clever techniques that can foster epiphany. Momentary insight is better than its alternative.
As Jim Jarmusch acknowledged about his black and white film Dead Man, stripping away a layer of familiarity (removing an expected aspect of reality) can expose otherwise overlooked relationships— even reveal an underlying truth.
Perhaps predictably, there are contrived and artificial as well as more graceful, organic means of accomplishing this effect in the classroom.
Muting the audio to emphasize visual storytelling
blah
Turning off picture to emphasize a sound mix
https://hyperallergic.com/376807/louise-lawler-screens-a-movie-with-no-images/
Draining color to reveal light Ratio
Twitteracy
Friday, July 29 2019
The Valdosta School
To: recipient
Re: subject
@tmulligan
#socialmedia_literacy
Twitter’s decision to double its character count from 140 to 280 characters last year hasn’t dramatically changed the length of Twitter posts. According to new data released by the company this morning, Twitter is still a place for briefer thoughts, with only 1% of tweets hitting the 280-character limit, and only 12% of tweets longer than 140 characters.
Critical Making & The Learning Curve
Friday, July 29 2019
The Valdosta School
To: recipient
Re: subject
@tmulligan
#critical_making
Critical making implies self-awareness during the process of creating, but what about the how of arriving at appropriate responses to communications challenges (message, voice, aesthetic, etc.)? Modeling may represent a way out of the quagmire, but how to manage the process?
Reflectivity vs. reflexivity.
Situational awareness & muscle memory. Tactical forces are trained to rely on series of rote procedures in life threatening situations.