Pick a colour for the day. Notice it anywhere you go. Take photos. Pick the best one to show us. Did you notice that setting an intention to notice something, helped you pay attention and be more aware of your surroundings?

Thursday was a lovely day a bit of frost and a clear sky. unfortunately I was stuck indoors all day. I thought I’d wait till the weekend.

As atonement for not doing it on the right day I decided on yellow as I thought that would be hard.

Saturday started a dreach damp day sleet, rain and wet snow. I still managed to find plenty of yellow.

I love these simple challenges best of all this morning yellow shone out like lights. I didn’t even take gave of the opportunities.

File under another thing about WordPress I didn’t know.

I do not use the more tag on this blog very often, but it is a handy thing if you do not want all the text from a post filling up your home page. I was using it elsewhere today and wondered if I could edit the text from the standard Continue reading → turns out you can. You need to stitch to the Text view in the post editor, rather than the Visual, There you will see:

<!–more–>

you can edit it like this:
<!–more Find out more about more… –>

Find out more about more…

The University of Dundee seems to be making its voice heard about glow and so it should! It’s here, let’s use it. But, it made me start to think about why I personally have got into blogging so much when some of the professionals around me just don’t want to?

from: Making This Blog Count | Katie-Rebecca’s ePortfolio

Further evidence of the blogging boom in the University of Dundee. Katie-Rebecca’s post about why she blogs makes me very glad to have worked on Glow Blogs.

 

I was alerted to Anchor by Joe Dale.

I don’t think audio needs reanimated but…

Looks like an interesting app for mobile audio. Ease of use and the ability to reply seem to be the features they are going for. Setup was largely audio, for instance you don’t type your name, you speak it.

Pasting the link to a piece of audio into WordPress here embeds it, via oEmbed I guess. I can’t see any sign of RSS yet. I’ve not found the documentation yet either. Seems to be iOS/iPhone only so far.

They do say:

Once published, conversations can be shared as podcasts, and heard all over the web.

from: Anchor – True public radio – About Anchor

So I’d expect RSS to be involved somewhere. I am hoping for RSS for tags so that we could pull  them into Edutalk.

Recording is so easy that I made the above without much though, I’ll try again soon with more of a plan.

 

For example, teaching digital skills would include showing students how to download images from the Internet and insert them into PowerPoint slides or webpages. Digital literacy would focus on helping students choose appropriate images, recognize copyright licensing, and cite or get permissions, in addition to reminding students to use alternative text for images to support those with visual disabilities.

Really interesting post by Maha Bali with some great real world examples.

Knowing the Difference Between Digital Skills and Digital Literacies, and Teaching Both

So often we only seem to have time for breezing through the skills and mentioning literacy. In my own work we deliver fewer and fewer daytime CPD opportunities, shorter twilights are delivered more often. Skills then become the main focus.

I’d be interested in knowing how much penetration digital literacy has in classrooms across Scotland?

Especially among staff who do not identify themselves as having digital skills?

An even more challenging read is: Media Literacy: 5 key concepts to teach this year

I am yet to see Microsoft or MinecraftEdu act in a way other than marketing and brand-building (ie scholarly).

and

Most media messages are organized to gain profit and/or power.
To learn this, kids need to be removed from the kind of dubious activity that ‘brands’ are doing to children with the willing co-operation of teachers. Point 5 – The message that goes with the device you place in the child’s hand was not created, designed or sold to make them more literate – and yet, we call it ‘digital literacy’ to mask the obvious effect of forcing one brand over another into kids education.

I’d like to see this discussed by a group of teachers who belong to different clubs, ADEs, MIEExperts, Google for Education Certified Innovators and the like. How do we deal with our bias when teaching? Do we walk the talk if we claim some sort of balancing act?

The featured image for this post is Public Domain: Image from page 108 of “Argument to errors of thought in science, religion and social life” (1911) | Flickr – Photo Sharing!