The FeedLand blogroll on Drummer blogs was a snip to set up. Here is mine. Looks very nice imo. I’ve not been blogging via drummer for a year, but Dave says there is a WordPress plugin in the works.

I’ve had my feedland blogroll on my WordPress site in a couple of different ways, via Jan’s plugin on the sidebar and my own script on a page. This is more interesting. Like Frank, I hope I can get the blogroll on it’s own page on my WordPress site. I am also just dumping my whole FeedLand list at the moment. I think I’d want to edit that down for a blog roll, perhaps missing out the more obvious links in favour of folk who I interact with.

I’ve had a blogroll on my site for most of its existence. There seems to be a bit of a resurgence at the moment. Hopefully this will lead to a more open and connected web. Dave’s version expands the concept from a list of links towards a feed reader experience. I am wondering if it is heading towards the way Ton’s feedreader seems to work. As it stands it is a great way to get reference links while writing.

Finally I and enjoying writing this post in Drummer, and am going to post it to my WordPress blog with a script Frank shared.

Published on my Oldschool Drummer blog

Read: Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson ★★★★☆ 📚
Lots of fun, I chuckled my way through. Somewhat confused by the time travel, alternative paths and possible hallucinations. Isobel is 16 in the 60s. Her mum and dad disappear mysteriously. All the characters are strange.

Read Generative AI and Creative Learning: Concerns, Opportunities, and Choices by Mitchel Resnick
As each new wave of technology ripples through society, we need to decide if and how to integrate the technology into our learning environments. That was true with personal computers, then with the internet, and now with generative AI technologies.

I just listened to the generated audio rather than read this.

Really powerful summary between the instructionist and constructionist approaches to AI in education. Resnick is of course the father of scratch, so is firmly on the constructionist side.

There are powerful ideas and examples of the ways AI could support a constructionist approach to learning and the 4Ps projects, passion, peers, and play.

I started to pull out quotes, but it easier to suggest you just read the whole thing.

 I worry that inertia and market pressures will push the educational uses of generative AI in this direction.

This would be the worry.

The piece finishes with

The choice is up to us. The choice is more educational and political than technological. What types of learning and education do we want for our children, our schools, and our society? All of us—as teachers, parents, school administrators, designers, developers, researchers, policymakers—need to consider our values and visions for learning and education, and make choices that align with our values and visions. It is up to us.

I do wonder if, in the mainstream, we have much choice. I don’t think that many decisions about educational technology have been very pure, the power of the big companies is massive. We should be thankful that the more open, non-commercial like scratch exists.

Read: The Trees by Percival Everett ★★★★☆📚
Racism, lynching, half detective, half horror. Also laugh out loud funny. What a strange book. Raced through it. The conclusion was a bit abrupt, but I am not sure how it could be finished with complete satisfaction.