9) Fads and factionalism – no thanks. Even in my short (5 year) teaching career I have seen things come and go out of favour. Learning styles, mindfulness, multiple intelligences, growth mindsets, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Cheese (I’m pretty sure it was cheese), I’ve been taught them then been told they don’t even exist. There’s probably a grain of truth in most of these things: good lessons should stimulate many of the senses but let’s not turn every teaching point into a song made out of differently-textured smells differentiated 30 ways to accommodate each child’s ‘learning style’. Life’s too short.

Back in 1993, as a young computer science graduate student, I created my first web page. To do so, I had to learn a new language, HyperText Markup Language (html), which was pretty easy for me as someone who had been programming in Cobol, PL/I, C, Basic, and so on, since high school. My web pages co...

Liked Reads, Listens, Watches, and Editable Webmention Types and Avatars in the IndieWeb WordPress Suite by Chris Aldrich (Chris Aldrich | BoffoSocko)

One can now go to the admin interface for their comments and webmentions (found at the path /wp-admin/edit-comments.php), click on edit for the particular comment they’re changing and then scroll down to reveal a droplist interface to be able to manually change the webmention type.

Virtual reality has potential as a learning tool in classrooms, but don’t rush its use until the technology has been well-tested by teachers and students.

When we leave the classroom, or the school, or the job and no longer are in touch with those who our words affect the most.

After years of letting algorithms make up our minds for us, the time is right to go back to basics.