Morning in the bin lane.
Good morning Banton
Reading & enjoying House Training my Phone. Is reading about distraction my distraction?
Not much to argue with here. Image CC-BY Dean Shareski
How to improve Glow Blogs?
I’ve been involved with Glow Blogs as product owner for a few years now 1. I think my main aim has been to avoid the stagnation that happened with the previous system and to keep the service as useful as possible for teachers and pupils 2.
So far we have I think managed that by keeping up with WordPress releases and adding features to improve various different aspects.
Since the rebooting of Glow in October 2014 there have been around 3 major releases of Glow Blogs every year. At the end of last session it was decided that these gradual improvements were going smoothly enough to drop back to one major release each year 3.
It was also decided to formalise the way we get ideas for improvements a little. To do this we are trying to gather suggestions in one place as opposed to the rather ad-hoc system that was in place before.
It seemed like a good idea to use the blog service itself to gather these ideas so a page has been added to the Help Blog for suggestions.
Anyone who is interested can suggest ideas and these will be triaged into the release for next summer.
This doesn’t mean that all suggestions will be taken forward. I’ve learnt my lesson a few times with suggestions of my own. Some ideas might be too expensive, some might be insecure or too difficult to implement in our setup. It was surprising how complicated adding features to Glow Blogs turned out to be. Glow Blogs is, I believe, the biggest WordPress set up in Europe so changes cannot be made lightly. On the other hand the service needs to met the needs of teachers & pupils in Scotland.
If you are a user of blogs I hope you will take a bit of time to think of how the service could be improved. Then it is just a case of filling in the form and we will take it from there. If you leave contact details with your suggestion I’ll certainly get back to you, possibly with some questions. We will also post the suggestions as they are made to the help blog to allow others to comment or express interest.
One more time, here is the link for suggestions. The cut for next years release will be at the end of November.
Featured Image: Image from page 196 of “Suggestions for handwork in school… | Flickr No known copyright restrictions.
Done.
Orange Autumn
Life in Links 04-11-2017
Grist from the pinboard.
- Creativity and digital technology So the digital is a less creative arena?
Gardner and Davis suggested that the pre-packaged resources (no matter how vast) made available to young people through the Internet is limiting exercise of the imagination because (as Marvel has shown again and again) it is easier to repackage an existing idea than come up with a new one
- A Selection of micro:bit Projects – Maker Space
A lot of these projects involve connecting the micro:bit to other bits and pieces; such as buzzers, or LEDs. However, we start off with a really simple project which just uses the micro:bit on its own
- The Case Against Automated Student Data Dashboards | EdSurge News
We tried to inspire reflection, but it often happened separate from learning. At the end of the semester, we’d ask students about their strengths and weaknesses, and what they could do differently next semester. They would write down a few ideas, but were never asked to come back to them. It became an activity that yielded little impact.
- Teachable Machine silly practical machine learning. Would be a good demo.
- Educators in Indieweb twitter list Thanks to indiewebber Chris Aldrich for a interesting slice of educators on twitter.
- Analyze | Webbkoll – dataskydd.net
This tool helps you check what data-protecting measures a site has taken to help you exercise control over your privacy. Read more.
One of the many links from the next one.
- Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web – Neustadt.fr
We’re quietly replacing an open web that connects and empowers with one that restricts and commoditizes people. We need to stop it.
Lots of information and links clearly spelt out. Tempted to quote all of it, but just one more.
Pay for services and content that you like, if you are able. If you like reading The Guardian, for example, consider subscribing. If your favourite YouTube channel is on Patreon, consider pledging a small amount per video. If you like services like Pinboard.in that charge in return for a useful service, buy it. There’s mutual respect when both the user and the service provider know what basic service they are buying/selling.
pumpkin, nor needed!
all you need to light hallowe’en:
a wee neep lantern
Should get microblog pumpkin pin while denouncing pumpkins in a haiku