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It’s also example of doing something that only I would want to do and yet having that thing echo into eternity without any additional effort.

from: API Nirvana – The Content – Bionic Teaching

Tom Woodward writing about his love of APIs, one of a series of posts. I love the idea of playing with things that do something that only I would want to do.

If you have a slightly geeky interest in technology & edu tech Bionic Teaching is a great blog to read.

I’ve a long term casual interest in playing with APIs, and love trying out some of the stuff Tom blogs about. In a timely fashion wordPress 4.7 came out today, including:

WordPress 4.7 comes with REST API endpoints for posts, comments, terms, users, meta, and settings.

from: WordPress 4.7 “Vaughan”.

This is the same API that Tom blogged about (I guess he was using a plugin). The opening up of WordPress sites via an API that an amateur like myself can use it welcome. Over the past few years several sites with interesting APIs move to make them harder to access with out a deeper knowledge than I have (twitter, instagram…).

I had a quick play with the WordPress api making a page that lists recent posts on 3 of my blogs, including this one. 1

wp-json-render

I guess this sort of thing is a minority interest, but I find it enjoyable and although I am never going to be a programmer, helpful in getting a better understanding of how technology can work.

Featured image on this post, one of my own turned up in a search for echo. test1-echo.tif | Using Image Bending in Audacity – CogDogBlo… | John Johnston | Flickr

 

  1. I added the Better REST API Featured Images WordPress Plugin to et the images following a hint on Tom’s post. ↩

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Intervision, the 70s Soviet answer to the Eurovision Song Contest, was judge by electricity grid voting: “those watching at home had to turn their lights on when they liked a song and off when they didn’t, with data from the electricity network then being used to allocate points.” [Nick Heady] (Fluxx have been working with National Grid on several projects this year)

Just one of 52 things I learned in 2016 – Fluxx Studio Notes – Medium found via kottke

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There are also evil women. I didn’t go looking for them either. This is what I type: “a-r-e w-o-m-e-n”. And Google offers me just two choices, the first of which is: “Are women evil?” I press return. Yes, they are. Every one of the 10 results “confirms” that they are, including the top one, from a site called sheddingoftheego.com, which is boxed out and highlighted: “Every woman has some degree of prostitute in her. Every woman has a little evil in her… Women don’t love men, they love what they can do for them. It is within reason to say women feel attraction but they cannot love men.”

from: Google, democracy and the truth about internet search | Technology | The Guardian

I’ve long been fascinated by google auto completes but never though of deeper implications.

I read this in the Observer this morning. Thanks to @LillyLyle for digging out the link I couldn’t find (via @IanStuart66)).

I use google all of the time and do pay attention to the auto completes as they often seem to help in refining a search. Sometimes this is just to avoid suggestions, sometime better. I’d not thought about the darker side.

On reading the article I first didn’t think that I paid much attention to auto suggestions (like adverts). I cast my mind back to yesterday when I was searching for a way to draw ‘irregular rectangles’ with JavaScript. I didn’t really find what I wanted, but burrowed down several rabbit holes steered by the suggestions.

I am used to the top google results having some sort of authority. Google a film get IMDB or Wikipedia. This gives pause.

Featured image captured with LICEcap.

Running my auto complete script leads to a few possible questions…

is_google

  • is google your friend?
  • is google evil?
  • is google racist?
  • is google listening to me?
  • is google making us stupid?

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maybe, in concert with an emphasis on making and collaborating and bug reporting and embracing other values of the open web, individuals can help reorient the cultural attitude toward technology away from entanglement and back to a place of enlightenment.

The Age of Entanglement – The Atlantic

Interesting Article. More grist for the ‘why we need to teach digital literacy and curiosity’ mill via @livedtime

Featured image Qsquare quantum pseudo-telepathy from flickr
Creative Commons — Attribution 2.0 Generic — CC BY 2.0

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Some thoughts about making choices about the software and systems you use, they may have hidden positives or negatives.

Featured image, iPhone screenshot, edited in snapseed

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I am a pretty regular podcast listener, mostly while commuting. Recently though I’ve been listing to iPlayer radio on the drive home. I listen to today on the way in. This week I’ve restarted the podcast habit.

I’ve listened to one old friend and a couple of new ones. The old friend is

TIDE

Today In Digital Education
A regular podcast from Dai Barnes and Doug Belshaw about education, technology, and everything in between.

I always enjoy this podcast as it roams education and tech. This weeks episode was particularly interesting as Dai & Doug were talking about Facebook and in particular the recent posts from Mike Caulfield which I’ve been following1

The ED Files The truth is out there?

A fortnightly podcast about UK education for and about teachers, teaching, government policy and other things…
By Alex Weatherall and Leon Cych

I listened to episode 1 which was mainly about the Michaela school. This seems to have generated a lot of tweets south of the border and it was good to hear some details. I’ll be adding The ED Files to regular listening.

The final podcast I listened to was CPDin140 – Kevin Hodgson. This is the first of a series of podcasts by Ian Guest. The episodes are interviews in Ian’s PhD research on Twitter for professional development. Kevin’s, who I’ve bumped into online was a great first guest. Again I’ll be listening regularly.

I am particularly delighted that Ian is posting these interviews on Edutalk starting a new ‘channel’ CPDin140 | EDUtalk. I’ve always imagined edutalk growing to include a range of show. Ian, of course, has contributed a lot of podcasts to edutalk via audioboom over the last few years.

I’ve not done as much broadcasting/podcasting on Radio Edutalk as I usually do. I am struggling to find time to organise my self and contact posssible guests. I have thoroughly enjoyed the ones I have done, if you have something to say about education and are free of an evening on A Wednesday at 8 please get in touch.

*featured image 1959 6-Tube Pushbutton AM Radio | Happy #ThrowbackThursday 1… | Flickr by Michel Curi | Flickr CC-BY. With a wee edit. *

  1. the post Banning Ads Is Nice, but the Problem Is Facebook’s Underlying Model | Hapgood is especially great, I am fascinated by the affects and affordances of interface. Facebook are master1959 6-Tube Pushbutton AM Radio | Happy #ThrowbackThursday 1… | Flickr of proving a UI that gets uses to do what FB want them to. ↩

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I just read this on OLDaily ~ by Stephen Downes in my RSS reader.

Points to

apparently YouTube has decided to allow users to follow channels via RSS again,

from: YouTube has (apparently) reinstated RSS feeds – BiteofanApple

It seems to work, I’ve aded my own channel to my RSS reader, Inoreader, and it worked fine.

The feeds seem to lack description, inoreader (and I’d guess other RSS readers) pick up the video from the media:content tag (I’d guess).

This could be useful for bringing content together with other feeds. Perhaps YouTube will bring back tags too…

Update, borked again

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Note to self. I’ve a few wee things 1, recondite projects if you like, that run off a Raspberry pi.

The Pi is at pi.johnj.info I use Zone Edit and dynamic dns to keep the subdomain pointing at my home network when its external IP address changes.

This stopped working. It looks like

A Dynamic Authentication Token is required in order to use our Dynamic DNS services. The tokens are generated on a per domain basis.

This is used in the place of my zoneedit password which used to work.

Fix found Solved: Re: BT Home Hub 5 Dynamic DNS – BTCare Community Forums via google.

1.

↩

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Now forget about the algorithm that brought this here and focus instead on the card. Every decision on this card is maximized to keep you on Facebook. So, for example, my name is bold and blue and prominent. The headline is also prominent, and Facebook pulls the description from the page so that the Facebook reader can read a summary of an article without going to the article.

Facebook Broke Democracy, but the Fix Is Harder Than People Realize. | Hapgood

A really interesting post lots to think about. Unlike Facebook I’d encourage you to read it

I’ve been wondering about what software choices do to us, and our thinking. These sort of considerations are missing from the from the conversation among technology enthusiasts in school education(or I’ve missed them).

I am not sure I am knowledgeable enough to even start teasing this out. Certainly there seems to be more immediate problems in our digital learning bubble (access and skills for two). But if we make choices for ourself and learners with out even considering the effects and affordances of software design we may end up drifting in the wrong direction.

Bonus link: Only Microsoft Could Make Teams

 

featured image: screenshot shot somewhat messed about with snapseed.

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In early October my school had a visit from Google Expeditions. I’d been contacted to see if I would be interested and jumped at the chance.

Google Expeditions are a 3D VR ‘experience’ using google cardboard. I’d tried a few mobile apps using cardboard before but not in a classroom setting.

The plan was we would choose Expeditions that would fit into our learning.

On the day Kostas from Google turned up in Banton having traveled on public transport with the whole kit in a backpack. This consisted of one tablet, one router, a set of android phones with a google cardboard for each phone.

Expeditions are a set of several 3D VR ‘images’ that can be looked around. The images are broadcast from the tablet ( or a phone) to other devices on the local network. The Tablet is handled by the ‘leader’ the phones by the ‘explorers’. The leader controls which image/space the explorers see. The leader’s non-3D view includes some notes and discussion points.

table leader view

The devices need to be connected to the same network but they do not need to be online. The scenes are ‘served’ from the tablet. The tablet does need to be online at some point to download the scenes in preparation.

When in a space the explorers can look around by turning their heads or bodies. Moving forward and backwards has no effect.

The leader cannot control where the explores look in a scene but double tapping will show the explorers an arrow pointing to the object tapped (we saw that explorers would always follow these arrows).

We had chosen a couple of Expeditions that would fit with out learning, but did have the chance to explore quite a few.

in the box

The pupils were very engaged immediately, the images are surprisingly ‘hyper real’ and the experience of turning round or just moving your head was delightful.

We collated some pupil responses on the class blog: Around the World in a Cardboard Box.

I’d chosen the spaces we looked at at fairly short notice, one did not really fit with my expectations the other was linked to a topic we had not then started. So for the point of view of linking into the learning and teaching I hadn’t planed well enough. From the point of view of exploring potential new technology and giving the pupils a glimpse of the near future.

I’d also feel that the resources might be a bit more valuable after the initial excitement had died down and the pupils used the system more than once.

So how would we use this past an exciting but brief test. Although the kit is relative inexpensive a class set would still be an major resource for even a large school.

I suppose it could be a share resource for a group of schools or local authority.

I wonder too if it could be used on a smaller scale, with less devices. At the end of last month I was talking to Will Tuft on Radio #EDutalk about ‘The immersive classroom’, this involves setting up classroom experiences, for example the aftermath of a hurricane, with props and tasks. I wonder could the cardboard be part of some such class. For example a group of ‘divers’ could take it in turns to put on the googles and explore the sea.

It could also just be used by a few children as a time.

I wonder if as well as the obvious exploration angle if it would be a rich resource for writing.

All in all an interesting experience, it will be interesting to see how this type of technology develops.