Smoke & Light, barbecue in the park
Read: The Gospel of the Eels by Patrik Svensson
Read: The Gospel of the Eels by Patrik Svensson ★★★★☆ 📚
Great read, a mix of the history of the study & natural history of eels with the author’s eel fishing with his father. The list of folk who studied eels runs from Aristotle through Freud to Racel Carson. Includes a bit of recent Swedish social history, the mystery & plight of the species. loved this.
Life in Links 43
- Download your artist activity pack | Stay inspired at home | Firstsite
Firstsite’s mission is to improve the well-being and life-chances of all residents of East Anglia through innovation, ingenuity and creativity. We empower people, no matter their background, to be creative together and lead happier and healthier lives.
This page has several pdf downloads of art activities that looks as it they could be useful in school. I’ve been trying to avoid school related things over the holidays but there are a lot of interesting links out there.
- A Year Of Posts to Notes Conversion – Interdependent Thoughts Reading your own old blogs posts every day. I do this, not every day but most of them using my On This Day page. I mostly fix typos, links and the like.
- Oh Hello Ana – Blogging and me I really enjoyed this post it is from a web developers perspective but it applicable to most bloggers I think. I particularly liked the bonuses of blogging:
Searchable; Memories that you own and are in control of;
- Talking of blogging, Multiverse is a new thing, for the personal site that is different. Easy to set up, I did that in June and sort of forgot. style is Macpaint & HyperCard with gaudy colours, could be fun.
- Talking of blogging 2, Joe Jenntt’s ‘dailywebthing daily pointers posts to a really wide variety of mostly personal sites, this leads to many rabit holes. Joe’s the dailywebthing linkport is wonderful for web development links.
- Access Guide
is a friendly introduction to digital accessibility – specifically to help understand WCAG 2.1 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), the official resource for legal compliance.
One of many I found via Joe’s site. This looks like a very easy entry to thinking about accessibility. I di a bit of cleaning up on the glow Blogs site early this year and could have done with this then.
- For one tide only: modernist sandcastles – in pictures | Art and design | The Guardian
Featured image, spider and young, my own.
Read: Scabby Queen by Kirstin Innes
Read: Scabby Queen by Kirstin Innes ★★★★☆ 📚
Multi narrator life story of Clio, Scottish singer & activist. Starts at her end in 2018. Revisiting most of the narrators and scenes revels more & more about all the characters.
Read: The Heartbeat of Trees
Read: The Heartbeat of Trees: Embracing Our Ancient Bond with Forests and Nature
by Peter Wohlleben, Jane Billinghurst(Translator)
★★★★☆ 📚
New science about trees back up with references mixed with personal rumination and experiences. The good trees do for us and the planet and the bad we do to them.
Some really fascinating snippets about tree biology too:
The trick to living another couple of decades or even centuries is to compost yourself. Fungi that enter via a wound in the tree convert the wood into a sort of humus as they eat their way through the tree, creating debris that is soft, crumbly, and moist. Now the tree can grow inner roots into this “soil” and reabsorb nutrients it stored in earlier years in its growth rings.
Read: Luckenbooth by Jenni Fagan ★★★☆☆ 📚
A novel Maddox up of short stories over 100 years linked by a Edinburgh tenement. Gothic, ghosts, queer, beat, crime and more. Some seemed to flow for me better than others. Probably best read in fewer sessions than I did.
15+ alternatives to using laminates outside https://bit.ly/36H66ht Always on the look out for good ideas here. #EYShare #EYMatters, #EYTwittertagteam, #EYFS, #EarlyYears, #TeamEarlyChildhood #EYBLUK#edutwitter #EYMaths #continuousprovision #eyideas
Read: Why coding should at the centre of the curriculum
Coding develops cognitive skills, problem solving and analytical thinking (“computational thinking”). By introducing and developing these abilities from primary school onwards, we create the building blocks and thought processes necessary for robotics and AI. This is not about displacing traditional subjects but, rather, changing the emphasis. Coding can comfortably sit alongside other subjects, especially those with a creative slant, reinforcing the development of key skills through multiple channels.
Digital skills: Why coding should at the centre of the school curriculum | Tes
Coding certainly can develop cognitive skills, problem solving and analytical thinking. A lot of other things can too. I think it is difficult.
Any class will present a wide range of learners. Designing or adapting lessons to try and get as many of them in the right zone to develop these skills is tricky. If you don’t get this right coding is neither productive or fun.
The article notes:
. Coding can comfortably sit alongside other subjects, especially those with a creative slant, reinforcing the development of key skills through multiple channels.
I’ve certainly found that putting coding into a context can lead to more fun and success. By adding elements art or making to a coding project more pupils are involved in problem solving, collaboration and creativity.
A difficulty in managing this might be the perceive need to be an expert in several different areas. I’ve certainly found myself in situations where I’ve not be completely confident around some of these areas.
The article acknowledges that covid has had an effect:
It is a reasonable assumption that this immersion in IT and technology is preparing young people for a digital future and teaching them the skills they will need.
But we need pupils to be creators as well as users:
there is a largely unrecognised digital difference between the users of technology and the creators
I think there is also a gap around literacy and the problems that the mixing of commercial and educational interests in technology. A lot of the uptake in digital solutions lacks any questioning of the provides of these solutions.
This is something I am not very sure I’d know where to start with? Perhaps Coding is not ‘fun’, it’s technically and ethically complex:
In just a few years, understanding programming will be an indispensable part of active citizenship. The idea that coding offers an unproblematic path to social progress and personal enhancement works to the advantage of the growing techno-plutocracy that’s insulating itself behind its own technology.
I’m Guy Kawasaki, and this is Remarkable People. This episode’s remarkable guest is David Winer. Dave is a programmer, entrepreneur, writer, and to some, a gadfly. The word ‘gadfly,’ by the way, means “An annoying person, especially one who provokes others into action by criticism.” That’s Dave, all right.
Listened: David Winer – Guy Kawasaki
Really good chat. Covering the birth of blogs, rss, podcasting and outliners.
Talking about the idea that apple networking, if better, could have made the web unnecessary:
David Winer: We had to give up the GUI. We went from having all this great user interface standards to the web, which had no user interface standards.
When I started using computers, a mac 475 and system 7 point something I really found the standardised UI a huge benefit.
Guy Kawasaki: …. but it seems like Apple and Spotify and Amazon, they’re now trying to gate-keep podcasting.
I’ve been podcasting since 2005 and really worry that the medium is being commercialised. Dave Winer was more pragmatic.
Interesting too to compare Dave’s podcasting routine with Guy Kawasaki’s extensive editing:
David Winer: I open up my iPhone, I turn on the Voice Memo app, talk for a while, I email that to myself, I upload it to a server, I put it on my blog. Goodbye.
The wee bit of audio was grabbed by Castro.
Good walk ground the trio of hills in Glen Douglas. Notes, maps & photos: walkmap. I saw a dead hind 2-3 weeks ago, now picked clean.