Tag: podcast

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Likes Exploring WordPress, Textcasting, and Open Web Standards.

In this episode of the Fediverse Flows series, host Matthias Pfefferle sits down with pioneer technologist Dave Winer. The inventor of blogging, podcasting, RSS, and text casting. Together, they unpack the evolution of the open web, discussing why true interoperability and openness matter more than ever in an age of restrictive social media platforms.

The shownotes and transcript on this podcast are wonderful. The Takeaways, provide a great summary and worth reading after you listen.

I’ve been reading Dave Winer’s blog since I discovered rss. I’ve tried many of his more recent tools, including WordLand & FeedLand which he discusses here1.

Matthias Pfefferle is an IndieWeb & WordPress developer. I use his sempress theme & several of his plug-ins2 on this site. Recently he has been developing the ActivityPub – WordPress plugin . This allow your WordPress site to function as a federated profile. I’ve not tried that as I currently posse posts from here to mastodon via micro.blog.

Anyway, I’m a big fan of both participants.

A few interesting things

of the many in the podcast.

I don’t believe in comment sections on blogs, though. I think we could live without that, actually

Dave Winer

Like Alan I do like comments. I’ve read about bloggers who do not and mostly they are the ones with huge audiences. Apart from valuing the conversation, comments & even likes, which I fetch back via brid.gy, it does let me know that sometimes I am not writing into the void. I’d still blog for the void but it is nice to get some contact.
I’d guess bloggers like Dave dislike comments because of the way they can go on big sites.

But over time, what I hope happens is that people find that Wordland’s editor isn’t what they want. They want a different editor because you know what? There’s no one kind of editor that would please everybody.

Dave Winer

I’ve found this one of the most compelling reasons for exploring WordLand. WordLand is quite an opinionated editor. It has led me to think about all the different ways I’ve posted in the past and try out a few other options.

I think most of the younger generations are not aware of what a link is, what a URL is. They simply use one social network, and if they search for other users, they have that little search box and they search for the username. They do not understand that in a decentralized world that they may have to copy and paste URLs to find a new.

Matthias Pfefferle

This really spoke to me as a teacher. I am saddened by the way that even browsers hide paths after domains, and pupils just grab whatever google tells them. I have been surprised twice in the last few years by young kids, 9-11, doing something smart with urls or parameters.

I really enjoyed listening to this episode, lots of food for though. The ideas discussed become complicated quite quickly. A bit like the IndieWeb in general. Dave has of course been aware of WordPress but only recently started using it in earnest. Matthias comes from a different direction, the IndieWeb and Activity pub.

I’ve also now listened to another WordPress podcast with Dave: #186 – Dave Winer on Decentralisation, WordPress and Open Publishing – WP Tavern.

In this one Dave’s optimism and enthusiasm really shines through. I don’t know who it was told me, or maybe I read it somewhere: if you wait long enough Dave Winer is always right, Not sure that is true of anyone, but Dave Winer is always interesting & though provoking to read or listen to.

  1. Other products of Dave Winer I’ve used recently include:
    BingeWorthy 3
    Drummer
    1999.io ❤️
    ↩︎
  2. indieweb/wordpress-indieweb
    wordpress-indieweb-press-this
    WebActions for WordPress
    A Webmention plugin for WordPress
    ↩︎

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Listened to How I view WordPress

A podcast by Dave Winer tangentially discussing the WordPress drama. I’ve been testing his WordLand editor for posting to WordPress. It was especially interesting to hear Dave talking about the need of a range of different editors. He sees a need for a variety to suit different writers.

I’ve used a variety of Dave’s products and have always enjoyed using them. Dave’s products are opinionated in a thoughtful way that makes me think about what I want and need from software.

WordLand encourages me to think about the features I need and features I want. As I understand it, WordLand was based on an earlier blogging system, 1999 which I really enjoyed using.

I think my favourite way of blogging was when I used TextMate. Unfortunately TextMate & the blogging bundle has not been updated for years. Although TM supported quite a few WordPress features it lacks some I now use.

Like TextMate WordLand only support a subset of WP features. It certainly is nice to use for short status posts. Partially because it simplified all the boxes and features in the WordPress. I am continuing to use it to post to a WordPress.com site, for testing and nonsense and my local Raspberry Pi for short notes.

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Listened to: Learning Conversations Artificial Intelligence with Ollie Bray | Education Scotland podcast

This is the first Education Scotland podcast episode I’ve listened to. Solid food for thought. I’ve not developed any really solid ideas around AI in education but this helped me think of some questions. Ollie compared the uptake and development to AI to other technologies:

So the take up rate of generative AI, like ChatGTP, has been far quicker than people signing up to Facebook, you know, people adopting the internet, people getting a television, people getting radio, etc.

There was discussion of some ways that AI is already being used in schools including what Ollie described as lots of schools doing really, really good work around the ethics of AI.

I wonder what aspects of ethics are being discussed? The one I’ve thought of most is already out of the stable. All the material scraped by AI before we got a chance to choose. I’m not particularly worried about anything I put online being gobbled up by AI, but I imagine it would be more of concern for artists and writers who earn a living from content?

I think we also need to consider the ethics of all application & services we use in education. Especially when application make educational design decisions or have unethical behaviour1.

An interesting point was around developing AI to recreate traditional methods of education, but arguably in more efficient way. Ollie thinks that is probably missing how do we use the technology to do things that were unimaginable before?

I’ve read a bit about using AI in schools for report writing, analysing pupil data and the like and seen a few educational AI startups offering that sort of service. Most of the teachers I’ve talked to, like myself, have used it in a very basic way, cutting down some time in making a quiz or other classroom resources. We are just using ChartGPT, Copilot. etc in as fairly simplistic way.

The podcast talked about the need to update the Scottish Government’s technologies for learning strategy mentioning that it would take 10 years to bring this to publication. I can see a bit of a mismatch with the speed that technology is developing, especially AI. Can we plan that far ahead?

I used the AI application Aiko to generate the transcript to get the quotes.

  1. Thinking about X/Twitter, see Can democracy survive now the world’s richest man has it in his sights? | George Monbiot | The Guardian should we be using X with learners or at all given Mr Musk’s reinstatement of horrors & obliging censorship of government critics? ↩︎
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Listened: Meeting Point by Louis MacNeice – A Friend to Imtiaz Dharker.

I was sitting at a table with a boy I just met and he casually said: ‘Time was away and somewhere else. The waiter did not come, the clock forgot them.’ And it just stopped me dead because I wasn’t especially interested in this boy, but for a few seconds I fell in love with him because he said those lines.

Poems as Friends is a lovely idea.

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Bookmarked 📻 Turning radio into podcasts by Max Bruges.

As more and more BBC programmes vanish from open podcast platforms and into Sounds, the app feels increasingly like an attempt to build a content silo that is utterly unbecoming of a national broadcaster.

I listen to a few BBC radio programs in Castro while commuting. Quite a few radio programmes are only available in the Sounds app. I don’t like switching apps and do like the ability to queue things in Castro. I am wondering if this might help along with Castro’s side-loading feature which uses iCloud?

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Likes Pseudo code and kitchen-table conversations by Dave Winer.

I read a lot of negative stuff about chatGPT. Dave Winer seems upbeat. Even though he mentions that a lot of programmers will lose work, he is positive about chatGPT. There are a couple of laugh out loud moments and lots of ideas to chew on, even if you are not a programmer. An enjoyable listen.

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Listened #1 - How it got its name and if I ruled the world from podcasts.apple.com()
Join us, Richard, Elaine and Chris, our brand new podcast and our first ever episode, as we share our desert island apps, our favourite iOS features,  our best bit of recent CPD and why we should  rule the world! Before, we answer the big question, which is and will always be... How is learning be…

I was delighted to hear my name mention on this new educational podcast coming from a trio of Glasgow teachers. A life time ago I used to work beside Richard. Very much iPad focused but lots applicable elsewhere. I’ve subbed and look forward to hearing more episodes. There was some discussion about pupils as leaders of learning and I hope this might be a theme I can find out more about.

Hearing from very Apple focused teachers will be interesting for me. Although I’ve been Mac for all of my technical life and 1–2–1 iPads in my class for a good few years my tech interests/obsessions are not iPad centred so this should be CPD for me. Apple pencils seem to be transformative in Glasgow, I’ve never even picked one up.

The podcast is of a reasonable length and is split up nicly into sections, one of which was the teams favourite iOS thing. I’d agree with AirDrop, which I’ve hammered in class for the last 8 years. Unfortunately it has stopped working for us in school at the moment, not sure why?

It is nice to hear some Scottish educators voices. There was mention of podcasting in one of the presenter’s classrooms. I am looking forward to listening to that too. I still find it puzzling that podcasting does not happen more often with learners. It has amazing potential. The fact you don’t need much in the way of hardware and in Scotland Glow Blogs can provide the hosting for free for pupils make it to me compelling.

Nice name & logo.

N.B. the link is to apple podcasts, I can’t find a generic page.

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Listened Michael Camilleri from Really Specific Stories
Join host and podcast studies researcher Martin Feld as he delves into stories of tech-podcast production and fandom, featuring creators and their listeners.

Listened: Really Specific Stories – Michael Camilleri, I continue to really enjoy this podcast. A podcast about podcasting and podcast listening.

Wonderfully it discusses the culture of podcasting rather than the type of mic you need. Michael‘s episode was very interesting his views on podcasting and the web had me nodding a lot.

I grabbed this wee snippet when I arrived in the car park at school the other day using Castro’s ability to snip a bit from a podcast (I am presuming such a short extract, for review, breaks no copyright).

There is a lot more to listen too, the idea of blogging, podcasting and writing html as a something done by ordinary folk, and the idea that the openness of the format invite participation certainly rings true for me.

There is quite a lot of blogging about blogging, maybe we need more podcasting about listening to podcasts & podcasting.