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I opt out of most prompts from sites and services to use their "intelligent" tools becuase I don't want them to harvest any more information from my use than is necessary. AI is showing up everywhere and I'm really concerned that there won't be anything without some kind of large language model (LLM) opt out.

Baldur Bjarnason shared a post today that Wordpress.com is now including an AI assistant that will make it easier to publish machine-written blog posts.

The machine-generated blob is going to swallow the entire Internet. Wordpress is a huge platform and adding this tool just means that spam and click farms will be able to pump out more junk faster.

I'm not really sure what I want to say with this other than I'm really disappointed we can't seem to find something - anything - more thoughtful to do or say with this new technology. I'm going to keep opting out, as long as that's still an option.

Online spaces are, by default, open spaces

The World Wide Web was created with open spaces in mind. It allowed anyone, anywhere to publish and see information on the computer in front of them. Closed spaces followed, but the idea of requiring a password to interact with information was a change to the system (Luotonen, 1993), not the default. Closed spaces are not bad in and of themselves, but they ignore a major affordance of the web: connectivity. In a closed space, information can be brought in, but it difficult to get shared knoweldge back out.

Open online learning offers a formal way to invite perspectives and voices into otherwise privileged spaces. When learning is visible, teachers and students are participants in communities of practice, which raises rigor (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989) and contributes to the construction of knolwedge rather than consumption of information. Students are refocused toward building the community by sharing their own learning rather than fixating on simply demonstraiting captured facts.

An argument could be made about how students are assessed in the online space and that the LMS provides a "secure" way to make those measurements. Open learning rejects the notion that all knowledge can be measured as discrete "right" and "wrong" or that it is even the underlying goal of assessment to make that judegement (Schira Hagerman & Kellman, 2020). Online courses have an opportunity to allow student production of knowledge to serve as a demonstration of understanding where students synthesize ideas from across the Internet as they consume and create information.

Spaces need to be cultivated, not replicated

We care for our physical spaces because they're intimate and hold tangible value. The online space is no different - it requires care and attention in order to serve in an effective and, at the very least, functional capacity.

Many online courses are born and live inside the Learning Management System (LMS). The tidiness of the LMS gives a false sense of "doneness." When the course is published, it is easy to fall victim to copying the same thing over and over because the content is "complete". The LMS needs as much care as the physical meeting space.

An indicator of the impersonality of the LMS can be easily seen in discussion boards. It is not uncommon to see the directions, "post and reply to two peers" as an expectation for discourse. This often results in poor participation and formulaic responses at best and marginalization at worst (Lieberman, 2019). Without taking time to build a culture of learning and clear guidelines for communication with peers, these tools become wasted space and provide little affordance to the course.

Care for the online space needs be driven by a pedagogy of online instruction (Morris & Stommel, 2018). Our developed and practiced pedagogies will dictate the type of care we provide. If our pedagogical focus is on cheap replication of a product for consumption, the course will feel cheap and impersonal, even with a dynamic, engaging instructor. If we're focused on the experience of online learning for our students, we will have hard-to-replicate spaces, but ones which cultivate a culture of learning through building together.

We are not "just" online teachers

The early focus on online instruction centering on facilitation has damaged the dialogue about online learning in general (Bayne et al., 2020). There is a perception that teachers of online courses are not skilled or qualified enough to teach in a classroom and emphasizes "learning at the expense of teaching" (Bayne et al., 2020). Instead, the "best" online instructors should be as, if not more, sought after as the "best" classroom teachers.

The best teachers are those who A) know the content in situ, and B) know how to help students interpret information in ways to grow their own understanding (Bayne et al., 2020). This can happen in person as well as in the online space. The need for strong teachers exists in both contexts and the most adaptable professionals will develop pedagogies for both.

Online learning can make it more difficult to get to know students at first, especially in asynchronous courses where much of the interaction is written rather than face-to-face via video. Technology plays a critical role in getting to know students at an introductory level (a "get to know you" survey, for example) as well as how you build relationships through coorespondence. It is also important to remember that instructors are also humans and we have interests, quirks, and personality. We need to be careful to show these qualities to our students as much as we ask them to share with us their own preferences.

Best practice may change year to year, month to month, or even day to day. Practice needs to be driven by the experience of the learner online and the the instructor's ability to make instructional decisions strategically and with purpose.

Expression and iteration are required

The way in which knoweldge is built has changed. New knowledge is created through interactions - we help each other make sense of the world by sharing our experiences and building meaning from our varied backgrounds. Online, new knowledge can be shared in a wide variety of means of expression and creation is just the first step.

Communication

Text-only communication can often lack tone, which can lead to uncomfortable or damaging interactions. As instructors setting the tone for a course, we need to clearly define and demonstrate appropriate and edifying communication practices. This work begins in the intial contact with students and continues until the final congratulatory message is sent.

Creation

Authorship is changing (Bayne et al., 2020) and the way in which we can interact with anything published on the web fundamentally shifts the narrative about finding meaning. Interaction around ideas becomes much more dynamic as we mix and remix, adding layers to ideas collaboratively using the medium of the web. Feedback becomes a driver of learning both for the creator receiving and the observer giving. Ideas are discussed and learning is shown through iteration. When expression and iteration are core components of online learning, participants will move from compelled participation to a culture of learning in which growth is inevitable (Shepard, 2000).

Long live guiding questions

A pedagogy built on sequencing students from point A to B comes from a pre-Internet world where resources were limited. Today, the volume of information on any given topic is overwhelming and it isn't feasible to sequence an exact path students need to follow. Online learning allows us to ask - and try to answer - questions that are worth asking. We are enabled to go move beyond simple regurgitation of information in favor of synthesis and elaboration. This is embodied in how we structure course materials (sequential module requirements vs explorations) for students to use and in how we choose to assess their products.

When the answers to most questions are a search away, we have to fundamentally change what we're asking and what students are expecting to be asked. The age of online learning gives our students opportunities to become experts in their own way, building meaning with what they can find and interacting with those ideas in a community of practice. The teacher's subject matter and instructional expertise provides a base of interaction but quickly steps aside as students take charge of their learning.

This focus on student synthesis moves away from assessment of learning to assessment for learning. Assessing student growth takes the shape of feedback and is tailored for each individual. Their products can serve as a log documenting their progress from one idea to another which supports metacognition and reflection.

Critique everything, especially yourself

For teachers, questioning methods and assignments is a good way to reflect on pedagogy. Diving into the why of what we chose to do will help us reflect on what we think about teaching and learning. Do we really believe students should be creators of information? If that's true, are those elements present and intentionally structed into the course?

Reflecting on in-person teaching can do the same thing, but our basies and perceptions of how students received a lesson or assignment can make our reflections biased. The value of online learning references being stored perpetually is that we have a lens into what we were thinking at the moment of creation. We're faced with our own decisions in real time each time we look at our courses.

Morris and Stommel (2018) argue that online learning is already in a state of failure because of the ways in which many online courses focus on replication (cost saving measures), uninformed design (disconnects between teachers and instructional designers), and a lack of pedagogy. Lacking deep reflection on methods, especially in the digital context, will result in poor online learning experiences for multitudes.

Online teaching requires that we question everything, especially ourselves.

Resources

Bayne, S., Evans, P., Ewins, R., Knox, J., Lamb, J., Macleod, H., O'Shea, C., Ross, J., Sheail, P., & Sinclair, C. (2020). The manifesto for teaching online. MIT Press.

Bransford, J. L., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school (Expanded Edition). National Academy Press.

Brown, J. S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, 18(1), 32-42.

Morris, S. M., & Stommel, J. (2018). An urgency of teachers: The work of critical digital pedagogy. Pressbooks.

Gershon, L. (2020, April 13). Three centuries of distance learning. JSTOR Daily. Retrieved from https://daily.jstor.org/three-centuries-of-distance-learning/.

Lieberman, M. (2019, March 26). Discussion boards: Valuable? Overused? Discuss. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/03/27/new-approaches-discussion-boards-aim-dynamic-online-learning.

Luotonen, A. (1993, September 10). Announcing access authorization documentation. Retrieved from http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q3/0882.html.

Putnam, R. T., & Borko, H. (2000). What do new views of knowledge and thinking have to say about research on teacher learning? Educational Researcher, 29(1), 4-15.

Shepard, L. (2000). The role of assessment in a learning culture. Educational Researcher, 29(7), 4-14.

Schira Hagerman, M. & Kellman, H. (2020). Learning to teach online: An open educational resource for pre-service teachers. Retrieved from https://onlineteaching.ca/module-4-2/#Five-Methods.

I've spent the last couple of weeks taking deep dives into LLMs and how they work. Stephen Wolfram's essay (more of a mini-book) took me several days to read (and I still don't understand all of it) and other suggested reading by Dave Cormier and Ted Chiang were also very helpful in building a picture of what can actually be done with tools as they stand.

Turns out - not much.

The most interesting piece of the AI boom is the natural language processing that is possible. The way the models understand prompts is very, very cool even if the output is stale. The point is that knowing more about AI and how it works today has put a wet blanket on wanting to actually use it.

I think understanding context is critical for putting technology to use in meaningful ways. I want to be able to use assistants some day (privacy issues and data retention are another ball of worms) and I think the progression of AI to be able to do things dyncamically has huge implications. I would love to be able to say, "Schedule a meeting with Jim, Carrie, and Bill the next time we're all free."

I think after all of my reading and digesting, the potential for AI is there, but it's not something I'm going to put a whole lot of time or effort into using yet.

If I'm wrong, I'd love to get some insight. Send an email with what I should consider.

I jumped off of Twitter several months ago and haven't really participated in anything specifically education-related on social media. Maybe this is more an indicator of a healthier social media perspective than anything, but I've found that my mindset has changed from not participating.

When it started, I was young and looking for perspecitives. I'm still kind of young, but the perspectives I want are more nuanced and less focused on the next big thing. I want to talk about the meaning behind what we're doing, not the what itself. I want to know motivations about choices and discuss the benefits and detriments about making different choices.

I want to talk about how students are actually affected by the long-term application of ideas, not the one-day response to the super-fun-social-media-shareable thing we pulled off. What does it mean to be a teacher for the long haul, doing the hard, invisible work of making sure every student has the opportunity and the means to learn?

I think there is a lot more thinking I have to do about this, but I'm really happy with the changes I've felt in the time since leaving.

I'm re-listening to The Expanse novels on my drive to and from work and a piece of dialogue caught me this morning:

"Easy to make rules," Emma said. "Easy to make systems with perfect logic and rigor. All you need to do is leave out the mercy, yeah? Then when you put people into it and they get chewed to nothing, it's the person's fault, not the rules."

This is worth remembering, especially when we're in classrooms.

I wanted to write up a beautful travel journal with a custom post theme and write prose like Wendell Berry about our vacation this month. But then I thought, "why?" Somtimes experiences are best kept in your own head and told in person. I think that's worth remembering more often.

The trip was beautiful. We had a great four days on the island and we'll definitely go back again at some point. The geography and ecology of the island are fascinating and I could spend hours just looking up through the canopy.

If you're a camper, I highly recommend going. Here are some pictures.

Cumberland is a barrier island off the coast of Georgia. Sailboats would anchor in the west river to avoid the wind and waves of the Atlantic Ocean on the east side.

Dungeness is a mansion built by the Carnegie family in the early 1900's. The island history is rich, violent, and fascinating.

I've been a Vivaldi user for several years, but this year, I pushed hard into making it as efficient and usable for me as possible. Some of this was sparked by my experiments with Arc last fall and others were picked up from other people sharing their tips.

Quick commands

Vivaldi's command palette (Cmd + E) is a helpful tool with a couple tweaks. I like to get as much space as I can - the browser is often full screen - and using the command palette lets me keep my tab bar hidden. Instead of toggling the tab bar open and closed, you can use the palette to find what you want.

In Settings, go to Quick Commands and set your search preferences. In order of priority, mine are:

1. Open Tabs
2. Extensions
3. Web Search & URL Entry
4. Commands

This gives me the ability to use one shortcut and search. The command palette will give me a page I already have open first, and if I don't have that tab open anywhere, I can go right the URL in a new tab. This also lets me toggle any of my extensions before resorting to a search.

Command chains

Command chains are automations you can set within the browser. I don't use a whole lot of these, but I did take time to set one up for when I'm preparing to do some research. The chain can be entered into the command palette (launched with one shortcut) and will give me two vertically split tabs automatically opened to Google Scholar and a blank Google Doc for notes. It's a small change, but it saves me from having to do all of that manually.

There are probably some other chains I could put some time into, but I haven't found others that would make a huge difference yet.

Shortcuts!

I love that Vivaldi has shortcuts for everything. Some of these are set up by default, others need to be set manually. But if it's something you want to control in the browser, you can do it. My favorites are:

• Cmd + [ and Cmd + ] for moving backward and forward through page history.
• Caps + B to show/hide the tab sidebar. (I use Karabeaner Elements to remap caps lock to a 'hyper' modifier. It's the same as holding all of the modifier keys at once.)
• Caps + J to open the browser console on the current page.
• Caps + P to pin the current tab.
• Caps + H/L to go to the previous/next tab (in the tab order)

Real estate

I already mentioned that my tab bar is pinned to the left side of the screen. Clive Thompson is clear on why and I have to admit, this is a carry over from Arc for me. I appreciate the veritcal browser space and the tab nesting offered in Vivaldi looks better vertically than horizontal.

I really wish Vivaldi offered an automatic show/hide of the left-pinned tab bar based on mouse position, so for now I rely on my shortcut to show the tab bar if I need it. I also wish the address bar could be pinned to the top of the tab bar on the left, but it's another feature I'll have to wait for.

Do you use Vivaldi? What other tips do you have?

The broken things in life are continuing to assault my weekends. Our washing machine had a mysterious leak which I finally identified. (No, it wasn't the drain pump.)

I'm 90% sure it was a failing main tub seal which keeps water inside the large water basin for the machine. Sometimes, they're replacable. But with our model - confirmed with an appliance repair friend - our particular machine's seal is attached to the main drive shaft, which can be as much as a functional used machine. So, we ended up hopping on the local stuff website and started looking for a replacement machine. This actually works out well because my brother-in-law was wanting a machine for spinning salad leaves on the farm for packaging, so I was able to donate the old one to the farm effor this year.

We found a working machine for $40, which is a steal. It's an older model and a little smaller than what we need, but it'll work while we take longer to find the one we really want. We'll probably end up gifting this one to someone else in need of a washer.

On the way to pick up the replacement, my brake pedal went to the floor when I came to a stop. That's a Bad Thing.

Somewhere between my house and the new washer, a rock had kicked up under the van and wedged itself between the suspension and the hard brake line. All I can assume is that there was enough rubbing on the old line to pip a hole when I pushed the brakes, dropping the pressure in the hydraulics to near zero. Luckily, with modern cars, there are two outputs, so my front brakes still worked. Kind of.

We limped the car home avoiding as many intersections as we could and I managed to get the old brake line out without too much effort. Brakes are notorious for being one of the hardest easy jobs because of how much corrosion can build up on components over the years, especially in my area due to salt on the roads during the winter.

When I went to thread the new brake line into the wheel hub, the threads for the piston had stripped, so the new line couldn't seal into place. That's another Bad Thing.

In the end, I was able to find the part at a local parts supplier and get it back into working order by lunchtime on Sunday. I try hard to keep Sunday reserved for rest and rejuvinating work (in the garden, mainly) rather than tasks like this, but stuff breaks when it breaks and I just needed to deal with it.

Put another tick mark in the win column for keeping stuff working.

I ended up writing (and publishing) a lot this week. Be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed if you don't want to miss any of my drivel.

Are we the bad guys?

The Verge has an insightful look at the TikTok ban. Say what you want about TikTok, this is a more nuanced look on the continued hypocrisy of the US when it comes to condemning practices of the "bad guys" while turning a blind eye to the exact same - or worse - practices here at home.

Other interesting finds

• For a slightly less than insightful question about TikTok...
• This collection of articles, videos, and discussions on AI in education looks pretty thorough, though I wish it had more cautionary tales included. (FYI - this is a Google Slides link.)
• There's a new Mighty Morphin Power Rangers movie coming from Netflix this year. I may drive to Kentucky to watch it with my brothers.

School Shootings

Another week in the US has another school shooting. As of writing, that is 13 fatal incidents on school grounds since January 1, 2023. Congress has no interest in doing anything. The representative from the Tennessee district where the shooting occurred has given up any veneer of caring what happens.

I'm a teacher. I go to schools every day even though gun violence is now the leading cause of death in children and more and more is happening in schools. America thinks it can invent itself out of violence rather than making violence harder. But it's not laws or gun-specific reforms that will make a bigger difference.

From the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Defense and Security

It's lobbying.

Millions upon millions of dollars go into Congress with no accounting and no oversight to fight for special interests over safety. With an unending flow of money, there is no real incentive for anyone in Congress - in either party, in either house - to put citizens above office. Both sides are equally culpable for the continued murder of children and teachers in schools because it isn't politically advantageous to do something.

Senate Chaplain Barry C. Black eloquently addressed our lack of empathy for the dead in his five-sentence opening prayer on Tuesday:

Eternal God, we stand in awe of You. Lord, when babies die at a church school, it is time for us to move beyond thoughts and prayers. Remind our lawmakers of the words of the British statesman Edmund Burke: All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.

Lord, deliver our Senators from the paralysis of analysis that waits for the miraculous. Use them to battle the demonic forces that seek to engulf us.

We pray in Your powerful Name. Amen.

John Stewart is a little more blunt.

Children dying is not a political issue.

It's new notebook day, and there was much rejoicing.

Granted, I didn't fill up my last one nearly as fast as I should have, but still. My fondness for paper and pen (though not pen-snob level fondness) continues and I'm looking forward to filling this little guy up.

In the past, I used to look for name-brand notebooks. Recently, the off-brand, eight-dollar versions have been just as good for a fraction of the cost. This time around I'm committing to actually writing down the books I read because I slacked off on that in the last notebook and I'm feeling the gap particularly hard.

Spring break is also next week and I think I'm going to take a page out of Jack Baty's book and do some indexing.

I want to take digital notes well, but I can't seem to find a system I like. With so many moving pieces to my work, notes are really important. I'm working on letting myself think through notes and that's been an improvement. I would love to have a better digital workflow to connect ideas together, but I've decided that it just isn't something that works well for me while I process information.

The one thing I would like to do better is indexing my notebooks so I can find old ideas. I came across the Zettelkasten method which is attractive, but still a lot of overhead. Maybe I just love the card catalog vibe.

This blog is certainly a log of learning over the last 12 years. My notebooks also hold a lot of learning. If you have tips on how to make those more searchable, I'm all ears.

Community is still heavy on my mind this week.

It's easy to argue for authentic learning experiences. We want students to relate learning to the "real world." Ignoring, for a moment, that students already live in the real world, the sentiment is valid - students should have knowledge that will be relevant when they leave the classroom. We're all well-meaning when we dive into Project/Problem Based Learning (PBL), Challenge-based Learning (CBL), or any of the other X-based learning options that have become more popular. The goal for each is the same: students experience the content as part of the learning rather than receiving.

I've struggled for years to consider PBL as authentic and I think it is because those experiences are still missing the context critical for situated learning to take place. Students are still experiencing the material through the lens of schooling. We're prompting our students toward an end goal which isn't always connected to the domain experience and that's why some of those activities still feel so much like school. It's also telling that students typically struggle to apply ideas to novel situations. The experince is full of the school flavor, so it still feels like school.

So, how do we join communities of practice? Being immersed is critical - as a learner, we need to pick up and use the norms, language, and culture of the community as we interact. Only then, when the learning is immersed in the culture, can it be authentic. In my personal experience, this happens naturally when we’re interested in something. We start researching, looking for examples, or imitating someone around us. Our language changes naturally as we try to fit into the culture of that activity or skill. School, on the other hand, generally tries to give the experience without the culture. The experience is sanitized so we can focus on the content, and that's a mistake.

Technology is a major aid in joining communities of practice by closing distance gaps, giving us access to information about what we’re trying to learn, and connecting us to individuals already immersed in those cultures. Personally, it has helped me learn to use watercolor paints for creative work. I’ve joined Reddit boards, watched YouTube videos, and shared snapshots of my work on social media. Using technology, I’ve been able to receive feedback from people in the art world that I wouldn’t have connected with otherwise, which has helped me focus on areas of improvement that I wouldn’t have otherwise considered.

Professionally, if community and culture is the missing component in schooling, I’m thinking through how I can help teachers make those connections in the planning phase. We cannot be experts in every domain, but some low-barrier things to try could be:

• Arranging video calls with local professionals to speak with students about a topic they’re exploring
• Approach teachers to explore redesigning some lessons to be more open-ended
• Work with staff on methods to take advantage of distributed cognition (ie, every person in the group contributes to the group intelligence) instead of relying on individual results

This is a bigger shift than simply "doing" PBL or being a PBL school. This is recognizing that school culture still focuses on school when that is precisely what we need less of.

Not much happening

This was a very quiet week. I attended a conference at the end of last week, which always takes a lot of energy. I also had a grant proposal due at work, so that took a lot of my time. I also had many more meetings than normal for some reason. I did manage one blog post of my own on why it's important to learn how to repair stuff.

Other curiosities

• I came across Freetube, a YouTube client for multiple platforms that removes all the stuff you don't like and puts in stuff we do like. I use NewPipe on Android and this seems similar for the desktop.
• My team has been discussing ChatGPT and AI in general, particularly about what kind of training we need to create for teachers. I shared this great article from Simon Willison on the hallucination ChatGPT does when you give it a URL. This was news to my team.
• Here's another take on why chat-based AI is the opposite of a calculator. This stemmed from the hype response that "mathematicians had to adapt when calculators were invented."

I can honestly say, without a doubt, that learning how to fix things is one of the best skills and habits I've developed. In the moment, when something breaks, it's really frustrating. Like this week, when my car didn't start. At work. Before a meeting I needed to leave for.

It's not something I did as a kid. My dad would fix this from time to time, but I don't remember being taught that fixing is worth the time and effort. My grandfather was a tinkerer and could probably fix anything he touched, but he died before I was old enough to really latch on to that mindset.

My wife's family, on the other hand, is elbows deep anytime something breaks. When my wife and I were dating, I remember being put to work one weekend on a visit because that's what the family was doing. 14 years later, I'm trying to do the same with my kids.

Diagnosing problems might be harder than the actual fixing, but that comes with time. The internet is a huge asset - you can probably find a video talking about anything you'd need, but learning how to ask the right question has been harder than actually learning how to replace a broken part. I've also learned enough to know when a fix is in my skillset and when it's not. The videos and forum posts out there are great, but they don't do a good job conveying the nuance of the repair and can give a false impression of how easy (or hard) the job actually is.

Anyways, this is a rambly way to say that I was able to replace my car's starter in the work parking lot without too much issue. Take time to learn about the tools you use every day and how they work. You never know when you might need it.

Don't worry about running out of QR codes

• We got talking at work this week on how many possible QR codes there are. It's a lot.
• I've been learning to sketch and watercolor paint this year as a way to do non-technical creative things. I'm still trying to find my personal style, but I really like this method for sketching people quickly and the contour approach to more detailed sketches.. In general, I try to add too much detail.

A milestone

This week, I published my 600th blog post. I might do a little bit of digging to see what my high writing periods were vs my low because it's definitely not spread evenly over the years. I started the blog in 2010 and it really ramped up after my first professional conference in 2011. Reading some of that early writing makes me cringe a little because I think my focus was off when I started, but having a history of where I was to where I am now is intersting to think about this week.

I got asked this week about our goals with using Canvas as a learning platform. I didn't know that question was coming and the answer I gave was "consistency and variety." I think that idea is worth digging into a little bit more.

It boils down to consistency in appearance and variety in experience. Consistency boils down to students knowing what to expect and where to go when it comes to navigating. In middle school, Canvas is the first learning platform they experience and it can be a large task in getting students where they need to be in the course. When all the batteries are included by default, the pages are filled with lists of links that may - or may not - take you where you want to go.

The consistency between course shells helps them orient in a digital space much more quickly. I think of it as doing a building tour before the first day of high school so your first minutes and days aren't filled with anxiety about where to go.

On the other side of the coin, the LMS makes it easy to have cookie-cutter (ahem, boring) experiences. I've got other thoughts on the lemon that is the LMS.

When everything is a PDF worksheet, a quiz, or a YouTube video, it's much more a Management System rather than a Learning system. The plugin architecture can be an argument for variety, but at the end of the day, if the platform isn't giving students unique opportunities to explore and demonstrate skill, then it's just another place to bubble in responses.

So, consistency for the user is a good thing. The pages are navigable and context switching from course to course (remember, middle- and high-school students can have 5-7 classed each day) is minimized. We should be taking advantage of sound page design principles to make sure material is always accessible and ready to be used. At the same time, we should be training staff in ways to use the web as a platform for learning rather than an access point. If they're in the LMS, let's use that as a starting point - a home base they can refer to for context or next steps. If we're living in the LMS at all times, we're missing out on the variety of experiences which are available when we look at the big picture.

I'm heading to MACUL this week and I realized that I have an entire confence prep routine that I go through to make sure I get the most out of attendance. The event is an investment in me from school and this is one way I honor that investment in my work. Going to conferences isn't my favorite thing in the world (I think I've become more introverted since moving to a farm...) but it is a good way to get ideas and check my own assumptions about what works well and what doesn't in my role.

1. Read the schedule carefully. This seems like a no-brainer, but I go through the schedule three or four times before leaving. Going through multiple times gives me time to process what I've already bookmarked and to notice something I missed previously. That helps me avoid standing around, feeling indecisive while at the event.
2. Mark multiple sessions each block. I used to pick my top choice and stick with it. But then, one day, I realized that I can leave a session that wasn't what I expected. I generally bookmark three or four sessions in a given block of time so I can move quickly if I need to.
3. Pay attention to the speaker bio. There are times when a session looks good, but it turns out to be a sponsored vendor session. They can have value, but I find that it's better to just go visit the booth to learn about the product rather than use a workshop block for the same thing.
4. Team up. I'm lucky enough to be able to go with a team, so we divide and conquer. Our interests and projects are diverse enough that we don't often end up in the same session, but it's always nice to be able to plan ahead so we can avoid surprises.
5. Prepare to meet people. This is tough for me because I like to process on my own, but some of the best learning has happened when I grabbed a free lunch seat with a stranger. When 5,000 people gather in one place, chairs can be scarce at meals, so pop down next to someone you don't know and start chatting. You're all there to learn and meals are a great spot to chat about something you picked up.

I have a little bit of a grief cycle, where I'm excited about a conference when I register, but then the week of the event, I wonder what I was thinking when I committed to going. But, these routines help me get into the right mindset to make the most of the time.

A variety of things

• This seems like the best way to verify journalists on the fediverse. Here's how the Washington Post verified its journalists on Mastodon.
• Josh Collinsworth shared a fun little tool which generates random bezier curve animations. I'm not working on any apps at the moment, but this is something to keep in the back pocket. It's also just nice to play with.
• It's behind a subscribe wall (c'mon Substack), but this is a great look from Abigail Noyce and David Largent at how to wiggle the Canvas LMS gradebook to report learning and progress rather than just point acquisition.

Improving communication

This year, I've struggled to work well with a particular colleague. At a certain point I went so far as to put all communication through an intermediary because I couldn't find a way to communicate positively. Since then, we've had a couple healing conversations and we're on a pathway to a better working relationship, which has been a major relief.

Doug Belshaw shared a post this week on FONT, which is an application of nonviolent communication methods. Like Doug, I reacted a little to thinking that my communication style was "violent," but I'm wishing I'd seen this way back in the fall when some of the conflict began.

FONT stands for feelings, observations, needs, and thoughts. Doug's post has a great overview of the order you acutally use to work through dealing with conflict, so please take a minute or two to go read it. For me, it stood out that Doug used this in writing to prep for uncomfortable conversations and I think that's something I'm going to try the next time I'm facing a similar situation.

I've been bouncing between Arc and Vivaldi as the browser of choice for non-work related Internet things. I think I've finally settled on using Vivaldi as my daily for a couple reasons, but there are some UI elements from Arc that I'm missing in the switch back. Here are some of the things I've changed about my Vivaldi preferences and some I'd like to see improved upon.

Enable workspaces

Enable workspaces in vivaldi:experiments to get a dropdown on your tab bar to switch between spaces. I've started using workspaces in Google to manage projects and I find they're easier to manage than having different profiles to switch between. I still need to map specific workspaces to custom shortcuts.

Move tabs to vertical

Horizontal real estate is good, but vertical space is more limiting on my main work machine. Clive Thompson has a good post on switching to vertical tabs. Vivaldi makes it easy to switch to vertical and they were default in Arc.

One thing I miss from Arc is the ability to have a floating tab bar. Meaning, when the mouse wasn't in the left-hand side of the screen, the tab bar moved away. It gave the entire screen to the browser window, which felt luxurious. In Vivaldi, I have Ctrl+Cmd+Opt+B (using Karabiner-Elements to turn my Caps Lock key into an all-modifier key) to toggle the bookmarks bar on and off, but I miss the gesture. I also wish it floated. Right now, when I toggle the tab bar, all of the content shifts to account for the new space.

To mimic the gesture, I set a custom mouse gesture to show the tab bar when I hold option and move my mouse to the left. It's not perfect, but my muscle memory should pick it up soon enough.

Address bar in the tab bar

This one is harder. I would love it the address bar could be moved to the top of the tab bar. I get the argument for always having it visible to ensure you're on the page/domain you think you're on, but I miss the clean look of not having anything at the top of the page.

Granted, this also adds complexity around where to put browser extensions, and Arc solved that with floating buttons which activated when you're mouse was in the top right. It wasn't ideal beacuse I couldn't always hit that small activation area accurately, but that's not a big deal in the long run. My guess is that I'll get over the address bar issue pretty quickly.

Automatic ad skipping

Arc has uBlock Origin installed by default (easy to solve in Vivaldi) but it would also automatically skip ads on streaming services, which was incredible. I have a small (hacky) ad-blocker for Spotify that I might put an hour into to improve to get that behavior back. Right now, the tab is simply muted if a class is detected on the player element on the page. With a little work, I could grab the audio element and set the time to it's max to get the same result.

I'm dumb and didn't realize that uBlock Origin was actually what did the skipping in Arc. So, this is a non-issue.

Modify the command palette priorities

Arc used Cmd+T to open all commands, which was great for muscle memory. Vivaldi has Cmd+E linked to the command palette launcher, so the muscle memory won't be too bad to adjust. What I did change was the priority of items in the command window. Instead of the default, I now have:

1. Open Tabs to keep the tab bar closed more often than open
2. Workspaces to quickly get to one place or another based on what I'm doing
3. Extensions to launch an extension from the keyboard rather than moving to the mouse

These small changes help keep my hands on the keyboard, which allows me to work faster.

Productivity matters more

In the end, Vivaldi runs on all of my machines while Arc only lives on the Mac. The experience feels like a Mac app - smooth transitions and nice UI elements and there are other features of Arc that I didn't really get into using (page boosts and easles in particular) and maybe I would stick around if I had more of an idea about how to use them well.

The biggest dealbreaker after several weeks was the laptop-to-mobile experience. The productivity lost trying to find and reopen tabs on my phone was too much. Once the mobile space is finished with Arc, I'll give it another shot.