Books books books. Only two finished in July becuase the third I started is super heavy and just slow to get through.

A Darkling Sea - James Cambias

A space and ocean adventure all wrapped up into one. It's got Star Trek Prime Directive vibes paired up with language learning magic from Arrival as three civilizations try to work out who does what. The start of the book was a little slow, but I was able to suspend disbelief not too far in and enjoy the rest of the book. The tension built steadily up to the climax with an ending that left me with questions rather than answers (and I'm not sure if it was in the good way).

The Faith of Beasts - James SA Corey

Humans are continuing to struggle against the Carryx, the overwhelmingly powerful alien collective which took them from their homes on Anjin to serve the empire. The narrative follows several distinct groups who spread out from the Carryx world to "prove their value to the empire" in different situations. At the same time, the humans remaining on the Carryx world have to figure out how to not just survive, but grow as a beneficial species.

The hardest part was remembering what happened in the first book because it's been so long since I read it. Once I got back into the flow, it read easily and kept me reading late past my bedtime.

Only a couple books in July - I was pretty tired each night, so reading was pretty slow.

Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism - Sarah Wynn-Williams

I picked this up after hearing about the legal battle over its publication earlier this year. "Careless" really runs through the entire book. Facebook leadership is careless in how it approaches problems. They care careless over how employees are treated. They are careless over very clear, very real impacts the platform has on the world. The stories are heartbreaking and illustrate the toxicity of power when there are no checks in place.

Sarah's credentials makes the entire memoir credible and gives a deep look into one of the most influential companies in the world. The details of her trauma are hard to read, but give acute insight into the attitudes and behaviors of top leadership at Facebook.

Interestingly, after finishing, I had an exchange with someone on Mastodon about the author's own lack of responsibility for what happened during her time there. I think I read this with a little bit of a lens already in place and I missed that angle.

The Three Body Problem - Cixin Liu

After seeing the trailer for the Netflix series, I grabbed a copy from the library and set in. It took me a little while to get oriented to the main characters, but once I had each of them straight in my mind, I enjoyed the book more. It's a difficult book because of the complexity of the Chinese cultural revolution in the 60's and how it affects characters later in life. Given that it's a translation, I'm not really surprised to have struggled with different aspects of the narrative. There is a thick portion at the end with a lot of high-level physics detail that could have been simplified, but it also set up the scope of the main conflict, so maybe it was done correctly.

I didn't know this was a series and I'm not sure I'll continue reading. Given that there are two more books, this ending felt like it could've been standalone.

Before starting this post, please go back and look at Part 1 to get the research justification for the outline below.

In an effort to make research more accessible and visible in the implementation of new ideas, here is a practical, “how-to” explanation of ways to get students to ask better questions.

While all of this can be done with paper and pencil in class, expanding the process to the web brings benefits. Students (and the teacher) can interact when and where they want. If you’re using an open community, you can also get feedback from outside sources. There is also a running record of the interactions asked and answered by each member of the community, which can be used for analysis, assessment, or just judging the health of the community.

Dan Meyer advocates questioning habits through making it a habit to ask. His keynote at CUE gives an example of how he practices asking good questions. (Please watch just a minute or two of the video. It is well worth the time.) This brings us to thing-to-try-number-one:

Think of this as brain training. There is evidence showing that students who undergo training in asking questions score higher on information-based assessments than groups who do not receive training (Weiner 1978). Now, before you accuse me of reaching too far, the study also notes that they did not study the efficacy of a particular type of training. So, if we take Dan’s example and begin tracking perplexity, we are training our brains to pay attention to our surroundings, which could translate to the classroom. (As a closing side note, Dan also runs a website called 101 Questions which is a fun way to get kids thinking. You can also use it to upload content to get some feedback before using it with students.)

Thinking back to part 1, I gave a brief outline of a method called the “question formulation strategy. So, thing-to-try-number-two:

I know both strategies essentially do the same thing – get students to reflect on their learning as it happens. I like QFS better because the metacognitive processes the students engage in are open ended and content agnostic. The students are free to ask questions on anything they want, which gives then an open route to make connections on their own. The KWL also has a “finality” to it…once the student learns what they want to know (the “W” column), there is little invitation to continue exploring. QFS, on the other hand, encourages further questioning at every stage.

Finally, thing-to-try-number-three:

Remember, there is evidence showing that questions alone aren’t enough. We need feedback. I mentiond earlier that StackExchange is a great platform for both asking and answering questions, but the added layer of voting and commenting serves as the quality control. Unfortunately, getting the platform for student use is more complicated.

StackExchange is a private company – the platform is not open source. I did some searching and there are some open-source alternatives which can be used, but they’re not insignificant to get set up.

The way I see it, there is a large community of educators with the know-how and the interest in getting something like I’ve described set up. I’m even willing to throw in my small-beans experience in helping to set up and maintain a site. If there is interest in experimenting with this idea (I’m not in the classroom, or I’d try it myself), leave a comment and we’ll see what we can do.

Leading up to the headless ds106 planned for this fall, it’s an August GIF-a-thon. I managed to find some time tonight to get one finished and uploaded.

What you see below is a reconstruction of what really happened. We were able to get to the doctor in time to reduce the chance of major scarring. Today, you can barely even tell this occurred.

The GIF is 11 frames long, which keeps its size pretty low. I also varied the length of each frame to give the illusion of the ball flying back at my face much faster than I threw it to Peter, because that’s what happened IRL. What a punk.

On July 2nd, I wrote a short post about taking some time off for the month. Well, the month is over, I haven’t written a single article, and now I’m trying to decide what to focus on first.

I’ve been thinking a lot about defining my learning spaces this year. I’ve got some ideas about creating an inviting and inspiring space for students. I have some ideas, but I really want it to be my students who drive what happens. One thing I’ve thought about is a collage wall, where students can post pictures of their learning, especially learning outside of school. Hopefully, the photos will spark conversations and students will become experts in a certain area, and the pictures will help them tell their stories. We’ll see what happens with that.

I’ve also been thinking about flipped learning and what role it will play in my class this year. Again, the space is a major issue, but I’m also continuing to think about how learning will be defined next year. I’ll be writing more on the pedagogy behind flipping and what it looks like in my situation. I would also like to begin writing more about common threads found in all areas being flipped. We need to begin pushing the discussion further.

Finally, I am going to be working on the structure and content of my class website. I need to get back to the basics of what I’m teaching and streamline the content for my students. I’ll be making some changes to the course outlines as well as the videos within the course in an attempt to make them more interactive and not solely content delivery. Again, I’m not totally sure what the course will look like when this is done, but I’m excited about the possibilities.

When I wasn’t thinking about school, I learned how to make yogurt, moved into a new apartment, went to Colorado for a wedding, and rode a bike in a ride across Indiana.