Flickr offers users, even users of the free version, to offer their photos for use under creative commons licenses. This video explains how to apply these licenses and how to search for Flickr photos offered under a creative commons license.
Highlight the Mueller report
Like many Americans, I am reading the Mueller report. I prefer to highlight while I read and I was originally frustrated in finding a way to do this. I could locate several sources for a pdf, but most seemed to be protected in a way that do did not allow me to use my pdf highlighting tools.
My wife saw a recommendation for a searchable pdf. Evidently, some of the first pdfs released did not allow searching and to me this sounded at the core to be based on the same problem I was encountering. CNN is providing a searchable pdf of the report. I downloaded this version and found that the tool I use to highlight and annotate on my Mac (Skim) did work.
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Get your news through RSS
There is growing discontent with Twitter and Facebook, but many still use these services to access the news. Using these social services is going to provide a slanted view of the world and also blends together legitimate and sketchy information sources. RSS offers an alternative that you control.
I have written about RSS many times before. Designating the sources you want to follow using an RSS reader, allows you control over the content you want to review. Certainly, this might end up feeding your own biases, but following reputable news outlets would likely offer an improvement for most individuals. This was the argument made in this Gizmodo article suggesting those who rely on recommendations through Twitter (and Facebook) improve the quality of the content they view.
I have long used RSS (Feedly) to follow bloggers I respect and I had not considered adding news feeds to the content I consider on a regular basis. A question I know concerns new RSS users is how they should discover quality sources. My response for news feeds is far easier to implement than how I recommend users get started following blogs. It easy enough to find lists of the RSS feeds for the major news outlets. If this idea appeals to you, I would suggest a specific list to get your started.
There is no backlash
Social media has received severe criticism for the past several years. There were the revelations that Facebook was manipulated into spreading false information about Hillary Clinton and may have influenced the election of 2016. This seemed to start greater scrutiny of major online services leading to detailed information about how personal information was being collected and sold and how many services use behavioral techniques to increase heavy use and the sharing of more and more information. These findings have been widely distributed through every news outlet.
You might think that this would discourage users. The problem is that online services have become such a large part of our daily lives and have near universal acceptance. Despite the assumed frustration survey data collected by the PEW research center has found no decline in use. The charts in this report go back to 2012 and show use has leveled off since 2016, but
No matter how you view major social media platforms, the lack of meaningful competition is an important issue. Without competition, there is little incentive for innovation or responsible service.
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Teaching for mastery is more than allowing resubmits
I have observed multiple online references to teaching for mastery in the last couple of months. I have mixed reactions based on a career-long interest in mastery learning. On the positive side, seeing new interest in an old idea that I believe is typically novel to most educators is encouraging. On the other hand, it seems present interest involves a narrow perspective on what teaching for mastery originally meant. Teaching for mastery is more than allowing students a second chance to demonstrate their level of understanding or competence.
I think the original teaching for mastery approaches offer great possibility now that technology can offer ways to implement the components of mastery instruction as originally proposed. I think mastery faded not because there were not benefits to students, but because the demands of implementation were too great. To me, mastery based models were a way to respond to the differences in time to learn required by different students. These differences could be a consequence of differences in aptitude or in the success of past learning experiences. A successful approach combined multiple components and not simply the willingness to provide students a second chance. While an important component, nonpunitive, second chances still assumed all students will move on at approximately the same rate.
I have made an effort to describe what I understand to be a be a more complete approach to mastery based instruction previously and if interested, I refer you to these comments- https://learningaloud.com/grabe6/Chapter4/ch4_mastery.html
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The other side of the student-guided learning argument
Arguing for more traditional approaches is a good way to get ignored. However, often trends are more flash than substance. When it comes to the direct instruction / discovery, constructionist distinction, research has repeatedly demonstrated the advantage goes to direct instruction. This conclusion has been reached in multiple time periods when this educational controversy has emerged. Paul Kirschner has been one of those who continues to bring attention to this conclusion despite how he has been labeled. Here is a recent interview about his argument and his impression of those who continue to ignore the research findings.
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