✨ Adobe express, inclusive language, tech detox, and more – Of bits and bytes for April 24, 2023
Internet Travels
Of bits and bytes is my weekly round up of interesting links and ideas I discovered on the internet. It is published on Mondays for the previous week
Apps
Besides Canva, Adobe has their Adobe Express project. If you’re interested in it, The Nerdy Teacher has a getting started guide available. Adobe Express, like Canva, is free for education. It’s always good to have other creation tools available!
Pedagogy
The end of the year is approaching, and Larry Ferlazzo has a great list on ending the year strong. Remember, you will have students that are dreading the oncoming summer.
None of our students are the same, and how should you refer to your students’ differences? Here are two articles on the language to use when referring to your students. The first on using person first or identity first language and the second on more inclusive language for students with disabilities.
Technology
I have written in the past about lessening the time spent with technology, and it’s great see Chris Lehman working on thoughtful and deliberate technology use at the Science Leadership Academy. I’ve done a few things in my use of tech to help limit the amount of time I spend on my phone. These pertain to iOS and the iPhone, you’re mileage may very if you use Android.
- Notifications: Almost all of my apps only have the ability to set their badge (the red circle on the icon). No sounds, no banners, no push notifications. When I look at my phone, I can see if I have an app I need to deal with, but I’m not here to be nudged to open an app just because it sent me a notification.
- Vibration: Turned off for everything.
- Phone: Default ringtone is 30 seconds of silence. I then go in to my contacts and set up ringtones for those people that I want to be able to ring my phone. The default ringtone does get changed when I’m waiting on a call, but then it goes right back to silence.
- Texts: Same as the phone. Default text message sound is silence, and then certain people will get a sound.
- Parental controls: I’ve had to turn on parental controls for TikTok. I get 18 minutes a day, and then will get a notification every 15 minutes I continue to use the app. It’s a great way to remind me that I’m wasting time.
- Grayscale mode: This is the nuclear option, using an accessibility feature to turn off the colors on the screen. Great way to make the phone boring to use.
With these settings in place, my phone waits for me to interact with it, not the other way around. It can get as needy as it wants, but I’m not going to be notified about it.
Tips
AI is being used to generate more and more content but how do you cite it? Richard Byrne has you covered.
Pop Culture
Kurt Vonnegut sounds like he was such an interesting person, and his advice to students re-inforces this! For those that would rather hear it, Ian McKellen reads Kurt Vonnegut’s inspirational letter to students .
Pot Pourri
I think a lot of the problem with trying to figure out how technology use is affecting us is because it’s complicated, as the University of Michigan as found out when studying the effect of TikTok on mental health.
Along with a bunch of fascinating facts this post also describes a visual number-system invented by Inuit schoolchildren.
History
- 📱 The iPhone’s scan text is a game changer for taking notes
- Turn a web page into a mind map with MindPane
- 📷 Ed photos of the week for April 20, 2023
Extra Credit
Here are extra links that I found interesting that may or may not be education related or interesting to you and I didn’t want to lose them.
- The Rise and Fall of the Teaching Profession: Prestige, Interest, Preparation, and Satisfaction over the Last Half Century | EdWorkingPapers
- 3 in 4 managers find it difficult to work with GenZ – ResumeBuilder.com – #1 issue is the lack of technological skills.
- Detecting stress in the office from how people type and click
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