🙋♂️ Web directory, no note meetings, screentime, and more – Of bits and bytes for January 29, 2024
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
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Apps
Back in the late 1900s and early 00s, human curated website directories were a nice change from the algorithmic responses of Alta Vista or Yahoo!. Curlie brings this idea into the now, with a human managed directory of websites. I did a search for volcano and was greeted with several categories about volcanoes along with sites and images. All without ads or sponsored sites being pushed at you.
Pedagogy
Michael Darius worked at Apple in design under Steve Jobs, and his Threads account posts interesting ideas and examples of design back before computers and phone were ruined by flat design. Released with iOS 7 in 2013, flat design took the world by storm because it had Apple promoting it, but in the end, flat design has problems.
I digress, because I’m wanting to point out this Thread that Mr. Darius posted:
The irony of working on a Notes app…
What? No notes? He followed it up with:
If you can’t rely on your own…
I was distraught to say the least. How many times have you been at a meeting, and then a few weeks later people at that same meeting have an entirely different memory of what happened? I still can’t get on board with banning note taking at meetings, but his blog post on the idea helps explain the thinking at Apple. I still disagree with the practice but I am impressed that they are able to implement it.
If you don’t allow notetaking in meetings, I’d love to hear about it!!
More and more schools are banning smartphones, but how this district did it is pretty brilliant. Instead of just banning smartphones, they issued black & white “feature phones” to students AND staff.
A new study shows that kids learn better on paper than on screens (research Middle-schoolers’ reading and processing depth in response to digital and print media: An N400 study). However, the article glosses over some of the findings from the research, it’s not as cut and dry as the headline would make it appear. I love reading on my Kindle, where the e-ink screen mimics paper and the device is designed for a single task. None of these research papers that I’ve read on the subject take these kind of screens into account. Are they the same as laptop and tablet screens or the same as paper or somewhere in between?
![[Pasted image 20240129061240.png]]
Me in class taking notes: : memes
Technology
The default font in Microsoft Office is now Aptos instead of Calibri and since people don’t like change, there will be people angry about it. You can switch it back if you’re so inclined.
Google announce several new new Chromebook features and security updates for educators at BETT 2024. They are also adding AI features to Chrome to help you manage your tabs.
Using screens with babies and toddlers is a recipe for disaster. So much so that psychologists are having to teacher parents how to fix an iPad kid. Our daughter was born in 2004, so we didn’t have the temptation that parents have today. However, we did stop watching TV when she was in the room, which seemed like a pretty big punishment for us. We kept it up until she was two though, and even them we limited her screen time, so it is possible.
Memebase – Microsoft Office – All Your Memes In Our Base – Funny Memes – Cheezburger
Pop Culture
Here’s a Sudoku secret to blow your mind.
Potpourri
Here’s a twofer of Seth Godin, one on reframing rejection and the other one on how everyone could be moving forward when progress is happening.
Rejection everywhere ~~ | Memes Universe
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.
- Violent video games decrease stress hormones, study finds
- Believe, Sleep, Play: 3 Research-Based Ideas for Effective Teaching (Opinion)
- 4 science-backed ways to build trust as a leader
- We’ve Forgotten How to Use Computers
- A new collaboration with OpenAI charts the future of AI in higher education | ASU News
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People want the PG version of Steve, the Steve that stayed cool tempered when someone didn’t even know how to describe what they did for the company.
That Steve didn’t exist and thank God he didn’t.
You came to the wrong place if you’re offended by me saying Steve called people who took notes ‘idiots’. We need MORE people wanting to learn from Steve’s ridiculously high attention standards in a world where everyone expects a free ride on the back of ‘equality’.
We’re not equal but if you’re good I’ll show your work off to the highest design order in the land and pray it brings you a lot more of the type of work you most enjoy doing and you might learn something in the process.
I’m not offended, I’m just not a good enough writer to remove all ambiguity from my posts. To get better at what we do in education, I look for inspiration everywhere, especially in non-educational settings. And from what I’ve read and seen, there is no way I would be in Steve’s orbit. That doesn’t mean I don’t understand why he acted the way he did or how he was able to get the best out of people.
The “no notetaking” idea is one of those ideas that are so against the grain that I can’t help but not get behind it since I’m all for things against the status quo. I’m trying to figure out how it would work in a school setting. For example, when dealing with students we have laws and regulations that if they are not followed can have severe consequences. But there are other situations where it could work.
Thank you for taking the time to reach out, it’s not only a reflection of your high standards, but also your willingness to help others, especially some nobody like me!
(And skeuomorphic design is my Roman Empire, I think about it every day, especially when I hop on my lampshade iMac with 10.3.)