Academic Aesthetic

Just an old man yelling at cloud computing. My other projects are all over at AaronBSmith.com.

Blog

  • It’s been a while.

    My last published post on here was written in 2018. (I have a draft that I typed up in 2020 but I’m not going to count that.)

    Eight years later and a lot has changed. Yes, all the big things that have already come to your mind, but also, I’m doing a lot of stuff differently.

    (Except for standardized testing. Standardized testing never changes.)

    The rest of this post’s going to be something of a ramble. I might take parts of what’s in here and turn them into separate posts later, or I might come back years later and share another ramble.

    My computer lab is all Linux. Heck, my home computers are all Linux at this point. It’s not that I love it, it’s that every other OS I’ve been fond of in the past 20 years has turned to garbage.

    AI is a plague, and many of the great educators I once admired are now touting it as the revolution that will help everyone more easily steal from artists while enabling cognitive decline and hastening the destruction of our environment. None of these things really matter to them, but hey, they got it to make a graphic with too many colors so that lets them hand-wave away all the negatives.

    A lot of the sites I’ve convinced others to use have gone the same route as my once respected peers. Code.org rebranded to CodeAI just this year. I’m still expected to use their curriculum for my web design course, but it’s one overhaul away from being useless to my students. (They’re all artists. Am I to tell them the future will be built upon their works, with no credit given? Am I to tell them the future requires them to steal for the corporations so that they may be laid off when they’re no longer needed? What skills will it provide to help them after the AI bubble bursts?)

    I’m having a lot of fun playing TTRPGs, though, and most years I sponsor an after school TTRPG club for my students. We’ve abandoned Dungeons & Dragons (another product whose owner has made thoroughly bad choices, but this is the wrong blog for that) in favor of Lasers & Feelings, Cypher System, and Tales of the Valiant.

    My social media presence has eroded to near nothing. I deleted my Twitter accounts (I’d stopped using them years earlier), and no longer publish videos to YouTube. I’m on Mastodon and PeerTube, though the former is followers-only by default and the latter focuses on TTRPGs. I might make a PeerTube for my education musings, if I gather enough thoughts to make that worth it. You can find the accounts I use on my other website.

    Just last month we passed the 10 year anniversary of my wife’s death. It still hurts. I still miss her every day.

    I want to be optimistic about things. There are a lot of reasons out there for me to be pessimistic and call it realism. You have to hunt for the things that make you happy, or make them yourself.

    Andrew Roach is doing some amazing things. He’s not a teacher in the traditional sense, but he’s a problem solver. He’s using old tech to make video and fancy tech to make toys. He has a zine that’s half manifesto and half instruction manual on how to make your own TV station.

    Russ Sharek went and made a new license for releasing work, that’s similar to CC-BY but with carve-outs preventing AI and corporate use.

    Old things are becoming popular again, and I only feel like turning to dust a little bit when I remember them as new things. Primitive digital cameras that don’t connect to the internet or use AI to “fix” things are on the rise, and my students like them a lot. It’s made it harder for me to buy used cameras because of supply and demand, but when I brought my Camp Snap 8 to school, all of my younger students wanted to use it.

    There are reasons to be optimistic. Maybe that’s what I’ll post more of here, to make myself feel better about the future.

    Or maybe I’ll just yell at cloud computing and AI.

    Or both. Both is good.

  • PUWT18 Presentations

    As is apparently tradition for me, I’m presenting two sessions at this year’s Powering Up With Technology Conference. (My first presentation at PUWT was … 2006? 12 years ago? Wow!)

    Rather than give long and difficult to type URLS for my presentations, I thought I’d share them here. (Yes, I am aware that “academicaesthetic” is not universally easy to type, but it’s easier than, say, “o03Eil5s,” and people can get here from AaronBSmith.com … hm, maybe that’s the link I’ll share.)

    Keep in mind that these Google Slides are primarily my visual aids, as opposed to the talks themselves, and I’ll probably be changing slides around up to and including 5 minutes before my session starts. If all goes well I’ll have recordings of the actual presentations that I can post on this website as a follow-up.

     

  • Will This Be Graded?

    Will This Be Graded?

    This post brought to you by…

    Let’s talk about assessment.

    …

    OK, now that I’ve scared off any random students who’ve managed to find my website, let’s have an honest talk about assessment.

    Grades in one form or another have been a staple of education for a very long time indeed. With the push to quantify school quality through standardized testing and the overall inertia that we normally encounter in academia in general, they don’t look like they’ll be going away any time soon.

    So naturally, they’re a perfect thing for progressive ed reformers to rally against. Kids hate them (unless they have an A), teachers hate assessing which grades to give (unless it’s self-grading), and parents hate having to come in for parent/teacher conferences to discuss them, so let’s trash them, right?

    … and the letter Y.

    Not so fast.

    Grades, like paper in an art room, still serve more than one essential need in the classroom. Unlike slide rules and filmstrip projectors, we still use grades because we haven’t come up with a better alternative for them. They work.

    Let’s start with the point that Mr. Robinson brings up in his initial rebuttal: Feedback.

    Grades on individual assignments let students know the skill with which they completed the assigned task. Those grades can (and should be) itemized in such a way that students also know how well they accomplished various subcategories of the skills being assessed. Their cumulative grade (which if done well should be accessible at any time, not just when Progress Reports or Report Cards are sent home) helps students know how well they’re doing in the course overall. Ideally they should have some idea about how much each assignment weighs against the other tasks they are given throughout the course.

    Yes, I can give feedback just through constructive and positive criticism, but while those things are crucially important parts of my curriculum, the ability to boil something down to a number or letter can help the student better understand their growth than me just saying “Hey, that was reasonably better than last time!”

    That’s NOT a #2 pencil!

    Next up: Grades do the same thing for me that they do for the students.

    For the past eight years, my grade book has been a Google Sheet with more annotations, comments, and conditional formatting than is healthy for any web-based system. It is packed full of additional information that explains or clarifies various scores and why they are what they are.

    This is incredibly useful information that I’ve gone back to on many occasions throughout the year, but it doesn’t beat being able to highlight the row a child’s scores are in and scroll across to see trends in the data. I can do that with numbered (or lettered) grades far faster than I’d ever be able to do that without them.

    I’ve often complained that education is a dinosaur that needs to do some serious evolving if it’s to continue to be meaningful and helpful to our students, but when it comes to getting rid of grades? That’s throwing the baby out with the bath water.

    There are a few kinds of assessment that I could do without (Die, standardized testing, DIE!), but let’s keep grades around for a while. They haven’t failed us yet.

    Pun intended.

  • Scholar.Social: A Mastodon Network For Teachers

    Scholar.Social: A Mastodon Network For Teachers

    I wrote a short time ago about how I really liked Mastodon and thought teachers should give it a try. At the time I’d settled on a home server but lamented that there was no instance (each Mastodon server is called an instance) set up specifically for teachers.

    Well never fear, because scholar.social has stepped in to fill the void!

    As the name implies, scholar.social is not JUST for teachers, but anyone involved in academics. The tag line they use is  “The Mastodon profile that you’re not embarrassed to put on the last slide of a presentation at a conference,” which is a little wordy I’ll admit, but I think it’s  a great ideal to live by.

    It’s a small instance at the time I’m writing this, but as someone who has debated making an instance just for myself I don’t see this as a bad thing. Something I enjoy on Mastodon is when I can look at the Local Timeline and not have it scroll past me faster than I can read. I was getting that on mastodon.cloud and mastodon.social, but not on elekk.xyz. I’ll admit, being able to see what others were saying on my instance kind of spoiled me, so I’m glad my new home lets me enjoy that again.

    scholar.social logoI’m not going to say this will replace Twitter. Twitter didn’t replace Tumblr for me, and Tumblr didn’t replace this blog. I will say that so far I’m enjoying Mastodon, scholar.social specifically, and think that if you like reading what I put on this site you might enjoy it yourself.

    So if you’re a teacher, why not give it a try? When you do, say hello. All the cool kids are doing it.

    And so am I.

  • Adam Savage’s “Sunday Sermon” at Maker Faire 2017

    I’m growing more and more certain that everything Adam Savage touches turns to gold, even the things that fail spectacularly.

    For years, now, Mr. Savage has been giving a  short talk at the annual Maker Faire. They are full of inspiration, encouragement, and awesomeness. This year’s talk is no different.

    The giant ant he rides in on is a bit of a bonus.

  • Why This Site Is Self-Hosted

    Why This Site Is Self-Hosted

    Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr (the list goes on…) are (or have been) extremely popular, in part because they’re free, but also because they’ve reached a “critical mass” of users. I know many people who only use Facebook because their friends and family use Facebook, for example.

    Separate from this is a trend known as POSSE, or Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere.

    Like it implies, following a POSSE strategy doesn’t forego having and using the free social media sites that are so hip with the kids these days, particularly the ones who don’t describe neato things with the word “hip” (or “neato,” for that matter…). Instead, you put your meaningful content on a site you host yourself, then link to it on those networks.

    I like this plan. Here’s why.

    Here today, gone tomorrow.

    A sizable portion of the things I have made were uploaded to services that no longer exist. Remember Geocities? Mac.com web hosting? Tumblr is still around, but I apparently went so long without using it that an older account of mine was deactivated and resurrected by someone spamming ads for real estate.

    We assume when we create an account on a free service that it will stay online forever, or at least until we’ve lost interest. Those of us with more gray hairs know that this is simply not the case. A lot of people today are mourning the loss of Vine, but it’s far from the first to go and certainly won’t be the last.

    (Side note: My wife did all her blogging on a Tumblr account. I’m going to have to find a way to preserve that somehow.)

    You’re the product.

    I’ve heard “If you’re getting a service for free, you’re not the customer, you’re the product” so often that it almost loses meaning now. Unfortunately, it is frequently true.

    Google doesn’t make money hand over fist because they’re selling physical items or search results, they’re making money because so many people see the stuff they do that buying ads from them is cost effective. (I say this knowing full well that some pages on this website include ads  from Google. I didn’t say all advertising is bad.) The same is true for Facebook. Twitter is … working on it, but they have a problem still with bots and harassers so their store of products seems a bit tainted to prospective buyers.

    I pay a company for server space. Because that’s their product and keeping me happy is the best way to keep me sending them money, they work hard to do so. On a free service that is mostly depending on ad revenue and/or data collection, the people they want to make happy are the ones sending them money.

    This happened recently on YouTube, where advertisers got particularly annoyed when their ads started showing up in front of incredibly offensive content. As a result, YouTube has seriously cut back on which videos can be monetized. So far, so good, right? Yes, except the algorithm isn’t as fine-tuned as it could be, and now non-bigoted people (I’m assuming, but I like to assume the best when possible) who depend on YouTube ad revenue to pay their rent are a bit concerned about their drop in income.

    I like YouTube. It’s where I post all of my tutorials as well as my more recent conference presentations and vlogs, but I wouldn’t depend on it for my income even if my channel subscriptions went through the roof because I’d be relying wholly on a company NOT designed or motivated to keep me happy meeting my needs. (I’d also be squeamish about forcing my students to watch tutorials that make me money. The channel I use to host my tutorials is currently not set up for monetization. If you see ads, the revenue isn’t going to me.)

    Self-hosted content is (more) mobile.

    I said before that I like my web host. I do, but if I somehow change my mind it would take only a little bit of work to back up this entire site with YEARS of content and move it to another host. There are a few other companies that do that, but it isn’t universal and it isn’t always easy.

    Google is one of the few, which is part of the reason I was able to move from Blogger to WordPress without copy/pasting blog posts by hand.

    Flickr theoretically has an option for downloading all your photos, but the last several times I tried it didn’t work. If I had been uploading all my photos to a self-hosted site instead of Flickr, I wouldn’t be so concerned about this.

    Twitter allows you to request an archive of all of your tweets.

    I haven’t seen anything on Facebook or their subsidiaries (Instagram, etc.) allowing you to download all of your content from them.

    Vine offered this, but they’re gone now.

    You don’t need to leave, but a permanent home would be good.

    This entire post was inspired by Doug Belshaw’s post about why he’s “leaving” Twitter. I use quotes because he’s not abandoning Twitter like I abandoned my old nameless-to-not-support-a-spammer Tumblr account. Instead, he’s switching strategies.

    To Mr. Belshaw, the Twitter of yesteryear was a place where he had conversations. Now, it will be a place where he uses a bullhorn to tell followers about the cool stuff he’s doing elsewhere. It’s a viable use for the medium, and many people use Twitter for mostly that anyway.

    “But blogs are for long form content, not rapid-fire ephemeral but public communication,” you might counter. “Surely he’ll continue to use Twitter for that.”

    Eh, Twitter’s not the only option for that, either.

    (I’m on Mastodon as well, if you want to follow me. UPDATE: I found an academics themed instance and I’m giving that one a try.)

    (Also, if you want to try self-hosting and help support this blog at the same time, try Dreamhost. If you don’t like clicking affiliate links, here’s one to Dreamhost that doesn’t support me at all.)

  • 5(ish) Photography Lesson Ideas

    Lesson ideas:

    1. Take 100 unique shots of the same item and/or in the same location. (The first 50 or so will likely not be so good. After that, students will be forced to think.)
    2. Photograph something being made (Lego sculpture, a meal, a painting, etc.) with the camera in a different location in regards to the subject in each photo.
    3. Document an outside (not in a car) journey from the point of view of your feet. Capture as many landmarks/areas of interest as possible.
    4. Create a series of images where the subject is only seen in reflections (mirrors, windows, still water, etc.), bonus points if it is interacting or lining up with the non-reflected parts of the composition.
    5. Watch the video below for inspiration.

  • Test Quality

    As I write this, a lot of final exams are being given and/or graded. Mine are actually due today, and internet use isn’t an option, it’s a requirement.

  • PICO-8 Progress

    PICO-8 Progress

    It’s been a few days since I  started messing with creating content in PICO-8, so I thought I’d document my journey so far through the magic of bullet points.

    • There’s a programming cheat sheet.  This helps.
    • There’s also a more detailed manual online,  if you want to know everything.  (This might not be the best starting point, though.)
    • YouTube Video tutorials abound, though the language in some is not safe for school. I will likely make my own tutorials once I feel I have enough skill to do so.
    • Pressing F9 to save 8 seconds of an animated GIF to your desktop is a really neat feature that I will probably be using more than I should. (The images aren’t large by default. The GIF in the corner here is shown full size.
    • This is definitely something my students are not going to understand fully on the first day.
    • This is something several of my students are going to love.
    • I got caught up in the sprite editor at first. I shouldn’t have. You can do all kinds of cool things without sprites at all. Start there.  The sprites are nothing without the code. The code can do plenty without the sprites.
    • I have 10% of an idea of what I’m doing, and I love it. This is my kind of learning – I am outside my comfort zone, but not by such a large margin that I’m afraid to see what changing a parameter does.
    • The “Undo” shortcut of Ctrl-Z works, and it is a lifesaver. Also:  Copy & Paste work as intended.
    • Programming is an algebra teacher’s answer to the age-old question of “When are we going to need to know this?” Only in this case, you’re telling PICO-8 to plot X and Y and oh, wait, now change those numbers to this and keep changing them and use  those numbers as the modifiers for changing themselves and no, you’re not plotting a line graph, I want a new image each time.
    • This is fun.

    More updates as I do more.

  • It Shouldn’t Be Hard(er)

    It Shouldn’t Be Hard(er)

    Taking a short break from long blog posts to give you this little tidbit I’m fond of saying.

    Note that this doesn’t specify who’s doing it wrong. Sure, it MIGHT be you, but it might be a student, administrator, or even the person who designed that bit of technology in the first place.

    Come to think of it, that last scenario has occurred more times than I’m willing to talk about.

    In any case, it has a kitty in the background.