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 …
Category Archives: Technology
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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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
It’s been a few days since I Â 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. Â This helps. There’s also a more detailed manual online, Â if you want to know everything. Â (This might not be the best …
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 …
Getting Homework to Work, Part 2
Yesterday  I started documenting my efforts towards making homework enjoyable enough for my students to actually do it for a change. By the end of that post I’d set up a weekly assignment where students made a video series as if they were YouTube stars. There was a definite increase in participation and quality, but …
Getting Homework to Work, Part 1
I mentioned in a previous post that I’ve been experimenting with letting kids grade student work. The whole journey will take more time to tell than I feel comfortable putting in a single blog post, so I’ve split it into parts. I’m not at a point where I’d say I have a perfect system, but …
Game Design With PICO-8
The more time I spend on Mastodon, the more I like it. It reminds me very much of the pioneer days on Twitter, but without  all those issues of @ signs meaning nothing, retweets being something we had to copy/paste, not having a decent phone app… Never mind that.  Mastodon isn’t even the subject for …