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Showing posts from April, 2017

[RSS] ProfHackerProfHacker - Blogs - The Chronicle of Higher Education / Weekend Reading – Doing it Wrong Edition

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Weekend Reading – Doing it Wrong Edition Lee Skallerup Bessette It's that time of the (academic) year for many of us: we are neck-deep in grading, in stressed-out student, in wondering if we'll even have a job in the fall and how are going to make ends meet over the summer. Typically, this would be the time to share self-care pieces, but instead I'm sharing a few provocative readings that have prompted me to ask the question, maybe we're doing this wrong. Life Hacks of the Aimless and Poor, by Laurie Penny in The Baffler . "The isolating ideology of wellness works against this sort of social change in two important ways. First, it persuades all us that if we are sick, sad, and exhausted, the problem isn't one of economics. There is no structural imbalance, according to this view—there is only individual maladaption, requiring an individual response. The lexis

[RSS] ProfHackerProfHacker - Blogs - The Chronicle of Higher Education / Recent & Upcoming Conversations on Open & Networked Learning

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Recent & Upcoming Conversations on Open & Networked Learning Maha Bali If you are in the field of open and networked learning, you are likely going through a process of exploring the place of open philosophies and networked/participatory practices in the current political environment, and deciding where your place is in all of this. Thankfully, there have been a lot of spaces for us to discuss these questions together, such as the #OER17 conference which took place in London with the theme "The Politics of Open". The conference may be over, but there have been several virtual events continuing the conversation, such as the Virtually Connecting Missed Conversation Towards Openness , led by Christian Friedrich and Kate Green and an OpenEdSIG follow-up webinar organized by Teresa MacKinnon. More recently, this Monday, I led a conversation among several open practitioner

[RSS] ProfHackerProfHacker - Blogs - The Chronicle of Higher Education / Is This Still a Thing? Looking Back at Unroll.me

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Is This Still a Thing? Looking Back at Unroll.me Jason B. Jones ProfHacker has been writing posts for a long time now, and in addition to all the evergreen posts about writing and syllabus design and so forth, we've also covered a lot of tech. I've been kicking around the idea of an occasional series called "Is This Still a Thing?," in which I look back at an app, service, or gadget we've reviewed, and briefly update readers on its status. For one reason or another, I've dithered in getting this off the ground, but recent revelations about Unroll.me have smoothed the path. Four years ago, Brian plugged Unroll.me , a service that offered to scan your cloud-hosted email for subscriptions, and roll them up into a single daily message, called a roundup. Brian found that he had 180 [!] subscriptions, unsubscribed from a bunch, and rolled most of the rest into his

NASA News: NASA Digital Communications Honored with 2017 Webby Awards

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NASA Digital Communications Honored with 2017 Webby Awards NASA's digital communications team will be honored at the 21st Annual Webby Awards on May 16 in New York. For the first time, NASA's social media presence has been recognized by the Webby Awards, winning in corporate communications and being honored with the People's Voice Award. Published April 25, 2017 Read more from NASA Manage this Applet

NASA News: NASA Awards Goddard Logistics, Technical Information Services Contract

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NASA Awards Goddard Logistics, Technical Information Services Contract NASA has awarded the Goddard Logistics and Technical Information II (GLTI II) Services Contract to TRAX International Corporation of Las Vegas. Published April 24, 2017 Read more from NASA Manage this Applet

[RSS] ProfHackerProfHacker - Blogs - The Chronicle of Higher Education / 5 Tips for Designing Course Documents

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5 Tips for Designing Course Documents George Williams Here towards the end of the semester, I'm thinking about all of the different kinds of documents I've seen left behind on or near the departmental photocopier over the past 15 weeks. And I've developed some … opinions about how such documents could be improved. Here are 5 specific tips I'd like to share with you: Add the same visible metadata to every document : Remember that each of your documents will have a life independent of the other documents you're creating for a course. When that document is separated from context, will it be possible for someone to know where it came from or what it's for? Add some context in the form of a header on each page: put the course name and number, your name, office number, and whatever contact information you wish to share. This information helps a student keep track

NASA News: NASA Astronaut Peggy Whitson Talks STEM Education with President Trump

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NASA Astronaut Peggy Whitson Talks STEM Education with President Trump NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, currently living and working aboard the International Space Station, broke the record Monday for cumulative time spent in space by a U.S. astronaut – an occasion that was celebrated with a phone call from President Donald Trump, First Daughter Ivanka Trump, and fellow astronaut Kate Rubins. Published April 24, 2017 Read more from NASA Manage this Applet

NASA News: How to See President’s Call to International Space Station on April 24

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How to See President's Call to International Space Station on April 24 President Donald Trump, First Daughter Ivanka Trump, and NASA astronaut Kate Rubins will make a special 20-minute, Earth-to-space call at 10 a.m. EDT Monday, April 24, to personally congratulate NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson for her record-breaking stay aboard the International Space Station. Published April 21, 2017 Read more from NASA Manage this Applet

[RSS] ProfHackerProfHacker - Blogs - The Chronicle of Higher Education / Weekend Reading: Late April Edition

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Weekend Reading: Late April Edition George Williams It's hard to believe that April is almost over. I know that some campuses still have weeks to go until the academic term is over, but on my campus we start final exams next week (!). Without further ado, here are 5 interesting reads to get you through your weekend: " America's Great Divergence ," by Alana Semuels in The Atlantic : "Half a century ago, economic opportunity and upward mobility were available to many white Americans, regardless of where they lived and what kind of education they had. They could graduate from high school and find a job at a local factory and make a good wage, or graduate from college and sit behind a desk and make a slightly better wage. About 90 percent of kids born in the 1940s earned more than their parents did. But beginning in the 1980s, the returns on a college education sta

[RSS] ProfHackerProfHacker - Blogs - The Chronicle of Higher Education / Annotating Financial Context Automatically with Bloomberg Lens

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Annotating Financial Context Automatically with Bloomberg Lens Jason B. Jones Despite the fact that the web is a powerful tool for annotation , many news stories and blog posts lack relevant context that would be useful for readers. Especially as a site ages, it can be hard to know how information has changed over time. Most of us at ProfHacker like hypothes.is as an annotate-everywhere tool. But there are other visions of annotation, and this week, Bloomberg and Postlight jointly announced Bloomberg Lens, an iOS app and Chrome extension that aims to provide on-the-fly financial and news context for websites. Ben Mullin explains the basic idea: "Bloomberg, with its terminal business, has tons of data. Postlight has Mercury, a web parser that scans and reformats text. Together, they could create an application that scans news articles for newsmakers (people, companies, institutions

NASA News: Two New Crew Members Arrive at International Space Station

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Two New Crew Members Arrive at International Space Station After a six-hour flight, NASA astronaut Jack Fischer and cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos arrived at the International Space Station at 9:23 a.m. EDT Thursday where they will continue important scientific research. Published April 20, 2017 Read more from NASA Manage this Applet