Sandy Kendell @SandyKendell@qoto.org

This is an introductory post as I begin to explore Mastodon. I'm a high school teacher in an English Language Learner program, and also teach IB classes. Am interested in education research, ed policy, and learning about - and sharing - teaching resources. Any tips on how to function well on this site are appreciated!

"social capital" is a fraught name for it, but groups can get things done for each other outside frameworks of law and contract. I taught college students that providing aid and knowledge to others online can pay off when they need aid and knowledge. Since I got online in 1985, I've found that I receive multiple returns for everything I freely give.
#onlinecommunities

We're all gonna need this sooner than expected so here is my proposed APA 7 style citation format for citing a Mastodon post

Lastname, F.M. [@mastodon@handle.tld] (20XX, Month DD). Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut ... [Mastodon post]. Name of instance. [URL of post]

As with the format for citing a Twitter post, the correct reference list title is the first 20 words of the post, and the correct short title is the first 5, both using an ellipsis if necessary.

If you don't fundamentally believe that all students can learn and want to succeed, teaching may not be the right career for you.

Yes, the work is hard. No, you won't always get it right.

But once you stop believing, you also stop trying -- and that ain't right.

Another design consideration re: Mastodon is that it works well for ephemeral asynchronous communications, but for many reasons should not be counted on as an archival resource. Media attachments are periodically purged and may not be available after a week, or a month, etc. While some servers may try to preserve content forever, this may be costly and unsustainable. Creators, researchers should treat this as an ephemeral resource and make provisions for self-archiving anything important.

A vibrant #democracy requires a strong #publiceducation system. The most robust democracies in the world have the best systems of public education. It is no accident that as public education has been systematically weakened in the United States that our ranking in the Democracy Index has fallen precipitously and that we are now considered a flawed rather than a full democracy.

The cultivation of #criticalthinking is a key ingredient of a vibrant #democracy.
Anti-democratic #propaganda thrives in a context where persons lack critical thinking skills, and critical thinking skills are lacking in countries that do not have strong #publiceducation systems.

If we told our children that we want them to have a good #education so that they can help us create a more loving, more just, and more #sustainable world; that would be a vast improvement over our current focus on education to be successful.

I have nine years of experience working in Alt Media for educational access, and I have a little advice, particularly for furry artists on how to write Alt Text that will be useful and accessible for your blind followers.
A summary list:

1. Be brief as possible.
2. Do not repeat information.
3. Choose to describe what is most important.
4. Do not use it to circumvent the system.

Did you know that if you capitalize each word in a multi-word hashtag, #ScreenReaders can read them as words, but if you leave them lowercase, they can't? Well, now you know! So, for #accessibility, please capitalize words when there's more than one in a hashtag.

Enjoying the feeling of exploring a new digital space, and finding some familiar faces here!

My intro: I’m a professor teaching media and communication studies at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. I’m interested in media history, critical studies of #edtech, civic and #socialmedia, and the interplay between digital and material culture. I also write about #penpals! My book is Bring the World to the Child: Technologies of Global Citizenship in American Education (MIT Press, 2020).