Sandy Kendell @SandyKendell@qoto.org

@brndnpink @edutooters Don't lecture too much. Break up lecture portions with activities/etc.

And when you do have a lecture portion:

- use slides to accompany a verbal lecture. This is important for accessibility.

- make sure those slides are highly visual and well designed. No SmartArt, Design Ideas, or walls of text that are just read to students 🙏.

- do more than just share fact after fact after fact.... Add stories, metaphors, humor, etc.

A Pinned Thread on Threading and Pinning

While different, threading in Mastodon is actually pretty good. People are familiar with Twitter threads that link one post to the next in chronological order. You can do this on Mastodon too, but it’s a little less polished.

Read more of this thread on How To Thread by expanding this post…

1 of 8 #twittermigration #feditips #mastodontips #NewUser

new blog post: #SIFT on #Mastodon https://www.speedofcreativity.org/2022/11/27/sift-on-mastodon/

#MediaLit #MediaLiteracy #polarization #edtech #socialmedia #LikeWar #ConCW #digiURI #EduTooter #education s/o @mguhlin @SandyKendell

How Do Vaccines Actually Work?
#Vaccines aren’t miracle cures: they don’t make every individual immune to disease. But what matters is that they work on a population level. 

The key to a successful vaccination program is immunizing enough people to develop so-called “herd immunity,” where most infected individuals can’t spread it to anyone else. This way, over time, fewer and fewer people get infected, ideally until the disease is wiped out entirely.
Diseases still pose a risk as long as there are some  cases anywhere.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/video/decoded-how-do-vaccines-actually-work/?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1669589493

If you're hearing a lot about the fediverse these days, you should know: Mastodon is not the whole fediverse and the fediverse is not simply a Twitter replacement. The fediverse is an entire ecosystem, built on something called ActivityPub. Learn more: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/11/leaving-twitters-walled-garden

You don’t have to be progressive to grasp Nazis and Nazism are bad things and contrary to American principles. It just takes memory or a history class about what side Americans were on. Over 16M Americans fought in WWII, over 400k died and nearly 700k were wounded to defend democracy and America.

Maybe most already know this but...

If you see someone using a Mastodon instance you don't know about but are curious, Just put the domain without username in your browser. For example, just go to mastodon.xyz, retro.pizza, or wondering.shop. This will load the local feed of that instance.

Click "..." in the mobile browser, or "About" by the domain name in the lower left on a desktop browser, and read about the general idea and policies of that instance.

If you’re an American who just spent Thanksgiving with people from another part of the country, you may have started to talk like them.
Here’s what a linguist found when they studied the phenomenon: “People do, in fact, converge toward speech sounds they expect to hear – even if they never actually hear them.”

https://theconversation.com/what-makes-us-subconsciously-mimic-the-accents-of-others-in-conversation-181771
#language #news #linguistics

Getting started with #mastodon and being an #edutooter #edtech

I'm wondering how many fellow #edutooters are leaving the bird site.

✂️ Magic Eraser - https://magicstudio.com/magiceraser

Remove unwanted items from any image using this AI-powered online photo editor.

Free version allows unlimited edits.

Free version limits the size of downloaded images to 600x400.

#edtech #ControlAltAchieve #edutooter @edutooters

Micro-investigation born out of discussion with an American friend:

Apart from the U.S., in which countries do schools celebrate a pledge of allegiance or something similar?

Here in Italy we don't have anything like that in schools and I'm pretty sure it's roughly the same throughout Europe. Or not?

#PledgeOfAllegiance #School #Education

One of the things on my mind this morning is what role sharing of resources should play in my Mastodon experience.

That's something I did a lot in Twitter. I'd share presentations I was giving or tools that I made for teachers or for teams - and I think that had value for folks.

But sharing doesn't always lead to deeper thinking and connection.

What do all y'all think? Is sharing resources something that should be a part of our networked learning spaces?

#EduTooter

Are there apps that have students respond to a teacher’s multiple-choice questions? I need it to show the results in real-time in the form of a graph. https://blog.tcea.org/tcea-responds-student-classroom-response-systems/ #Education #EdTech #TCEA #ClassroomResponseSystems #RehearsalStrategy #EvidenceBasedTeaching

Interwoven into #instruction, #assessment has many benefits. Its biggest benefit? Aiding students and teachers in closing the learning gap. https://blog.tcea.org/digital-tools-formative-assessment/ #Education #EdTech #edutooter @edutooters

“WhatsApp data breach sees nearly 500 million user records up for sale… The post, which multiple sources have confirmed is likely to be true, claims to be selling an up-to-date, 2022 database of 487 million mobile numbers used on WhatsApp, which contains data from 84 countries.

This means that almost one-quarter of all WhatsApp's estimated two billion monthly active users are possible at risk.” https://www.techradar.com/news/whatsapp-data-breach-sees-nearly-500-million-user-records-up-for-sale #databreach #CyberSecurity #News

For those in the #EdTech or academic spaces, I've noticed that Humanities Commons (https://hcommons.org/) has a Mastodon instance:
https://hcommons.social/explore

(If you sign up, they'll give you a website hosting as well.)
#IndieWeb #AcademicSamizdat

Cricut cutting machines, ubiquitous in schools, libraries and makerspaces, can be used to make embossed or stenciled tactile graphics. A Braille embosser costs at least $1500 — Cricuts cost a fifth of that or less. Today I learned that I can handle the hardware and make great stencils: all that holds a Blind maker back is a set of unlabeled controls in the software. Does anyone know somebody at Cricut I could talk to about making the interface more accessible? Boosters beloved on this one!