Sandy Kendell @SandyKendell@qoto.org

"His seditious words, calling for the 'termination' of the Constitution to placate his grievances and reinsert himself in office, remain a clear and present danger to democracy and the rule of law. For Donald Trump, the coup attempt is still underway." My latest: https://open.substack.com/pub/america/p/when-the-danger-is-plain-to-see?r=bb6o8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

I'm noticing a lot of "I'm bored of Mastodon, I'm going back to #Twitter" posts.

In case they are genuine, here's what I've found works:

⚫ try to post content, not complaints. People want to engage with you, not your gripes

⚫ try to learn. If you're putting in an effort to be part of the community, the community will welcome you

⚫ Try to avoid posting links to tweets, definitely don't cross-post. People want Mastodon content

⚫ Reply! Reply! Reply! Everyone wants to know someone's reading and considering their content, even you

⚫ Don't lurk. Many of us check for a filled out profile, avatars, and posts, before we follow someone back

⚫ Chill. It's a big new world that doesn't serve everything up to you

⚫ Avoid the trap of rebuilding Twitter here

Feel free to link this post to people struggling with Mastodon. It's what I've found works, and may not work for everyone

"There’s some child who’s on your roster, who...takes up like 70, 80, 90 percent of your emotional bandwidth."
"the teacher was asked to retell the story from the child’s perspective."
"Students of teachers who were briefly trained in this [perspective taking] thought experiment reported better relationships with their teachers and earned higher grades" https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/59748/how-perspective-taking-can-improve-classroom-behavior-and-teacher-student-relationships
#teaching #education #ClassroomManagement #EduTooters

❄️ The 12 Days of Chrome-mas kicks off today with:

Day 1: Pinning Tabs in Chrome - https://www.controlaltachieve.com/2022/12/pinning-tabs-in-chrome.html

📌 How to pin a tab
👍 Benefits
❌ How to unpin

See all 12 Days of Chrome-mas at https://www.controlaltachieve.com/2022/11/the-12-days-of-chrome-mas-2022.html

#ControlAltAchieve #edtech #GoogleEDU #edutooter @edutooters

In 1925, Dr. Cecilia Payne completed her PhD thesis, described as “the most brilliant ever written in astronomy.” At a time when few #women entered academia, Payne discovered what the universe is made of. Her work began a revolution in astrophysics.

Dr. Payne-Gaposchkin became the 1st female professor & 1st female department chair at Harvard. Given most of us remember names like Darwin & Newton, we should also celebrate Payne. #science #space

Read more at https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201501/physicshistory.cfm

#HourOfCode and #CSEdWeek starts this week: https://hourofcode.com/
https://www.csedweek.org/
It's a yearly event for 10 or so years now in which kids are exposed to coding. How-to guide and sample activities https://hourofcode.com/us/how-to
For older kids/students, check out the #OpenSource browser-based block/visual coding tool, Snap! by @moenig
https://snap.berkeley.edu/
#CSEd

Bob McGrath, Sesame Street legend and original cast member, passed away today at the age of 90.

Here he is with "Anybody Can Sing" and boy, could he.

https://youtu.be/D0UD5x1rePg

One straightforward way of dealing with systems like #ChatGPT or #Galactica in #higherEd is to directly confront students with an LLM-generated answer and have them critique it.
This is in fact be much better aligned with what we want to teach. Remembering and recalling facts isn’t an important skill anymore, but #criticalThinking is essential for a future in which graduates will work side by side with “#AI.” #constructiveAlignment

Join me for the "12 Days of Chrome-mas" at https://www.controlaltachieve.com/2022/11/the-12-days-of-chrome-mas-2022.html

🔵 All throughout December
🔴 Things you never knew Chrome could do!
🟡 Tips, tricks, lesser known features, helpful ideas
🟢 Learn & share!

#ControlAltAchieve #EdTech #GoogleEDU #edutooter @edutooters

In case you missed it, last month I wrote a beginner's guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse for WIRED. Send it to all of your friends so they can hang out with use here: https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-get-started-use-mastodon/

#TwitterMigration #MastodonMigration

🗻 #Multnomah County #Oregon:

😷 #WearAMask indoors until at least Jan 1 as viruses surge

#Portland #PDX #COVID

https://www.multco.us/multnomah-county/news/multnomah-county-health-strongly-recommends-everyone-mask-indoors-viruses

Some Mastodon thoughts, for bird-site expats (which include myself). I'm aggregating these from posts I've boosted before, so little of this is my own brain.

- There's no algorithm here. That means favoriting/liking doesn't do anything except communicate approval to the OP and others (which is still nice!).

- No algorithm means boosting ("retweeting") is the true method to increase a post's visibility. Do that more than you did on birdsite.

- There's no post-quoting here, and that's by design. Look at quote-tweets on the birdsite; it's a feature primarily used for toxicity.

- There's no direct word-search here either; that means you want to use hashtags to make posts more searchable. This is also intended, since word-searching posts was often used to harass/stalk on the birdsite and elsewhere, so that was left by the wayside here. This also means hashtags are much more a thing here than any of the algorithm-powered sites.

- It's encouraged to put in text descriptions when you post images; a lot of Mastodon users use screen-readers due to various disabilities, and getting an image description read out loud helps them immensely.

- Speaking of screen-readers: using capitalization in your hashtags allows the screen-readers to read them more easily, especially if you're smashing multiple words together. #rockmusic = unreadable. #RockMusic = readable.

- The best way to make threads is to make set your first post as public, but "unlist" all of your replies. This prevents your whole thread from clogging up feeds.

- Content Warnings should be used more liberally here. If you haven't gotten the impression yet, much of Mastodon was built and populated by marginalized groups who were harassed/bullied off of other platforms. This is the culture they built, to respect each other's mental health. It's not a rule, but it's well-appreciated.

- Consider chipping a few bucks towards whomever runs the server you're on; the strain is real, and most server admins were likely paying out of pocket before so don't have an existing donation base. The growth here has been extremely fast, and that means money's needed.

- DMs are just posts with privacy settings. So if you @ someone in a DM, you pull them into the thread. That could be embarrassing.

- Also, no, DMs aren't end-to-end encrypted, but they aren't on Twitter either. Don't use either if you want true privacy.

- Including your Mastodon handle in your birdsite profile will help people find you here; there's a tool (pruvisto.org/debirdify/ is one of them that's used) people can use to pull Mastodon handles from Twitter profile.

- Use the blocking and reporting features liberally, if needed. This should go without saying, but they work, and work well!

- If there's an entire Mastodon server you don't want to hear from, you can block the whole thing too.

- Preferences -> Appearance -> "Slow Mode": this can make larger "Local" feeds and any "Federated" feed much more readable.

I'll reply with some more as I see them, or reply here too. I've only been here 4 days but I'm loving it so far.

I must say, that even in the last few days since I joined Mastodon I’ve seen a culture shift - more #politics, more ‘hot takes’, less discussion, fewer #CWs, less #AltText. I hope it’s a blip and urge newbies like me not to unwittingly play out the #coloniser #stereotypes and ride roughshod over the existing culture. It’s a lovely, gentle, curious #community here, would be awful to ruin it because we’re conditioned to something worse.

“Associate with people who are likely to improve you.” -Seneca #Stoic #Quote I feel like I am trying to find more people to learn from on Mastodon, as I once did on Twitter and other social media. 🙂

I am now compiling a list of all servers who may have an interest in joining the United Federation of Instances.

Quite a few instances have already signed up.

Please reach out to me, all servers of any size are welcome!

This is non binding, its just to get a preliminary list. You can withdrawl at any time and dont have to go through the application process. I just want to know what servers to reach out to once we begin kicking things off.

If you are a server admin please let me know **in DM** if you have an interest and I will add you to the (for now) private list. I want to only release the list once we have enough momentum so please respond in DM only.

for those who are new to this you can read the proposal here:

https://ufoi.gitlab.io/constitution/united_federation_of_instances_proposal.pdf

You can read the early draft of the full bylaws here:

https://ufoi.gitlab.io/constitution/united_federation_of_instances_bylaws.pdf

Both of these will still undergo a lot of modification. For information on how to join the conversation see this post:

https://qoto.org/@freemo/109433298021890915

You can see the progress and conversation specifically at the official repo here:

https://gitlab.com/ufoi/constitution

#UFI #UFoI @ufoi #mastoadmin

"Education as a whole is not a problem waiting to be fixed but a set of issues, problems, and opportunities to be addressed." (Weller, 2022).

I'm an advocate for #DesignThinking. Not as a way of solving problems but as a way of exploring the world. This idea comes from Jon Kolko, a designer.

This thinking helps push past the idea that #education is broken and opens up to us (educators) the opportunity to explore issues, opportunities and problems and develop new approaches (small) based on evidence and feedback.

This is me just unpacking my thinking. 😋 @edutooters

I am starting my own 14 Days of Create-mas!
I hope you enjoy it!
#edutooer #edutoot #edtech #tlchat https://www.tech4schoollibrarians.com/it-is-beginning-to-look-like-create-mas/

I will die on this hill telling everyone that wants to write opinion pieces about this platform over the next few months that THIS IS A MAMMOTH, NOT A MASTODON!!!! Please #mastodon, help.

“Let’s not forget how many Republicans have chosen to minimize the Jan. 6 attack, which included insurrectionists wearing shirts emblazoned with ‘Camp Auschwitz’ and ‘6MWNE,’ that is, six million were not enough.”

https://america.substack.com/p/hello-nazis-and-nazism-are-bad

It's time for our Friday #news #quiz!

Early reviews are it's a bit harder this week, but let us know what you think.

6-20% of the U.S. population is deficient in what vitamin, which is only found in foods from animal sources?

https://theconversation.com/the-conversation-u-s-weekly-news-quiz-189437
#Trivia #Fun #Nutrition