Friday Finds: The Best of Learning, Design & Technology | June 25, 2021

“The greatest enemy of communication is the illusion of it.”

William Whyte

I’m not sure what happened with the delivery of the email version last week. If you missed it, you can see last week’s version here. It is a good one! Hop over there to see what you missed – I’ll wait here until you get back. One way to look at it is you can get twice the usual amount of great into and twice the fun! No matter what, I hope you have a day that is twice as good as usual! 

Thanks for reading!

What I’m Listening to: I am enjoying Poolside.fm today, which came in the latest edition of Jeremy Caplan’s wondertools newsletter.


Last week’s most clicked item:
5 Behavioral Biases That Trip Up Remote Managers


The Future is Creation via Curation 

it would take the fastest readers around 11 million years to read the current number of web pages on the internet and that number is growing by the second. In this article, Kazuki Nakayashiki explains how “As the Amount of Information Grows, So Does the Market for Content Curators” 

https://medium.com/@kazuki_sf_/the-future-is-creation-via-curation-c73a9c65e258


How to Tap Memory Systems to Deepen Learning

Memorization can get a bad rap in education debates, conjuring images of mindless repetition or a “drill and kill” pedagogy. After all, why memorize something when we can look it up on our phone? But memory is inextricably tied to learning. “You don’t really really learn anything unless you have it in your long-term memory,”

https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/58006/how-to-tap-memory-systems-to-deepen-learning


Planning for a Blended Future: A Research-Driven Guide for Educators

By thoughtfully and strategically considering design and technologies to create meaningful connectedness across distance through active learning pedagogies, real learning can be achieved. This guide moves beyond getting started with blended learning to help educators realize the best of online and onsite instruction and implement research-driven techniques to positively influence learning outcomes.

https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/tools/planning-for-a-blended-future/


Why Students Don’t Like School

Tom Sherrington praises Daniel Willngham’s book “Why Students Don’t Like School” by saying “there is no other single text that explores so comprehensively and clearly, the nature of learning and the challenges that students and teachers experience. The ideas in the book are certainly ideas that all teachers should know about and, in Willingham’s hands, you won’t find a better explanation of the learning problems that arise in schools and the solutions that we can pursue to overcome them.” This America Educator article is a great place to start learning more. 

https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/WILLINGHAM%282%29.pdf


How to build an architecture of participation

Doug Belshaw documented a useful framework of 8 steps to help people cover all their bases when thinking about volunteering, contributing and facilitating communities.

https://weareopen.coop/aop/


EdTech Books

This is a collection of completely free textbooks by industry-leading professors and other experts. Head on over and take a look. 

https://edtechbooks.org/


Podcasts


Tools & Tips

  • Collect.chat is a slick (and easy) way to convert a Google Form into a chatbot
  • Mega-Creator is a free, online graphic design tool by Icons8 
  • Gender Spectrum Collection is a stock photo library featuring images of trans and non-binary models that go beyond the clichés.
  • Doodle Icons are cool set of hand-drawn icons
  • Front-end Toolbox is a collection of resources for illustrations, icons and other design items.

Where You Can Find Me


If you’re enjoying this newsletter, I’d love it if you shared it with a friend. You can send them here to sign up.

Want more? Follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn.


Looking for a previous edition? Check out the archives 

Published by Mike Taylor

Born with a life-long passion for learning, I have the great fortune to work at the intersection of learning, design, technology & collaboration.

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.