The first post of 2026 on the Alternative Social Media Researchers Blog is live! It's by @jjsylvia and it presents a syllabus of a course in social media ethics. The course uses a classroom instance of Mastodon to work through ethical issues in digital media.
https://www.socialmediaalternatives.org/2026/01/12/teaching-mastodon.html
Replies to this post will appear as comments on the blog.
#Mastodon #pedagogy #alternativeSocialMedia
The first post of 2026 on the Alternative Social Media Researchers Blog is live! It's by @jjsylvia and it presents a syllabus of a course in social media ethics. The course uses a classroom instance of Mastodon to work through ethical issues in digital media.
https://www.socialmediaalternatives.org/2026/01/12/teaching-mastodon.html
Are you also teaching using Mastodon or other alternative social media? Reach out to us!
alcinnz
boosted
Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance:
Source:
👉 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adt7790
#Performance #Education #TalentDevelopment #HumanPotential #LearningScience #Pedagogy #SkillAcquisition #Specialization #HumanPerformance #Development #Science #Academic #Students #Learning
Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance:
Source:
👉 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adt7790
#Performance #Education #TalentDevelopment #HumanPotential #LearningScience #Pedagogy #SkillAcquisition #Specialization #HumanPerformance #Development #Science #Academic #Students #Learning
Michael Bacon
boosted
Johanna Winant on close reading under austerity
'My own attention became attenuated, and I was less and less able to help students bring their ideas into focus. Failing at one of the things I cared most about made me feel I was being hollowed out. I started crying on the drive home. I contemplated going to law school. I read about “moral injury.” I looked up the university’s bylaws. I felt feverish with fury...student after student, professor after professor, alum after alum, community member after community member spoke—the comments ran for hours—asking, begging, and demanding that the Board of Governors not approve the cuts. The next day they were voted through: we lost; we knew we would'
#pedagogy #austerity #academia #lifelongLearning
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-claims-of-close-reading/
Johanna Winant on close reading under austerity
'My own attention became attenuated, and I was less and less able to help students bring their ideas into focus. Failing at one of the things I cared most about made me feel I was being hollowed out. I started crying on the drive home. I contemplated going to law school. I read about “moral injury.” I looked up the university’s bylaws. I felt feverish with fury...student after student, professor after professor, alum after alum, community member after community member spoke—the comments ran for hours—asking, begging, and demanding that the Board of Governors not approve the cuts. The next day they were voted through: we lost; we knew we would'
#pedagogy #austerity #academia #lifelongLearning
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-claims-of-close-reading/
Howard Rheingold
boosted
Used the whiteboard in my lecture today. Free speaking, working through the case in open dialogue.
No slides. Slides destroy the student's engagement, they present the material as fixed, whereas it is alive and needs to be called out.
My institution has rules that require us to use slides. I could not bear the suffocation any longer and just broke the rules. I will have to find some acceptable mix that maintains overall compliance, with the occasional free session smuggled in.
It was so liberating to be able to be in open dialogue with the material, no predetermined progression, the students experiencing the actual construction of knowledge live, sensing the personal investment needed to obtain truth.
The students were on board. Took notes, asked questions, talked to each other when I set them a task. Real learning, live in the classroom. Learning as joyful work, not as consumption. It is possible.
#lectures #pedagogy #HigherEducation #AcademicChatter #noSlides #constructivism
I was trying to post this on my blog, but it seems to be not cooperating these days… So here comes a long thread on #Pedagogy, #FineArtsEducation, #4ECognition, #Phenomenology, #Dewey, and #Vygotsky…
_______________________________________
I have a feeling there will be several of these…
This fall term I will be on a research leave. I am temporarily (and voluntarily!) relieved of all my regular duties in order to spend time doing research — the research I would normally do in my free time, in the moments between meetings, on the weekends… Suddenly that is my main job; I’m not quite sure how I’ll respond once the term starts again, but I’ll do my best to manage.
And what will I be researching? A couple of things: (1/5)
Scaling Laws - I strongly recommend this #podcast series on #AI #LLM related #Legal topics, including Law #Education #ScalingLaws
https://mastodon.social/@lawfare/114874664114525328
@lawfare 🧵Scaling Laws — Lawfare podcast
“Mollick discusses the transformative potential of AI in various fields, particularly education and medicine, as well as the need for empirical research to understand AI's impact, the importance of adapting teaching methods, and the challenges of cognitive de-skilling.”
Includes extended discussion on law school teaching. The Apple podcast has a generated transcript.
#lawfare#ScalingLaws #podcast#AGI#AI#LLM #pedagogy
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scaling-laws/id1607949880?i=1000715411530