One of the challenges of social networks is that these platforms are meant to serve as the pipes that connect us with others digitally. Since many of us do not have one digital hub that we use as our online home, we use profiles on these networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN, Mastodon) to assemble bits and…
This morning I’m giving a keynote virtually to the Virginia College Literacy Educators. In this address, I’d like to focus on our current state of affairs as we deal with current educational and social contexts. The slides for this event are available here. We Privilege Care As we confront unprecedented challenges, I want to take…
The Internet is the dominant text of this generation. In order to be considered fully literate, individuals need to be able to read, write, and participate using the web. It is a paradox that history’s first generation of always connected individuals does not have the skills and practices necessary to survive, let alone succeed in…
Together with Katie Paciga, Elizabeth Stevens, and Kristin Turner, I submitted a proposal for this call for papers from the Journal of Design Science. The call is a partnership between Wired Magazine, the MIT Media Lab, and the UC Irvine Connected Learning Lab. The special issue invites both empirical and conceptual papers from diverse perspectives…
Carving out the boring bits TL;DR #184 – 2/9/2019 Hi all, welcome to TL;DR. My name is Ian O’Byrne. I research, teach, & write about technology in our lives. I try to synthesize what happened this week in tech…so you can be the expert as well. We’ll have some changes upcoming for this newsletter to…
I’ve written quite a bit about blogging, and my creation of open education resources over the past on this website. A lot has changed in my blogging habits, and general digital identity construction since those posts. Most of the response that I get from colleagues, students, and tenure committees is “why in the world would…
“Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” – Lewis Carroll Note: This post documents my thinking as I am choosing to redefine my relationships with social networks and other digital spaces/places. I dig in a bit to explain what I mean…
On Sunday, June 4th, 2017 at 8 PM Central Time (9 PM ET) I guest hosted the #TXEDUCHAT. During the hour, we dove into some of my thinking about becoming a digitally agile educator. This post will share the genesis of my thinking about becoming a digitally agile educator. I’ll then share the prompts from…
The term digital native was coined and popularized by Marc Prensky in his 2001 article titled Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. In this he posited that the contemporary decline in American education was due to educators’ inability to understand the needs of modern students. Students were labeled digital natives and said to have an insider’s perspective…
In many of my classes I have students reading, writing, making, and sharing in online spaces. This may include blogging, tweeting, or connecting with others on Twitter or Google+. In some of my more advanced classes, I ask students to go use the Internet to learn something…anything. At the end of the individual learning modules,…