psychobabble Archive

Reflecting on #teachtheweb Week 1: Making as Learning

Last week we launched #teachtheweb, a Mozilla Open Online Collaboration (MOOC – more commonly “Massive Open Online Course”). The first week was all about Making as Learning, and today, I’m going to write a reflection. Not an update about Webmaker stuff, not a plug for the MOOC (which is awesome, and you should totally join

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Offline, Offroad, Off my Rocker

Missed me, didn’t you? Two full weeks of me not writing you and telling you the things floating around in my brain must have been excruciating. I mean, really, it’s not just self importance, now is it? I’ve got a couple of things to tell you, but I promised Mark Boas and Laurian Gridinoc that

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My Year in Review

Seems like I should follow suit and do a “Year in Review” post. I do so like to comply. I was moving around quite a bit this year. This post took me forever to put together. January: Ran the first New York City version of the Producer’s Institute for New Media Technologies, started working with

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I like to read

The year is coming to a close, and I didn’t know what to blog about today. I have a million thoughts swimming around, you know, so it’s hard to focus them into a blog post at the moment. Since my techie category had so many posts, I thought I would tell you about some of

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How the Web was Won

It’s 2020, my flying car is charging outside, and I’m typing this post using my Arco Telekinetic Knowledge Transcription Helmet. After the decades of intellectual warfare that raged between Open Web Activists and the Champions of Capitalism, the OWA have been successful in the implementation of legislation proclaiming the Open Web as an officially protected

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Life is a Game

Over the past couple of months I’ve seen a variety of discussions taking place concerning the positives and negatives of using the term “gamification” in reference to learning. In the educational community there are often negative connotations associated with the idea. Being rewarded an incentive (in this example a badge) in learning, seems to be

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Adjustment of Perception (ie Learning)

Alright, here’s the deal: A while back I made a promise to myself that Zythepsary would be the home for “pure unedited thought, art, media, writings”. I promised myself, and you, that I was going to live fully open, unafraid of the judgement that you or the proverbial “they” would make. I promised myself I

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Cyberspace and the “Virtualitätslagerung”

In continuation of my attempt to commit to memory long, complicated phrases and words in German by understanding shorter words in English, here is Round 2. So now if I could just find a suitable translation for “Virtualitätslagerung” (literally “Virtuality Storage Facility) and “Durchdringungsverhältnis” (literally “Penetration Relationship”… Cyberspace is a (trans) cultural space. With the

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Edutheories Round 1

This weekend I have two exams for my Masters program. The first is on educational theories and new media, and the second is on media research. Both are in German. My German is really good, but writing essays (by hand!) on philosophical, educational and scientific theories is outside of my comfort zone with the language.

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Distract, don’t retract

Did you recently say something that wasn’t totally kosher? Have a moment where your verbal diarrhea got the best of you and you opened your mouth and just spewed heinous, raucousness? Yeah, I didn’t have one either. But I’ve done it before, and I was just thinking about how to best deal with your certain

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