I updated “Communication is oxygen. Build a district wide collaboration infrastructure and an open by default culture.” with a selection from “25 Years of EdTech – 2003: Blogs – The Ed Techie ”.

If I had a desert island EdTech, it would be blogging, and that is not just in a nostalgic sense. No other educational technology has continued to develop, as the proliferation of WordPress sites attests, and also remain so full of potential. I’ve waxed lyrical about academic blogging many times before, but for almost every ed tech that comes along, I find myself thinking that a blog version would be better: e-portfolios, VLEs, MOOCs, OERs, social networks. Sometimes it’s like Jim Groom and Alan Levine have taken over my brain, and I don’t even mind. I still harbour dreams of making students effective bloggers will be a prime aspect of graduateness. Nothing develops and anchors your online identity quite like a blog.

Source: 25 Years of EdTech – 2003: Blogs – The Ed Techie 

I updated “Created Serendipity: Chance Favors the Connected Mind ” with selections from “What does knowledge work look like? | LinkedIn” and “WHERE GOOD IDEAS COME FROM by Steven Johnson – YouTube”.

These days, the equivalent of the 20th century ‘work hack’ of spending time at the water cooler is spending time on social networks. The ironic thing is that, because knowledge work isn’t usually procedural and repetitive, but thrives on serendipity and slow hunches, this ‘goofing off’ can actually be beneficial.

Source: What does knowledge work look like? | LinkedIn

Most important ideas take a long time to evolve.

Good ideas usually come from the collision of smaller hunches.

When ideas take form in this hunch state, they need to collide with other hunches. Often times, the thing that turns a hunch into a real breakthrough is another hunch that’s lurking in somebody else’s mind. And you have to figure out a way to create systems that allow those hunches to come together and turn into something bigger than the sum of their parts.

The great driver of scientific innovation and technological innovation has been the historic increase in connectivity and our ability to reach out and exchange ideas with other people and to borrow other people’s hunches and combine them with out hunches and turn them into something new.

That’s the real lesson of where good ideas come from: that chance favors the connected mind.

Source: WHERE GOOD IDEAS COME FROM by Steven Johnson – YouTube

I also reworked my placeholder opening graf (too long it lingered) into a few somewhat better grafs that need work, still, and will, again, too long linger.

If I had a desert island EdTech, it would be blogging, and that is not just in a nostalgic sense. No other educational technology has continued to develop, as the proliferation of WordPress sites attests, and also remain so full of potential. I’ve waxed lyrical about academic blogging many times before, but for almost every ed tech that comes along, I find myself thinking that a blog version would be better: e-portfolios, VLEs, MOOCs, OERs, social networks. Sometimes it’s like Jim Groom and Alan Levine have taken over my brain, and I don’t even mind. I still harbour dreams of making students effective bloggers will be a prime aspect of graduateness. Nothing develops and anchors your online identity quite like a blog.

Source: 25 Years of EdTech – 2003: Blogs – The Ed Techie 

“But a special case can be made for upping the digital literacy of our elected, because unlike the many, many subjects about which our politicians know little, digital technology increasingly concerns foundational questions of accountability, fairness, and abuse of power. And to answer these questions today increasingly requires some degree of technological know-how.”

Source: The Facebook scandal exposes our politicians’ technical illiteracy | Coffee House

I updated “Bring the backchannel forward. Written communication is the great social equalizer.” with a selection from “Microsoft’s Radical Bet On A New Type Of Design Thinking”.

One day someone will write a history of the Internet, in which that great series of tubes will emerge as one long chain of inventions not just geared to helping people connect in more ways, but rather, to help more and more types of people communicate just as nimbly as anyone else. But for the story here, the most crucial piece in the puzzle is this: Disability is an engine of innovation simply because no matter what their limitations, humans have such a relentless drive to communicate that they’ll invent new ways to do so, in spite of everything.

You could describe this in that old cliche that necessity breeds invention. But a more accurate interpretation is that in empathizing with others, we create things that we might never have created ourselves. We see past the specifics of what we know, to experiences that might actually be universal.

Source: Microsoft’s Radical Bet On A New Type Of Design Thinking: By studying underserved communities, the tech giant hopes to improve the user experience for everyone.

I updated “I’m Autistic. Here’s what I’d like you to know.” with selections from “THINKING PERSON’S GUIDE TO AUTISM: On Hans Asperger, the Nazis, and Autism: A Conversation Across Neurologies” on functioning labels.

Function labels are what others use to try to control us and act as gatekeepers to the things we need to survive and thrive. Functioning labels are weapons used against us.

Source: THINKING PERSON’S GUIDE TO AUTISM: On Hans Asperger, the Nazis, and Autism: A Conversation Across Neurologies

More on functioning labels from that piece:

I do agree with Sheffer that sorting autistic people into “high-functioning” and “low-functioning” bins carries echoes of Nazi ideology. Under the Reich, being branded as ineducable or low-functioning meant you were expensive ballast on the ship of state, and worthy of a death sentence. But let’s not forget that in America for most of the 20th Century, a diagnosis of ‘“classic” autism meant life-long institutionalization on a lockdown ward where patients were routinely beaten, restrained, and subjected to the horrible experimental treatments. That’s barely better than a death warrant, and it was mainstream American psychiatry for most of the 20th Century.

There is a long history of functioning labels being used to divide the Autistic community, both externally and internally. Externally, function labels get leveled at us from the autism community. (The Autistic community is the community of people who are actually Autistic. The autism community is a larger community comprised of everyone with any stake in autism at all: Autistic people plus non-autistic parents of Autistic children and adults, doctors, researchers, teachers, and so on.)

The thing so many Autistics have pointed out about functioning labels is that we are called “low-functioning” by those who choose to ignore our strengths and “high-functioning” by those who choose to ignore our challenges. There is no official definition for these functioning labels. I’ve noticed researchers defining what they mean when they say they are studying a low functioning or high functioning population, and the chosen definitions vary from study to study, complicating meta-analyses. The labels are meaningless in an objective, scientific sense.

Several years ago I was looking for some help and was rejected by one agency, which said I was too high functioning and referred me to another agency. That second agency rejected me for being too low functioning. I concluded that function labels are what others use to try to control us and act as gatekeepers to the things we need to survive and thrive. Functioning labels are weapons used against us.

I updated “I’m Autistic. Here’s what I’d like you to know.” with selections from “THINKING PERSON’S GUIDE TO AUTISM: On Hans Asperger, the Nazis, and Autism: A Conversation Across Neurologies” on compliance and behaviorism.

Our non-compliance is not intended to be rebellious. We simply do not comply with things that harm us. But since a great number of things that harm us are not harmful to most neurotypicals, we are viewed as untamed and in need of straightening up.

What I am against are therapies to make us stop flapping our hands or spinning in circles. I am against forbidding children to use sign language or AAC devices to communicate when speech is difficult. I am against any therapy designed to make us look “normal” or “indistinguishable from our peers.” My peers are Autistic and I am just fine with looking and sounding like them.

Source: THINKING PERSON’S GUIDE TO AUTISM: On Hans Asperger, the Nazis, and Autism: A Conversation Across Neurologies

Here are those selections in the context of their surrounding grafs:

Our non-compliance is not intended to be rebellious. We simply do not comply with things that harm us. But since a great number of things that harm us are not harmful to most neurotypicals, we are viewed as untamed and in need of straightening up. Sheffer writes that Dr. Asperger called this non-compliant trait malicious, mean, and uncontrollable. She notes him describing Autistic children as having a “lack of respect for authority, the altogether lack of disciplinary understanding, and unfeeling malice.” That appears to be the majority opinion of us today as well. If we were not threatening to the social order in some way, there would not be therapies designed to control how we move our bodies and communicate.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not anti-therapy. I embrace therapies that help me with some of my Autistic co-occurring conditions like circadian rhythm disruption and digestive malfunction. I welcome treatments for epilepsy-a co-occurring condition found in 25% – 30% of Autistics-because I’ve seen how much suffering epilepsy brings. My late fiancé died from SUDEP, a fatal complication of epilepsy, and before his death I watched seizures shred his attempts at living a full life. What I am against are therapies to make us stop flapping our hands or spinning in circles. I am against forbidding children to use sign language or AAC devices to communicate when speech is difficult. I am against any therapy designed to make us look “normal” or “indistinguishable from our peers.” My peers are Autistic and I am just fine with looking and sounding like them.

Source: THINKING PERSON’S GUIDE TO AUTISM: On Hans Asperger, the Nazis, and Autism: A Conversation Across Neurologies

I updated “Bring the backchannel forward. Written communication is the great social equalizer.”  and “I’m Autistic. Here’s what I’d like you to know.” with a selection from “THINKING PERSON’S GUIDE TO AUTISM: On Hans Asperger, the Nazis, and Autism: A Conversation Across Neurologies” on written communication as a means of avoiding bias.

Thin slice studies showed that people prejudge us harshly in just micro-seconds of seeing or hearing us (though we fare better than neurotypical subjects when people only see our written words).

Source: THINKING PERSON’S GUIDE TO AUTISM: On Hans Asperger, the Nazis, and Autism: A Conversation Across Neurologies

“The willingness of clinicians to go along in the face of great evil is what made it possible for the Nazis to transform the Austrian medical establishment into an industry of death. If you weren’t risking your life by actively resisting, you became complicit in the horror that was created. That’s a heavy lesson for this historical moment, when government officials are routinely asked to ignore norms and ethics to fulfill various agendas.”

Source: THINKING PERSON’S GUIDE TO AUTISM: On Hans Asperger, the Nazis, and Autism: A Conversation Across Neurologies