Introducing version control & git in 1.5 hours to undergraduates
Dan Scott, Coffee|Code, January 22, 2013

HTML slides (nicely done) and a git repository used in this presentation have been made available online. I dare say it would be useful not only to undergraduates but to git-impaired people like me. More...

Telling Everyone to Just Uninstall Java was a Terrible Idea

John Fontaine, , January 15, 2013.

Here's the background: Java applications were shown to be vulnerable to malware, so the U.S. Department of Homeland Security recommended that people uninstall Java from their desktop. I agree with the author that the recommendation was overkill, but only just. I generally run my browser with Java (not Javascript, which is different) turned off. More...

Lucidchart: a free collaboration tool for teachers
Eliza Wright, A GeekyMomma's Blog, January 11, 2013.

I've been using draw.io to make flowcharts for gRSShopper - it's pretty basic, and doesn't share the way I'd like it to, but it's free. Draw.io was set up to demonstrate the mxGraph Javascript diagramming library and works quite well as a drawing tool. You can find it on GitHub. Here's more on the plug-in. Here's where I tried to share a drawing using Google Drive (also pictured above). More...

How online 'chatbots' are already tricking you
Chris Baraniuk, BBC, June 11, 2014

OK, so chatbots that lure people to dating sites or convince bitcoin users to give each other tips are not going to impact most of us. But with as much as 65 percent of online chatter being generated by bots, chances are you've read or interacted with one. Of course, it really depends on how you define 'bot'. More...

Do the new anonymous social media apps encourage us to overshare?
Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian, June 11, 2014

I guess the answer to that question is, "who knows?" What we do know is that there has been a negative response to the Facebook dictum that " The days of you having a different image for your work friends [and] for the other people you know are probably coming to an end… " But there are certainly downsides to anonymity. More...

ProQuest Case Study: Using the Oscillation Principle for Software Development
Nancy Dixon, Conversation Matters, June 11, 2014

This is an interesting and extended look at the software development methodology employed by ProQuest (you may have seen their online maps). They use what Dixon calls the "oscillation principle" meeting three times a year for three days. More...

Ed tech behaviorism

Scott Mcleod, Dangerously Irrelevant, June 16, 2014

Although behaviourism has several flavours, it is in general the idea that you can (only) talk about mental phenomena, such as learning and cognition, in terms of behaviour. The mind in behaviourism is treated as a black box, to which we do not have evidentiary access. This for the most part remains the case today, which means that most all educational theory belongs either to the category of (a) continuing to use the black box, or (b) making stuff up that we think characterizes cognitive phenomena. More...

Coding for journalists: 10 programming concepts it helps to understand
Paul Bradshaw, Online Journalism Blog, June 1, 2014
This article won't teach you how to program - not even close. But if you're involved in any discipline employing computer technology - such as online learning - then the language of programming seeps into everyday language. That's where this article comes in - it will help you understand the real meaning of such arcania as lists, loops and APIs. More...

Cloud, Services and the Transformation of Production
Irving Wladawsky-Berger, March 26, 2014

Good article that describes the rise of cloud computing not only as a change in the delivery of online resources, but also as a change in the organization of computing generally, and with it a gange in the organization and understanding of production and work generally. More...