#2: Word Clouds

Source : http://edutechniques.com/?p=261

Exhibit A

Have you ever thought to yourself, “Wow, I really wish I had a image for this but its all text”? Thanks to ed tech people, the word cloud is your new best friend.

If there is an occasion to turn simple text into a image, ed tech people will find one. Searching “ed tech” will show you just how much ed people love word clouds.  Word clouds about ed tech. Word clouds about topics from courses that use ed tech. Word clouds in the shape of the words “ed tech”. The list goes on…

Source: https://create-elearning.com/what-next-gen-lms-platforms-for-edtech/

Exhibit B

What is it about pictures of jumbled words that appeal to ed tech people? The colors? The deep aesthetic meaning? The big letters? Moreover, what exactly are these word clouds accomplishing? Are they testing people’s knowledge of ed tech? Jazzing up a normally dull short answer question? Acting as a digital crystal ball looking into the ed tech future?

Picture "ed Tech" ; Source: http://melanielinktaylor.mzteachuh.org/2014/02/ed-tech-and-stem-monday-review-2314.html

Exhibit C

An ed tech person might say: “Word clouds create a visualization of words used in a document or on a webpage. Word cloud visualizations can provide insight into textual data that might not be evident from reading the text itself. And with Wordle, anyone can make one for free! “

When you can smush words together, make them pretty colors, use fun fonts, and put the image on your site all for free — why not?

Exhibit D

Exhibit D

 

#1: Netiquette

PRACTICE NETIQUETTE, YOU TROLLS!!!1!

PRACTICE NETIQUETTE, YOU TROLLS!!!1!

Take a second to Google the word “netiquette.” Write down the top 5 tips that you encounter. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Did you do it? How many of these tips were particularly revelatory?

The idea of “netiquette,” a vestige of 90s internet-speak left over from the olden days when we called the internetz “the net,” persists in ed tech guides around the world (and especially the ed tech / Center for Teaching and Learning world. This is despite the fact that 1) way more nuanced, robust, and thought-provoking considerations of this problem exist, 2) cultivating respect in hybrid or online classes (or in any class, actually) takes sustained, continual engagement that can’t really be tidily barfed into a list of general rules designed for mass consumption, and 3) telling people that netiquette means we should “show respect” by not yelling in caps lock or to be “friendly, positive, and open-minded” is actively insulting to people who actually face internet harassment, which is scary, complicated, not easily solved or solvable, and a product (like everything else) of systemic injustice.

Let’s take this a little more seriously, y’all, because it is serious and because it’s important. I can pretty much guarantee that trolls aren’t trolling because they didn’t read a guide that told them to be “effective communicators.”

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