Minimal Mistakes is a [[Jekyll]] theme that I have used for many years. Extremely flexible, lots of layouts and options, well-structured code.

The name 'virtual programming lab' (VPL) tells us what it is in three words, so the question in the title is resolved in the title. This article, though, talks about something very specific: "If you teach computer science and use Moodle as your LMS, good news: you can now have student submit snippets of code easily using the new Virtual Programming Lab." Like other virtual programming labs, "The module allows code editing, running tests and more, all within Moodle... VPL supports nearly 20 programming languages, from Java and Python down to Haskell and Prolog. The environment will let you run complete programs, its performance depending on the server resources available. It is able to provide basic automated checks to ensure code submitted by students runs smoothly."

Unravelling `not` in Python

Part of a series where Brett Cannon looks at how fundamental Python syntactic sugar works, including a clearly explained dive I to the underlying op codes and C implementation.

Via Django News

John Offutt was a recently retired school teacher who was also an avid cyclist.

This Toronto Star article sums up his life: “John Offutt quit a lucrative job to become a Toronto public school teacher. He was killed last month by a turning cement truck driver“

Dec 20 Update from the Star: “John Offutt’s life was a rich poem. To the citizens of Toronto, he contributed more than a verse“

He died when he was right hooked by a cement truck in Mimico, at the intersection of Royal York and Judson. Today, a ghost bike was installed in his memory.

Just before setting off from near Bloor and Lansdowne.

The bike lanes are starting to be installed on Bloor between Dundas and Indian Rd.

At the foot of Ellis Ave.

Crossing the Humber. Note the newly paved path on the east side of the river seen in the background.

Approaching the crash site, just north of the GO train tracks on Royal York.

There was already a memorial here.

Realizing that we didn’t have a long enough chain to go around this pole.

Putting it around these cables. We will come back with a longer chain to move the bike to the pole.

Displaying the banner.

Another cement truck passes by.

It is bitterly ironic that the neighbourhood had been wanting the cement plant to move for years, and that the city bought the land last fall and gave the company one year to move.

Rob Z also posted his thoughts about the inadequacy of bike infrastructure along Royal York.

Tenzing rode with us. He was taking video for a documentary about ghost bikes in Toronto.

There are some articles about the deceased:

• Globe and Mail: “One teacher tries to unite the two Torontos“
• Parrysound.com: “Highway cardiac arrest inspires Parry Sound hospital fundraiser“

Deepest condolences to his family and friends. The sign on the bike is temporary and will be replaced.

ARC regrets that they did not organize a group ride in view of COVID restrictions. We encourage people to visit the bike in his memory.

His obituary is here.

While I was printing my MMXX! cards last night, I was also filming what I was doing, using my iPhone and a tripod.

I’m not an accomplished filmmaker, and know very little of camera angles and visual storytelling; what I tried to do was to tell the story of how the idea came to life, and how the typesetting and printing process works from beginning to end; I hope I succeeded, at least a little. I learned a lot editing this in iMovie: the mind is capable of filling in so many gaps that it’s possible to trim big stretches of what I might have otherwise thought as invaluable action; watching the video again now, I see I could have done even more of this.

Thanks to Olle for the filmmaking inspiration; he has started a YouTube channel for his tool-cleaning videos, and his efforts made me remember that I carry around a powerful video camera in my pocket.

The music is from Scott Buckley, an Australian composer who’s generously released much of his music with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License; I used his Solecism, Snowfall, and Wanderlust tracks.

I’ve uploaded the movie to YouTube (with captions), YouDescribe (with audio description); you can also download it here (without captions or audio description) or watch it below (it’s licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License).

I decided it wasn’t just to release the video without captions or audio description, so, with the help of my friend Cheryl, I figured out how to add these; I welcome feedback on these particularly, as they are a freshman outing, and I want to get better at it. The audio description suffers, I think, from the relative volume of the music and the description, but I couldn’t find a way to adjust this in YouDescribe.

I had a lot of fun doing this. 

This article begins asking you to imagine yourself as a lecturer presenting online. "You conclude, sit down and ask for the thoughts of the students. Silence." Now we are led to believe that this is because of the medium. "Everyone would prefer to be teaching and learning in person. When the cameras are off, virtual learning feels impersonal." But no. First, I've seen exactly the same thing happen in in-person lectures and classes. And I know that, if an instructor stares as intently at a person as a camera does, they'll hide from the instructor too. The article invites us to think of the camera as an invasion of privacy - and in many ways, it is - but it should question more this idea that teaching consists of talking face-to-face, staring into each others' eyes.

Wireless mice are convenient to use: They can help you navigate more quickly and easily than a finicky trackpad, and there are no wires to clutter up your desk space. Wireless mice have become so inexpensive and reliable that, for most people, they’re a better option than a cheap wired mouse.

After researching and testing mice for nearly a decade with multiple panels of testers, we’ve found that the Logitech M720 Triathlon Multi-Device is the most comfortable option for a variety of hand sizes and grip styles.

We're obsessively updating our list of the best Black Friday deals. For even more live deals this Black Friday, see the latest on our Wirecutter Deals page.

Remember other continents!? Ten years ago today my crew was en route from Munich to Basel by train, and feeling the jetlag heavy.

If you are a character in Oliver’s cinematic universe, you have, no doubt, been the recipient of his strident lobbying on behalf of Christmas, often distilled to its essence: send cards and gifts!!

Catherine, you see, was the Head of Christmas in our family. Leaving me to be cast in the role, often with some cause, of steely curmudgeon. The kind of person who leaves securing a tree until all the trees are gone, who wonders what the point of Christmas cake is, at all.

So, sensing a pending vacuum, Oliver has launched a marketing campaign to save Christmas.

Understandably, given past performance, he is skeptical about my protests that This Year I Will Rise To The Occasion. Truth be told, I will rise to the occasion. But it make take a year or two for Oliver to believe this.

So, fear not, Christmas is not in jeopardy.

If it are moved, nonetheless, to help Oliver fill the holiday vacuum, he is, confoundingly, non-specific in his wishes, which are “things that bring joy and relieve sadness and grief.” The ball is in your court, Christmas-lovers.

When I first heard about the proposal for ‘Transport Pricing’ in the City of Vancouver’s Climate Emergency Action Plan that went to council a few weeks ago, I thought, sorry, that’s a lost battle.

The political capital required to start ‘taxing the road’ is so high, reports that recommend it – like this one – are typically dead on arrival.  As elections approach, political leaders jump over each other to reject anything that looks, sounds or smells like a toll.  Here’s Bowinn Ma from the NDP, passing along the blunt words from John Horgan (who won the 2017 election by taking tolls off the Port Mann): “I have to be clear: it (congestion pricing) is not in our platform … and John Horgan has stated very clearly today that it would not be supported by our government …”

Not that it matters.  Congestion charging as it has been demonstrated in a handful of cities so far, notability Singapore and London, is way out of date – so 20th century.  Using gantries, cameras, IED passes and other visibly intrusive technology to establish a geographic cordon for pricing entry and exit for one particular part of a region will never pass the fairness test.  Why wouldn’t we include other places – for instance, the North Shore – where congestion is bad and getting worse?  (Minimally, there will have to be ‘discussion’ among the municipalities on either side of Lions Gate Bridge.)

Again, so much more political capital required.  Add in an equity requirement*, and good luck in getting a majority vote.  That’s why so few cities have done it.

So I was impressed when Council, by a bare majority, voted to support the part of the report that had actually recommended Transport Pricing (despite media, and my own, perception of what was being proposed).  Staff, having played in this rodeo a few times before (a previous report listed 14 examples), really wanted one key thing from council:  ‘Authorize us to develop a road map that will get us to Transport Pricing (TP).  Do not take it off the table, ship it off to the region, qualify it into irrelevance or remove any deadline for response’ – and that’s what they got.

An approval in principle is a powerful tool.  Other municipalities and levels of government start to pay attention, as has happened in almost every working example of TP so far.

Actually, despite the expected hysteria (road pricing is the new bike lanes!), it was never intended that a specific pricing mechanism would roll out in the first half of the 10-year plan.  Implementation would occur starting around 2025, still in time to reach the transport target (two-thirds of all trips by foot, bike or transit) by 2030.  In the next five years, the latest technologies and strategies would be explored, consultations occur and partnerships with the region and province established.  (Implicitly, the expectation is that climate change crises, combined with technological momentum and financial necessity, would make transport pricing no longer politically suicidal but politically inevitable.)

Also, not at all coincidentally, by 2025 the Broadway line will be up and running along with more reallocated road space for bus priority lanes, providing the increased transit service that every critic demands before vehicle pricing is implemented.  Further, if 11 percent of road space is to be shifted from vehicles to other modes or for more public space, as already mandated by council, then TP is essential.

(Why such a specifically odd number as 11?  Well, New Westminster had previously made a motion for 10 percent – so, you know, Vancouver has to lead. And strategic leadership is what Vancouver does well – not by being first but by being successful. Our version of TP will aim to do the same.)

Singapore is regarded as being the first in congestion pricing using gantry technology now regarded as clumsy.  They’re trying to move to per-kilometre pricing and more mobile technologies, and Vancouver is watching carefully (while other technology innovators are watching us.  Within a day of Council’s motion, providers were already calling up Dale Bracewell, the Manager of Transportation Planning.)

By 2025, the focus is likely to have shifted away from traditional car-commuter congestion to how we charge users for curb space (looking at you, Amazon), how we integrate all forms of mobility into service plans, how we charge third-party providers as we do cell-phone services, how we manage automated vehicles from hover boards to trucking fleets – and how we get the most efficient pricing.  Imagine an urban-freight bidding war for designated space.  Fun stuff. **

We can’t with precision predict the interactions of technology change, social responses, new ways of doing business (like how much working-at-home is likely to continue) and, of course, real-estate prices and land-use changes.  Indeed, we may need another crisis like a pandemic or climate catastrophes to provide the political and social backbone for such a transformation at the speed required.  (Nature will provide; think of the pandemic as a practice round.)

But in Vancouver, concern about climate change is deep-seated and broadly felt. There is enough demand to require action, enough of a consensus to justify risk.  While anxiety and political calculations about TP may change, the goal is not so much the adoption of a particular application to deal with congestion as it exists now but to move towards flexible responses to accommodate growth while ensuring reliability in the transport system as we address climate, air quality and safety.

That was what the motion about Transport Pricing was really about.  Details to follow.

_______________________

*The application of an equity lens is the distinguishing mark of a woke politician, and the current council in particular.  Staff will be expected to figure out how not to negatively affect ‘disproportionately impacted populations’ – leading everyone to figure out how they can get exempted.  (Hey, I’m a gay senior with bad hearing.)

**The first test for council’s sincerity will not be TP but  in another motion that calls for a report back by the second half of 2021 for residential parking permits on a city-wide basis.  When the equity lens is applied, the debate over who counts as disproportionately impacted will be a racial, class and neighbourhood fun-fest (though the more appropriate descriptor would begin with ‘s’).

Source

This week I built datasette-ripgrep - a web application for running regular expression searches against source code, built on top of the amazing ripgrep command-line tool.

datasette-ripgrep demo

I've deployed a demo version of the application here:

ripgrep.datasette.io/-/ripgrep?pattern=pytest

The demo runs searches against the source code of every one of my GitHub repositories that start with datasette - 61 repos right now - so it should include all of my Datasette plugins plus the core Datasette repository itself.

Since it's running on top of ripgrep, it supports regular expressions. This is absurdly useful. Some examples:

• Every usage of the .plugin_config( method: plugin_config\(
• Everywhere I use async with httpx.AsyncClient (usually in tests): async with.*AsyncClient
• All places where I use a Jinja | filter inside a variable: \{\{.*\|.*\}\}

I usually run ripgrep as rg on the command-line, or use it within Visual Studio Code (fun fact: the reason VS Code's "Find in Files" is so good is it's running ripgrep under the hood).

So why have it as a web application? Because this means I can link to it, bookmark it and use it on my phone.

Why build this?

There are plenty of great existing code search tools out there already: I've heard great things about livegrep, and a quick Google search shows a bunch of other options.

Aside from being a fun project, datasette-ripgrep has one key advantage: it gets to benefit from Datasette's publishing mechanism, which means it's really easy to deploy.

That ripgrep.datasette.io demo is deployed by checking out the source code to be searched into a all directory and then using the following command:

datasette publish cloudrun \
    --metadata metadata.json \
    --static all:all \
    --install=datasette-ripgrep \
    --service datasette-ripgrep \
    --apt-get-install ripgrep

all is a folder containing the source code to be searched. metadata.json contains this:

{
    "plugins": {
        "datasette-ripgrep": {
            "path": "/app/all",
            "time_limit": 3.0
        }
    }
}

That's all there is to it! The result is a deployed code search engine, running on Google Cloud Run.

(If you want to try this yourself you'll need to be using the just-released Datasette 0.52.)

The GitHub Action workflow that deploys the demo also uses my github-to-sqlite tool to fetch my repos and then shallow-clones the ones that begin with datasette.

If you have your own Google Cloud Run credentials, you can run your own copy of that workflow against your own repositories.

A different kind of Datasette plugin

Datasette is a tool for publishing SQLite databases, so most Datasette plugins integrate with SQLite in some way.

datasette-ripgrep is different: it makes no use of SQLite at all, but instead takes advantage of Datasette's URL routing, datasette publish deployments and permissions system.

The plugin implementation is currently 134 lines of code, excluding tests and templates.

While the plugin doesn't use SQLite, it does share a common philosophy with Datasette: the plugin bundles the source code that it is going to search as part of the deployed application, in a similar way to how Datasette usually bundles one or more SQLite database files.

As such, it's extremely inexpensive to run and can be deployed to serverless hosting. If you need to scale it, you can run more copies.

This does mean that the application needs to be re-deployed to pick up changes to the searchable code. I'll probably set my demo to do this on a daily basis.

Controlling processes from asyncio

The trickiest part of the implementation was figuring out how to use Python's asyncio.create_subprocess_exec() method to safely run the rg process in response to incoming requests.

I don't want expensive searches to tie up the server, so I implemented two limits here. The first is a time limit: by default, searches have a second to run after which the rg process will be terminated and only results recieved so far will be returned. This is achieved using the asyncio.wait_for() function.

I also implemented a limit on the number of matching lines that can be returned, defaulting to 2,000. Any more than that and the process is terminated early.

Both of these limits can be customized using plugin settings (documented in the README). You can see how they are implemented in the async def run_ripgrep(pattern, path, time_limit=1.0, max_lines=2000) function.

Highlighted linkable line numbers

The other fun implementation detail is the way the source code listings are displayed. I'm using CSS to display the line numbers in a way that makes them visible without them breaking copy-and-paste (inspired by this article by Sylvain Durand).

code:before {
    content: attr(data-line);
    display: inline-block;
    width: 3.5ch;
    -webkit-user-select: none;
    color: #666;
}

The HTML looks like this:

<pre><code id="L1" data-line="1">from setuptools import setup</code>
<code id="L2" data-line="2">import os</code>
<code id="L3" data-line="3">&nbsp;</code>
<code id="L4" data-line="4">VERSION = &#34;0.1&#34;</code>
...

I wanted to imitate GitHub's handling of line links, where adding #L23 to the URL both jumps to that line and causes the line to be highlighted. Here's a demo of that - I use the following JavaScript to update the contents of a <style id="highlightStyle"></style> element in the document head any time the URL fragment changes:

<script>
var highlightStyle = document.getElementById('highlightStyle');
function highlightLineFromFragment() {
    if (/^#L\d+$/.exec(location.hash)) {
        highlightStyle.innerText = `${location.hash} { background-color: yellow; }`;
    }
}
highlightLineFromFragment();
window.addEventListener("hashchange", highlightLineFromFragment);
</script>

It's the simplest way I could think of to achieve this effect.

Update 28th November 2020: Louis Lévêque on Twitter suggested using the CSS :target selector instead, which is indeed MUCH simpler - I deleted the above JavaScript and replaced it with this CSS:

:target {
    background-color: #FFFF99;
}

Next steps for this project

I'm pleased to have got datasette-ripgrep to a workable state, and I'm looking forward to using it to answer questions about the growing Datasette ecosystem. I don't know how much more time I'll invest in this - if it proves useful then I may well expand it.

I do think there's something really interesting about being able to spin up this kind of code search engine on demand using datasette publish. It feels like a very useful trick to have access to.

Better URLs for my TILs

My other project this week was an upgrade to til.simonwillison.net: I finally spent the time to design nicer URLs for the site.

Before:

til.simonwillison.net/til/til/javascript_manipulating-query-params.md

After:

til.simonwillison.net/javascript/manipulating-query-params

The implementation for this takes advantage of a feature I sneaked into Datasette 0.49: Path parameters for custom page templates. I can create a template file called pages/{topic}/{slug}.html and Datasette use that template to handle 404 errors that match that pattern.

Here's the new pages/{topic}/{slug}.html template for my TIL site. It uses the sql() template function from the datasette-template-sql plugin to retrieve and render the matching TIL, or raises a 404 if no TIL can be found.

I also needed to setup redirects from the old pages to the new ones. I wrote a TIL on edirects for Datasette explaining how I did that.

TIL this week

• Redirects for Datasette

Releases this week

• datasette-ripgrep 0.2 - 2020-11-27
• datasette-ripgrep 0.1 - 2020-11-26
• datasette-atom 0.8.1 - 2020-11-25
• datasette-ripgrep 0.1a1 - 2020-11-25
• datasette-ripgrep 0.1a0 - 2020-11-25
• datasette-graphql 1.2.1 - 2020-11-24

Eleven years ago today we installed our first LED light. Three years later any type of the old fashioned incandescent light bulbs were de-facto banned in the EU, because the energy efficiency norms outpaced them. Our current house is almost LED only, and most of those LED lights are programmable, including their color. It has changed the way lighting is treated in interior design: the near absence of heat makes different materials and shapes possible in lamps. The only exceptions are a few G4 halogen lamps still present in the kitchen. Those are banned from production and import since 2018 based on efficiency standards, but were in the house when we moved in in 2017. In time their replacements will be LED of course.

Though our lamps now use some 90% energy less than 11 years ago, our energy usage itself hasn’t changed much in that same time I think. More devices have entered the household in those eleven years, Sonos speakers, wifi routers on each floor instead of one downstairs, and we have a bigger house now which means more lamps as well. So the energy savings are relative, we’re more efficient, but as a consequence started doing more. This is a known effect of course, that energy efficiency gains are (over)compensated by the lower threshold to do something using energy.

I also remember from around that time having an argument with my mother who had stock piled 100 Watt bulbs around the time they were first banned from production and import. A few years later, when we cleared out their house, whatever was still left landed in the trash.

I have two eyefi SD cards that I love dearly because they make my workflow at lot easier in those rare cases when I use one of my Fujifilm cameras. How do you get photos from the camera to an iPhone or iPad?

The eyefi cards present themselves as a wireless access point to which you connect. It's not a straightforward password + filesystem approach. You have to use the eyefi mobi app which installs a profile on your phone. This profile contains the credentials, and you need to use the same app to transfer the photos. Not very convenient but a lot better than using dongles and cables.

Eyefi went bust a long time ago. Ricoh bought them and tried a restart as the photo service subscription Keenai. That went bust again and this year the app disappeared from the app store completely. Yes, it was no longer in My Purchases. I did not notice until I migrated from the iPhone 11 Pro to the iPhone 12 Pro. The new iPhone told me it was unable to migrate the app because it was no longer in the store.

That is of course kind of backwards, because here it was, just a few centimeters away, on the other iPhone. I somehow had to get it across. What do you do? #followerpower on Twitter. That was the winnner:

Dürfte die sich nicht z.B. mit iMazing auf den Mac und von da aufs neue iPhone schieben lassen?

— Captain Pudding (@cptpudding) November 28, 2020

I installed the free version of iMazing, extracted the app from the old iPhone and added it to the new iPhone. It first needs to make a full backup before it can grab the app, but that just took a bit of time (90 minutes). When installing the app on the new iPhone I had to go out on a limb. iMazing needs you to remove the Find My Phone setting and then restores the app. When the iPhone restarts you are presented with the same dialog as with a new iPhone and I was worried that I might have lost everything else. But then I didn't. Everything was still there, and Keenai was added to the phone.

Apple, why does this have to be so complicated? You own all the parts, I own the app. Why can't you just move those 3 megabytes over?

This is an unedited auto-generated transcript of my talk for LINC home learning professional development, November 28, 2020.

All right so for the purpose of a recording and I've just turned on my audio here oops and I should turn on my start recording over here, all right so this is Stephen Downes November 28th 2020 and it's my great pleasure to be with all of you here today the title of this presentation is being online facing the digital future together and, I got a bunch of stuff.

I want to talk about but you know, the the context that word in is the context of the pandemic text is backwards, oh sorry, okay, let me fix that oh there's always something isn't there. Switchable cam. How's that that should be better? So yeah. So that's pretty funny so let's for the people who had to look at that backwards here's the title screen again all beautiful and that's my cat.

Charlemagne, they're on the screen. Anyhow, so we're in the context of this pandemic and what's happened is. I'm sure you all know is that over the last what is it now eight months? There's been a rediscovery of what we're calling remote learning these days are hybrid learning sometimes and it's almost as though we're rediscovering what online learning is all about there's been a very interesting kind of thing and of course now that we're several months in we're into the point where people are drawing the lessons learned now.

I've been doing this for a long time and I'm sure many of you have been doing this for a long time and it's hard to offer. A home learning if you don't so you know, a lot of these lessons are things that we might already know but on the other hand.

I find the useful to revisit these lessons at we're learning and and look at them in a new light, so it's not 2003 anymore, it's 2020 we know we've learned these lessons before but these are new to a lot of people out there, they're new to our learners and their new to a lot of first time.

Educators, so that's the way I'm going to approach this talk, that's the the theme if you will that. I'm going to follow in this presentation. And. And so we have the abstract that I promised you. I'm not generally good at delivering on what I promise to my abstracts, but this time we're gonna be pretty close to what the abstract actually promised.

Catch her the audio, of course not. Okay.

So one of the things that I've learned over time is the best laid plants sometimes fail that sort of worked. I don't know why it didn't work, but okay.

Yeah. Standing the left hand corner, oh I'm not even into it. I'm gonna have to skip it. I I can't fix it on the fly, so okay, this is.

This is adapting to things in real time. I'm sorry, but okay.

There it was and if you want to see that video and the others that I had planned to show you they are available. And come on. And they're available on. This website see. UNESCO website.

Basically getting responses from people who are trying to learn during the pandemic. I thought it'd be a nice thing to add but in no sound. I didn't have a chance to test on zoom so I'd try to any I've never mind sometimes it's funny because I was introduced as an expert sometimes they definitely have expert is has made lots of mistakes bracket will continue to make mistakes.

And of course I can share the links in the chat. I thought it was a nice site and and I'd like to comment a lot so there's a there's a link in the chat for you okay back to the PowerPoint and.

So,

Oh my goodness, why is the sizing all wrong? That's why So. The big lesson that I took away from this is it's hard at first. And I think that's a worthwhile lesson to be taking away from this. You know and we've seen that in a lot of the studies in the evaluations and it's interesting because despite some of the talk about oh no people are going to fall way behind in their learning the grades seem to be coming up about the same online as offline, which would be consistent with 20 or 30 years of practice.

But students find it harder. They find it takes everything. Takes longer online. But the main lesson is it gets easier. Of course in a sense, it doesn't get easier because you keep trying to do new things as I've been trying to do here, but of course, you know, as you get more familiar with the system, it does get easier and my own experience is that.

As time goes by as it gets easier. I find I can do more and more online and ultimately in many ways the learning becomes better online than offline. It's.

The other thing is and I'm sure all of you know this but it. Really bears repeating. You know, you can't just replicate what you do in real life, right? In real life, I'd stand at the front of the room like this with the slide deck on the wall and just talk at you and you know, I pretty experienced speaker I can you know draw from your reactions and all of that.

I can banter back and forth a lot of that harder online. But what that means is that online we have to do different things. We we have to be bringing in other activities you have to be breaking up the flow that's what I was trying to do with those videos right there were little punctuation marks through the presentation and really annoyed the audio didn't work.

So and you can't just emulate, you know, this is this is this illustrations from the royal society a blog and teaching during the long time. They have a kid using a paper and pencil while learning online. Why are they doing that right? And. You know. Oh and I'm seeing from Elizabeth in many boards, this is exactly the expectation you will teach in class and do the same materials online.

Often that the same time yeah and that's a lesson that we've learned don't do that it comes up later so frustrating exactly, you know. Commit to the online committee using the computer it takes a bit of getting used to but ultimately it gets easier.

Another thing it's not all business. There there needs to be a little bit of socialization and chit chat take this presentation. I logged on at 10 and soon we're right into the talk right if we had done that better and I'm not blaming anybody because I should have thought of this ahead of time all right, but if we had done that better, we would have given me 10 minutes to try things out 10 minutes to banter with people to find out where you're at why because that's what I do in person and the reason why I do that is I get a feel for where you're at for what things are like where in your world, you know, I get a sense of how you speak how you went.

Correct every group is different and also that makes it more fun, you know, it's it's that kind of thing is part of what makes learning human and as a result, you know, when we just jump into let's stay on topic stay on task all of that that takes the the the human personal element out of it and there's no reason to do that there's no reason to take it out, it's just you have to make time for it.

There's another one of us going to use those as punctuation it still kind of like punctuation right because we can pause now. And the the previous one there was a funny remote the the student said, you know, I missed lots of things about school, especially the food let's just I love that this one, you know what I'm not studying I jump on the trampoline and we have pictures of her jumping on her trampoline, let's just do that anyhow, you can go see those punctuation.

I like punctuation. I also have a cat. Playing with my speaker wire or my microphone wire, so here's my wire and I have a cat. Because of course, I have a cat, okay? The other big thing. In remote learning are online learning is the need for support for online learning staff.

Danielle is saying I have three a. So we're loose I think two aspects to that there's one aspect in the sense that you know, they they need training or at least you know, someplace to learn how all the browser works how zoom works how the learning management system works, in fact what you're using how document sharing works how you can upload assignments record video and all of that and all of that Valentina respect.

S but her heart's belongs to cats yeah, oh I respect dogs too oops, she jumped and messed, um, the other side of it is. He could try again, okay the other side of it is that. Yeah traditionally people including teachers and instructors have relied on classes and courses to learn but things are moving too fast for that now new technology comes on a stream all the time new approaches new pedagogies, so it becomes incumbent on instructional staff to learn how to learn for themselves and I know that cats is almost counter to everything they do but that's what's needed right, you know.

Again, another definition of being an expert learned how to learn on his own so that way I don't need to take classes that allows me to stay ahead of the classes and and I think this is going to be an important aspect of you know, keeping up with the technology in the future.

Another aspect of supporting online staff recommended practice here is don't just throw staff into the lurch on their own again, despite the parents is here recommended practices to have a tech or support person working alongside and the reason for that as you watch this video should be evident the reason for that is it's really hard to focus on giving a talk.

Moving through the content interacting with the audience and also doing all the hands on tech stuff like every time you see me turn away like this. I'm looking at my other monitor screen. So you have the the big monitor here. So I'm looking at my other monitor to advance my slides to set up my browser whatever right it's really hard to do all of that at once so it's better if you can have a couple of people doing the work at the same time now, of course in today's socially distance environment not introduces complications, so it's on its own I was doing a presentation yesterday where I did have the support somebody else was managing all of that for me, but we had to work out a plan ahead of time.

So I said, you know, okay, we're going to start the video then you'll switch over to the slide and then when I advance this slide we'll stay on this slide for five to ten seconds since what's back to the video unless I advance really fast no matter what I do if I advance the slide the counter starts over again.

I will stay on the slide for five to ten you see what I mean. You need you need to coordinate it a bit in advance so going into it like, you know doing it live I think and I think have a slide to this effect later is best I like doing it live but you got to have a plan and then you have to prepare for the plan to fall apart while you're doing the presentation and it helps to have some backup and some support with respect to that even somebody saying your text is backwards, we're not hearing the audio you see how important that is.

Yeah lesson in practice there and as you can see now I'm turning aside to advance my slide then I'll come back here flip on PowerPoint only and you'll see the next slide which talks about the value of life that's not my cat that's someone else's cat but you know there is a value in hosting live classes, you know, the life has this different kind of feel that's why I like it if you guys are watching don't feel you're distracting me if you.

Type into the chat. I like seeing the chat. I've got it right there on my screen so you know, I've got my presenter and the chat right there. I'll be able to see the chat so yeah like in there it says two parrots watching with me perfect probably want to crack her.

I was trying to think of something that you wouldn't want your parent to say and then try to train your parrot. Right? I shouldn't do that, okay, what do we got next open media? I love open media people who are just going on line now just like back in the 1990s and 2000s they begin by thinking okay.

I have to I have to do everything myself. I have to make all of my content. I have to create my own images or illustrations etc over 20 25 years a huge body of open resources has been created. Some such that we can draw from that. I do draw from that pretty much any talk or any presentation or any learning event I've ever done.

Has drawn from the wealth of material that's online. Now again, it's harder at first, right? It's harder to find things at first, but once you get good at finding them once you have your go-to sources, once you've trained Google Google search to respond to the sort of things that you search for.

You know then. It gets a lot easier. We have two less saying about live. This is so true with our students who are often very isolated in their communities as newcomers to Canada. Absolutely live makes connections. Open resources. That's the language or the tool that you use to make these connections a lot of times these open resources will cross linguistic and cultural boundaries, especially if you use things like means or you know in commonly shared images.

It'll be a touch point because they may well have seen it before. They might not of I mean you never know right nonetheless and the other thing too and and it's on the slide here. When you're producing resources or sorry when you're presenting or interacting or working to provide learning think about creating these resources.

This session here is being recorded, you know, a year ago people were doing that. They weren't recording these presentations. Well, except me. And and a few other people but mostly we weren't doing that but now we want to record the zoom. We also want to record the audio and that's why on my phone.

I have a separate audio recording on the go and the neat thing about using my phone see there, it goes the meat thing about using my phone is I'm using a Google Pixel, so it does an automated transcription. So, I can't show you the transcription right here, but I will be able to put the transcription of this event into a blog post letter.

On and in fact, that's exactly what I'll do. Back to the slides. More on using open media. So, Open educational resources widely available etc, but also creating the resources over time it really adds up. This is a quote from the Royal Society paper. They've created 45 gigabytes of remote learning resources with 170,000 realm of resource fuse.

My production is similar believe it or not and I don't even make an effort because 45 gigabytes that's like 45 hours of video instruction. It's not that much. You know, and I've done quite a few of these presentations so start adding up the gigabytes. Um, oh and Karen Lee in the chat is offering us a definition of memes thanks to her 18 year old.

I won't read it because it's fairly long but still nice. Continuing. So the thing about open media too is often communities develop around these open media networks or repositories, here's something the Caribbean examinations council learning hub right and you know countries in the Caribbean believes Jamaica others use this resource share these resources and are able to support each other you will find if you haven't already that the language learning community.

Has a large body of open educational resources and the thing to do is to look at look for that type into that a good exercise right now even is to ask yourself what what opened resources do I know about already because you may well right, you know have I shared those with everybody else am I part of a community creating and sharing these open educational resources because it just adds some of, Its value.

Now there's a caution and I threw it a couple of geocity sites there so that you can enjoy the awfulness along with me and this is in a thing by Tony Bates and the caution is that the quality might not be there in open educational resources now. I find that a really mixed argument.

Okay everybody likes higher quality. But higher quality is one of these things for which there are diminishing returns the video quality of this presentation is not the same as a feature film but it doesn't need to be because presumably you're not paying well, maybe you're I don't know what you're paying, but presumably.

You know, we're not trying to drive hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue from this presentation, first of all there isn't the audience for it but secondly no one out to marriage no one wants to be seen in HD well, that's a pretty good point. I mean, look at this there's a reason why they hire professional actors for these things but Elizabeth is saying you do have to that things to be sure right?

I would not have tried showing those little videos that I had planned to show without. Having. Looked at them first nine now, they're running. UNESCO sight and all of that but just in case you know. So yeah so you know people talk about quality qualities not the only thing and it's mostly about preventing the awful that achieving the perfect there's that's a clip and save kind of remark isn't it prevent the awful instead of achieving the perfect after remember that okay, so there was a this one had music had a musical background.

I'm sorry. Ah beyond the broadcast. Um, we all heard stories I think of horror stories of people having four hours six hours eight hours of zoom sessions, sometimes it conferences just more often in fact, you know, taking classes online as part of the emergency remote learning nobody should have to do that.

I mean imagine sitting down and watching all three parts of Lord of the Rings back to back-to-back. Now that's as good video as you're ever going to see but it's too much right and and similarly with online learning you have to take it outside the computer environment you have to break your break it up etc now.

I've read a few things and you'll probably see it well you should break up your presentation by doing quizzes or whatever no because all you're doing is more on screen stuff right, it doesn't break anything up. So really what you want to do is use the on-screen time for stuff like this like this presentation maybe for conversation interaction with Elizabeth saying back-to-back-to-back's not a problem for her 13-year old okay point made and video games are like that too.

I've done 20-hour video games sessions. I sorry to admit that but it's true but you know, not everybody can. Do it and and most people shouldn't so. But the idea here is that use the online for one online is good for but then get people offline doing other things now that's harder during a pandemic than otherwise but whether or not we're in a pandemic, it's still good advice, you know the and it's funny.

I gave a talk in I don't know 2001. About a boat called the tribal warrior in Australia and the idea here was that the people on the boat were at risk youth and they were learning online but the whole point of learning online was so that they could get out of the classroom and onto the boat and learn through real life experience working as a team traveling interacting doing teachings.

You see the difference so I see online learning as the way to get out of the classroom and into the community or into the environment rather than as a way of just emulating the classroom and I think that's a really important lesson that I think that you know, especially the new remote teaching practitioners they have yet to learn that and and they need to learn that I think.

Okay. This is a big one, especially for those of us who work online, oh I took my online class camping since Karen I borrowed a hotspot from the library. I love that that's perfect yeah and and yeah. I love that actually do that. I should set up a little campsite in my backyard.

Linda says effling everybody sentiment. Karen is the best. So working and learning at home requires that you set routines for yourself now everybody had different routines and we're not necessarily talking about military drill here but we're talking about expectations right expectations on the part of the instructor expectations on the part of the learners and and the idea here is to you know, it isn't discipline it's not about discipline it's not about compliance it's about creating habits.

And a habit takes a certain amount of time to form yeah you might decide as I did once a long time ago, yes. I am going to eat breakfast every day because I want to I was one of those horrible students didn't eat breakfast had a coffee dragged myself into class and I decided no I'm gonna eat breakfast every day but then you have to force yourself to do it for a while now, it's just habit, let's just do it.

I had my oatmeal my fruit and my maple syrup and but, Back then it was a big thing and it took a while and that's the purpose of providing, you know, a loose schedule, you know a way of prioritizing and then you share it with people things happen, sometimes you break the schedule but you know and create balance in the schedule so that people don't go nuts working over can't clawing on my, Like she wants up again.

No thanks she wants out but I'm not sure. Kitty and you haven't seen the cat yet, so this could all be fake, how would you know, okay, how are we doing? 1037 another big lesson that was learned? Was access and equity as soon as we went online the problems began to show up now access of equity works both ways and people didn't talk about how in person learning also creates access and equity issues now you guys did.

I mean, like being able to learn at home is a benefit to the program that you guys offer but you know, if for most of the educational system, they haven't been talking that way, which is an issue so online learning can. Increase access but it also shows where we run into issues of access, come on, you can build kitty there yeah real live cat, she's struggling to get up onto the onto the desk, okay?

So you know, there's two sides here right there's the the difficulty of access in person and there's the difficulty of access online but in my view frankly, it's easier to address the difficulties of moving online.

There's other aspects to access right the sense of ensuring that people are with disabilities have alternatives the sense of engaging people who may have mental health issues and so access means not just providing extra tools or support to learners it also means providing yourself the extra tools and support that you need in order to be able to adapt.

I for example have the good fortune of working with people like Utah forensics. Who's an expert at Canadian expert in access related issues and hopefully your your work environment provides you with access to people who will help you manage different aspects of of access and as well in 2020, we saw we were all there a whole bunch of issues come to light with respect to race culture and language gender and more and all of these are things that overflow in.

To your teaching and learning experience and and things that need to be thought about need to be addressed in the online environment. Well for that matter in any teaching environment. In online we have something called the Universal Design for Learning not UDDL, just UDL and you know there it's a whole framework and you might consider going to that.

That webpage but basically the framework is based on the ideas of providing multiple means of engagement, you know, that's why we talk we have the chat room maybe there's a Twitter feed in the background a synchronous communication asynchronous communication video audio text. Multiple means have representation, which is why I'm providing video of you know, like visual slides here like this plus.

The audio track that you're listening to and you know, if I was better doing this I'd be providing more and then more the other thing multiple means of action and expression. Learning isn't as you know, learning isn't just sitting there you have to practice but practice isn't just you know, repeating your verbs over and over again.

I am you are he is she is. Now there is some element to that when I was learning French I spent a long time going through all the vowels house. Which is really boring but what's that for me was absolutely crucial to getting the accent, right? You know, so there is that element of wrote but there is that element of putting yourself in practice.

I actually learned French learned French for the first time when I committed myself to give a talk in French to a Francophone audience in Northwestern New Brunswick and the work of preparing that. Talk of rehearsing it etc actually gave me the confidence that yes. I can do this and I remember still to this moment clear as day walking into the front door of the school.

It was a school in Claire and. You know, introducing myself having a quick interaction and. It was all in French I realized hey I can do this and that took away all the fear that I had actually giving the talk and yeah, it was one of the greatest learning experiences of my life.

So, you know, something like that can be transformative and I know that that's what you guys do and so underlining the importance of having these different activities is a key part of that and that's something that we need to take back to the remote learning community and, To. A very clearly look you kind of do more than just talking on zoom even if you interrupt it with little quizzes, right?

So me, another aspect to access is broadening the reach and I imagine that you all encounter this as well. You know, what back when massive open online courses started everybody commented that oh yeah, they're only being taken by masters in PhD graduates, right? You know, they're not really for the common person and that's because they were in subjects like pedagogy artificial intelligence quantum mechanics etc and they weren't in practical day to day things like carpentry plumbing etc.

Now, there are tons of those kinds of resources on YouTube. And I know people use them because you just look at the views right, you know a million views on a plumbing video tells you something. But that also means that when we're thinking about access in online learning properly so-called that we need to be thinking about broadening the reach we're not just doing academic topics we're doing a wide range of topics.

Karen saying my husband had a hard time with two semesters of online welding. Yeah that can be a challenge. I'm sure I studied welding once I know it's a challenge I get. To study it online though. I started it in person and it was hard. So yeah, you know online welding you need the lab and that's the thing right about access is people have to have these tools they have to have these resources, you know, they have to have the things that they need if you're learning skiing.

You have to have snow you know, even if you have to make it yourself you need to make sure people have the tools that they need. See how well that would affect how would have been so great that would have been perfect but no well. The other thing is motivation matters.

It matters much more online than offline. You can't force people or convince people the online the way you can offline and there are different skills right people have to be self-motivated they have to be autonomous learners again, this is all part of please don't touch my phone kitty these.

These are all part of how it's hard at first to to do online learning right because you need these skills once you have them things go a lot more smoothly and the other thing is the reason why it's hard is it's harder to get people to do things they don't want to do online and you know, I'm talking about grade 12 math, for example.

That's going to be hard if the person just not interested in math.

So here's another way in which it's harder is what they call reading the room and you know, it's hard to read the room right now. I've got two computer screens here and a cat and I can't really see how you're reacting. I suppose I could if I went back to this session or if I went back to.

The gallery of you looked to see if you're still paying attention now. I'm looking at you but but you know. It's harder and you have to make a special effort and that that special effort so that's accidentally closed there we go that's special effort has to mean taking time to ask people questions to to rely on things like the chat and so to someone whose name is covered up.

Laverne Clark who said thank you. I'm enjoying this session thank you for saying that that really helps, you know, Because you know, I want I'm teaching online. I can't hear the snoring in the background there's another quote to keep you know. And you know and I've learned this the hard way too you can't you don't online session ask for volunteers doesn't work people feel put on the spot you're much more on the spot in the video conference than you're in the classroom that may seem odd but I think it's true so you know these these polling things I can't hear you laugh either that's true yes, so and that might be a good thing because when I was teaching in person, you know, there's, The inner comedian in all of us, especially me and once I get laughter it's hard not to stop anyhow so you need to do things to read the room you also need and I think people learned this you need to recognize learner realities as well, that's always been true used to be easier to do in person because you can see how they're dressed you can see if they're coming.

In late all the time you can see if they're tired and also different realities coming to play in the online environment which pulling tools work best in June no idea haven't used polling tools. I'm sorry yeah again, it's this meantime meter okay. Kim says meant to meter all right?

I'm just not a polling kind of person. I'm not a quantity kind of person. I like chat. I love chat comments but, I'm not keen on you'll pick one of these three options, that's just me but I think you know actual feedback works better online. So some people like Tony Bates and other said well you need to collect data from individual learners.

I think it's more you need to interact with them don't you know, I was gonna say don't collect data. I suppose you should collect data but but don't think of it in terms of collecting data think of it in terms of I'm learning about the people. I'm interacting with like, you know time zones all of that sort of stuff.

Another thing that I saw in quite a few of the studies that I looked at. I've classified under the heading of it takes a village now a lot of them were saying things like it takes a family and I wanted to broaden it from family because we're not always going to be living in these pandemic times and I really do believe that it takes more than just a family to support learning online for a person.

I think it does take you know, the whole community it's hard to explain. That I have but again if we're able to take learning out of the class out of the classroom off of the video.

Then we're able to. You know, we're out there in that environment and an important way so that environment needs to be receptive to learning that's one of the things that made my my study of French going to Claire so effective was that people were you know, they knew I was an English guy coming in.

I had moved to New Brunswick from Alberta, so there you go and, Miltonia Brunswick from Alberta English guy coming in speak in French, they appreciated that. I knew that yeah. I love Alberta love Alberta and. You know, they appreciated it by contrast not all my experiences learning French have been so good in the sense that I go to some place I speak French I'm not perfect they switched to English that's really depressing so you know how the community reacts and supports learning is really important now.

I just want to come back to something Diane said usually only about 20% actually participate in the chat polls. Quizzes etc reach more people that depends. I think on your definition of reach maybe more people are reading the chat that are just typing in chat now. Um, but but I take your point right?

I'm getting feedback only from a few people in the chat, etc seven minute time check, thank you and 40 slides to go not quite but still of course. I'm running behind because it wouldn't be one of my talks if I wasn't running behind okay? But I think we're doing okay.

And. That that was such a good one too and I'm really sorry we missed that when you you should go listen to her she's great flexible assessment is something that a lot of people look at there's been a huge brow in the online learning world about the use of proctoring systems like proctor you or proctorial and and so much so that these companies have actually begun to do things like sue people who are arguing against.

You know and students hate them serious as quite accurately that stuff is evil so if you're learning is depending on proctoring. I think there's something fundamentally wrong zoom polls work well since day and it's not gonna let it go.

You know, and and you know there online there are so many other things you can do besides tests right you can look at other indicators of progress you can look at things that they've done things that they say in the discussions and the chats yeah you have to get them to contribute but now if contributing becomes, you know, kind of an informal assessment maybe they might contribute more.

I don't like forcing people to go into chat, so it's kind of a mixed bag but you know, Informal assessment I think is going to be more and more prevalent in the future online especially but even in person is there's just too many ways to fake it when you're doing a test and I think that that's a long-term problem that you know, moving online might actually eventually address.

You know, another thing with assessment and moving online is as always see day OECD says there's a risk of proliferation of certificates there needs to be a regulation, etc. I love the idea that there will be multiple certificates from multiple organizations at the same time, it's like open content right there, there needs to be some kind of vetting sometime of quality assurance.

Hybrid learning hybrid learning is the mixture of learning online and offline now we talked already about the inadvisibility. Of teaching a class online and offline at the same time not recommended don't do it, there's somebody defines hybrid learning as some people are attend class in person while others join from home tell them no that's not what hybrid learning really means well hybrid learning really means is that you do some things online you do some things offline.

You know, if a person is attending an online session. I think from my experience is that. It's really important that everybody everybody be online we used to have these video conference meetings at NRC where I work and the main group would be in Ottawa and I'd be with an outline group in New Brunswick and we'd participate by video conference or more accurately we'd sit in a room reading our email while a video conferencing screen played they never paid attention to us because we were the remote people we didn't count so there you go, can you give an example of an informalist?

Assessment. You encourage your your student to write a regular series of blog posts in the case of language learning you'd ask them to write them in that language now you're not marking these especially you know, you're not marking them what you're reading them and you're offering feedback so it's more of a formative assessment but also you as an instructor by reading them are able to come to a conclusion a general statement not a great.

But a general statement this person is showing improvement this person isn't showing in person improvement you see what I mean, that's when I mean by informal time check three minutes to go email communication with the students yeah perfect exactly because you can tell right if you know if you're emailing with the students and your emailing in English and they're emailing you back in English and they're learning English you can tell whether they're, English is getting better, okay.

I was on hybrid learning which we said really should be. Not doing the two in the same classroom the other thing is this is less relevant to you but as something I want to point to digital learning in the classroom is something that is becoming more prevalent, but again right this isn't about having people in the classroom and people learning remotely it's like having people in the classroom juice digital stuff while they're in the classroom and that's that's perfectly fine it's it's the flip side of having people.

Do stuff, you know outside the digital classroom in their home or in their community. That's the talk. At the end of these slides in these slides will be available to you or some resources. This article from Tony Bates, I drew a lot from that. The OECD thing. I talked a bit about the World Bank is a wonderful set of examples of how different countries are using Ed Tech during the pandemic.

The Brookings Institute things a little one-sided as it always is from Brooking but I found it was a pretty good set of of lessons learned the Royal Society of the Royal Society, but there still the again, they still had some useful tips the UNESCO document that's the one with all the videos that I was going to play here and then something from blogger Damian.

Redcliffe some takeaways again, these will all be available to you or, They're also available and I created something called. Creating creating an unlike community class or conference quick tech guide. I'll just pop the link to that in the session here and if you want to learn about any tools etc.

Just go to that link and I know I'm zipping through it. It covers all the tools that you could possibly need and and offers you a little bit of instruction on each. So that's it for me. I hope you enjoyed the session and I hope. You finishing on time.

Oh, it's my pleasure my pleasure to do this.

There’s a Christmas Tree stand at the end of Prince Street in front of Founders’ Hall; mindful of “killer drought combined with Trump election protests and COVID means there might not be enough trees”-style headlines, I knew I needed to act fast.

So, roughly 20 days earlier than I’m used to, I stopped in and picked one up. And then made Oliver carry it into the house. It’s drying out from the rain in the vestibule as I write.

Note: The following comes from the bottom of my previous post. It gets buried there beneath a lot of code and thinking out loud, but it's a message that stands on its own.

~~~~~

I demo'ed a variation of my database-briven passphrase generator to my students as we closed the course last week. It let me wrap up my time with them by reminding them that they are developing skills that can change how they see every problem they encounter in the future.

Knowing how to write programs gives you a new power. Whenever you encounter a problem, you can ask yourself, "How might a program help me solve this?"

The same is true for many more specialized CS skills. People who know how to create a language and implement an interpreter can ask themselves, "How might a language help me solve this problem?" That's one of the outcomes, I hope, of our course in programming languages.

The same is true for databases, too. Whenever you encounter a problem, you can ask yourself, "Can a database help me solve this?"

Computer science students can use the tools they learn each semester to represent and interpret information. That's a power they can use to solve many problems. It's easy to lose sight of that fact during a busy semester and worth reflecting on in calmer moments.

“What kind of tree are you looking for?”, asked the jaunty Christmas forester.

“Um,” I replied, uncertain of how to respond (evergreen? festive? broad-needled? post-modern?).

Sensing that I was out of my depth, he deftly sauntered behind the tree that had caught my eye.

“Tall and bushy?”, he asked, Vanna Whiting my eyeline.

“Yes!”, I exclaimed.

He hefted the tree into the back of my KIA Soul. I paid him $40. I drove up the hill toward home.

It never occurred to me that the tree wouldn’t fit. But I need not have worried, as there are four inches to spare (I suppose there’s a standard Canadian ceiling height that trees are grown to hew to?).

“Catherine, where do we keep the Christmas tree stand? And that skirty thing?”

That’s what I’d normally be shouting up from the basement.

Except that I know the answer, because I put them away myself last January, as Catherine was in Palliative Care. Or at least I think I did. Perhaps someone did it for me?

Catherine went into hospital on December 17 last year, and came home on December 22. Her mother surprised us with a visit from Ontario on Christmas Eve. Catherine loved Christmas, and she especially loved being a mother at Christmas. It was as if the fates opened a window for her to have one last one, with those she loved, and who loved her.

And so the putting up of the Christmas tree this year is bittersweet: it’s the start of marking a beginning of an ending. But there’s a degree of “fuck yes, we’re still here, and we’re doing this thing” to it as well.

I got down in the dumps this week because all the dead movie wives leave years worth of birthday, anniversary, and holiday letters to their surviving movie husbands, and my real world (dyslexic) Catherine did not.

But then, watching Oliver carry the tree into the house, I realized she’d left me Oliver, and everything she taught him, and every example she set for him.

As Catherine’s prognosis evolved to “days, perhaps a week,” these were my words:

I wrote to a good friend this afternoon that “It’s sad, in a deep-down-body-sad kind of way. But it’s not only sad.”

And that is true: we laugh together when Oliver makes a joke. We gossip. I pass on kind wishes from near and far. And we sink into the contentment that Catherine radiates.

Catherine continues to radiate through this season. It won’t be nearly at all the same without her. But it will be something else.

Merry Christmas, everyone. Let’s do this thing!

Anybody who follows me on Twitter or reads my blog knows that I have quite a healthy stock of stationery. I have always loved stationery and office supplies. I love taking notes by hand, and this reflects in my methods for note-taking, active reading and writing.

Recently, a relatively new follower of my blog and Twitter stream asked me a question (I am paraphrasing here):

How do you take notes when you cannot highlight?

I am assuming that people who ask me this are referring to note-taking of books. Personally, I don’t mark up my books, and obviously I am extremely careful with those from the library, so I interpreted this student’s question in this way.

In this blog post, I explain my method, integrating my Twitter thread with some additional thoughts.

THREAD: A student (new to my methods) asked me what I did when I could not highlight.

Most people know I don’t mark my own books (nor the library’s!) but you can do with yours whatever you want.

Since I don’t mark my books, the highlighting and annotating methods I use … pic.twitter.com/l2OGV9RDF7

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 28, 2020

… may or may not work in the same way.

Since I prefer analog systems and do not mark books up, here are a few ways in which I take notes that still retain some of the characteristics of my strategies for printed materials.

1. THE INDEX CARD METHOD.

For example, this index card shows notes I took from @STRomanoPhD ‘s book, Transforming Rural Water Governance”.

(Those who follow my Twitter feed assiduously may remember that I also took notes of her book in my Everything Notebook, but that’s my next tweet) pic.twitter.com/A8Wt4HoITn

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 28, 2020

2. THE EVERYTHING NOTEBOOK METHOD

This would be my normal setup for taking notes off a book/book chapter.

I can write notes that are direct quotations or my own thoughts or I can paraphrase.

Obviously direct quotes have quotation marks and the exact page to avoid any chance of accidental misattribution. pic.twitter.com/2nW6K6MWoc

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 28, 2020

3. THE CORNELL NOTES METHOD.

3) THE CORNELL NOTES APPROACH:

I normally don’t use Cornell Notes to take notes of classes because I’m a professor and I haven’t taken courses since I was a graduate student (I do take pedagogy and tech ones obviously)

Anyhow, with books and chapters I also use Cornell Notes pic.twitter.com/XeKvueayhh

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 29, 2020

Obviously, as you can imagine, I’ve written a lot about Note-Taking Techniques on my website’s Resources page. I list those below.

In my Note-Taking Techniques page, I have blog posts that point to each of the three methods I described before. https://t.co/lKZe0IgfGQ

1) INDEX CARDS: https://t.co/RppZJmbPiz

2) EVERYTHING NOTEBOOKhttps://t.co/FPW14RlaHp

3) CORNELL NOTEShttps://t.co/X7TtvRdYzt

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 29, 2020

Obvious question you surely will have:

When should I write in my Everything Notebook or when should I use Cornell Notes, or when is a good time to use Index Cards?

Every single student of mine and every person who has ever attended my workshops asks me this question. I don’t have a universal answer, although I do have a few suggestions. As it always happens with techniques and methods for note-taking, active reading, annotating, writing, etc., we all develop our own heuristics for when we should use one method over the other.

Here are my heuristics:

1. If what I am reading cannot be marked up (I don’t write nor highlight my books, nor any library’s books), I use physical (analog) media. You can, easily, take notes in other programs (Evernote, Notion, etc.) Personally, I find that I need the tactile sensation of handwriting.
2. I usually write summaries and quotations drawn from books and book chapters in my Everything Notebook if they’re directly related to a research project I am doing at the moment, or if I am doing something VERY specific with them (for example, write a book review).

3) I frequently use Index Cards when summarizing and paraphrasing. It’s rare (though it does happen) that I use Index Cards to copy quotations.

4) For direct quotations I almost always use a modified version of the Cornell Notes developed by @katrinafee https://t.co/2s42MORNWr

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 29, 2020

Now, let’s go to another question I often get asked:

Do you take notes in your Everything Notebook, or on Index Cards or Cornell Notes of ARTICLES that you actually highlighted and scribbled on? Glad you asked.

The answer is YES, I DO. Why do I do this? (apparently redundantly)

For example on the left you will see a Cornell Note of Sarah Romano’s recent book.

On the right, my Cornell Note of a recent paper by @thomasnhale pic.twitter.com/zhx4Z43QpR

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 29, 2020

“If you already have the printed article or book chapter and you highlighted it, why not just drop your notes into an #ExcelDump row?”

First, because redundancies help me learn better.

Second, I DO create a CSED row, but I also write Index Cards from where I draw my notes. pic.twitter.com/Qg3TisBOhy

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) November 29, 2020

My methods work for me, adaptations of my methods work for my students and research assistants and colleagues and also for thousands of people around the globe, but the only person who can really tell if a technique I suggest will work for you is YOU.

Hopefully this blog post can answer people’s questions!

Like many, this year has been crazy for me too. When there is a crisis that I don't have control over, I surround myself with good people and work. So I can concentrate on things that I like. COVID-19 was no different, except I couldn't meet people

So it was mostly just work. Since March, I have been doing a ton of work. Most of it is personal interest around data collection, cleaning, etc. I must say that I am grateful that I have work, and I can earn money for doing most of it.

Now that we have reached December, I am longing to take a break and rest. Also, read something outside technology. So maybe you will see more book reviews in the second and third week of December.

The above graph show my work during this year. You can see the amount of commits I have done in comparison to 2019 or 2018.

Here is Gitlab for 2020. I couldn't figure out GitLab's last year's graph. But I don't think it is very different from GitHub's.

I wish I had spend more time reading. Given the situation, I am not complaining.

Everyone handles crisis in different ways. This is my way. How are you managing COVID-19?

I have always considered myself a methodologist, and someone with a slight obsession with methods. I write about research methods here on my blog, I’ve edited a methods journal (International Journal of Qualitative Methods), I’ve published several scholarly pieces (book chapters and articles) on methods, and this fall, I taught several courses on research design, comparative methods, qualitative methods and thesis writing.

Along the same lines, since Fall of 2020, I joined a Methods Lab (led by the amazing Dr. Rodrigo Salazar Elena, dear colleague and friend of mine at FLACSO Mexico). Thus it should not come as a surprise that I have the following three hot takes:

Super hot take:

We should NOT assume graduate students know ANYTHING about research design, research methods, methodology or the mechanics of doing research even if/when they get accepted to a graduate program.

That is, don’t assume undergraduates know how to do research.

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) July 23, 2020

I am seriously amazed at how many faculty assume their students know how to do a lot of things that they do not because they were not prepared nor taught. Neither my Twitter thread nor this blog post offer criticism of students, but more a concern with undergraduate and graduate programs where rigorous research desig and techniques are not taught or poorly developed.

Often times, we need to take students at their most raw and take them from zero to hero. Thus, I encourage all instructors to be KIND and GENEROUS with students admitted to graduate programs who may not have the research skills you may have expected them to have. Make graduate programs equalizers and skills developers. A gradual approach to teaching them how to do research may work best.

Even hotter take: you should NOT assume that graduate students who are doing their degrees in a foreign language know the rules and norms of conducting scholarly research in English.

There’s a hidden curriculum beyond what is new to first generation students. Never forget it. I find it super, super wild that scholars who discuss the hidden curriculum (about first-generation students in the United States of America and Canada) often do not seem to bring to the conversation the differences across cultures. There are hidden curricula all over the world.

Many students from countries or cultures where challenging the authority is not the norm may find it hard to enter “discussion groups” or to challenge a professor/doctoral supervisor. Also, writing norms and expectations (and grammar and structure) vary wildly across languages.

I have an even SPICIER take: By saying “send me/us your BEST students”, you are in fact reproducing the cycle of inequality and further marginalizing scholars who may have great potential but lack the training that others with more privilege have had.

Think about this.

I’ve written about this quite a lot https://t.co/WiqbcrCMY1

And I am grateful to (among many others) @jessicacalarco @gretchensneegas for speaking out about the #HiddenCurriculum

As anybody who follows me knows, I harp about this topic All The Time. Even more frequently…

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) July 23, 2020

… when I have to craft a new syllabus for research design or research methods.

I write my blog for my students, although I DO come back to my own posts for advice on how to do specific things. And I also write my blog for those who have not had the mentorship they deserved. Institutions and faculty need to do better by their students. It’s our job but also our duty.

We are at the end of November, and the past week felt somewhat better than the previous two. Not optimal though. I’ve decided to freeze my schedule for the rest of the year, meaning only doing things that are already scheduled and being very reluctant in adding new things to it. This so I can try and carve out more time to read things I want to read and to tinker with things.

This week I

• Arranged for our ‘adopted’ christmas tree to be dropped off and picked up. We have a tree that gets replanted every year, and then returns to our house the next year. It’ll be delivered Dec 17th, and picked up Jan 7th.
• Met payroll for the company
• Did some invoicing. We’ll end up with 10-12% growth for 2020 compared to last year.
• Interacted more with my notes and notions, using it more as a thinking tool. It slows down the creation process, simply because chewing on things takes time. As a result it is harder than before to maintain a steady pace of writing Notions, although I’ve kept myself on track to reach 800 Notions by the end of the year.
• Worked on the role definition of an open data coordinator for a client, and an accompanying publication process design
• Watched the Shakingtree Award session 2020 (see here my report about the 2018 edition for some background), and remembering Niels.
• Discussed the ‘definition of done’ with a client, to estimate what tasks will remain after our project, so the client can start planning for its follow-up
• Had our first board meeting with the newly (re-)elected board of the Open Nederland association, the Dutch Creative Commons chapter membership organisation
• Had a board meeting with the Open State Foundation, discussing strategy for the coming time
• Had the weekly client project meetings
• Had a meeting between the Open State Foundation and the Code for NL foundation board to discuss where our strategic goals align
• Worked on processing a number of interviews about sustainable infrastructure for a client
• Outlined a training session on ethics w.r.t data usage, in preparation for next week
• Started thinking about launching our own bookshop, and brainstormed names for it with E. I’ve spent a few hours on this now and everything that I can think of as a stumbling block to realise it, turns out to be easy to arrange when I look at it in detail. Finding customers may well turn out to be the only hard thing about it.

Spent this morning walking in the woods near Doorn