on Scrabble, French, and what it means to learn

- kudos:

In the summer of 2015, New Zealander Nigel Richards won the French-language world Scrabble championships despite not speaking a word of French. I heard this story on a Radio Télévision Suisse news show repackaged as a podcast (probably Le 12h30, but I can’t remember exactly) and wrote myself a note that if I ever got a chance to teach a class on games and learning, I would use this story in it.

rediscovering some comments on computational thinking

- kudos:

I keep a journal using the Day One app for macOS/iOS, and while I have some lingering concerns about platformizing (and even digitizing) my journaling, there are also some pretty neat aspects to using an app like this. First, it’s very easy to copy text from other electronic sources into the app, and that really helps me capture things that made an impression on me from day to day. Second, it’s also easy to search for, read, and even be reminded of old entries.

🔗 linkblog: just read 'The Melting Face Emoji Has Already Won Us Over - The New York Times'

- kudos:

I immediately connected with this emoji the first time I saw it. Also, I remember writing a paper in high school arguing that emoticons were legitimate “language.” The paper was horrible, but I still believe in that central thesis, and I think emojis are vindicating it. link to ‘The Melting Face Emoji Has Already Won Us Over - The New York Times’

🔗 linkblog: just read 'Ariol, vingt ans d'un héros de la bande dessinée jeunesse'

- kudos:

Great conversation in this podcast about the danger of dismissing comics as simply “easier to read.” I appreciated the discussion of the literacies needed to understand a comic. link to ‘Ariol, vingt ans d’un héros de la bande dessinée jeunesse’

- kudos:

It’s amazing how much French I’m learning translating students’ tweets to English for a research project. Language is so rich, and limiting it to 280 characters arguably makes it more so.