I think the hardest part of teaching is figuring out how to explain something you don’t remember not knowing how to do to someone who currently doesn’t know how to do it.

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.

Last week, I noticed that my RSS reader was no longer refreshing feeds from my local newspaper’s website. Today, I discovered it’s associated with VPN use. Anyone know what’s going on?

Finally decided to cut ties with Prime, and then Amazon goes and buys Eero, my router company of choice. It’s like I can’t escape (which is, in turn, exactly why I’m trying to).

Tried to grab my box of Altoids with my eyes still on the article I’m reading, and grabbed a box of thumbtacks instead. Spotted my mistake before popping one in my mouth, though. 😅

Sure, I’m eating cold leftovers (break room microwaves aren’t working), but today’s not a total wash: I got “Religion and Cyberspace” from the library and booked VIA Rail tickets from Quebec City to Montréal for an upcoming vacation.

The cutest part of my kid’s being old enough to make Valentines this year is her insistence on mailing one to herself.

Prisencolinensinainciusol is my favorite song-whose-name-I-can-never-remember. It’s an amazing rendition of what American music sounds like to someone who doesn’t speak English, and it’s worth a listen.

A lot of people are ragging on YouTube these days, so I’d just like to mention one thing it does really well: Consistently pick the least-flattering frames of my class videos for the thumbnail options.

If you’re going to get an article you’re proud of rejected on a Friday, it is comforting for the rejection to be essentially “it’s a good paper but doesn’t fit our special issue focus as much as you think it does.”

Nothing reinforces my professorial credibility quite like the wet bike gear from my rainy commute draped over the chairs in my office.

Quand une fusée temporelle commence son voyage dans le temps, on appelle ça un « décollage horaire »

In June, I purchased an “I’m Sorry, I Haven’t A Clue” compilation on Audible that is over 18 hours long. Tonight, I finally passed the halfway point.

Je viens d’acheter des billets pour visiter le Québec (pour les vacances) et la France (pour un colloque) au mois de mars. J’ai trop hâte !

Showing my information literacy class a clip from “Look Around You” this afternoon. Hope I don’t give anyone nightmares about the Helvetica Scenario.

I’m having students in one of my classes mod a game as their assessment for the current module, and I’m as excited about the outcome as I am nervous (which is to say: very, very, very).

Lexington has a sister city in Normandy, so I’m currently applying to our sister cities organization in the hopes it will provide opportunities to keep up my French. 😊🇫🇷

Reading today’s edition of the Lexington Herald-Leader makes me glad I subscribe to a local paper. Lots of holding our state and federal officials accountable; plus, I’m starting to have some favorite local columnists.

Bought a frame today for a nice piece of The Last Jedi art I received for Christmas. Going to hang it up in my office and start using it as a litmus test for visitors.

Over lunch, I continued a new (for me) book on the history of French and decided to email a thank you to a wonderful BYU professor who taught a class on that subject. I think of him often and am embarrassed I hadn’t reached out earlier.

We also looked at the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine as an example of the deep web. I don’t know how pedagogically effective that was, but the students definitely got a kick out of it.

This week, I had students complete a “human web crawler/ human search engine” activity to give them a sense of how Google works. Room to improve the activity, but I’m reading student reflections, and it seems to have helped!

Last week, I confessed to my colleagues some of my quirky passions, like radio dramas and Franco-Belgian comics. This week, driven by a compulsive need to outquirk myself, I am listening to a radio drama adaptation of a Franco-Belgian comic.

I (an educational technology researcher) have just declined the opportunity to review for the journal “Cell Proliferation.” The weird thing is that it didn’t seem like the spammy requests from journals I sometimes get. Mistaken identity, maybe?

On Monday mornings, I like to give myself a couple of hours to both plan the week and take care of a stack of odd jobs. It lets me ease myself back into work and frees up time to focus on more important things later in the week.

I think my favorite takes on La Marseillaise are the 1812 Overture and that scene from Casablanca.

Currently planning travel to an academic conference in France. Rule of thumb when flying to Paris is always to worry about consequences of disgruntled employees, but this time it’s the American ones I’m worried about.

Reviewer 3 doesn’t understand why my study is important. I’m trying to find ways to articulate that better, but all I really want to do is JUST BOLD EVERYTHING I’VE ALREADY WRITTEN TO THAT EFFECT.

I never know whether to be happy or frustrated when I’m able to respond to a reviewer’s objection by resurrecting a paragraph from the manuscript that I’d previously cut to slim things down.

Oh look, it’s my favorite day of the week: “Welp-those-manuscript-revisions-are-due-today Wednesday”

It’s only taken me five months, but I’ve finally updated my Alfred “search the library for such-and-such an article” shortcut to point to my current institution’s library.

Gotta say, Amazon, the amount of effort you’re making me go through to cancel my Prime membership is just validating my choice to do so.

If anything helps you appreciate Vygotsky (and sociocultural theories of learning in general) more than being the parent of a young kid, I have yet to experience it.

Tfw a seemingly small suggestion from a reviewer actually opens up new insights that you wouldn’t have otherwise noticed. Thanks Reviewer #1!

Today’s manuscript revision fun is detangling the results of a coding error that left out 3 hours and 56 minutes worth of tweets from my analysis. Just enough to make some very small differences in reported results.

One of my favorite “not designed for that” uses of the macOS app Alfred is to strip formatting from text when copying from one doc to another—paste it in Alfred bar in between, and voilà!