Electronic Mail ▪ Unknown Unknowns
> Unknown Unknowns
People don’t know what they don’t know. Unknown unknowns. That's why asking 'are there any questions?' is not a good question to ask. Even worse is assuming everybody understands if there aren't any. It's the difference between 'have you understood?' and 'what have you understood?'. With the second question, you can check for understanding.
This particular always comes up when the end of the semester is in sight and it's time for students to be graded. One of the worst things for a student is if they don't know how they will be graded. It's so freaking important to walk them through a rubric and explain each criterion with concrete examples.
It's not good enough to ask 'are there any questions about the rubric and criteria?'. You as a teacher have to explain each criteria with concrete examples.
Project
Adding more and more features and pages to my personal website. Since all the 'important' pages are finished I'm implementing all my 'nice to have' features. Those are nice little projects to code on the weekend since almost every one of those features is a new technical challenge for me. Examples are dark mode, webmentions, a world map (with leaflet), and lots of different fun little micro-sites.
Also working on a new image gallery where I can upload photos taken from my phone. Inspired by Max van Damme his photo-stream repository. I want my site to extract EXIF data embedded in photos, create some sort of collage of photos that have the same theme, and also would like to have an option to create photo sets based on location. I'll put my code repository public once it's finished.
Links
- Nonprofit newsroom 'The Markup' (Aaron Sankin and Surya Mattu) wrote a fantastic series of articles called the Blacklight which explains The High Privacy Cost of a “Free” Website.
- A fantastic article on how font fallback actually works by typographer Marcin Wichary.
- Ben Kuhn wrote about some tips and best practices to make video calls almost as good as face-to-face.
- Ethan Marcotte gave a fantastic talk at SydCSS on the design systems between us and how many organizations are uncovering the new cost of maintaining one.
More to click
Learning
Didn't do a ton of learning the last couple of weeks but I've had my eye on Wes Bos his Master Gatsby course but I'm also only halfway through his Beginner JavaScript course 🙈
Media diet
↪ Playing: I initially missed the whole Among Us hype but played a couple of games with colleagues and even with students. It's fun! I use BlueStacks (android emulator) to play it on my MacBook.
↪ Reading: Finished 'So Good they can't ignore you' by Cal Newport which makes the case that 'follow your passion' is bad advice and that you should first invest in gaining (what Cal calls) career-capital.
↪ Watching: Watched a couple of old 'design' focused documentaries: Art & Copy and PressPausePlay. Also started the McMillions mini-series about the McDonald's Monopoly promotion scam that occurred in the late 90s.
That's the end of this new(s)letter. Expect the next one in a couple of weeks in your inbox! 👋 )