#Literacy App

[blumoonfiction-blog]

Adult Literacy XPRIZE (Learning Upgrade): Empowering Adults to Improve Literacy Skills

Adult Literacy XPRIZE (Learning Upgrade): Empowering Adults to Improve Literacy Skills The Adult Literacy XPRIZE (in partnership with Learning Upgrade) is a mobile app designed to help adults enhance their literacy skills, including reading and comprehension. With a focus on practical, engaging lessons, it provides adult learners with tools to improve their reading abilities and gain confidence…

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Okay, y'all, it's rant time again. Buckle up.

A new report just came out from Public Citizen highlighting the dangers of using apps and AI foraging guides for identifying mushrooms, particularly when mushroom foraging. It's the latest in a string of warnings that are fighting against a tide of purported convenience ("just take a picture and get your answer instantly!")

I've ranted about this since last August, and I also wrote up a detailed post on how to identify an AI-generated foraging guide. I'm also including info on the limitations of apps and AI in The Everyday Naturalist: How to Identify Animals, Plants, and Fungi Wherever You Go. I'm not just saying this to toot my own horn--it's because nature identification, and teaching it to others, is literally what I do for a living. So this is a topic near and dear to my heart.

I teach a very, very specific sort of identification class; whether we're focusing on animals, plants, fungi, or all of the above, I walk people through a detailed process of how to observe a given organism, make note of its various physical traits and habitat, and use that information to try to determine what it is. I emphasize the need to use as many sources as possible--field guides, websites, online and in-person groups, journal articles, etc.--to make absolutely sure that your identification is solid.

And every year, I get people (thankfully, a very small minority of my students) who complain because my two-hour basic mushroom hunting class wasn't just five minutes of introduction and one hundred and fifteen minutes of me showing slide after slide of edible mushrooms. There are so many people out there who just want a quick, easy answer so they can frolic in the woods and blithely pick mushrooms like some idealized image of a cottagecore herbalist with a cabin full of dried plants and smiling frogs or something.

While I do incorporate a bit of information on getting started with the app iNaturalist in my classes, it is as only ONE of MANY tools I encourage people to use. Sure, it's more solid than most apps because, in addition to the algorithmic I.D. suggestions it initially gives you, other iNaturalist users can go onto your observations later and either agree with your I.D.s or suggest something different and even explain why.

And yet--even as great as iNat is, it and its users can still be wrong. So can every other I.D. app out there. And I think that is one thing that the hyper-romanticized approaches to foraging--and nature identification in general--miss. In order to be a good forager, you HAVE to also be good at nature identification.

And nature identification is an entire process that requires you to have solid observational and critical thinking skills, to be able to independently research using many different types of tools, and be willing to invest the time, patience, and focus to properly arrive at a solid identification--if not to species level, then as far down the taxonomic ladder as you can realistically manage. (There's a reason even the experts complain about Little Brown Mushrooms and Damned Yellow Composites!)

People mistake one single tool--apps--for the entire toolkit. They assume any book they find on Amazon is going to be as good as any other, and don't take the time to look up the author to determine any credentials or experience, or even whether they actually exist or not. It doesn't help that the creators of these products often advertise them as "the only [book/app/etc.] you need to easily identify [organism of choice]!"

I mean, sure, the world isn't going to end if you never question the birdsong results on the Merlin app, or if you go through life thinking a deer fern is just a baby western sword fern. But when we get into people actually eating things they find in the wild, there's often no room for error. There are plants and mushrooms that can kill you even if you only eat a tiny amount. And even if they don't kill you, they may make you wish you were dead for a few days while you suffer through a whole host of gastrointestinal nastiness and other symptoms.

There aren't any shortcuts if you want to be safe in your foraging. You HAVE to be willing to do the work. And any teacher, author, or product that says otherwise isn't being ethical. I'm glad to see more people speaking out against the "fast foodization" of foraging in regards to overreliance on apps and the existence of AI foraging books; I just hope it's enough to prevent more people from getting sick or dying.

[rachleahx]

Just in case you were ever wondering what it’s like to be a content creator managing a comment section, it’s a LOT of this 🙃

[kideaternomnom]

The Zuko x Mai defenders of ATLA fandom are genuinely so funny due to how hard they try to defend that absolutely ass ship…I see some say how Zuko is happiest with Mai? And how Mai is the only one to make him smile? When dawg- Iroh, Ursa, the Gaang at the end of S3, etc all exist. Mai IS NOT the only person to make him smile when they’re not arguing. 😭 I’m still re watching ATLA and I’m not done yet but I don’t even recall any scene where Zuko worried about Mai in the Boiling Rock episode after she defended them. ☠️

[ball-of-butter]

i remember being genuinely scared to ship mareven because im a toddler that uses tiktok so my first intro to mareven shippers were just crazy maven stans who romanticise his mental illness. i remember one so vile i had to comment hate on it because they were bringing my bae mare into this like mare get behind me rn. and then they doubled down saying her rejection to maven made him more mentally unstable LIKE it was her responsibility???

[clubhoops]

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As part of the campaign, Cash App users will have the opportunity to design limited-edition Angel Reese debit cards and enjoy exclusive discounts on her official merchandise. This collaboration reflects both Reese’s influence as an athlete and advocate, and Cash App’s commitment to fostering financial empowerment in new, creative ways.

With this partnership, Reese continues to expand her platform, proving that her impact extends far beyond the basketball court.

[pyreo]

Ok so you know when you're presenting a scenario in the narrative that your audience is supposed to disagree with. and, you know, 'shaking my head while reading on the train so everyone knows I don't agree' etc, you aren't presenting this for children, the audience is supposed to know what's going on.

good writing doesn't have something in-universe that points out when bad things are bad.

but there is a loophole.

if you want to make sure, if you feel like adding a failsafe to make sure nobody starts throwing accusations, you have the character with the incorrect view say something else, earlier or in the same scene, that is wildly, brutally obviously incorrect.

you brand them with the idea that they are Wrong and the audience will absorb that trait and apply it to everything else they do.

There's a great example of this in the Sopranos episode "Christopher", about christopher columbus and how defensive people are about him, where Tony disagrees with his son's columbus-critical school book. Tony rants "he discovered America, is what he did. He was a brave Italian explorer", with absolute conviction. But just a moment ago, Tony tried to excuse columbus's actions by saying that 500 years ago everyone was less aware - "people thought the earth was flat, for crying out loud", when arguments about the shape of the earth belong to ancient Greece, around 300 BC.

He also then mentions something about "remember when we went to Florida - the heat? and those bugs?" seemingly implying that mass murder is as excusable as swatting annoying insects. an abhorrent, disgusting view - informing us in concrete terms that Tony's impassioned defense of columbus is based on flimsy logic and his mentality is flawed.

another example I like is The Nicest Kids In Town from Hairspray. a toe-tapping number about the vast opportunities for young people in 1950s Baltimore - as long as you're white!

You'd better come on down and meet the nicest kids in town! Nice white kids who like to lead the way

Other than a little zoomed-in emphasis on the singer, it's just baked into the song. It's got the same jaunty beat as everything else. So just in case you somehow didn't get how amazingly racist this situation is, Corny Collins goes on to sing:

Every afternoon drop everything, Who needs to read and write when you can dance and sing! Forget about your algebra and calculus, You can always do your homework on the morning bus, Can't tell a verb from a noun- They're the nicest kids in town!

Playing it as a joke is a good way to couch the meaning, but this is no holds barred irresponsible in a way that explains why parents don't want their children watching Corny's show. But the link is there - this guy jokingly insists that children should watch tv instead of learning to read and write. With that in the same song, are you going to trust him on any other topic? On the racial divide of 1950s america? He's the face of the show, and given the time period, what he sings isn't shocking in-universe - but it should be outside of that, and his regressive humour clues you in that the correct stance is opposing this guy.

so there you go. if you want an audience to be assured a character is in the wrong... just... make them unbelievably wrong about something unrelated.

[m4ndysk4nkovich]

maturing is realizing that shameless is a show with a lot of homophobia, transphobia and sexism in the writing and it’s fandom is toxic and a lot of the fans are as shitty as the writers are

[liminalweirdo]

what do you think are the most important things to utilize if someone wanted to learn to amplify their tech-literacy/tech-using experience?

We all know about add-block and anti-tracker add-ons, I'm thinking things like using github for various things, downloading youtube vids using yt-dlp. etc. etc. Bonus points if you can drop guides/how-tos

Other examples are things you can do with word, like adding macros, etc.

Also, what are your favourite non-game programs and apps? This could be anything.

i'm hoping to get a list where lots of folks can add on so if you could reblog that would be awesome

[icomefromthemountains]

Tik Tok stay away from The Hunger Games challenge

[bizarreaizen]

i love switching to tumblr where i can freely express my opinion and share my identity from tiktok where people still can't accept furries and lack media literacy, from twitter where everything is just nsfw and if you share anything it can get you doxxed, from reddit where the misinformation spreads and arguing happens, from instagram where the rich flexes and the insecurity shows, and from facebook where your family members and people you haven't seen in years shows their lives that you could care less about. /gen

[briliantlymad]

I thought I was done but it's like I've come across multiple pages of badly tagged anti anakin fics that I can't just filter out. So like. Don't mind me I'm just throwing these posts out for no reason other than it's 3 am and I'm annoyed and I'd rather it be out than in ya kno?

"Fix it" as in you fixed it by killing palpatine but decided to ignore a huge chunk of why palpy was the problem. And decided to make anakin a problem? Also anti padme? You're hating padme too?

Also another one was just weird. Like ok yeah you, the author, love codywan, i like reading them too. But Cody and anakin don't have a relationship, certainly not in your fic. He has 0 stake in what anakin does unrelated to the clones. Why are you making him weigh in on anakin's "faults" like what's going on over here?

Also I didn't know but there are definitely people out there who blame anakin for qui gon basically tossing obiwan aside in the first movie. Which. Wow ok. That's 😬 instead of blaming a grown adult we're blaming little kid who has no idea what the fuck is happening I guess

[tcnysncrk]

I just want to spew my unsolicited thoughts on Sheila Haywood. Any takers?

[publicuniversalenemy]

i am tryng so hard to be good and make my little media library on one of them open-source softwares like jellyfin or VLC but unforchunately im really stupid with computers despite my best efforts and its making me grumby :(

[threalcrabbysamantha]

It is so frustrating to live in a world with such terrible media literacy when the one thing you are obsessed with most in the world is Understanding Media.

[wreckingball4good]

Thinking about Mastodon? Peertube? here’s a primer.