http://portal.sliderocket.com/BBUCR/Copy-of-Dwelling-in-the-Fuchun-Mountains2
I'd like to keep tweakifying this, but as a sort of proof of concept it'll do. It could be smoother-running, but the original work itself is a bit "lumpy" considering that the seams are visible between the paper are visible and the color varies, some of that may be smoke damage from the 1650 fire.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
The Social Graph is Neither (Pinboard Blog)
"Asking computer nerds to design social software is a little bit like hiring a Mormon bartender. Our industry abounds in people for whom social interaction has always been more of a puzzle to be reverse-engineered than a good time to be had, and the result is these vaguely Martian protocols..."
Thought-provoking and funny article on the failure of social networks to replicate or even closely resemble actual relationships between flesh and blood human beings. Relevant I think because the various social networking schemes are presently being hailed as the Big Thing - thinking which overlaps into the educational world - and the blogger, "maciej", correctly points out that even in the brief history of the net Big Things have already come and gone.
Link:
Friday, November 4, 2011
SlideRocket Presentation - Almost There
http://portal.sliderocket.com/BBUCR/Dwelling-in-the-Fuchun-Mountains
Almost finished, need sound and a few more touches but it's playable.
Almost finished, need sound and a few more touches but it's playable.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
A Silicon Valley School That Doesn’t Compute
Article from the New York Times, about a school that's bucking the trend.
link at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/technology/at-waldorf-school-in-silicon-valley-technology-can-wait.html
GRADING THE DIGITAL SCHOOL
A Silicon Valley School That Doesn’t Compute
Jim Wilson/The New York Times
The Waldorf School in Los Altos, Calif., eschews technology. Here, Bryn Perry reads on a desktop. More Photos »
By MATT RICHTEL
Published: October 22, 2011
LOS ALTOS, Calif. — The chief technology officer of eBay sends his children to a nine-classroom school here. So do employees of Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple, Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Slide:ology and Here Comes Everybody
I've finished Nancy Duarte's "Slide:ology" now and as I said in the last post consider it an excellent book on not just using PowerPoint but using it thoughtfully and with style; a good follow up to Burmark's "They Snooze You Lose".
Started "Here Comes Everybody" by Clay Shirky, which if it doesn't relate directly to the problems and questions we've gone over so far in 6340 does provide good background about the mushrooming growth of today's web technologies, how they change social relationships, and what kinds of problems they can and can't solve. Shirky views the changes in online capabilities and the way web tools are used with the eye of an economic and a social theorist.
Many of the author's points are too complex to describe in detail here, but a few important ones are:
"Mass amateurization" as he terms it of web input. Most contributors aren't journalists or from similar occupations which follow an "edit, then publish" model. Tools are now available to the public at low to no cost to publish anything anytime, leading to a "publish then edit" model. This influx of content at all levels of quality has led to:
The ongoing collapse of the professions, notably journalism but affecting everyone whose job is posited on the ink on paper system of publishing. (I have very mixed feelings about this as I am sentimental about the paper world of newspapers, books, what have you).
The fact that the number of relationships between people in a group increase much faster than the number of people in a group makes it increasingly hard to organize the members - the most successful online communities are the ones that self-organized spontaneously, e.g. discussion groups on Flickr or contributors to Wikipedia.
Very good book but denser and slower going. I don't hesitate to recommend though.
Shirky, Clay; Here comes everybody; Penguin Press, New York, 2008
Started "Here Comes Everybody" by Clay Shirky, which if it doesn't relate directly to the problems and questions we've gone over so far in 6340 does provide good background about the mushrooming growth of today's web technologies, how they change social relationships, and what kinds of problems they can and can't solve. Shirky views the changes in online capabilities and the way web tools are used with the eye of an economic and a social theorist.
Many of the author's points are too complex to describe in detail here, but a few important ones are:
"Mass amateurization" as he terms it of web input. Most contributors aren't journalists or from similar occupations which follow an "edit, then publish" model. Tools are now available to the public at low to no cost to publish anything anytime, leading to a "publish then edit" model. This influx of content at all levels of quality has led to:
The ongoing collapse of the professions, notably journalism but affecting everyone whose job is posited on the ink on paper system of publishing. (I have very mixed feelings about this as I am sentimental about the paper world of newspapers, books, what have you).
The fact that the number of relationships between people in a group increase much faster than the number of people in a group makes it increasingly hard to organize the members - the most successful online communities are the ones that self-organized spontaneously, e.g. discussion groups on Flickr or contributors to Wikipedia.
Very good book but denser and slower going. I don't hesitate to recommend though.
Shirky, Clay; Here comes everybody; Penguin Press, New York, 2008
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
More on Duarte's Slide:ology
Almost thru Nancy Duarte's book now. Take a look at her online examples of some work by ND and her firm, which raise PowerPoint to something of an art form. As with all art forms the key is restraint:
http://www.duarte.com/books/slideology/www
I found her use of the push transition to suggest panning across a larger terrain than the screen will hold at one time to be a very good use of PPT's built in functions. Conspicuously absent are animated text and logos.
The section on how to use color theory to select the signature colors of a presentation is very well done, with color wheels showing complementary, analogous, and so on combinations of colors. Another dimension is the saturation of the color, which has an effect on its visibility especially against a colored background. The fact that red-green color blindness is fairly common also has to be taken into account in planning color contrasts. ND gives the RGB color values of all the examples illustrated.
There is also a good brief intro to typography, covering the essential points (serif vs. sans-serif, how to choose point sizes, use two fonts at most - restraint again).
Grids to make the elements fall in predictable locations, dividing the screen into proportions like fourths or fifths, or even divisions based on the Fibonacci series (!), are a system ND recommends. Slides created according to a regular pattern look more pro and avoid having elements jump around from one to the next.
Very educational book, highly recommended.
http://www.duarte.com/books/slideology/www
I found her use of the push transition to suggest panning across a larger terrain than the screen will hold at one time to be a very good use of PPT's built in functions. Conspicuously absent are animated text and logos.
The section on how to use color theory to select the signature colors of a presentation is very well done, with color wheels showing complementary, analogous, and so on combinations of colors. Another dimension is the saturation of the color, which has an effect on its visibility especially against a colored background. The fact that red-green color blindness is fairly common also has to be taken into account in planning color contrasts. ND gives the RGB color values of all the examples illustrated.
There is also a good brief intro to typography, covering the essential points (serif vs. sans-serif, how to choose point sizes, use two fonts at most - restraint again).
Grids to make the elements fall in predictable locations, dividing the screen into proportions like fourths or fifths, or even divisions based on the Fibonacci series (!), are a system ND recommends. Slides created according to a regular pattern look more pro and avoid having elements jump around from one to the next.
Very educational book, highly recommended.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Some thoughts about Web 2.0 tools
I'm enjoying learning to use the new online tools. Some thoughts about my experience so far:
Wordle - It's very cute and works well for creating an image such as a self-portrait in words. What it needs though is a reasonable way to turn each word into a hyperlink.
Flickr - Been using it for a couple of years and have some of my pictures uploaded. Flickr only lets me put up 200 images though with the free account, a limitation; I may have to actually pay money to get more online space.
Diigo - Love it! Excellent link keeper and organizer. I was using Delicious but like Diigo better. I haven't figured out all its functions such as the group thing, more research is needed.
Photobucket: Seems pretty good also. It's another item I'm new to and still exploring.
Blogger - I have a little experience with it already and find it has all the functions I want and it's easy to use. I give it high marks.
Again, just my opinion.
Wordle - It's very cute and works well for creating an image such as a self-portrait in words. What it needs though is a reasonable way to turn each word into a hyperlink.
Flickr - Been using it for a couple of years and have some of my pictures uploaded. Flickr only lets me put up 200 images though with the free account, a limitation; I may have to actually pay money to get more online space.
Diigo - Love it! Excellent link keeper and organizer. I was using Delicious but like Diigo better. I haven't figured out all its functions such as the group thing, more research is needed.
Photobucket: Seems pretty good also. It's another item I'm new to and still exploring.
Blogger - I have a little experience with it already and find it has all the functions I want and it's easy to use. I give it high marks.
Again, just my opinion.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Reading Slide:ology
Reading further in Duarte's Slide:ology. It's a very good source for visual thinkers (like me). The book goes into a lot of detail about the creative process and translating ideas into sketches and diagrams, and then into visuals. Clarity and simplicity are watchwords; Nancy Duarte and her peoples' work is elegantly uncluttered.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Lynell Burmark Chapter 4
As I mentioned I've now finished the textbook and am trying to get in some reading of ancillary sources as time allows. I've bought Nancy Duarte's Slide:ology from Amazon (used, not much) and started it, it's a very beautifully designed book as well it should be, as a sort of a designer's manifesto. It's aimed more at a business audience than at educators but the principles are widely applicable. I'll post more about it, again if I get time.
On to Burmark, Chapter 4, "CHIMES".
CHIMES stands for Connections, Humor, Images, Music, Emotion, and Story. These are the ways the author identifies to create an engaging and memorable presentation - first to get the audience to look and then to sway their minds and emotions.
My take on this is that if all these aspects can be made to work, your presentation is likely to be a masterpiece. Since few of us are renaissance men or women, the approach I would suggest is to strengthen one's presentation by adding whichever of these "hooks" one has the ability to do. Other people's experience will differ from mine.
Humor strikes me as risky. If you have the gift of comic wit and timing, by all means use it, but a stolid presenter attempting to lighten the mood and falling flat is painful to witness. Use with caution.
Music - again this is going to rely on personal ability, background, education, talent, and taste. And again if one can wield it expertly music could add a lot to a presentation. Being sadly tin-eared myself if I were to include music I think I would have to sub out the job of building the sound track.
Images - One of the best points the author makes in the entire book I think is that images are powerful. They can set the scene, convey emotions, and introduce the audience to new places and experiences. The well-known Chinese aphorism about how many words a picture is worth is not far off. More and better images, less and better-chosen text is good advice I think.
Emotion, Stories, Connections - these three could be seen as closely allied. Bringing the audience into emotional accord is as important as giving them the facts (if not more important). Weaving facts and emotions into a narrative which involves the sympathies of the listeners will greatly improve the presenter's chances of drawing the audience together and then leading them forward into new territory.
Just my opinions.
On to Burmark, Chapter 4, "CHIMES".
CHIMES stands for Connections, Humor, Images, Music, Emotion, and Story. These are the ways the author identifies to create an engaging and memorable presentation - first to get the audience to look and then to sway their minds and emotions.
My take on this is that if all these aspects can be made to work, your presentation is likely to be a masterpiece. Since few of us are renaissance men or women, the approach I would suggest is to strengthen one's presentation by adding whichever of these "hooks" one has the ability to do. Other people's experience will differ from mine.
Humor strikes me as risky. If you have the gift of comic wit and timing, by all means use it, but a stolid presenter attempting to lighten the mood and falling flat is painful to witness. Use with caution.
Music - again this is going to rely on personal ability, background, education, talent, and taste. And again if one can wield it expertly music could add a lot to a presentation. Being sadly tin-eared myself if I were to include music I think I would have to sub out the job of building the sound track.
Images - One of the best points the author makes in the entire book I think is that images are powerful. They can set the scene, convey emotions, and introduce the audience to new places and experiences. The well-known Chinese aphorism about how many words a picture is worth is not far off. More and better images, less and better-chosen text is good advice I think.
Emotion, Stories, Connections - these three could be seen as closely allied. Bringing the audience into emotional accord is as important as giving them the facts (if not more important). Weaving facts and emotions into a narrative which involves the sympathies of the listeners will greatly improve the presenter's chances of drawing the audience together and then leading them forward into new territory.
Just my opinions.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
What if the Secret to Success Is Failure?
Web site:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/magazine/what-if-the-secret-to-success-is-failure.html?pagewanted=all
NYT article about whether training in "character" has a place alongside traditional subjects in molding students into responsible, fulfilled, successful adults. Onto something? A total crock? Intriguing in any case.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/magazine/what-if-the-secret-to-success-is-failure.html?pagewanted=all
NYT article about whether training in "character" has a place alongside traditional subjects in molding students into responsible, fulfilled, successful adults. Onto something? A total crock? Intriguing in any case.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Chapter 1 Lynell Burmark
Behind the surface appearance of annoyingly upbeat chirpiness and corny humor, the author has some very good ideas which should be more widely heeded. Microsoft PowerPoint is too universally derided to need much more explication of its downside. Here are some links:
Julia Keller: Is PowerPoint the devil?
http://faculty.winthrop.edu/kosterj/WRIT465/management/juliakeller1.htm
Edward Tufte: PowerPoint is evil. Power corrupts but PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2.html
Power Corrupts, PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely
http://www.usnwc.edu/Research---Gaming/War-Gaming/Faculty-Blog/February-2011-(1)/Power-Corrupts,-PowerPoint-Corrupts-Absolutely.aspx
This is an article on the US Naval War College site, no less, which takes its title from the Tufte article but makes points about improving .ppt presentations. Notable quote: "While death and taxes may be inevitable, death by PowerPoint is not."
If Abraham Lincoln had delivered the Gettysburg Address with PowerPoint:
http://www.norvig.com/Gettysburg/sld001.htm
And of course Dilbert:
http://search.dilbert.com/search?w=project+emu&x=0&y=0
What Lynell Burmark does is to show how a presentation can be given in a way that the medium enhances rather than overwhelms the message: colors are attractive, and are used to draw the eye to the most important points; text is squeezed out, condensed, minimized, reduced to a few essential words; image dominates the slide and any references are already included in the handout - built painstakingly and separately from the slide show.
A few of her major, um, points:
Color significantly increases the viewer's interest in looking at the slide and improves retention of its contents in memory.
Attractive and legible color combinations work best, this is worth some study. Yellow (about 570 nanometer wavelength) is the brightest and most noticeable, lying near the center of the human eye's spectrum of sensitivity to visible light and also lying near the center of the solar spectrum, not a coincidence.
Pay attention to contrast. Good contrast improves legibility.
Concerning type: use less of it. Emphasize what is more important with bolding and size. Avoid all caps. Use legible fonts. Divisions between sections of text are as important as the text itself.
Include images, more to come on that topic.
Julia Keller: Is PowerPoint the devil?
http://faculty.winthrop.edu/kosterj/WRIT465/management/juliakeller1.htm
Edward Tufte: PowerPoint is evil. Power corrupts but PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2.html
Power Corrupts, PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely
http://www.usnwc.edu/Research---Gaming/War-Gaming/Faculty-Blog/February-2011-(1)/Power-Corrupts,-PowerPoint-Corrupts-Absolutely.aspx
This is an article on the US Naval War College site, no less, which takes its title from the Tufte article but makes points about improving .ppt presentations. Notable quote: "While death and taxes may be inevitable, death by PowerPoint is not."
If Abraham Lincoln had delivered the Gettysburg Address with PowerPoint:
http://www.norvig.com/Gettysburg/sld001.htm
And of course Dilbert:
http://search.dilbert.com/search?w=project+emu&x=0&y=0
What Lynell Burmark does is to show how a presentation can be given in a way that the medium enhances rather than overwhelms the message: colors are attractive, and are used to draw the eye to the most important points; text is squeezed out, condensed, minimized, reduced to a few essential words; image dominates the slide and any references are already included in the handout - built painstakingly and separately from the slide show.
A few of her major, um, points:
Color significantly increases the viewer's interest in looking at the slide and improves retention of its contents in memory.
Attractive and legible color combinations work best, this is worth some study. Yellow (about 570 nanometer wavelength) is the brightest and most noticeable, lying near the center of the human eye's spectrum of sensitivity to visible light and also lying near the center of the solar spectrum, not a coincidence.
Pay attention to contrast. Good contrast improves legibility.
Concerning type: use less of it. Emphasize what is more important with bolding and size. Avoid all caps. Use legible fonts. Divisions between sections of text are as important as the text itself.
Include images, more to come on that topic.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
San Antonio Writing Project workshop, excellent event.
Written Saturday, posted Sunday 09-18-2011.
I got a chance today to attend a workshop on technology in the classroom, hosted by the San Antonio Writing Project. It was very good. The keynote speaker, Chris Navarro, seems to be a bit of a local Renaissance man and is co-running Open Art, an outfit which brings arts education to K-12 schools which can't afford to hire a full time art, music, or drama teacher (which is a lot of schools now given the way the tide is running). Link:
http://www.open2art.com/
He and the other presenters discussed using various programs to combine visuals, music, text, and voice-over to engage the students. A partial list of the programs they demonstrated or described:
Wikis -available thru various websites
Voicethread - upload any media type to the same account
Prezi - like ppt but cooler
Gimp - one I know pretty well already
Moviemaker - described as bearing the same relationship to real video editing programs that crayons have to other art supplies. Still, it's a place to start.
Glogster - ???
Comixpress and
Issuu - both involved in self-publishing, which isn't a bad thing any more
Audacity
Animoto
Evernote
Weebly
Various Google apps
Some of these are familiar to me, some not so much & some entirely new.
Other stuff. I found out about Joe Lambert's "Digital Storytelling" which I've ordered from Amazon. Andrew Eichstead, one of the presenters, spoke of the need to tell stories, using the online media - this keys in closely to points made in the textbook. Lambert has this site:
http://www.storycenter.org/cookbook.pdf which I have not more than started but looks like a short version.
Also, I learned about Ian Jukes' blog, "The Committed Sardine" (don't ask me) at:
http://www.committedsardine.com/blog.cfm
Looks like a good source for ideas about education, technology, and their evolving and not always pretty relationship.
Written Saturday, posted Sunday 09-18-2011.
I got a chance today to attend a workshop on technology in the classroom, hosted by the San Antonio Writing Project. It was very good. The keynote speaker, Chris Navarro, seems to be a bit of a local Renaissance man and is co-running Open Art, an outfit which brings arts education to K-12 schools which can't afford to hire a full time art, music, or drama teacher (which is a lot of schools now given the way the tide is running). Link:
http://www.open2art.com/
He and the other presenters discussed using various programs to combine visuals, music, text, and voice-over to engage the students. A partial list of the programs they demonstrated or described:
Wikis -available thru various websites
Voicethread - upload any media type to the same account
Prezi - like ppt but cooler
Gimp - one I know pretty well already
Moviemaker - described as bearing the same relationship to real video editing programs that crayons have to other art supplies. Still, it's a place to start.
Glogster - ???
Comixpress and
Issuu - both involved in self-publishing, which isn't a bad thing any more
Audacity
Animoto
Evernote
Weebly
Various Google apps
Some of these are familiar to me, some not so much & some entirely new.
Other stuff. I found out about Joe Lambert's "Digital Storytelling" which I've ordered from Amazon. Andrew Eichstead, one of the presenters, spoke of the need to tell stories, using the online media - this keys in closely to points made in the textbook. Lambert has this site:
http://www.storycenter.org/cookbook.pdf which I have not more than started but looks like a short version.
Also, I learned about Ian Jukes' blog, "The Committed Sardine" (don't ask me) at:
http://www.committedsardine.com/blog.cfm
Looks like a good source for ideas about education, technology, and their evolving and not always pretty relationship.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Some Thoughts About Copyright and Where It's Going
I've come to realize that an entire semester could easily be spent studying copyright laws and practices and still not cover it all. This is clearly an important topic to educators as they and their students re-use content of all types.
One subject that interests me as US copyright law gets ever more lobbyist driven, with the influence of money increasingly outweighing the need to disseminate knowledge, is the growth of alternatives like the Creative Commons license and copyleft. I'm curious to see as this drama unfolds, how big are these non-commercial alternatives are going to get and how useful they are going to be for the people who need them the most.
Open source software is already a force to be reckoned with in the programming world. Questions for which answers may not yet exist: can the model of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) and related systems in the software world be adapted to broader areas of creative expression? To educational content? Are there signs they are already doing so?
I've come to realize that an entire semester could easily be spent studying copyright laws and practices and still not cover it all. This is clearly an important topic to educators as they and their students re-use content of all types.
One subject that interests me as US copyright law gets ever more lobbyist driven, with the influence of money increasingly outweighing the need to disseminate knowledge, is the growth of alternatives like the Creative Commons license and copyleft. I'm curious to see as this drama unfolds, how big are these non-commercial alternatives are going to get and how useful they are going to be for the people who need them the most.
Open source software is already a force to be reckoned with in the programming world. Questions for which answers may not yet exist: can the model of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) and related systems in the software world be adapted to broader areas of creative expression? To educational content? Are there signs they are already doing so?
Friday, September 9, 2011
My First Post
If the cat will stop walking on the keyboard, I can upload the first post on my unimaginatively, but accurately, named blog for my EDTC 6340-60 class. I have another intermittent blog going, also in Blogger, called "Of Graves, Of Worms, and Epitaphs" (Shakespeare fans will recognize the quote) which I created for sharing articles of interest with the students in Mortuary Science at SAC where I used to work.
This seems to be going OK so here goes my first test post.
This seems to be going OK so here goes my first test post.
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