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.
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