Daily Create Week 1 Recap

Because the new ds106 Daily create is so distributed, and sometime the tags fail to bring content into the main site, I am requiring my students to either blog their efforts as they go (which some are doing), or post a summary at the end of the week.

This will not only make it easier for me to track, it will, more importantly, provide them a way to organize all their DCs in one place. I have already created a screencast on how to do this with WordPress Categories but one can also do it with tags.

This week is not over, but I wanted to create a demo. On this blog, I am tagging all my posts for this as dailycreate which becomes likable via http://cogdogblog.com/tag/dailycreate

The other thing I want them to do is to embed their content in the blog, not link to it or upload it. For both YouTube and Flickr, this is easily done in WordPress by putting the URL for anyof those item pages on its own line– no copy/paste of HTML, no plugins needed (for soundcloud they will have to use embed codes).
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Grant’s Road [Tunes]

Grants Road Tunes

This photo is somewhere near the Arizona / New Mexico border. It was fitting to see a sign for Grants Road, since I had been listening to @grantpotter playing a set of road tunes for me on ds106radio.

It was epic, and carried me clear from east of Holbrook AZ into Albuquerque NM.

It’s just a small example of how generous a spirit Grant is, he deserves more than a road, even more than a town, heck they name a new Canadian province for him.

Thanks!

No Moss

A Sweeeeeeeping Curve

There is no moss on this roving stone. In 30 minutes, me and Red Dog are headed back up this hill on AZ 87 towards Winslow, turning right on I40, and beelining for the East Coast.

A new odyssey.

My destination is Fredericksburg VA, where I am teaching a section of ds106 thanks to the awesome support from Jim Groom, who has been pinch hitting for me in class til I show up Monday. I have been beaming in via Skype, but not all in the vein of Dr Oblivion (I have all my hair and sanity).

Why go? I still have the means, if I choose, to be a bum for another year, but I want to try some new things, like teaching a real class. I am keen to hang out with the DTLT crew if they will spare me a table, cause Tim, Martha, Andy, and Jim do Rick the house. I will also be close to my sisters in Baltimore, and a hop from a favorite spot in Canada.

The truck is almost loaded, including kayak and road bike, and with some sadness, I close up my house in Strawberry, which will wait patiently til I come back down the curve.

The plan is maybe Albuquerque tonight, Oklahoma City Friday (and visit Wes Fryer), then Nashville by Saturday night, and on to Blacksburg Sunday to see Gardner Campbell (and hopefully catch David Carter-Tod for breakfast Monday?). I should get to Freddy by Monday afternoon, and show up for class at 6pm.

Like a rolllllllllllllllllling stone, says Muddy.

Organizing with WordPress Categories

Justin had a good question about organizing his content, wanting a way to easily show just the things he publishes for his Daily Create. This is a job for Categories (to be fair, it could be done jut the same with tags, there’s not a significant difference between them).

I wanted to experiment with showing this via an audio screen cast, which demonstrates how to create categories, how to update existing posts to be included in new categories, how to use them on a new post, how to find the URL for you category page, and how to add a menu item to point to your category.

FYI I made this on my iPad with Explain Everything, made screenshots, annotated them, recorded audio, and upload directly to YouTube. That was easy!

Ready, Set, Blog

In yesterday’s class we made great progress with getting their blogs set up. I’m pleased to see the ones that have already been made their own with different themes.. Now it’s time to fill them up!

In the class session we reviewed quickly the layout of cpanel; you may never return there but it is important to know that you are, as in the readings cover this week, your own system administrator.

Thanks to Jim we have a video archive from this

We did a rather quick overview of the WordPress admin tools– note that above I embedded that video simply by putting on a blank line:

http://vimeo.com/35545353

This works for Flickr, YouTube and a few more services. For your video posts like the DailyCreate, it is easier on the user to view the embedded YouTube than an uploaded video file (and it does not add to your file space quota).

You will find thorough documentation at http://wordpress.org as well as information on plugins and themes. You can install any of these via the WordPress admin area.

Speaking of plugin, the comment spam protection service Askimet comes with your install, so you just need to activate its plugin — note you will have to provide a WordPress.com API code, you should be able to get one at http://askimet.com.

Pages are edited like blog posts but exist as static pieces, they are not part of the chronological flow of blog posts. You should edit your own About page to reflect your own presence. You can add pages, other WordPress content, outside links to your blogs menu via the appearance tab.

Other things to fiddle with are in the settings. Permalinks create more readable urls for your posts. If you turn on XML-RPC in the writing options, you can use other tools to post to your blog (I am using the iPad app to write this post; there is also a way you can write a blog post directly from Flickr).

Explore the widgets in your appearance, this provides ways to customize bits for your sidebars and footers. You can even insert your own text and HTML– my Flickr badge uses the text widget and the code created by Flickr (make your own badge at http://flickr.com/badge.gne.

Look to the ds106 web site for information on this weeks reading, guest speaker, and assignment. We will be having a discussion in class Wednesday on the essay and the video, be ready to talk about your own “nugget”, and you might search the site to find things previous students have done- search for “Bags of Gold”. The speaker will be live on video for a class discussion Thursday. This is optional, but you should refer to the archive in your assignment.

Now go blog, go!

2010/365/154 The Classics Never Go Out of Style

2012/366/23 The Day the MacBookPro Died

2012/366/23 The Day the MacBookPro Died
cc licensed (BY) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

She went slow and painfully, my MacBookPro. I’m thinking it was Friday in Phoenix, when I inadvertantly forgot to zip the pouch on my backpack, and she fell hard to the concrete.

She worked fine over the weekend. But last night, the beachballs begain floating more and more frequently. I scrambled to do disk repair, permissions fix. It seeme dokay when logged in as another user, so I tried to do a fresh time mahcine backup, but it failed.

Twice. I did manage to copy my documents and a few more directories to a backuyp drive.

The last fail however, was terminal. Now the disk cannot be mounted.

My version of Disk Warrior is out of date, and with only by 2002 old iBook, I cannot burn a new DVD upgrade; I am fairly sure the Warrior can save the day.

So for the next week or more, I am making do with this ancient laptop, my iPad, and iPhone. I am worried about ther loss of my Aperture library (the masters are all stored external), some financial records, some projects in development…. the last time machine backup was (gulp) November 23, 2011.

She’s dead, Jim, she’s dead.

I had thoughts of running down to Phoenix to get a new one but really don’t have time, with all remaining to get done before hitting the road Thursday. So this will be part of the experience, and it’s interesting to try and get things done without the tools I’ve been used to.

My ancient iBook did have the ConnectedFlow Flickr exporter and it still worked!

And at this point there’s not much use in getting all strung out.

But damn…. Why did she have to die?

Week 2 Preview…

For students in my section of ds106, here is a little bit to expect for the coming week. The heat just increases every week.


cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by ?olo

Before class, you should have at least:

  • Create Your account on ds106 site http://ds106.us/register (about 1/3 have done so far). Create a gravatar so you get a custom icon. Join the class group.
  • Create your social media accounts. Make accounts in twitter, flickr, youtube, soundlcoud. Add these to your ds106 profile. I created a twitter list that includes all tweets from students in my section- you can subscribe to updates too – https://twitter.com/#!/cogdog/umwsp122
  • Do at least one Daily Create. get in the practice now. http://tdc.ds106.us. I will do what I can to track; it makes it easier for me to find (and others) if you tweet or write a blog post with your work.
  • Get your domain and blog set up. I see 11 have done this so far, well done. be sure to email me your blog url when it is set up- once added to the ds106 site, you can find all blog posts at http://ds106.us/tag/umwsp122/

For Monday we will be doing a lot of hands on work and be helping those who need help with their domains and blog set up. We will go over some of the cpanel tools and ways to work with WordPress. If you have your blog set up, this will be a chance to start or learn how to customize it more, e.g. work with themes, plugins, settings, widgets. I’ll give some tips on shortcuts for using media in your blog.

On Wednesday we will have a discussion on our topic for this week, wich is on framing your personal digital space- to give some reason why we are making you go through these hijinks of making a personal web site. There will be an optional live video stream Thursday with our guest speaker (this will be archived, as are all sessions), and you will have an assignment to write a blog post about your reflections on his ideas.

Are you creating? yes you are or will be.

Happy Birthday ds106 Radio


cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by peasap

This weekend marks the one year anniversary of the launch of what has been to me, one of the best shared online experiences in my 20+ years here– ds106 radio. This web radio station was started with a tweet by Jim Groom, that has gone millions of miles since then, thanks to the genius of Grant Potter (the story here).

I’ve mulled over what I wanted to give the birthday box, and I kept going back to one song I always reach for, because it is fun, it’s about radio, and it transports me back to the 19080s when I first saw this wild stuff called MTV- Wall of Voodoo’s Mexican Radio:

I wondered if I could play the song and maybe recast the lyrics, I was pleased to find an easy set of guitar tabs, and I set down my own lyrics. Here is my first draft (insert usual self deprecating I suck statements).

Mexican ds106 Radio

To add some background, I nabbed a loop of the opening electronic noise from the original song (1 second sampled), and made a repeating loop in Garage Band of a drum beat.

So here is the deal- I know I missed some people and stories in my lyrics, so I have set them up as an open Google Doc. If you want to add a stanza or two go ahead, and I will perform it live sometime tomorrow (Sunday).

Just for reference, my first round fo lyrics:

I check the status the server’s okay
Again its only… auto dj
Make a playlist, flip on Nicecast
Talking over making breakfast.

Refresh webpage, listeners three
Must be GNA, up in Philly.
Got Papaya, and the PBX,
from a pay phone live cast.

I’m on d s 106, radio
106 woah oh, radio

Just a year ago, Jim Groom tweeted
Radio station is what we needed.
Over a weekend, up in BC
Grant Potter built it easy.

Rowan Peter or Peter Rowan,
Turned the mic on cicada going.
Way out west from a sblue shed
Its a monocast, all that she said

d s 106, radio
106 woaj oh, radio

Earth was shaking, Tokyo
live reports from Scottlo
Timmmmmy Boy, made it crazy.
with the all night karaoke

We got easegill, South Pacific
Kernohan, apocalyptic.
Riga Stories, Micha’s Momma,
Flowing out, with vodka

d s 106, radio
106 woah oh, radio

Noise professor, circuits humming
Leslie’s got her uke a strumming
I’m a talking while I’m driving
Giilia’s up late, and archiving

Scary stories, February
Live jamming, Sanctuary
Steven Hurley, his dream with us
Bryan Jackson, musical genius

d s 106, radio
106 woah oh, radio

Have a great second year, ds106 radio. #4life is #4life.


cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by 150hp

Scales are for Lizards; ds106 is Fractal, Mutating


cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by Troup1

On the list of question topics that anesthetize me, just below FERPA and Intellectual Property, is the query on an experimental project, “Does it scale?”

Scales are fine for lizards. And weighing stuff.

Expanding things by scaling them is not the only model of growth. For Massive Open Online Courses, this year’s poster child the Stanford AI course, they grow the same way we enlarge an object in graphic editing software. We grab the corner and pull it outward. This method does certainly provide growth, expansion, and is not wrong in any way– but it is doing so by replication, by aiming to give each participant the same experience, the same lockstep pace.

But it was while driving down the mountain roads to Phoenix today, thinking about the forms of nature from rocks by the road to hills, to mountains, I got to thinking about the way ds106 is already growing by its incarnation a year ago. It might not be massive, but there are almost 400 blogs being pulled into the main site. But it is not growing by replicating; in fact, the growth is more organic, both in a fractal sense and a mutation sense.

At the University of Mary Washington, the growth is by running two sections, one Jim Groom is leading and one I am getting my first crack at. One might say that is scaling, from the 25 students Jim taught last year to the 60+ we have now.

But look at the other ways people, external to us, on their own, are mutating ds106:

  • Scott Lockman is tapping into the assignments for his Cyberspace and Society class in Japan
  • There are maybe two classes tapping in from the CUNY system.
  • Ben Rimes reports a similar use of ds106 assignments in 3rd and 4th grade classes that another teacher in Hernico County in Virginia has done (I’m getting lazy looking for these links).
  • Bryan Jackson is running a professional development cohort (at where?? Langley?) using ds106 to tie into their teaching strategies. I also saw where John Johnston had taken the ds106 assignment bank model for a professional development program.

There’s probably a few more examples out there, but they are not all the same- different courses, different education levels, and each one not taking the course as a single product, but reframing it for their own needs. These are not just carbon copies of ds106, but mutants, lovel mutants, and in some sense fractal, especially around the core of the assignment bank.

And I would not be surprised if we see some interesting ways for other educators to tap into the Daily Create.

This growth approach is in many ways, a parallel for the underlying, packet passing distributed structure of the internet we are all riding on. “Does it scale?” is irrelevant here, so I’d like to say, it does not have to scale- it is growing organically. Rather than taking the course as handed out by an entity, people are making it their own, meshing it with their own teaching needs, strategies.

And that is a beautiful thing, let’s make some art damnit, fractally


cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by Barabeke

I’m thinking this is not quite as well formulated as I’d like to express what I thought of while behind the wheel- there is nothing wrong about growth by scaling, but its not the only method.

And the fractal mutations have only just begun!

The Web as it Was 15 Years Ago


cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

Yeah, even in the early days it was all about sex online…

No it wasn’t, that was the unfortunate “special theme” for this September 1996 issue of “the net” magazine. I found this mint copy, along with the CD-ROM, in my Box of Old Job Stuff. The reason I have kept this is not because of the Special 16 Page Report, but because my first web project at Maricopa Community College that got attention was featured in this issue (No, my first web project was NOT abut sex, get yer minds outta the gutter).


cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

The magazine had a mention of Writing HTML (still alive at http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/tut/), a guide I published on the web back in 1994 and kept piling on for the next 6 years or so.

I had an odd thought looking at this magazine that back in this time, the best way to help people understand what was on the web was not done online, but in print magazines (well there was the NCSA Mosaic What’s New Page which stopped being updated in 1996)).

One more time- the effective way to share resources and interesting web sites was via printed screenshots and URLs. There was likely some online version of this, but the web was just on the cusp of being seen as useful, and still a few years away from being something people knew about widely.

So let’s go back and see what was relevant in 1996 (besides online sex).

  • A new web search engine was out, “InfoSeek” to try and compete with Lycos, Yahoo, WebCrawler, excite
  • NetNoir has a new interactive storytelling adventure called “African Story Lines”- NetNoir is still around as one of the first African-American web sites. Look at the instructions “You can reach NetNoir via America Online via keyword NetNoir or the World Wide Web at http://www.netnoir.com/) — AOL was seen as the more familiar gateway, and this new fangled thing we just now call “the web” was the World Wide Web.
  • Listed under “education” is Cells Alive which was done originally to promote the capabilities of a graphic design company, but is s reference that still lives now at http://www.cellsalive.com/
  • “The world waited with baited breath for the release of the World Wide Web Browser Netscape Navigator 2.0″ – the bug new feature was the new plugin architecture that allowed technologies like Acrobat, Quicktime, Java to load in a web page rather than external applications. “Navigator is still a buggy an doften unwieldy creature, though. It hordes memory and it crashes with alarming consistency.” Internet Explore did not even exist; the other browsers were NCSA Mosaic, WinWeb, and MacWeb.
  • The Spot was highlighted as a web tv show, what we would call a reality show (it is still up at http://www.thespot.com/) “this site follows the affairs, happenings, and ups and downs pf five hot Los Angelinos. They live in a sprawling, seven bedroom beach house with a 42-year history as a carousing and partying site.”
  • There is a feature article on “Web Word Processors: Using the HTMl Extensions of Word and WordPerfeect” The author compared the features of Microsoft Word 7.0 for Windows 95 and Novell’s WordPerfect (version 6.1 for Windows and 3.5 for Mac).
  • The first video conferencing tool I recall is described here “A Basic Guide to CU-SeeMe”- software that was invented at Cornell University. “While CU-SeeMe is a cool way to communicate (if nothing else) there are still problems with using video and audio over the net… Even with the high bandwidth of a T1 line, I rarely, if ever, received more than 5 frames oer second of video form other CU-SeeMe users… Modem users will have more problems than those on ISDN or T1 lines. Transmissions can almost be useless at 14.4 modem speeds (and audio won’t work at 14.4) with only a bit of improvement at 28.8″ What a long way we have come!
  • The music sites reviewed included CDNow! and EMusic- both front ends for ordering audio CDs- digital music online? hah, not in 1996.
  • Microsoft was proposing a standard specification for secure financial transactions, Secure Transaction Technology (STT) – I am not sure if it really exists, as everything now is done under SSL (secure sockets layer) that NetScape developed.

There’s a lot more, but this bit of back browsing is interesting to see the state of the net in 1996- hey is this what you were looking for in terms of turning the clock back, Martha? I have an extra copy of the magazine I can bring out to F’burg if it might be of use to you.