CogBlogged from ‘February, 2011’

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog I feel like this just listening to the live audio stream; I can only imagine the full force gale of being in the ds106 class with The Bavanator.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Adam Melancon I’m doing a presentation at ITC 2011 on some parallels between photography and learning- a piece of that is using the independent learning, feedback, and regular process of The Daily Shoot is an example to look at. In one part, I would like to show some examples of people who’s photography skills have improved just by the regular practice of doing daily photography via the Daily Shoot. If this is you, I will be looking for a URLK for a “before” shot (e.g. your early dailyshoot stuff) and an “after” shot (something more recent that shows how your photography has gotten better. I cannot offer anything but a little sunshine, and I will become one of your best friends in flickr. If you can help, just drop some info in my form at http://bit.ly/better-via-ds

In an upcoming presentation where I hope to make a case to a group of teachers that they are more innovative then they give themselves credit for, I planned to show a well worn clip of the teaching style I am fairly sure they do not employ What I loved in looking this up is that Ben Stein totally improvised this bit, that it was not John Hughes’ script except for the “Bueller? Bueller?” roll call. Even in the credits, the guy is so dull he does not even have a name, just “The Economics Teacher”. Sometimes I am curious at how they got the kids to get that empty a stare, but maybe they have a lot of practice. More about this bit via the source: Ben Stein’s famous monotonic lecture about the Hawley–Smoot Tariff Act was not originally in Hughes’s script. Stein, by happenstance, was lecturing off-camera to [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by brianjmatis Working on my taxes today got me started on trying a hand at a ds106 playlist assignment story (plus the Beatles “Taxman” showed up near the top as I scanned my music in iTunes. I could not help but try yo play in some flickr photos as well cc licensed flickr photo shared by marcos papapopolus cc licensed flickr photo shared by krembo1 Happy pup- as am I cause a decent refund is coming my way!

For ds106 Visual Assignment Four Icon Challenge Reduce a movie, story, or event into it’s basic elements, then take those visuals and reduce them further to simple icons. I am a horrible free drawer, so I set up a set of frames in PhotoShop, imported some images found (somewhere on the internet), and did some tracing and brushing. Sot quite as elegant as the example, oh well. ds106= opportunity to break rules

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Are you scared yet? No? Well you should have tuned in to our late night live radio show on #ds106radio — with Bryan Alexander visiting me here, it was the perfect plan to hatch. Sadly he seems to have been adbucted overnight by aliens, as have I. Scary Stories from Strawberry I cannot full say how much fun this was to do. I was inpsired to recall stories from The Thing at the Foot of the Bed, a book I enjoyed (or was spooked by) as a kid. I ordered a used copy on Amazon, but it will be another week before I can go back in time. We did this half planned and half improv. We sketched out a script of us talking, than getting spooked, and then something really weird happening at the end. [...]

Trying out One Shot from the set of the Visual Assignments in ds106. Take a single photograph. Chop it up comic book style to create tension and narrative This original is from my 2008 visit to Iceland, with the horse Nonni in the background laughing (or yawning at me). cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog I am really trying to fit in to this strange landscape, and not quite making it, eventually becoming the butt of the jokes around the horse pasture: Very funny, Nonni!

There is a lot of new stuff happening with web technology every day, hour, minute, and then there ones that just make you stand back, like Neo, and say , “Woah” I just had that after playing with the BBC Dimensions site http://howbigreally.com/ – it describes itself well: Dimensions takes important places, events and things, and overlays them onto a map of where you are. Or more detail Dimensions is an experimental prototype for the BBC. We want to bring home the human scale of events and places in history. The D-Day landing beaches measured from London to Norfolk in the UK. How far would the Titanic stretch down your street? Dimensions simply juxtaposes the size of historical events with your home and neighbourhood, overlaying important places, events and things on a satellite view of where you live. Certain “Dimensions” can be transformed into short walks, so you can get [...]

“Twitter is a waste of time” — yeah, time I could better spend reading dull emails, clipping my toenails, filing my taxes. Pfooooey. Yesterday, I got caught up in a mini burst of twitter spontaneity that was pure fun… and is still gurgling along today. IOt was the opposite end of the tail from trending, but it sure was fun for 30 minutes. This all started when Michael Berman sent me a chat via Skype because he saw my satus line “Strawberry Fields Forever” (a play on my location in Strawberry, AZ), and he said, it would be funny to have a list of Less Than Enthusiastic Rock Songs like “Strawberry Fields for a Little While” or “You Shook Me for 15 Minutes”. Well heck, why just play back and forth on chat. I said, let’s bounce this to twitter – with the hash tag #lessThanEnthusiasticSongs It was just pure [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by 尽在不言中 There might be other things to blog about, but nothing seems as exciting or interesting as the Mad Camp Adventures of Digital Storytelling Open Course aka ds106. There is a rive of creativity shared via the distributed blogs, the free form ds106 radio (by the people, for the people, of the people), a budding TV station, live weekly class-casts (yesterday was D’Arcy Norman talking on photography- hoping the UMW folks are working on an archive page for the recordings, hint hint hint nudge elbow wink hint). All of these are things we think can go beyond the usual slide talkin in Elluminate space that is the norm for synchronous online actvity. Jim reminded me of another live element we talked about- it was a half formed idea rooted in the regular #_____chats yo see happening in twitter #edchat, #lrnchat, dot dot dot. Others [...]