CogBlogged from ‘December, 2011’

Among other TEDx Talk videos I have seen recently, the one by Luis von Ahn on Massive-scale online collaboration, Stephen Downes notwithstanding, generated a number of ideas for me. von Ahn is the man behind the idea of reCaptcha- originally a Carnegie-Mellon project eventurally gobbled up by Google. What I liked most is his example of looking differently at a problem- digitizing texts via OCR and turning a normally wasted amount of human activity- proving themselves to not be bots by entering the text into a box of scrambled letters– into a useful activity by making the captcha images not random, but ambiguous words in the proces. The video alone is worth watching for von Ahn’s description of his newest project, to translate the web into all languages via free language learning lessons (see the video or http://duolingo.com/) I signed up for to get an invite for dulingo, but it [...]

cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by only alice Creative commons usage can be vague and tricky on its own, but it gets even more fishy. I was searching compfight for an image to use with a puff rant on predictions. This flickr image, licensed CC BY, that came up on a creative commons search result was the kind I would like to use, until I read the caption: This is the picture by Mark Weaver, I copy it here to only use for my blog posting; the the original here: www.flickr.com/photos/markweaver/5300867059/ That link is to the original image which is a New York Times image All Rights Reserved. Now to me, copying a copyrighted image and then setting the copy to be creative commons licensed does not really make it so, Maybe this is an attempt to do a flickr version of No Copyright Intended. [...]

cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by adamthelibrarian It’s been a few years since my last round of predictions (for 2009), but I’m counting on being 100% accurate. My prediction for 2012 is a ton of predictions for 2012. That’s all I got. For a refreshing approach to this old shlock, see Dave Cormier’s List of Black Swans for 2012.

cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by greenkozi Jim has already been dropping teasers but if he blogs, then it’s official. It’s been a year since the first open course version of Digital Storytelling (ds106) at the University of Mary Washington and in 2012 it’s going to DEFCON 1. Yep, you read it there- ds106 is open and you better get yourself geared up to be part of the action. And get this… I am officially teaching a section! After having the chance to participate from the internet fringes last year they are actually going to hand over a group of students to my care– which means I am calling on all of my internet connections to be part of this. I’ll be vague about the logistics, but Jim is teaching one section at UMW and I am taking on another. This is in addition to [...]

After seeing a few tweets today from @NancyWhite, @BryanAlexander, and @injeniuty about the ideas improv, I thought it was time to give a tryout to running PechaFlickr in a Google Hangout. Huh? PechaFlickr is a little experiment I built last year that combines Pecha Kucha with the improve act of Battle Decks all drawing random images from flickr. A few clicks back I was curious if it could be done in Google Hangout, with the new extended features of sharing screens. I did a brief test with Giulia Forsythe and it seemed doable. So I threw out a soft invite tonight and had a successful fun play with Nancy White, Giulia Forsythe, Scott Lockman, and Andy Forgrave. To make it work, I set up a mystery tag (since I was the only one to see it) in the advanced screen (so I could pick 7 slides for 15 seconds each). [...]

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog It was a grey, rainy, snowy, wintery day up here in the Arizona mountains. In the afternoon I decided to pull out the little mini turntable and listen to for the first time, some of the old 78s I brought home from my Mom’s house. I had ever heard these before, but played them live for ds106 radio (note, a first segment where I was trying my Zoom H2 as a mic produced ugly white noise, thanks @easegill for letting me know). I recall seeing these records on the shelves in the basement of the home I grew up in Baltimore, but am not sure if they were my parents, or more likely my grandparents. Regardless, the 78s are old; they have significant heft. Each disk has one song per side (78 rpms go fast) and they certainly have that [...]

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog The StoryBox project will end its gathering of media at the end of 2011, so there is still time to share any media before the time capsule closes- see http://cogdogblog.com/storybox for ways you can drop media files. During my 15,000 mile, 5 month 2 country, 29 state/province travels I collected a Shareskian “wack sock” of media- 1230 image, video, audio, document files: audio recordings: 127 documents: 18 music: 41 photos: 891 videos: 147 remixes: 6 And there is room for more! But to keep it true to the time capsule concept, the last media I will add will have to get to me by Dec 31, 2011 (at 12:59:59) What happens then? My plan is to return all of this content online, in a yet to be created web site that would allow, ideally, people to add tags/descriptions to help [...]

cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by eatmorechips Stephen Downes is not enamored by the TED machine: TED has certainly figured out how to monetize learning – and Alan Levine notwithstanding a big part of that, I would say, lies in offering opinions and talks that are safe for business people offered by speakers who are TV-pretty, speaking the language of the empowered, addressing first-world problems. I am highly doubtful I will evert pay the $6000 to cross the velvet ropes to attend a TED event, but I also am not quite as confident I can judge fully the intent of the people behind it. The selection of a link Stephen’s on the word “language” is I am not sure more than a cheap shot. But I shoot ‘em cheap all the time. Sure they are making money, but in the TEDTalks they are also providing [...]

Dean Shareski is already done with his Guitar learning project feeling that good is good enough. I commend him for carrying out. I’ve not picked up my harmonica much, have not done any lessons, or practices. Zero hours added, so I am not even near good enough. But there was a time a few weeks ago when David Kernohan was playing some electric guitar live on ds106 radio, and he responded to my request to play some blues riffs in E so I could jam later. I snagged a recording of his playing: @dkernohan blues riff I’ve been sitting on this a while, and tonight, thought “WTF” I will just make some noise. Here it is, it is awful, and do not tell em otherwise. I’m not giving up, but then again, I’ve not put more than a few hours, if that, into it. Just goes to show that you [...]

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog This multi-day slice touches on my week in Tasmania, starting Dec 7, 2011. IN accordance to Scottlo’s usual open self flagellation over audio tools, I have to worn you portions of this are indecipherable dues to the android recorder app I used which seemed in some places to increase the levels so much to completely distort my words. Slice 005 On my first day, I left the house of my host, Frankie Forsyth, and followed a road up the hill providing the view above. It led me to an old quarry with a curious junk car and an arrangement of stones into a large cross. I am still coughing rather badly, a barking reflecting dog. I pause to ask where is the big giant answer from the sky? Do the clouds spell really “ds106″? Of course they do. In other [...]