So long as a man imagines that he cannot do this or that, so long is he determined not to do it: and consequently, so long it is impossible to him that he should do it.
– Spinoza

Lately I’ve been tuned into how often people, especially those who perhaps have more treelines, tell themselves they cannot do something– without having really tried. It is in many ways, the marker of those who buy into the energy of ds106 versus those who wrinkle their nose at it like some foul piece of rotten fruit.

It’s what I saw in my University of Mary Washington students, who took on 16 weeks of many such challenges (of course they have to for the grade). One of my last semester students knew others taking the same course taught by the dude who does it the non ds106 way- it is much “easier”, they read a textbook and only have to make one video, but my student said she preferred the ds106 version even though it was way more work.

A difference is the way people who will not say “no” before they step into the unknown.

It came up recently when I did the True Stories of Openness presentation at Yavapai College — I pulled out the capture of the whiteboard contributions when I did the same session for ETMOOC, and asked participants to share barriers to sharing:

Almost every item on the board was a self judgement of a low esteem of the value of what they had to share. And labeling it “imposter syndrome” like it is a DSM-IV diagnosis does not address the issue. I’ve seen this for 20 years in education- people value and welcome resources shared by others, but feel intimidated about sharing back.

Part of it is, to me, some confusion about what it is we share. Most think it is just “stuff” – documents, media, publications. Those are excellent sharables, but I’m more interested in the sharing of ideas, of processes, of strategies, of arguments, of rough drafts and alpha code. From Everything is a Remix to Where Good Ideas Come From it’s obvious (at least to me) that the potential for a society, organization, institution, country, culture, world to be a better place and innovate for progress, it happens better when there are more raw ideas materials swirling in the open space.

Innovation abhors a vacuum.

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by kevin dooley

Now lest I be targeted about being holier than thou or thee, I find myself doing it all the time. More than a few times I have found my self looking at a new programming language or API or someone else’s elegant code and thinking “I cannot do that”. On the train ride recently a group of us at the dining table where talking about the friends of one woman’s who are regular climbers of Half Dome, and how they sleep in those bags tied to a rope hanging thousands of feet in the air.

We all said, “I cannot do that”.

Has anyone of us tried?

So if you find yourself saying/thinking “I cannot do that” ask yourself- “have I really ever tried?”

I once said I could never run a half marathon. I ran 5 and 1 full marathon (and I hated it but I did it). I still hate running.

cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by dare6

And there is a direct connection to learning, because I feel quite often, in higher education, we are so concerned about students not succeeding (or faculty in technology workshops) that we err on the side of trying to make things “easy” – full of detailed instructions and screencasts…

Yet it’s been one of my loves of teaching ds106 how often we do not provide students explicit instructions on how to create their media. We do not provide many software tutorials, if anything they are technique ones, and it usually other ds106 participants who create them. That was the thinking that Martha Burtis and I had for the end of our two week ds106 Bootcamp (first 2 weeks of the semester) is to give them a challenge to create an animated GIF. And purposefully we do not tell them how.

The point is not to create the GIF (well not the primary objective), but to learn how to figure things out, to learn how to learn the ds106 way. And they get less dependent on me as the teacher to be the font of technical expertise (which I am not, I just know how to look stuff up).

And this is the Stretch, the place where learning happens, when we go beyond the boundaries of what we know how to do. It is why the ds106 Daily Create is so valuable because it encourages people to try these things in a low or no stakes game. Their achievements are not graded (UMW students are graded for trying and writing up their process). That was the magic I found in its predecessor, the Daily Shoot- which gave me each day a photographic challenge, and made my try techniques or subjects I would not have normally done on my own.

It is also what see almost every semester when we start the audio units. I hear comments like “I dread audio” or “I hate audio” from students who have actually not really listened to a well produced radio show or every tried to create an audio mix themselves. It always turns around 3 weeks later, after they have fund the creating audio material is no different from manipulating text, cut and paste and combining.

So what are we providing in an environment of learning, when we make it easy, when the answers are google-able, or the assessment is a stupid multiple choice, or just where the work is not challenging? This feels painfully true for me the way we work with faculty on using technology, where so many of them have absorbed a sense of learned helplessness.

cc licensed ( BY ND ) flickr photo shared by TheWanderingAmerican

“Oh I cannot blog, I dont have time for that.”

“I stick to Powerpoint because I know how to use it.”

“I am not a computer person” (one of my favorites to shoot down- there is no such thing as a COmputer Person, I have never met a Computer Person. We are humans, damnit).

I am not suggesting everything needs to ba hard and challenging, we do need a system of scaffolding, a place to provide foundations. But frankly, if we are not making learning challenging, we are not providing learning. If it becomes a system to mass generate degrees and badges, we are not building a society that can take on our real challenges (financial, environmental, etc).

That was one of the aspects of my graduate program I liked- most of the classes, the seminars, the research, was open ended. We were not just jumping over a bar because it was set there, we had to define what the bar was, and where it was, and how to jump it.

I also was thinking about this during the April 2013 TCC Online Conference during Terry Anderson’s session Getting the Right Mix: Open Content, Quality Teaching and Supportive Community. I really enjoyed Terry’s ideas, frameworks, and big concepts. And he paid ds106 a large sized compliment as an open community of learning.

But he also referred to ds106 as “a bit manic”.

Manic.

I know what that means- chaotic. Not neatly laid out. Short on re-iterated objectives and crisp assignments.

Do you know of another space like it? It’s right outside the doors of your university. If we are not preparing students for the manic mess of the outside world, where they will not do their work in a password protected LMS, where things are not clearly laid out, then we are not doing our duty as educators.

Jim Groom reiterated that as he does so well in the session he did here for the College of Wooster; about how people can look at ds106 as “that wild crazy course” but then back of distancing saying, that approach would never work for what I teach.

It’s not about teaching your class like ds106, it’s about teaching your class in a way the world and the web really works.

And it’s about making a space where people learn to try things before saying they cannot do them.

But do me a favor, pay closer attention to the times people around you or even yourself are uttering that “I cannot do X” phrase. It is totally open to query. You do not know the answer until you have sincerely tried (several times).

cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by gaptone

In education we should not be in the saying “no” business.

Instead of getting zapped by laser guns and whopping spaceships with her axe, instead, Alien Lady and Jim Groom laugh at old stories over the best tacos in Virginia, perhaps the entire east coast.

Messing with the Macguffin may be one of my all time favorite ds106 assignments, because technically it is pretty simple (superimpose some text on a screen capture of a movie scene):

Wikipedia defines the MacGuffin as “a plot element that catches the viewers’ attention or drives the plot of a work of fiction.” For this assignment forever change the plot of a movie, tv show, etc. by changing a single line of dialogue. Put this new line of dialogue below a screen-cap of the moment in the movie you’re changing. Credit to Tom Woodward for posting an example of this idea in the #ds106 Twitter stream.

The beauty here is in the thinking and decision of what incident might unravel the plot- the storytelling here is in the thinking not the tool tinkering. In this case, if Alien Lady is not in her house, she never encounters the spaceship (maybe they fly on to Jim’s house), and the creatures on the ship get to go home.

I knew I wanted one of the earlier clips she she is cooking in the kitchen, and holding objects in her hand. I got the idea to throw in a twist, what might get her out of the house, but tweet from a friend? So while her house is a shack, has no electricity or running water, she does have an iPhone (solar charger). I clone brushed the knife out of ehr hand in PhotoShip, and made room to insert an image of an iPhone (there must be only 10,000,000,000,000 of them out there). I did paste in a screen cap of a twitter screen rather than an iPhone ome screen, it is so small you canot read the tweet. I placed it over her hand, then copied her hand from the screen layer, returned to the oPhone layer, and deleted the selection to make it look like her hand was on top.

For the tweet, I used a very key site for doing ds106 fake content- LEMMETWEETTHATFORYOU http://lemmetweetthatforyou.com/ lets you type a username in a box, and the twitter message. In this case there really is an @AlienLady, so I inserted a clip of the TZ character for the icon.

And there you go, the power of the MacGuffin is that it can neutralize the Twilight Zone!

(click for full sized glory image)

This Fantasy TED Talk assignment is brought to you by the ds10zone:

Create a scene from a TED Talk being given by a fictional character. Obscure or well known, feel free to have your fictional character pontificating on their story, and their “essential truth” that has come to be known as TED Talks.

Week’s 1 assignment suggested using one of my all time favorite episodes, The Invaders, which in typical TZ fashion, leads you into an assumption of character that gets flipped in the end. A power of this episode is is spareness, one actor (A pitiful “victim” played by Agens Morehead), almost no dialogue, and music that builds the suspense. The woman’s contortions, moans, and screams draws us into seeing her as the victim of an invasion from beyond.

The “essential truth” here is one of presumption, ignorance, language barriers, and use of violence over reason.

When Jim Groom discussion re-filming episodes of the Zone, I speculated a redo of this episode using my mountain remote home in Strawberry AZ, which, of course carries a bit of side meaning given my home states rather regressive attitude towards immigration (IMHO). Before Arizona SN 1070, when I told people where I was from, they would respond with “Oh yes, Sedona, the Grand Canyon, Tombstone” nut post 1070, it was more of a odd query of, “What is going on in your state?”

So just like Alien Woman, we may have some confusion/assumptions/predispositions towards people from other countries, we paint as invaders,

And thus TED, in reaching beyond its liberal bias, may someday have talks for spreading ideas that don’t matter. Alien Woman would be perfect as a speaker.

I have to admit working with the video from the UMW media server, was a bit of a struggle to use- since I could not pawn it, and getting a still was though if the movie was paused. But I grabbed my images ok. I downloaded the PSD template Ben Rimes created initially for this assignment. The poster shown on screen was borrowed from the It Makes Sense Blog (a site I feel dirty just looking at). In Photoshop I used the distort tool to stretch the image to the corners of the screen. I pasted in a few copies of the alien non aliens from the episode, and then did some erasing to make them appear to be behind the sign and the dude’s head.

I do like this creative challenge of finding assignments from ds106 that could be done with this episode.

I’ve lost track of the count, but for 3 or 4 years, Jon Breitenbucher has invited me to remotely present 50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story for faculty participating at the College of Wooster’s annuam Faculty Fellowship institute. When he approached me again in December, I asked if here would be interest in having me come to Wooster to do it in person. Not that I mind presenting online, but maybe we could do more in person.

And Jon said, “Let me check.” And he did. And that is how I ended up boarding a train in Flagstaff to ride 2 dys to Cleveland (the train was my idea). I decided to mix and match parts of sessions I did in Asia in March, to focus more on what makes storytelling compelling and things about the shape of stories:

A new piece is talking some about maybe what us a problem with the word “storytelling” (as it emphasizes performance) versus storymaking. Yet performing is inportant so as I have enjoyed lately, we ran through a round of pechaflickr. In this group (8 faculty) we all took a turn, and this group knocked it out of the park (the word was “frog”).

I took ‘em through the 50 Ways parts but more with a focus on the story process. Typically I talk through a story that starts with a prompt based on a local landmark. I chose the place Jon took me out to eat, the Olde Jaol- the prompt being:

You would never believe who I saw sneaking outside of the Olde Jail last night

The point is to run through a process following the 3 Act play structure- establish the character/inciting moment, describe the things the protagonist needs to learn / do to take on the challenge, and then how it resolves. I set these up in a Google docs participants can group brainstorm.

For this workshop, I know the participants wanted to work on things related to their courses or proposed fellowship project, so I offered that as something they could do in the workshop. Yet I saw there some value in them doing their brainstorming together in the doc.

They subverted my idea.

And I like that.

They wanted to work together on a single story, involving if I recall right, a ficticios college President, Prince, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Toni Pepperoni (a cricket coach) and our hero, Rabbi Jane. They changed the location. They wrote out a more complete narrative I have ever seen, with one pair working on the document and the others finding media, which they shared in a drop box. Again, working in pairs, the started building out stories in the tools – Vuvox, Photo Peach, Glogster.

And I think they got the goal that the media is not the intended outcome, but the process.

I thus actually managed to not do much on ds106, which was perfect, because I returned the next day (although my work was done) to hear Jim Groom come in via Google Hangout to present the ideas behind and parts of ds106. Jim was, ever more so, en fuego. He did capture their attention, and though a bit glazed eyed, they know now when he is called The Reverend.

It was a grand experience- thanks Jon and Ellen for making this possible

cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by WilWheaton

First all the change in the layouts, which I admit I like as a design- it forefronts the image.

But alas, the change did again break my CC Attribution Helper script. It took a few rounds of XPATH fiddling, but there is a new update available.

Yet the flaffle over what the new accounts mean is staggerling clownish. Most everyone I heard form on twitter was as confused as I what these new accounts mean for existing pro users. Most think they are being asked to choose one of the new accounts (you do not).

Why would I want to switch to Free? Just because it is free? It suggests I need to do something by August.

I’m staying Pro, Yo.

But ahem flickr.

You just drop this on a community w/o any notice? sneak preview? ask for feedback?

I feel not only like a user, but used.

Tumblr, meet your future maker. Errr, Makr.

Just squeeze the ref rubber nose

Inside the Photo

Springtime at home means a steady stream of macro sots of flowers, and I am rarely disappointed to find a new way to photograph something I have done before. A key of course is a sharp lens, I doubt you get real crisp shots with a zoom lens. This one is with my trusty nifty fifty 50mm f/1.4 — not strictly a macro lens.

You will want to use a spot focus mode so you can pinpoint where you want the sharpest focus (or if you hav better eyesight than mee. do a manual focus. I sometimes go to too open an aperture, you want wide open enough to blut the background (and perhaps pick up some bokeh), but sometimes if you are too wide open, you lose being able to focus on enough of the interesting pieces.

I caught this wild tulip– I am only 50% sure of my identification– but these lovely flowers return every year in the same spot, in a pile of rocks next to my yard fence. Its easy to blow out the whites in the petals. But what helped in this one, a lesson I learned in a workshop with Bill Frakes and Don Henderson, was to be conscious of putting a bright subject against a dark background.

It need not be black, but I saw that I had a background of dark green leaves, and the flower was lit by afternoon sun. In editing I cropped it some to put the 1/3 lines right at the center of the flower, but it was by raising the blacks level, and contrast, I saw that I could drop out the background completely to a solid black that made the flower really pop.

So when you are shooting macros or lit subjects, try thinking more deliberately about putting it against a contrasting color in the back, or at least trying a few angles to put different things in the background- even if you are using aperture to lose the derail in shallow depth of field.

I tend to also shoot multiple shots with slightly different focus points. I have had plenty of frustration where a great composition was ;ost because of my lousy selection of where to focus.

PS! I plan to be writing a bit more of these “inside the photo” posts as I am considering running a multi-week online photo seminar this summer, so keep your eyes peeled to cogdogblog.com for some lofty announcements. Also, I am composing this on my Barking Dog Studios photo site, but syndicating it to my main blog. I’m also considering running a seminar on running a syndication hub, especially if someone expresses interest.

Barking Dog Studio » Inside the Photo is the part of my photo gallery site where on selected photos I write about what went into creating the image, sort of like DVD extra!.

Blogging to you from the outskirts of Vegas…. Las Vegas New Mexico. A guy just got off the train there just for the enchiladas.

I cannot fully explain why I feel at home, reassured by these vast open spaces of rock and scrub brush and sky. I overhear the passengers from New Jersey and Florida and Virginia shake their heads at what looks like a wasteland to people accustomed to malls and golf courses.

It’s the light, especially now on the leading edge of sunset, the infinite sky, and mostly a sense if a land do old it does not give a f*** about humans.

Even the tiny hamlets full if rusting rebar, pickups on blocks, heaps on busted cinderblocks…. Appeals to me.

I awoke in Flagstaff ready to roll at 3:40 am. There was a text message that my train was going to be 2 hours late. Do I catch some more sleep? It also said trains can “make up time” (it did the opposite) so it was not worth it to me to risk a miss.

The Amtrak station had a handful of other sleepy schedule victims, we lie knowing we share the same fate. A chatty old lady with a polish accent was eager to talk to everyone. She was sweet. She said “I only went to five years of school but I learned five languages.”

Another retired couple from
Pittsburgh asked alot about how different the world was these days. When I mentioned I was from Baltimore, the man got a little stiff necked and said “you know what that means?”

I failed and he reminded me of the rivalry of the Steelers and the Ravyns. “Not my fight” said I. He was immensely under impressed by the Grand Canyon “After you see it and take a photo, there’s not much else.”

I just smile, not in agreement not in anything I could muster an opinion besides, “Good, we need less people like you clogging that space.”

We boarded and the train set out. The space, even in the coach cheap seats is huge! And they recline almost full. Sleeping will be no problem (I already napped teice

We paralleled I-40, a route I’ve gone many times, like January of 2013 when I drove to Virginia. We cruised past Winslow AZ, Gallup and Albuquerque NM. I’m reading meaningless novels, taking random photos, did a few mini ds106radio broadcasts, tinkered a bit with my workshop materials for Tuesday, and posted about 4 Cinemagrams. Totally productive.

I ate lunch in the dining car with a retired couple from Rochester. After trading train and travel stories there was not much more I could muster. I might skip the dinner and munch my crackers and cheese I brought.

We duck into Colorado tonight and Kansas, friends are messaging me about tornados in Kansas.

Nice.

I’m totally stoked about this pace of travel, soaking it in.

Disclaimer: Yet another blog post without a destination in mind; this is in the vein of open ended wondering, probably ripe for shooting arrows at. Batteries not included, void where prohibited.

I’ve been dabbling, writing, teaching about digital storytelling for years, I still cannot tell you what it is, as a definition. For sometime, I’;ve had this niggling question that has been knocking to be written out. It is a question.

Is there a difference (or anything meaningful) in making a distinction between when storytelling is used as a strategy for some other goal as opposed to a goal in itself (just to tell a story)?

A few months ago I was at a conference, and sitting in a session on SEO. OI think it was because I did not move quick enough out of the previous session, and got trapped in the middle of a row.

A woman got up in front of the room; she was a good speaker, enthusiastic, and introduced her SEO company and explained what they do.

“We are just storytellers. Period.”

I got little queasy.

I mean c’mon, you get paid money to improve some company’s placement in search results. Yes, you tell a “story” of that company, but its for the express purpose of a business advantage.

Ugh, am I some kind of holier than thou storytelling snob?

It’s the core of consulting firms who help

clients define and give voice to what’s best and most distinctive about them–and use the power of who they really are to create compelling brands, develop inspired leaders and deeply engage their workforces.

I mean that actually sound compelling and something I’d want if I was some CEO.

And then it becomes a thing we do to tell stories with data (and people I really respect do a lot of powerful work here)– when I look at sites like this, they are dominated by the tools and the techniques, and I am not rarely seeing the story. Yes, it is finding ways to elicit meaning, direction, maybe interpretation out of data, but are these really stories? With a jpurney of a hero, an arc, the overcoming of obstacles?

I have seem amazing ways to represent complex data, amazing ways to elicit trends, patterns, but is there really a story that data tells, or is it we tell stories with data? Or ???

I am not criticizing, I am just asking, fumbling with the question.

I do this myself in my workshops, where I urge people to use storytelling techniques to create a message that is more approachable, interesting etc.

So dont get me wrong, I am fully in support of using storytelling as a means to an end, but for some reason it bristles me when it comes off as being something more spiritual or ethereal (scracth that,s top using fancy words you neoliberal so and so…)

What is the difference, if any, when the end goal is just to craft a story, when Story (capital) ia the goal? I honestly was tipped here a while ago from a conversation with Barbara Ganley, when she told me why she loved the community of Cowbird, because it was to her, a place of people outside the mainstream, who were solely aiming for creating stories for the sake of stories.

Maybe it is a meaningless question. Likely.

Let me move on to another one.

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by estelle f

I’ve been thinking to a lot about the word “storytelling” and how I bring it to workshops and presentations I have done (and are doing like next week). The word itself to me suggests the performance part, the idea that someone really good at it (like Barbara) are really powerful at the telling part. And while I believe that everyone does and can tell stories, the connotation that comes up is that really passionate, engaging person in the spotlight with a microphone.

If the word really mattered, I’d rather be talking about Storymaking than storytelling, because that is the stuff I like do- creating, manipulating, I feel more comfortable saying I am a Maker of stories than a Teller of stories.

Like I said, this is just one those free form posts of little purpose than to try and capture some thoughts. To be honest the name, and even the intent dont really matter as much as the making. Stop spending so much time retweeting links and gushing over TED Talks, get your butt over to ds106 for the next 5 weeks of the Twilight Zone flavored class Jim Groom is leading, and make some story art.

But if you got some insight or more likely, some criticism, bring ‘em

I kind of forgot how funky, cool, and outgoing a town is Flagstaff. After settling in at the Monte Vista Hotel, downing some custom brewed coffee, i walked towards the sound fo drums, and found this group of young people dancing, chanting, and pounding drums.

I’m here for the tracks, and was treated to a steady round of maybe 10 different freight trains passing. I have to wait til 4:41 am for my Amtrak to come in

cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

I wandered and noticed a long brick wall on Phoenix St that was covered in outlines for a mural. I walked up to the woman mixing paints, and Maggie enthusiastically told me about her mural project.

cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

Talking to strangers can be a good thing. It makes the world just a tiny bit better. At least it works that way for me.

Flagstaff, a magical place. Come back!

I’ve driven as far as I need to on this trip, 70 miles to Flagstaff.

My neighbor was going to drive me here, but he shopped by 2 hours before our planned departure and said he was a bit too nauseous to drive. I was able to ask another friend to drive, even though it was his birthday!

But I thought to check options for long term parking in Flagstaff and saw that you can park for free at Pulliam airport, so that’s where Red Dog sits now. This works well since I return in 3 weeks in the evening, and I can then drive right home and save the cost of a hotel.

I’m in the coffee bar at the Hotel Monte Vista, a fab place 2 blocks from the train station, and where Giulia and I had a ton of fun last July on our mini road trip.

I’ve only got 12 hours in town; my trsin for Chicago then Cleveland leaves at 4:41am Ouch. It’s 36 hours to Chicago! But then I get to hang out a few hours with @drgarcia

The Amtrak app has some nice features to reference your tickets and train status. They also have some sort of Passport thing with checkins and badges (or stamps in their parlance). I might get bored of that in a day.

Lets get this train a rolling! Stay tuned to ds106radio for traincasts.