Still back logging the Slices of Life audio reflections on my first round of teaching ds106, parsing back here to the last week of February, 2012.

Slices of Life 15: The Leap

We start first after class on Monday Feb 27. Today’s class was easy because I did not have to do anything- this was time set aside for work on their group audio projects, creating a radio show (see work for week 7).

I am no accepting excuses for not turning in work by the Sunday deadline or missing class. One student who said he missed last class “because his roommates asked him to dinner”. I said wow, it must have been some awesome dinner, where did you go? He said, “The dining hall”

Me: “You missed my class for dining hall food? Seriously? You have to show up, you gotta be there (for life)”

Each group has to turn in audio for shows the Monday after spring break, but to keep them on task, I am requiring for Wednesday’s class, that they need to prepare a 15 second bumper, one commercial and 5 minute preview and add the links to a class wiki page

I only id one bit of leading, a quick demo on using the Audacity envelope tool for adjusting levels, something I thought was key to dealing with multiple tracks. I did not have this video at the time, but it will be useful going forward

After this, the bulk of class was the students working in their groups, I just walked around and listened- or just got out of the way, and all groups zeroed in on their show idea by the end of class. Activity level was high.

Five minutes before the end of class, I called out each group to say on the spot what their show was about. These are the show topics:

• Call in show on embarrassing stories and pet peeves (sort of a vox populi?)
• Science jokes
• Post apocalypse radio show
• Call in show from the wild
• people sharing bucket lists
• advice from drunk people (done before, I warned them to make it structured!)

For me, this was a welcome break from having to design class/activities. For them, they got to do stuff the whole class.

——- cut to Wednesday ——– 8< --------------

I thought I was recording, but the red button was not clicked; and even after redoing, Siri seems to think while talking that I want her, and she turns off my recorder app. Amateur hour(s).

But it is a rainy day, the sky is crying. Yet this is a giddy slice! This was another great class for me, this day of the leap year, where the time rounding errors yields us every 4 years, a day to lump it together for extra time.

Tonight I will upload their bumpers to ds106radio (they are still there as of May 2012)

Best week I have taught, because they are doing stuff.

Might do a bit of singing in the rain, I am so excited to see the energy in class tonight.

Oi.

I dropped the ball of my slices of life audio reflections- slice 14 here is almost 2 months old! I did get up to slice 20, so ahve some posts back logged, given that my ds106 semester will end this week. But let’s roll it back to late February.

Slices of Life 14- the Coughcast

This was 2 segments, walking to campus in the morning talking about the plans fo a Wednesday class on audio, and then after class, when I literally might be skipping (as in happy) as the activities I had set up seemed to fly well.

This again was February 22, 2012, and there is a bit of my coughing into the mic with a cold coming or already in- “I need me an immune system:. Yet it was an atypical winter sunny day walking into campus.

Tonight’s class plan (see full materials) to start with a rapid prototype challenge- using Audacity to edit a 5 sound story with files they were asked to come to class with, ones downloaded from freesound.org.

This would then flow into them, working on into group projects. A question remained on how to introduce ds106 radio – how to make it relevant? does anyone listen to radio?

They were given assignment to listen to episode of This American Life or RadioLab and to write a blog post analuyzing ther use of audio, especially effects and use of music.

The groups for audi projects would need to be formed tonight, so ideally they could get work done before spring break (in hind sight oops! this did not work well, a few groups fell apart and left the work on others to pick up.)

I had also sent a “depth charge emai”l to one student not doing anything, and noted that on blogging others seemed to be doing hasty work. Coming this week as well was the first round of required mimd term appointments, where I meet individually with students to review their work to date, and to get them to starte thinking about their final project.

— break —
After class… would it be weird to come out of class skipping? class was great, energy was good, maybe the best week ever.

The in class sound story exercise activity worked well, 2 students were done in 15 minutes, but others were so into it, I let them go a bit longer. The beauty is that I gave them thre most minimal of software instructions; they figured out most of the key things in the act of doing audio work.

This only left about 10-15 minute for am overview of ds106 radio- I played bit of Scottlo’s Japan Earthquake live broadcast, as samples of last year’samples of student audio stories, especially an all time favorite, Callaloo

They then did a great job of assembling teams for their audio project, and even tweet out their show idea and plans.

Another highlight was one student who had tweeted getting into listening to This American Life.

Yeah, that’s me skipping off campus like a school kid…

Now a bunch more of slices to go….

Finally, a good slice, after a really good class.

Slice 13: A Good Slice

This was recorded after class on Monday February 20, after having returned from a weekend trip to Canada, in which I came back bearing a cough.

Tonight’s class was really good in terms of energy, both mine and the students, as we started our two week section on audio (see notes for this class).

I began with some intros to examples where audio was important, e.g. War of Worlds, some videos that showed the work of Foley artists, and the sound team that does live effects for Praire Home Companion (the amazing Fred Newman).

After seeing Jim’s section, I noticed that I tend to cut off the videos a little quick, I should let them see the whole thing, or more than I have been showing.

I then told the class they would make noise in class. They seemed intrigued, especially bby the arrangement of junk on the front table- foil, a phone book, plastic bags, newspapers, pliers, a stapler, some old dell mous pads — all things I showed could be used to make sound effects.

I was demoing these, like how hitting a phone book could sound like a punch, or making that horse galloping sound by clapping and hitting your thighs– one student said, “you are really having fun with this” — and that is true, and key maybe to why this class went better (?)

I reminded them how subtle but important sound is (Jim had a great line quote about how not scary horror movies would be w/o sound effects).

The gem was my devised in class activity, based on an idea I had from Skyping the night before with Scott Lockman, to have them make sounds using every day objects — before even going to software. My idea was to have them form teams of 3-4 people, and assigned each group a different 30 second clip from the Charlie Chaplin silent film “In the Lions Cage”. The would have to devise sound effects to play live when we regrouped (playing the video w/o the music track).

This was like magic- the groups got really into it, and it was a joy to see them get inventive on how to make sound effects. I recorded their audio effects on my iPhone, and added it as a sound track- here is the new version:

I next played bits from an episode of RadioLab I had listened to on the drive down to Fredericksburg this morning. I had brought it into Audacity, and put markers at locations I wanted to show them things like bumpers, quick edits, overlaying of audio, sound effects, etc.

After this was a quick demo in audacity, recording, checking levels, basic copy paste, effects — to show them what they would be doing wednesday in class. Their homework is to come in wednesday with sounds they could use to make a sound effect story in class.

I am worried now that I am coming down with cold (and this turned out to last a week), but found myself reflecting back to the ds106 radio conversation I caught last night between Dr Garcia and Scott about bringing the “whole self” to teaching, and to me, that is the reason why tonight’s class seemed to go better to me, in that I made it my own, had some fun, and just tried to be as natural as I could.

This was a good slice, a very good slice. I’ll have another please.

The title here has no real reference to anything I talk about, besides me babbling as I talk, walking in to campus on February 14 at the “crack of 10:00am”. The class is consuming me, and at least one person about there is wondering, “Will he ever blog about anything else?”.

Not this week.

Slices of Life 12: Team Celsius

I wanted to get one more back slice posted since the last few have been downers, so here is one with a bit ore upbeat tempo.

Last night’s class worked well, simply by changing up the flow a bit, and having more time of students doing things. This was the week we moved into Design Assignments and where again the students were charged with doing all daily creates for the 7 days.

Easy to focus on students who are not getting it or doing all the work, when there are more than enough who are doing good work- one even did a Design Assignment before class yesterday. I am really looking for ones who go above the minimum, really describe their process or idea, not just post a final piece.

Jim and I have started tracking Best of the student work in delcious stacks:

• Best of the Visual Assignments
• Best of the Design Assignments
• Best of the Daily Creates

While I asking students to be active commenting, I am putting it on them to be able to demonstrate their activity (e.g. U am not counting though I am observing since I see every post). It my student Liz (I said wrongly another name in the audio) who shared the idea to star posts she commented on in google reader. Brilliant! I am using that myself.

In last night’s class, I briefly introduced elements of design (color, typography, symbols), then gave another in class challenge to find, photograph examples in class or hallway. A 15 minute challenge. I asked them to post to flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/designblitz) but also to add them to a shared google doc I had set up for them to add notes to (the idea lifted from Cheryl Colan) http://bit.ly/ds106-design-notes

We then had Tim Owens do guest appearance via Skype (from bed!) to talk more about design- an archive with more class resources is at http://106tricks.net/2012/02/14/week-5-its-time-to-design/

For the last section, rather then me talk about the Design Assignments, I had students get into groups to discuss the available design assignments and which ones they might try.

Gotta find my own way to do the class, there is only one Jim Groom, and I have to come up with my own “act”. It is working good for us to be teaching in parallel, we share ideas, and talk about ds106… like all the time.

Playing on Team Celsius… went well this week.

This was from two weeks ago, still catching up on my back(b)log of audio reflections, back in my second week of being here at the University of Mary Washington teaching my section of ds106. I can give you a prelude that the next episodes pick up in spirit much more.

Slice of Life 11: The Sad Dog

I felt tonight’s class went well, but I am still not feeling the magic “it” of my teaching. Changing up the structure Monday worked out well, especially starting with a photo challenge to the students. I gave them 15 minutes to take and post a photo there images, a mini Daily Create:

• picture of something ordinary made to look different
• portrait of person showing emotion
• converging lines

Defninitely the energy changed as the students got up and were active. My student’s photos are in the first half of the flickr tag stream http://flickr.com/photos/tags/ds106photoblitz, Between my class and Jim’s doing the same activity the next night, the students did 157 photos.

I also did a mini version of some previous talks on Photography, Through the lens slide show which is with other class materials at http://106tricks.net/2012/02/06/week-4-on-photography-class-materials/

It;s been rewarding to see the students do their daily create, producing the visual assignments, and my last 2 students got their wordpress blogs running. I was excited that one student had already created a visual assignment, and others were taking on doing doing tutorials.

Tonight, I had D’Arcy Norman come in and talk on Google Hangout about his approach to photography- he share a ton of useful, practical ideas.

I was disappointed that Kris Krug has stuck on a plane and unable to join us as planned.

I just wish my students had more questions! They are so reluctant. I struggle to draw them in — maybe I should ask them directly, doh- but as I am still getting to know them, I am unsuare even of 25% of their names.

The other thing I can do is change up the structure even more.

Good after class with 2 of students who are thinking about the assignments and doing thoughtful writing. No one has dropped, still at 26 students.

I am really liking this time walking home after class, debriefing, and getting a chance to reflect.

Onward!

A mopey audio reflection following my second in person class of ds106, from two weeks ago. Seven minutes and forty six seconds of blah.

Slices of Life 10: Dying on Stage

Recorded walking home after a class that just did not flow well at all. I did not feel in best game form, the students seemed bored, and they had not done readin of the papers and video for tonight’s discussion. I felt like I was dying a slow death on stage, but also I had not really designed the class well. I had hoped to draw them into discussion.

What worked was the ending 15 minute “Rapid Prototyping” activity I saw Jim do the night before in his class, where he challanged the students to create some web stories with whatever they could, about our hacker, Emre5807. And that totally hange the energy. I collected them in a pinterest board – its not about being anythig great, but just being in that creation mode.

Coming up the next week is photography, a topic I feel much more confident handling. I need less of me talking, and I expect to have external guests.

My question is how to raise level of participation, and what is my shtick in class? I am needing to develop my own show.

What was a bit better was working one on one after class with student, helping her add plugins, themes, widgets to her blog.

This is done, and time to get back on horse for monday.

Post Script: Better classes were to come!

This audio reflection comes close to the end of my cross country sprint from Arizona to Virginia, as I close in on Fredericksburg Virginia, where I am now, and not planning on driving away from for a while. Maybe it will become Hallowed Ground

Slices of Life 009: 90 miles from Fredericksburg

I had just listened to Scottlo, who inspired me to try this audio reflection, end his Slices of Life with number 47 “End of this Chapter”, his own path. It’s been remarkable to follow him from his start, when he was questioning everything about his teaching, to the torrent of excitement he achieved by number 47.

Many ways to fill in Scottlo’s blank:

Always Be _________ing

I am looking forward to first face meeting with my ds106 students, and plan to meet individually with students and review their blogs, get to know who is who. Tonight’s class plan to be hands on, with a crack “gentle” whip for some who had not yet set up blogs, reminder tneed to embed media rather than linking, and urge the writing in their own voice, not the school voice.

I plan also to how to set up categories in blog for organizing as well as setting up permalinks to have different forms of blog urls.

The next phase is making the space their own, starting with theming, but going into widgets, plugins, etc. As a great example rossannamarie.me has done an interesting restructure by making a landing page, and building a navigational structures to the blog portion and a separate update summary that journals how the blog grows

It is also time to turn up the heat on commenting and need to be linking more in their written posts.

The first round of reflection posts on Cyberinfrastucted were mixed, some just “I think this is cool” when really I want them to reflect on what it means to them,a nd to connect to other ideas, not write the general school report summary. I hope to have them circle back later to their initial Cyberinfrastructure post at the end of the term, to see if the class in which they are actually doing this has changed or evolved their first idea.

There is a fair amount of student pushback on use of technology, probably from Gardner’s quote about “everyone needs a cyberinfrastructure”

Just as the real computing revolution didn’t happen until the computer became truly personal, the real IT revolution in teaching and learning won’t happen until each student builds a personal cyberinfrastructure that is as thoughtfully, rigorously, and expressively composed as an excellent essay or an ingenious experiment. This vision goes beyond the “personal learning environment”5 in that it asks students to think about the web at the level of the server, with the tools and affordances that such an environment prompts and provides.

I rambled a bit on Beth Kanter’s post on content curation, citing the prolific Robin Good as an example of someone that does this to the nth degree (and I agree with what he does as being a flashlight into the bag of gold). I agree with the value of the recommended tools, but not as a total toolset (e.g. scoop.it) in that they are all *external* Both Beth and Robin exemplify the balance of managing their own digital space, much as the digital locker in Gardner’s talk, and what we are asking students to do in this class.

My last bit was an idea for the next This Week in ds106 live vide show with Jim, with me pretending to skype in, and apologizing for not getting there in time. Jim will get angry, and then I will walk on the set.

(later) We did pull it off that afternoon:

Still catching up on the slices of life audio reflection, this one almost two weeks old. ALways Be ‘Poligizing for being behind? This audio recording is from January 26, the morning I left home in Strawberry Arizona, for the 220 mile express trip to Virginia.

Slices of Life 008: Leaving Arizona

I am going to miss these Big Blue Skies

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

In many ways, this was eerily similar to the day I left on my 5 month odyssey in June 2011, but also very different. At that time was unsure if I could even live the road life; would I hate it? I of course found it I could manage living out of Big Red and being mobile for few months, and that home was always in Strawberry even if I wasn’t. I know now too that if I need to I can do 500, 600, 700 miles in a day.

I reflected on my section of ds106, a class I will be teaching in person at University of Mary Washington. Last night was third session I did remotely via Skypa (a huge Arizona sky sized thanks to Jim Groom who has been present for my students, and set up the two way video liv stream)

This is far from an optimal way to teach this way; It is hard for me to see, hard to hear audio clearly via skype (especially since I had busted m laptop and was using my iPhone- students are tiny!). I cant read body language, and really I am “sort of not there”. But it was just a bridge needed to give me time to get across the country.

So far, 20 of my 25 students have their domains and wordpress blogs set up, done with minimal direction — I agree with Jim that it’s a lesson in not relying totally on the course or the teacher to provide answers, that they will need to figure out things on their own, with their pal. Half of these have already customized their themes.

Last night’s session was the discussion of Gardner Campbell’s talk on No Digital Facelift and paper on Personal Cyberinfrastructure. Stealing/borriwing/co-opting on of Gardner’s own classtoom techniques, I had asked them to think about “nuggets” within reading or video- a key sentence or phrase that grabbed their interest, curiosity as starting points for discussions. I provided Jim a few YouTube links that use the technique to point to a particular timecode to start playing, examples:

• Bag of gold http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lelmXaSibrc#t=02m50s
• Digital facelift http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lelmXaSibrc#t=10m15s
• Little big planet http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lelmXaSibrc#t=18m50s
• Small things can be meaningful http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lelmXaSibrc#t=33m20s

I also had Jim show some examples of how te “bags of gold” became a bit of a viral meme last year. e.g.
Tim’s Kinetic Typography, Tom Woodward audio remix, Giulia Forsythe’s visual notes, Barbara Dieu’s video remox — in all of these, these show visual ways of drawing out different nuggets of the talk.

I tried to start with a discussion of “What is bag of gold? what does it mean to you?” … awkward silence.

But the discussion picked up next when we moved to “what is a visual facelift”.

It was interesting that students felt Gardner was advocating a total technology makeover for teaching, which got into the most active state as they debated what could and could not be taught online. I for one have not come across anyone advocating that surgery could eb taught completely online.

Class closed with an attenmt to describe what Personal Cyberinfrastructure means- asked student to read passage out loud (borrowed again technique from from Gardner):

Cyberinfrastructure is something more specific than the network itself, but it is something more general than a tool or a resource developed for a particular project, a range of projects, or, even more broadly, for a particular discipline.

— American Council of Learned Societies,
Our Cultural Commonwealth, 2006

We do have an archive of this class

And posts from this assignment are available at http://ds106.us/tag/pci

I then speculated what to do next week with Storytelling- introduce examples of web storytelling?

The slice closed with a personal memory of my trip return to this road in November, where I crossed the 15,000 mile mark and getting an iPod shuffled memory of my Mom, She’s a Rainbow”

Driving north from the Ponderosa Forest into the pinyon pine forest and eventual sage brush high desert terrain near Winslow, I marveled at how subtle wast this transition from forest to high plains, not clear where one begins and other ends — life is gradational

I’m catching up on my audio reflections, this one is from before I left Arizona. On January 22, the weekend before I left, I drove down to Cottonwood Arizona to visit Todd Conaway. It’s a majestic drive down Highway 260, falling off of the top of the Mogollon Rim down through Campe Verde.

Slices of Life 007

Most of this slice was reflecting on my first class of teaching ds106 for the University of Mary Washington, albeit remotely from Strawberry, via Skyoe with the help of Jim Groom. The first meeting went fairly well, me introducing the class and the students introducing themselves.

I was pretty darn nervous, and felt the combination of that excitement and the drain of energy after being tuned in for that session. It is hardly the best way to teach, and is only a bridge til I get there.

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

I enjoyed the time chatting with Todd at his home in Cornville, and as a bonus audio (hah, some bonus), I recorded a conversation we had talking about the StoryBox. I appreciate and am doing some later to be schedule reflection on his interest in what comes out of that experience.

Conversation with Todd Conaway

We then drove over to the town of Cottonwood where I got a tour of main street by Todd and some fine local food.

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

I was a bit frantic at this time to get ready for the upcoming drive to Virginia, but it was well worth taking the afternoon to visit Todd and see a bit of Arizona I’d not been to before.

And all of this being part of the larger slice of embracing the unknown and reflecting on what it might offer.

On break from a long drive to California, I took respit via a hike in Joshua Tree National Park, hiking up Lower Cottomwood Wash to this place- wash meaning maybe some soul cleansing under the desert sun, or also in this case, the dry sandy bed of a river currently without water flowing in it. At this spot, the water’s route comes over this dry fall. Walking inside the crack, I found the tiniest dribble of water, and it spoke as a spot for a new Slice of Life audio reflection. It’s been a few weeks since the last one.

Slice of Life 006

Having just re-listened to it, 2 days later, on one hand I am wondering who I am listening too, but I know the voice. I am feeling a strong tug to return to this peaceful place, but am far away. The nudge for this came via an email from my friend Raj Boora, who I met for lunch in Edmonton back in mid-August. He recently emailed me a brief but big question about my road travel in 2011:

What did you learn about yourself on this trip, Alan?

Having tried to answer it, I am still wondering if I did, but there you go.

To get this spot I had walked up a dry river bed, all sand and gnarled wind blasted trees, many bent over, like old men others hoary with mistletoe or flood debris. They have a tenacity for life worth respecting.

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

At the place of the dry waterfall where I recorded this was a place of picture words for Scpttlo- the weathered granite formation this place is known for, boulders looking like giant toy blocks, pillows of rock, looking like like piles frozen from squeezed out mud.

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

Inside the crack of rock where I recorded this is a a drip of water down crack. Water in the desert very magical and a hopeful sound. My hope in 2012 for the next few months is to do 2-3 Slices per week, especially in light of sorting to teach a section of ds106 starting next week, and reflect on my own process of becoming a teacher.

In thinking about Raj’s question, what I thought I learned is (at least when this was recorded):

(1) That I could do the trip – that I was able to live out of the truck for 5 months, to be away from my home, to cover a lot of distance and be with many people.

(2) That I could make mistakes, not see it at the time, and face up to regrets. I have much more to do here, but am learning in the face of times of despair, life does go on.

(3) That I have a lot of good friends out there. So many people went the extra mile/kilometer and then some. Connecting with them in their space, where they live really matters beyond the connections made online.

(4) That I have a lot to improve on- s.g. fitness, getting out hiking, getting back to the space of nature.

That was a very special spot, and is now so far away.

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog