CogBlogged Tagged ‘audio’

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Yesterday I was on stage as the opening act for the 2010 Canadian eLearning Conference hosted at the University of Alberta, with a new show I had conjured “Join the Secret Revolution”. The presentation is on slideshare (where you can see the notes for the slides); I have an audio recording but it is trapped on my iPhone and need some time to transfer it over. The revolution is now recorded and is also included in the slideshare below. Join the Secret Revolution View more presentations from Alan Levine. The idea was spawned by the rEvolution theme of the conference, and I thought I could have some fun looking at ways one could take on what seems like huge challenges (“We Must Change Education!”) and not be flaming radicals (“Burn the mother down” through smaller scale actions in what we do as people [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Another August 27th clicks by, another notch marking one more year since my Dad passed away (2001). I love this picture of him (not sure how old) at Coney Island (he grew up in Newark, NJ)- he looks sort of serious in is driving role and his suit (people got more dressed up in the 1940s to go to amusement parks), yet there is a very very faint twinkle in his eye, or at least I want it to be. This is from a series of old photos I had scanned when I last visited my Mom, and part of the project to continue digitizing the stories recorded in 1994 by my grandmother (his mother). In one segment she described a series event that happened when Dad was 7- he and so neighborhood kids were playing King of the Hill on a pile [...]

I sit brain dead in a plane heading west, home, after a New England road tour with stops at Baruch College in Manhattan, Penn State University, Middlebury Vermont, and wrapping yesterday in Salem, Massachusetts. The stop at Salem was an invited session for their sixth Future is Now conference a semester end gathering for faculty to look at technology and learning, very similar to the Ocotillo gigs I previously ran at Maricopa. Actually that had me on a double-header, first as the “post lunch wake ‘em up” plenary and right after I did a rapid fire version (45 minutes) of 50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story. So round one was The More Things Change… the more things change, a remix/reprise of a version of this I did at Scottsdale Community College in January 2009. I have some audio I recorded with my LiveScribe pen, and hesitate to post [...]

I’ve been excited about the LiveScribe pen recorder since seeing it first at a meeting last January, and then magnified by the presentation by Joe Russo at the NMC 2009 Symposium on New Media & Learning. I’d not done much with it in a while, especially with the problems I had with the 1.0 Mac Desktop software, but noted a new version had been out a few weeks– and it (mostly) works well now. I have just uploaded by first “pencast” and the newest feature is the ability to embed this into another site. Right after I got the pen, I packed it for my trip to Vancouver for Northern Voice 2009. During my presentation on Say/Blog it in Pictures I did something smart- I gave it to someone who can actually draw well- Nancy White – who took some amazing notes in my LiveScribe notebook. But up to now [...]

What I used for today’s presentation was one of those lucky cool finds that can lift my from a web 2.0 sized rut. Today I was invited to give an opening keynote back at some old stomping grounds; Scottsdale Community College was hosting their first “TechTools” day, and I got tagged to kick it off. I was asked to touch on new technology and understand students use of technology, which led me down a few paths- one for some Digital Native bashing, but also a chance to delve into two trends I am growing interested in – one being YouTube / video as a communication and its evolving culture. I borrowed heavily from the brilliant videos by Michael Wesch (I am convinced I could make an entire presentation just by playing his videos). And the other the rise of DIY culture and media creativity as a past-time. And for the [...]

Listen to the Reverend! by cogdogblog posted 22 Jan ’09, 3.29pm MST PST on flickr Jim Groom gets the crowd rolicking at our ELI session on "Not your Grandpa’s Blog" eli2009.wordpress.com This dog’s cog’s are wogged so the blogs are back logged. The EDUCAUSE/ELI conference this week continues to demonstrate it as a prime gathering for the edtech crowd, and to be less about shiny gizmos and more about shiny ideas/practices. They do a great job of adding new features like the self tags, the interwoven “Where is Professor Bluth” ARG, and just a great atmosphere. Among several highlights was co-presenting something “different” with colleagues Cole Camplese and Jim Groom. I joked that we “didn’t spend much time preparing” which is not quite true; all three of us have been prepping all these years; its just that we did not spend a lot of time (or any) prepping slides etc. [...]

More iPhone love. If you cannot stand it, go read a blog post about Android. I just gave Recorder for iPhone a quick test and it so rocks! For 99 cents, the price of a sappy Abba song in iTunes (or a Led Zeppelin anthem, just to be fair), I have an audio recorder on my iPhone: It could not be easier to use. You click the big giant button labeled “record”- you even get the levels as a visual display as you record: When you are done (yes, do you remember step 1, click the red button??), you can then email the audio file if you wish, but better! You can sync it via wireless to your computer- when you activate the sync feature, it gives a local network address you can pull up in a web browser, and see a directory of your audio files on the phone: [...]

I always knew some day I’d have a reason to blog about something I could relate to the insurance duck (don’t seek an answer why). In my travels last week, a friend I stayed with shared some (well a lot) of concert audio files, all in .flac format- which I had maybe heard of before, but now know it is a lossless audio file format. My ears are not near discriminating enough to know, but that is way besides the point. Of course I expected to find a free audio converter as something I could use to bring in the music to iTunes and onto the phone/pod (you can open them in Audacity and convert but that would be a one by one manual op. I first went to a reliable source of Mac apps, VersionTracker and searched for “flac”- scanned a few (I peek at the reviews as well), [...]

To say I had a great time this past weekend at WordCamp would be an understatement. Beyond the gathering of 400 other WP junkies, there was getting to meet all the Automatticians (and fascinating to learn they work as a completely decentralized organization; 30 some employees strung across the US, Canada, Bulgaria, Australia, Japan…). And of course the wp-fanboy-plugged-in cherry on top was going to the speaker’s dinner the night before and being seated across from Matt Mullenweg, who remembered sneaking in on my session at Northern Voice. Matt described that they only plan the San Francisco WordCamp, and the other 15 or so that go on around the blog are locally organized– he says he likes to show up un-announced to check out what people are doing who use his company’s wares. Yes, it was through a connection via James Farmer that I got invited to do a presentation [...]

It is an understatement, but I was extremely ecstatic when I got an email in January from Jeff Utecht asking me if I’d be interested in speaking at the Learning 2.008 Conference in Shanghai. Must details got fuzzy as I thought about going to China. So I paused an appropriate amount of milliseconds before replying with my “hell yes” message. Last year was the first iteration of the conference, and I remember reading bits of the blog coverage, and liking the different ideas they had packed into that first version. I was just listening to Jeff’s podcast with Ken Carroll: Learning 2.008 Podcast and am liking even more they ways they are trying to make this a different kind of format, with mixes of un-conference activities, hands on experiences, some Second Life-age, no paper, every session recorded/podcasted, and lots of social interaction. Oh, and they are asking the 8 presenters [...]