I have been head drafting posts (where the ideas just swirl around, sometimes slipping down the drain) I have been contemplating one about my now long path with digital storytelling. That one will be another Long Running Blab for sure.
But it also got me thinking about one of the pinnacle things I hatched, spawned almost accidentally, and coming up in 2027 on a two decade mark, 50 Web Ways to Tell a Story (a site I had rescued from Wikispaces obliteration). In combing through a summary page of its presentation runs it dawned on me that a good number of them I had used that fancy web CoolIris presenter tool that had died on the web vine when Flash went kerpoof.
This was a fantastic thing driven my a variant of RSS (MediaRSS) that prescribed a series of images as thumbnails and larger to display on an interactive wall of media, and each one could have an external link that opened. In a presentation, I could arrow key through them in order, or jump around to any “slide”. This was not your grandma’s PPT.
When it was dead, I did manage to record a video demo running on an old iBook that at the time could run Flash.
But thanks to a web nudge from Tim Owens a few clicks back and through some updating of RSS feeds (not dead) I was able to get it working with the Ruffle Flash emulator.
CoolIris did say I’ll Be Back. And it was!
I had first made the updates to the CoolIris versions in the suite of presentations I made for Amazing Stories of Openness. After learning how to use CoolIris in 2009, I used it for a number of presentations I did through 2011 or so on 50 Web Ways to Tell a Story, now linked from the listing site I had made at https://bones.cogdogblog.com/stuff/50ways/
These include:
- Remote presentation (from Iceland) for Dean Shareski’s teacher ed class and Alec Couros ECMP 455 class (Feb 25, 2009)
- Baruch College Schwartz Communication Symposium, New York NY (May 1, 2009)
- Invited presentation at Penn State University, State College PA (May 5, 2009)
- Salem State College Future is Now conference, Salem MA (May 13, 2009)
- College of Wooster Faculty Fellows remote presentation via Skype (May 21, 2009)
- ED-MEDIA 2009 invited feature session, Honolulu HI (June 24, 2009)
- 2010 Museum Computer Network (MCN) Conference, pre-conference workshop, Austin, TX (Oct 27, 2010)
They are all almost the same, but what was different on each one was the place in the middle I would put out a story prompt that was relevant to the place as an audience participation activity, e.g. like for Penn State University with an iconic statue from State College, a NYC subway one for Baruch College, a Tim Hortons prompt for Dean Shareski’s class, a Salem pub based one for Salem State College, a local restaurant reference for Wooster, a beach based theme for ED-MEDIA 2009. and of course a bat theme bridge one for the MCN Conference in Austin.
Then after I went through a pile of stuff about storytelling, we’d come back to followup with the kinds of questions I thought would help tease them out, e.g. for Penn State’s statue. I would ask more questions what media might be needed, etc.
A number of the 50 Ways presentations were lost as recordings on now dead platforms like blip.tv and ustream.tv.
And it the 3D wall CoolIris thing is not that Cool, I did one for another session with another one of Dean Shareski’s classes as Google Slides (then known as Presenter).
This got me thinking too of another milestone coming up, that 2027 will be the 40th year since the story of my lost/found dog Dominoe that was used as a demo for all the tools — I did return to the scene of the story in 2012 to relive the losing and finding of a dog.
I sure took the 50 Ways thing as far as it might go, no surprise there are a few blog posts hanging around here related to it.
And how “cool” is it that CoolIris works again? Not that anyone has asked me to present anything, but if I do get a future chance I just might reach for it.
This is my own spirit of keeping the web alive, I am taking care of my own garden, not spending time at the web Walmarts.
Cool.
CoolIris.
Featured Image: Screenshot of the Cooliris wall of media in action coming back at you from the ED-MEDIA conference in 2009
