How Creativity Works: Animated video - Wow!

IMAGINE: How Creativity Works from Flash Rosenberg on Vimeo.

Thanks to Language Teaching Professionals for pointing this out!

Networked Student - YouTube (2008.11.26)

Networked Student - YouTube: Uploaded by Wendy Drexler on Nov 26, 2008

"The Networked Student was inspired by CCK08, a Connectivism course offered by George Siemens and Stephen Downes during fall 2008. It depicts an actual project completed by Wendy Drexler's high school students." 

(YouTube description, link added)

The Networked Student (Drexler, 2008)

'via Blog this'

Google Docs for Collaboration

2012-01-13_1456-GoogleDocs_project

The video in this post represents a Jing screencast recording with embedding code from Screencast.com. The default dimensions, 984 pixels wide by 667 tall, I've reduced to 338 and 222, respectively.

Ode to #Pencilchat by MiddleLevelEd

Ode to #Pencilchat: Technology Integration in the Classroom
by: MiddleLevelEd

In honor of Twitter's #pencilchat, I put together some of the more memorable tweets to create this video. I plan to use it for upcoming professional development workshops about technology integration in the classroom. It's a light-hearted look at the spectrum of where we sit regarding technology in the classroom and meeting our students' needs. Enjoy! (Xtranormal, MiddleLevelEd, 2011.12.07)

Photobabble: sample talking pictures

"We are they" (Lessig, Webside Chat @ Harvard).

Live at Harvard University - slides and audio

(Lawrence Lessig, Blip.tv, 2010.02.25 [42:15])

Removed from YouTube

"... since Lessig’s slidecast ... contained 15-second clips of copyrighted music by Warner Music" (Adi Kamdar, Open Video Alliance, Irony: Wireside Chat with Lawrence Lessig Silenced by Copyright, 2010.03.??)

"... [W]e are currently working on a high quality archived version of the speech" (Neil Bates, Flumotion, Lawrence Lessig Wireside Chat on Copyright Silenced by Copyright, 2010.03.10)

The Machine is (Changing) Us: YouTube and the Politics of Authenticity

Wesch (YouTube, 2009.07.16) presents "a brief history" and extolls a new age of "whatever" (33:44 min.), which as Couros (2009.07.21) suggests is well worth our time.

Odeo player test

The purpose of this post is to test scripts for embedding Odeo players for recordings that students made.

Track One



Track Two

Pageflakes for Educators

Check out this SlideShare presentation by Gladys Baya, with an embedded YouTube video (below). It introduces RSS feeds and a tool for aggregating them, Pageflakes.

Vance Stevens, who moderated an Elluminate Live! session for a TESOL workshop in which Gladys gave the presentation, has made a recording of the session available with a TinyURL. Thanks, Vance!

Thanks, too, to Gladys for publicizing this all in a blog post, Pageflakes for Educators (2009.02.10), in which she also notes recent concerns regarding the stability and viability of Pageflakes.

Pageflakes4 Educators

View more presentations from Gladys Baya. (tags: webheads presentations)

Kumamoto Lantern Festival (2008.10.10)

Created from an iPhoto slide show [exported as a .mov file, uploaded to YouTube, and posted to a Blogger blog setup in YouTube

Notes:

• Blog setup in YouTube requires blog password.
• The YouTube video posting function affords text input (e.g.: the text above outside square brackets), but apparently not labels or tags.]
  

Wesch introducing YouTube at the U.S. LoC

Billed as "an excellent backgrounder to social media, user-generated content, and online communities through the lens of anthropology" by Alec Couros (2008.08.03), this YouTube video resonates in a similar post by D'Arcy Norman (2008.08.06). The video represents a June 23, 2008, appearance of Professor Michael Wesch at a U.S. Library of Congress (LoC) podium to display and describe his and his students' findings from ethnological investigations into YouTube as participant observers (Wesch, 2008)

Wesch describes media such as YouTube as neither content, nor tools of communication, but rather as a landscape that mediates human relationships. He suggests that changes in "the mediascape" correspond to changes in human relations (approx. 12 of 55 minutes in), reflecting manifestations of participatory culture and networked individualism. Eschewing Powerpoint, he and his students remix dozens of independent video productions to portray a mediated state under tension between personal expression and social aspiration:

• individualism and community,
  
• independence and relationships, and
• aggrandizement and authenticity.

"More info" in the YouTube sidebar provides a timeline for the video itself (Added: July 26, 2008). However, you've got to see the presentation to believe it!

Reference

Wesch, Michael (Dir.). (2008). An anthropological introduction to YouTube. Retrieved September 9, 2008, from http://youtube.com/watch?v=TPAO-lZ4_hU

A Gift that Gives for 15.5 Years

Reading back through Mctoonish to 4 Generations (2007.01.23), I discovered a powerful short film by Robert Thompson documenting the acquisition, delivery, and aftermath of a surprising gift. Here it is (in various formats and sizes).

Image by geofana (2006): There is a Creative Commons license attached to this image.
AttributionNoncommercialNo Derivative Works

VoiceThread from the B4E Workshop

Not much to say here except check out the blogging ideas represented in this VoiceThread from the Blogging for Educators workshop:




Had to use the small version, because the big one didn't fit the page. For a micro-review of the tool (VoiceThread), please see the LTD Project Wiki (AudioPodcastVideo, VoiceThread).

ELT notes: On Gadgets and Widgets (Ceraso)

In ELT notes: On Gadgets and Widgets, Claudia C. makes a host of fine points about audiences, purposes, and the choices that we make to suit both - as well as ourselves - as bloggers, community members, and educators. I am grateful to the organizers of the Blogging for Educators workshop for pointing out Claudia's post again this year (Blogging4Educators Pageflakes, Week 4, Extra Reading [February 2008]).

In conclusion, Claudia suggests that "adding widgets [to blogs] for the sake of practice is creating a noise in communication with students, audience and community." She goes on, "Widgets are meant to be simple. Learn about them, know what there is available[,] and trust yourself that you will manage to install them pretty fast when you or the purpose of your blog post needs them" (emphasis added, pab).

Claudia is careful, verging on fastidious in her choices of widgets for her teaching blog (The FCE Blog), and meticulous about the layout (no sidebars) and presentation of other gadgets (all at the end of posts) on her professional development blog (ELT Notes). I think she is modeling as much as telling us what helps learners and other readers get right to the heart of her ideas (February 15, 2007).

"Lessons from Geese" (jamsoun, 2006)

Running the risk of making this blog media heavier than it already is, I'm going to add an inspiring video entitled Lessons from Geese that Vicki pointed out in the current Electronic Village Online workshop, Blogging for Educators (message 419, 2008.01.21)

Lessons From Geese
Uploaded by jamsoun

(Dailymotion,
c. 2006)

Whether the lessons presented in that video are examples of collaboration or cooperation, they definitely are inspiring for groups of people working together. I can hardly wait to watch it again.

Trial YouTube Video Players

This video player should display my YouTube favorites, if they're still available. Click the menu button, or move your cursor over the viewing screen to see. If they're not, please post a comment to let me know, and I'll pick more videos sooner or later.



Postscript: Though I had embedded another custom player here, within twenty-four hours the color of the frame changed and the selections in the sidebar were perverted from my favorites to a rack of amateur pyrotechnic rock video clips. I tried once to replace it without success, so I removed it (2007.08.09).

Blog post label experiment

This post, I'm labeling "b4b" because when I announced this blog in the Blogging for Beginners (B4B): Links: Participant's Blogs list, I characterized it as an experiment in labeling. While this experiment has surpassed the duration of the B4B workshop by a week or so, I am anxious to flag and share the results.

Just as the blogroll that I assembled had grown too long, so too had the list of labels (I'll work on the blogroll later). In the past few days, I have combined labels and re-affixed the combined labels to blog posts which bore original, spontaneously derived labels. What follow are a few memorable examples of the past few days' work (ABC...). The left-most items are current labels derived from items to the right:

• AudioPodcastsVideo: Audio/Video
• This concatenation derives from recent wiki reorganization which reflects the intersection of audio files, blogs, podcasts and videos.
  

• BloggingCommentary: Blog/Comment

• CognitionReflection: Meta-cognition and Reflection

I've decided to use CamelCase, instead of slash marks, and to spell items out rather than acronym-ize them (ExtensiveReading rather than ER, on another blog). I've also decided to use plural forms of countable nouns: tools and wikis, rather than tool and wiki (same pluralization for del.icio.us bookmarks, when I get around to it).

In Camino, the Mac browser that I prefer, revisiting and editing posts and labels was easy because I could click on a label. Then the pencil icon on each post with labels that I wished to edit offered one-click access to the posts and their labels. For example, I could select a label like "GlobalIssue" and immediately revise each post so labelled to "GlobalIssues."

However, in Firefox for Windows, I have been unable to display the editing icon (pencil) on any post, in spite of toggling off and on the settings for easy editing (Blogger: Dashboard: Settings: Basic: Show Quick Editing on your Blog? Yes). Clicking on a label concatenated target posts. Yet I've had to use the Dashboard: Edit Posts view, and repeatedly scroll down through the list of posts to visually search for labels to redefine.

Once I got to the end of the first 25 posts or so displayed, I had to scroll down and then select Older Posts, before continuing to scan for labels to redefine. Scrolling down and then reselecting Older Posts was necessary after every label update.

How did Neil Young put it in his song, "Piece of...?"

I'd better stop now, before this report and reflection turns into a rant.

Inspiration from Karim (a Google Video)

A blogroll buddy from the Blogging for Beginners workshop put the following video on his blog for for a bit of comic relief "after three weeks of hard work" (B4Bers, We deserve a Break!). The six-week workshop is over now, and I'm finally getting around to enjoying it. I hope you do, too.

Technical and Time-Saving Issues Re: Blogging Podcasts

Whilst announcing a wonderful interview on her blog, MaryH suggests that she'll try podcasting interviews "in the future" (B4B Message 1503). In response, Gladys points out a recording tool - blog sharing link-up (Podomatic: Blogger) that used to work for her, yet expresses a preference for "text in blogs" (B4B Message 1534, PS).

Elsewhere on the B4B list (forgive me, please, for relying here upon our memories rather than citations), contributors note challenges related to bandwidth limitations, making it difficult if not impossible to download media- (audio or video) rich blogs. They also may face restrictions on downloading media players or browser plug-ins to play back A/V blog elements.

Though I've begun listening to, and earmarking podcasts of interest, I prefer text in blogs, too, for reasons beyond downloading and playback difficulties. Granted, A/V podcasts are of great interest to educators who are intent upon presenting material that will help learners to develop listening and viewing skills.

However, for time-challenged educators and learners, sitting through podcasts is hardly a viable option. Attention spared while driving or cycling, I argue, is insufficient for uptake of ideas, intents, structures and vocabulary. Under such circumstances, note-making and cross-referencing are virtually impossible - unless you have a clip-board or keyboard mounted on your steering wheel or handlebars (or are concurrently recording your own commentary). Moreover, for city-dwelling pedestrians, traffic noise may well defeat listening at anything less than hearing threatening playback volumes on mp4 or mp3 players.

Rather than rant on about the drawbacks of podcasting, and before I develop a fuller argument for properly framing podcasts to develop learners' listening skills and vocabulary, I'd better point out the LearningTimes Green Room and suggest that you check it out before the folks there quit providing nearly complete transcripts in show notes on their website as a prelude to their podcasts.

Pukman: Trying out beta slide shows

Pukman has been trying out online slide shows that he has produced with SlideShare (beta) and Zoho Show (beta).

Here is his latest go: Trying out Zoho Show. That looks buggy in both Camino and Firefox. In Camino, on the top page of Pukman's blog, slide one of the Zoho Show flashes on and off as I scroll down past it, but it doesn't display properly. Clicks in the display frame seem to advance to slide two (invisible) and beyond to: "End of Presentation. / Click here to start again." The two slides almost seem to be tucked under the top edge of the display frame.

A SlideShare presentation that Pukman modeled earlier works slightly better: 3 spots in Kumamoto. That seven slide show displayed after a while, as I painted the display frame with cursor rollovers; then the advance & replay buttons worked to display individual slides.

Hopefully slide shows are working better in students' blogs. If not, it is probably best to view the SlideShare presentations about Kumamoto that he and his students have posted in SlideShare proper (most of those you find with a search for "kumamoto").