Bags of Gold

Here is the second assignment for #ds106:

Read Gardner Campbell’s short article titled “A Personal Cyberinfrastructure.” Additionally, you will need watch Professor Campbell’s presentation on the topic at the 2009 Open Education Conference called “No More Digital Facelifts: Thinking the Unthinkable About Open Educational Experiences.”

I read the article, watched the talk, even listened to Tom Woodward’s Remix of the talk. I took notes on Gardener’s thoughts and let them stew. I thought of writing a traditional intellectual response, which I felt would most likely be profound and moving would be lost in the shuffle of echo chamber noise. One aspect of this course is figuring out to have one’s work and subsequently voice heard over the din of vying ideas.

We are after all telling stories, and no story teller that I know, likes to tell stories to an empty room. So the medium becomes the message. How we share our ideas and stories, become just as important as whatever it is we are trying to say. I didn’t feel a traditional blog post, offering my thoughts on the talk or article would be worthwhile.

As I stared at my notes, I started to notice the non-vital words floating from the page. I began to cut and paste and move text like a demented scientist searching for the essence of his message. What was left, was the barefooted thin poem you see below. I then did a search for CC images tagged as gold on Flickr d created this collage to accompany my piece.

images by lukesaagi, Swiv, guillaumeo, Ko_An, Auntie P

bags of gold

vulnerabilities are fine.
that is where learning happens.
a sense of wonder:
strange correspondences and grand harmonies:
bags of gold.

play,
tinker,
publish,
archive,
assemble
import and export,
internal and external,
information and connections.
awaken self-efficacy and creative possibilities.

build: digital presences
in the web itself

looping back
to vital ideas
unrecognized
underexplored
ideas into
a new context.

modes of communication
make them audible.

the real revolution won’t happen until each student builds
an ingenious experiment.
technology gradually creates a totally new human
not passive wrappings but active processes.

vision goes beyond
what can be imagined and expressed:
bags of gold.

I am looking forward to seeing what form these words will take next…

Highlighter

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I am a highlighter. Unfortunately I don’t mean the Evernote, Diigo kind, but the old school grab a book and highlight passages, words, imagery that I think may somehow be useful to me later on. So as I started reading blog posts for #ds106, I was wondering what I would do with digital nuggets I would surely find scatter among the digital material that I would want or need later on. I am sure there are a plethora of tools that could help me store and share my highlight worthy pieces of text better that what I have chosen, but I chose this rather simple system to see if it works.

image by Grace Fell

Here’s how it goes: As we begin to pour through hundreds of blogs and perhaps thousands of pages of text, where will we store and share important, meaningful, beautiful, mind blowing lines and quotes? I decided to create a simple public Google Doc, which you can access here. I will add all the lines that stick out from what I read and I suggest you add to the list as well.

This way we can cull a growing greatest hits of work from what we read. The material will also be useful for later projects for use as things such as scripts, graphics, brainstorming ideas, and introductions for collaboration. As I mentioned, I am sure that there may be other tools for something like this, and I encourage you to share them in the comments below, but sometimes simple and easy works just fine. Besides participating in a MOOC with so many participates, we need to carve out a small niche and find our tribe. I hope you join me here and share the gold. (The obvious metaphor for this course.) Remeber if you are going to tweet a line or two, add it to our list.

Intro to ds#106

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The day has finally come. Jim Groom’s ds#106 class has officially begun. You can read this for details of this first week, but if you are reading this you are most likely a member of the class. Curious how you introduce yourself to hundreds? of people, but we will see how many and who responds. It still feels like Jim is responding to every post and Tweet which is lunacy, but that is part of the reason why I am here. The guy is nuts and I look forward to seeing how he manages this beast.

Seriously though, the thing that attracted me to this course was more that his Bava persona, like Hunter S. Thompson, Jim is more than his online character. Both Jim and Hunter tend to push envelopes and grate at people sensibilities, but underneath that bravado is complex depth and seriousness to what all this means. And by this I mean art, human beings, technology, film, you name it. And if next week’s readings are any indication it is going to be one helluva a ride. Not too be out done by Alan “Show off” Levine, here is my intro:

If you are new to my blog and want to know more. Please feel free to follow the crubs around this maze I call my Personal Cyberinfrastructure. Home page probably best place to start.

Marathon Man

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As the year comes to close there will be the inevitable litany of blog posts recapping achievements, documenting successes and reflecting on next steps. Kim Cofino started it with her latest post, and since I am flying to Lombok tomorrow and hoping to take a much-deserved break from Twitter and Edublogging, I want to gather my thoughts here, now, in this blog post.

Unfortunately my list of accomplishments may sound a bit more personal than Kim’s, because I am not really working within a Tech team, regardless I would like to thank my colleagues at school, and my wife/team member/tech protégé Mairin Raisdana for being so open and hungry to learn about technology and move forward. So where to start?

It is a bit taboo and perhaps considered vain to talk about numbers, but since it is clear I have no issues with ego, awards, or numbers counting, I will start there. My numbers are up!

I am sure there are many that will say numbers don’t matter, but for someone who started a few years ago writing to an audience of one, it is encouraging and rewarding to watch the bars on the graph grow taller and taller. I am not arguing that higher numbers mean success or a better blog, or a better community, but I am saying that the more people stop by and read my blogs, the more chance there is to build authentic connections. Beyond the numbers, however, the thing I am most proud of and happy with are the consistent comments from my regular readers. People like Will Chamberlin, Adrienne Michetti, Clint Hamada, Cathy Crea, Melanie McBride, Tim Bray, and Keri Lee Beasley (There are so many more to mention!) have proven time and time again that having a small committed readership is more important than a huge one. So while increasing numbers are a good way to build a robust readership, a blog must have a foundation of people who look to it as a pleasure to read and with which to connect. I know that I have a support system in place that challenges my thinking, supports me and my students, and offers me material on which to reflect. So why mention numbers?

Over the last semester as my blogs have gained popularity, my voice and ideas are reaching more people. Through Twitter and my two blogs I have been able to connect with a variety of people worldwide. School kids in Canada, a variety of online interviews, and of course face-to-face connections. I have been accepted to present at the 21st Century Learning Conference in Hong Kong, and I am speaking with Melinda Alford about leading a cohort at the next Learning 2.0 conference in China. I have had constructive feedback on my teaching more here, and support for the blogging initiative I am trying to spearhead at our school.

Wow! That’s a lot of hyperlinks. Which means it has been a busy productive term. For people who are new to this online world of networks and connections, I hope my recount can shed some light on the power of blogging and connecting. It is not my intention to brag about my work, but to show what powerful professional development maintaining a blog can be. I was able to do all of this in addition to the in house “real” work I am doing on campus, building an ESL department from scratch, learning about the MYP, and helping the IT team move forward on schoolwide initiatives!

Furthermore, my students are making great progress within our classroom. I am experimenting and pushing the boundaries of what second language learners can do when given the tools to express themselves. In short, I am doing what I love and modeling behavior I would like to see in our school.

How does this happen? How did I go from blogging to myself to creating an authentic, caring, supportive, critical group of individuals who read my work, comment, share tweets, and invite me to conferences?

Consistent, open, honest sharing. This is the model that has worked for me. Everyone says they haven’t the time to blog or connect or do anything other than what the curriculum demands of them. I simply find that to be a cop out. In addition to what I have described above, I am raising two kids, writing a book, and leading a pretty satisfying rich life. I am not trying to say that I am superman and you should be like me; I am simply pointing out that building these networks takes time and energy and it is hard work, but if you take baby steps and stay with it it will bare fruit. Managing time is a choice we all make. If you are serious about blogging, it must be built into your day. Even if it is a few hours a week, it must be consistent.

I often catch myself comparing writing/blogging with running. I don’t do the latter, but first saw the connection through the book What We Talk About When We Talk About Running. Writing is like a marathon, you take your time and pace yourself, but always have a goal in mind.

image by seeveeaar

My goal has never been to become an Edublog celebrity, or to leave my classroom and present at conferences worldwide. I have only ever wanted to share my ideas, my thoughts, and yes my feelings in the most honest way I can to connect with as many individuals across the world as I can. I see this connection as the first steps toward understanding, which eventually I believe leads to a more just and peaceful world. A marathon indeed.

So as 2010 comes to close, I want to thank everyone who has supported me this year with your comments, tweets, external validations and of course love. I feel proud of the work I am doing and I owe much of its success to you. Whoever you, where ever you are reading these words.

Now I am off to Lombok to enjoy some of this:

image by Fadil Basymeleh

I look forward to spending time with family, friends, and my thoughts. Looking forward to disconnecting for awhile, taking a break from Twitter and blogs and enjoying the ocean, my daughter’s laughter, and my camera. See you all in 2011!

Can’t Stop

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I am a bit obsessive. Can you tell? I haven’t been able to stop thinking about animated .gifs since my initial foray last night. Armed with a new tool, I ventured back to try and fine tune my newly acquired skills. Thanks to this great new tool, Squared 5 from new contact @peteschneider I was able to abandon GifNinja. I was looking for something that would give me more freedom to play with still frames, and Squared 5 is just the tool. You simply click and drag the few seconds of video onto the editor and export using image sequence. You can adjust the frames per seconds to determine how many images you work with when creating the animation. I still prefer to use Photoshop instead of a gif creator. This is where the fun starts. This is when the art starts. I am slowly beginning to feel comfortable with the basic routine of this task, which is great because now I can begin to think about and work on the subtle craft of animation.

Working with these frames is a bit like choreographing a dance. I am still not to the level of the Lebowski image, but I am getting closer. Bigger, slower, and clearer images.

I am starting to brainstorm ideas of making a .gif with images I take myself, or thinking about how cool would it be to have an animated comic book, although Comic Life on my Mac does not accept .gifs. Any other ideas? Having lots of fun learning new skills over at #ds106.

Another great side effect of this course is the excitement I am feeling about my learning. I don’t remember being this excited about any single assignment during my entire master’s degree at Columbia. I am thinking a lot about how student must feel, when they are given a task or asked to learn something they truly enjoy. This learning does not feel like a chore, it is an obsession. Now how do I create this kind of excitement in my classroom?