You'll know when you get there

I chose a place on the map that looked like a likely spot to have a nice hike, a falls somewhat off the beaten track. I put the name of the falls in my map program and pressed start. As it turned out I didn't really need the map program because helpful brown nature signs were posted along the road at intersections.  

I parked the car off the road and headed down the trail. Soon I could hear water running.  Louder and louder. I could just glimpse water through the bushes and was headed that way when out of the depths of my pocket came a muffled electronic voice, "you have arrived."

At the Hostel

The almost middle aged, middle-eastern looking man with the scruffy beard seemed to be the only other person besides me who used the hostel's common room-kitchen. He fixed himself dinner the first night. The next night he waited until a couple finished cooking their dinner and then asked me, "you cook?" "No thanks, I'm just having tea." 
He puttered in the kitchen as I read in an easy chair. At length he came over and asked "you soap?" As he waved the bowl I understood.  My gratefullness flowed out in a wave. "I'd love some," I said with a wide smile.

At the Post Office

"What kind stamps would you like?" asked the post mistress. "We have birds and flags and the new Christmas stamps. The madonnas are nice."

The madonnas were nice. Rich reds and glowing golds.  

As I inspected the Christmas stamps, mulling over my choices she added encouragingly, "And none of the parts that shouldn't be showing showing", 

"What parts would that be?" I inquired, thinking of many madonnas with a tennis ball of a breast exposed.

"Oh, in last year's stamp the baby's little thing was dangling.  See how in this year they don't show that lower half of the baby."

Sure enough, Jesus was cropped at the navel.

"I'll take the madonnas," I said.

The University of Texas Sniper and My Journalism Career

AP Photo

Fifty years ago today a man climbed to the top of a tower on the campus of the University of Texas and ended, not only the lives of 14 people, but also my journalism career.

I was working as a copy girl at the Albany Times Union during the summer of my sophomore year in college. My job in the afternoons before the deadline for the evening paper was to carry the copy from the bank of very loud teletype machines to the copy editor. I tore stories off as they were typed and made sure the editor had the latest news stories from the wire services with which to work.

As the story broke the wire services were updating the death count every few minutes. As the deadline for press drew near, the editor told me to just stand in the teletype room and shout the latest number out: ten…. eleven…..   twelve.

I don’t know if we went to press with the final number or not. I do know that my enthusiasm for pursuing a career in journalism died that afternoon as well. This was one of the first mass shootings, surely my first.  It was necessary to put all feelings aside and just report, yell, the numbers.  That evening I decided journalism as a career demanded more than I was willing to give.

Machine Scored Discussion Boards

This started out as a joke but the more I think about it the more I like it.

What every learning management system needs is an auto-scored discussion board, a discussion where the computer scores student entries.

This would be useful to instructors who:

- want students to post a response to a question

- and then post a reply to another student,

- who want the posts to have a point value,

- but who don’t want to spend time scoring responses.

 (and trust me, there is a lot of navigating work to get posts into a format that you can see what you need to see to grade them.)

So why not have the Learning Management System automatically score x points for posting and x points for replying.

This would make it possible to have a low stakes assignment that does not take up excessive time grading.  The instructor could still read the posts and comment as they feel is appropriate. They can spend time reading students’ thoughts and engaging them in conversation, not grading. 

Where Was I?

I’m glad the 50th anniversary celebration of the March on Washington is winding down. Frankly, it was making me ashamed. 

Ashamed of myself. 

I should have a personal memory of that time. Of that event. And I don’t. 

In August 1963 I was about to enter my senior year in high school. I was old enough to be civically engaged. I  would weather the death of President Kennedy 3 months later. I have vivid memories of that.  Why don’t I remember the March? It just didn’t make it on to my radar. 

Four years later in 1967, as an exchange student to traditionally black Clark College in Atlanta, Georgia, I witnessed a spontaneous re-enactment of the “I Have a Dream Speech” by Clark College students on the steps of the dining hall. But in 1963, I, like so many others I’d guess, didn’t notice it.

82nd and Fifth

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is publishing a video series throughout this year in which their curators talk for two minutes about one of their favorite objects from the collection.  It is a stunning work in progress.  

All images of the objects are still photographs They are revealing in a way that a video would not be. Seeing them glide by while the curator talks is a contemplative experience. There is often a series of views approaching the object. You see the object in its museum setting. And you hear the curator explain why this object is special, special to her or him.

Curators' describe their personal experience that led to their selection. Curator George Goldner says of El Greco's View of Toledo "The first time I saw it I was 10 years old, I think...  

I always thought of paintings as being.... they reproduce reality, and that's what they were all about.  Seeing this painting... it was the first picture which attracted me to art. “

Most objects are not so famous as the El Greco and they are not paintings. Tapestry, sculpture, clothing, crossbows, guitars, a spoon, a Mesopotamian cylinder seal and the official signature of a sultan are all focused on with loving care and, of course, considerable knowledge.

In addition to the video each object can be viewed in a program that allows you to zoom in on it and turn it around. One of the most effective is Rembrandt’s drawing of Leonardo DiVinci’s Last supper. You can move a slider to view Leonardo’s fresco behind Rembrandt’s drawing. You can even display the black and white engraving  of the fresco that Rembrandt may have worked from. He never saw DaVinci's original.

A couple videos are published a week and you can subscribe to the series.

The Learning Adventure

I bumped into a listing of 7 new tools for creating music online recently. I am no musician and don’t teach or create music, but the tools tempted me. What fun it would be to try out some of those tools and see what I could create.  

Why don’t we do more exploring into areas that we don’t know?

As a technology facilitator to faculty I have noticed that most people, teachers and student, (and I include myself here) want to go only where they have gone before, perfect something rather than try something entirely new.  When was the last time you tried something entirely new?

I can hear the arguments in my own head

    -  Well, it wouldn’t be any good.

    -  It wouldn’t be professional looking    
    -  It would be too difficult

    -  All I would learn is that I can’t do it... AND I'd feel stupid!

But I would be missing something. I would be missing the adventure and the joy of figuring out a puzzle with only our wits, and the combined wisdom of the group to help us. I might not learn to create a passable piece of music using the new tools, but I might learn:

    -   How to attack a problem I haven’t seen before

    -   How others do it (and could I do that?)

    -  Where the edge of my comfort zone is for not knowing what I’m  doing

When confronted with something new, what is your preferred way to learn? Ask a friend, find a book, google it?

When was the last time you and your class had a learning adventure? An activity which you didn’t know how it would turn out? That had not been carefully planned and constructed and all the possible hard spots and bumps removed? When did you learn something together?

I think I’ll try some of those tools.

Photo Credit: Ran Yaniv Hartstein via Compfight cc

Woof

In Florida I admired the variety and beauty of the bark.
(All from Florida except the birch which was in Quebec.)
See the Edcanvas project here.

36 Hours

I dislike the 36 Hours in.... series in the New York Times travel section for many reasons.
1. They are not often a place I want to go. They are usually cities and not the countryside

2. If I really wanted to go to a place, I would plan to spend more than 36 hours there.

3. The emphasis is on running from one thing to another as fast as you can. Savoring, bumbling around or "doinking" isn't an option.

Charles Isherwood addresses that issue in the opening lines of a recent post:

Trying to sample the pleasures of some cities over a weekend can be a bit like entering a pie-eating contest. Sounds like a madcap lark, but after a while you’re likely to feel overstuffed, foolish and maybe a little sick. Sure, you could do Paris without the Louvre, but why? Even negotiating the fabled museum itself in that time frame would be a challenge. San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico, poses no such problems. 

So I guess the trick is to choose a "less worthy" site to "do" in 36 hours.. or stay home.

How to Stay Warm

Isn't it funny how when you feel cold, you can't ever remember being warm and then when you're warm you can't remember being cold?

Here are some things that you can do to stay warm when it's 15 degrees outside for a week and it's 55 in the house.

- wash some dishes in hot sudsy water

- work with your laptop in your lap.

- go to the library and read a book

- do something creative that takes your mind off the cold like editing a picture (not needlework cause your hands are too cold for that)

- cook something, better yet, bake something

- go shopping

- clean a room really well

- try very hard, when you are tucking your long underwear tops into your long underwear bottoms not to touch your back with your very cold hands.

- wear thick wooly socks and thick soled shoes

- drink hot tea. Hold hot tea

- find some place to go in the car (visit a far away friend, preferably one who lives further south)

- do some yoga stretches

- eat some hot oatmeal for breakfast and hot soup for lunch

- hug your dog

Photo Credit: MarsuMic via Compfight cc

The Joys of Non-Social Media

My husband was keeping notes and reflections on his IPad in the yellow pad notes app so when a friend recommended Day One, a new diary app, I thought I'd try it out to see if it would be an improvement.

Day One is simple; it does what it does, period.  I loathe the word "intuitive" when applied to a software interface, but suffice it to say you can't do anything too wrong here. You can write text notes in a box and do some minimal formatting. You can add a subject tag, a geo-reference and, most importantly, a picture (just one)

It's perfect for a trip diary. Even if you just add a blank entry it will track where you were and what the weather was. You can add those stray notes about a place and the odd photo you take with your IPad. 

I used it during a 10 day vacation recently and it worked well for me. I was able to add  stray notes and observations as well as a short list of activities for that day. 

After using it and exploring it for a bit I realized that what felt truly different about it was that it was not social. I wasn't sharing my observations with anyone but myself. In fact, you can tweet an entry or put it on Facebook, but there is no easy way to share the whole thing with someone else or download, export or print in any meaningful way.

And you know what? that's just fine. I like it here in my private space. I like the creativity of posting a picture for my day, sometimes just a picture. Sometimes just a phrase.

It is a definate improvement on the yellow pad notes app. Both folks that I've recommended it to find it is an easier and faster way to do what they were trying to do with other clunkier software. 

It did cost $4.99, a rather steep price for a simple app, but sometimes, even usually, less is more. It was awarded the Mac App Store 2012 Mac App of the year. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/day-one-journal/id421706526?mt=8

Available for Iphone, IPad and Mac

There's No App for That

I first noticed it walking down the street toward my hotel in a strange city. On the corner across from my hotel was a nice looking Italian restaurant… maybe a place for dinner? I could see that the menu was posted at the front door.  Instead of walking over to look at the menu I went back to my hotel and looked it up on the IPad.

Eating breakfast by the kitchen window, the one with the outside thermometer attached, I open the weather app on my iPad to see what the temperature is.

I started keeping track: 

How many things do I do online that I don’t NEED to do online?  Things, that if I didn’t do online would give me, at a minimum, more human contact or more exercise.

And it's not only with computers and the internet. A friend told me he wanted a Super Remote for Christmas. It replaces all your remotes; you need never go looking for the “right remote” again.  So now, you not only don't have to get up to change the TV channel, but you don't even have to get up to look for the right remote.

Mobile devices can surely make you more efficient.  But aren’t there times when being efficient is not and should not be the primary goal?

Yes, of course. Which means that we each have to think about and set boundaries on what should be done with electronics and what is better done by moving an object through space and time.

So I’ve been trying to be aware of what I am doing when I open the computer. What is the task that I went here for? what  type of task is it? Fact finding, communicating, time wasting?  I  just name it.

I ask, is this the best way to complete this task? Is there a way to do this that would connect me with people more? Give me more exercise? Make me more focused?  It’s not much but it’s a start.

Here is an ode to movement done with technology: the best of both worlds.

November view

November brings me a lesson each year. And each year I have to re-learn it.

It’s that there is a world behind the leafy-green boundary that suddenly disappears when the leaves fall.  Ponds appear. Distant hills jump closer. Houses tucked back in the woods stand up. The effect is magnified by the sideways light, throwing a spotlight through the trees. It is a startling and humbling experience.

The November view and the July view are of the same landscape, yet completely different.  Can I remember this when talking with someone with whom I don’t agree? That we may very well be looking at the same landscape and seeing different things?

How Beautiful Are the Feet

Statue of Statue of Peace Leader Sri Chinmoy along Burke-Gilman Trail, Fremont, WA

How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things. Isiah 52:7

Interaction

When we use the concept of "interactive media" exclusively in relation to computer-based media, there is the danger that we will interpret "interaction" literally, equating it with physical interaction between a user and a media object ... at the expense of psychological interaction.

The psychological processes of filling-in, hypothesis formation, recall, and identification, which are required for us to comprehend any text or image at all, are mistakenly identified with an objectively existing structure of interactive links.

Lev Manovich Language of New Media p 57

Photo by WadeB under Creative Commons License

Those Heineken Beer Songs

Those Heineken beer folks have a great way of picking out the odd tune, one that makes you look up from ignoring the ads and just grabs you.

Recently they resurrected a BollyWood extravaganza song from a 1965 movie, Jaan Pehechaan Ho. While not an unknown quantity (the YouTube video has more than 1,700,000 view) it was probably new to most Heineken imbibers and to many other Western audiences as well.

In their most recent ad the music is Love Letter by Clairy Browne & The Bangin' Rackettes
A rockin,  bruising deepthroated Clairy belts out “I’m gonna write what I want you to do to me in a letter”  The group got together in 2009. So this has to be a huge bump for them. In fact, under the video one fan comments:
Heineken is horrible beer but their commercial did lead to me buying this album :) So it's not a total loss.

And they are good.

Looking forward to the next Heineken discovery.

The Eternal in the Specific

film by Temujin Doran via Brain Pickings http://bit.ly/Hec8XR

The Joy of Books

Definitely  watch this in full screen mode.
Bookstore owner's notes:
After organizing our bookshelf almost a year ago (http://youtu.be/zhRT-PM7vpA), my wife and I (Sean Ohlenkamp) decided to take it to the next level. We spent many sleepless nights moving, stacking, and animating books at Type bookstore in Toronto (883 Queen Street West, (416) 366-8973). 
Everything you see here can be purchased at Type Books.
Grayson Matthews (http://www.graysonmatthews.com/) generously composed the beautiful, custom music. You can download it here: http://itunes.apple.com/album/awakenings-single/id496796623
But none of it could have been done without all the volunteer hands who shelved and reshelved books all night, every night.

Underground NY Public Library

Underground NY Public Library, a gallery on Flickr.
The Photographer SheSaidUnPrintableThings takes these wonderful pictures of readers on the subway. And because it matters she carefully notes what book each person is reading. Her blog is at http://undergroundnewyorkpubliclibrary.com/
A wonderful read on Reading is at Someone Reading A Book is a Sign of Order in the World  I believe that.