Setting Up Cross Posting on a Few Accounts for DS106
Dailyshoot: Water in a Vase.
I normally don’t blog my Dailyshoot photos on my educational technology blog, but it’s summer and I’m doing DS106 again, so what the heck. This is normally what I use Posterous for. I love how you can post something in one place and have it repost everywhere else. Posterous owns that. What I want to learn today is how to add tags and categories, or can I even do that. I guess I’ll find out. Posterous can, but I’m not sure about Flickr. This is pretty basic. Just type in a box.
Okay, so apparently it will post to a category if you set up that category as you default. That’s good to know.
Via Flickr:
Make a photograph of water in one form or another today.
@dailyshoot #ds583 day 2 for #ds106
DS106 Assignment #1 Introduction
Just getting started with round two of DS106. Maybe I’ll get a littler further along this summer, as I supposedly have less to do in the summer. Made this Animoto video by recording a podcast in Audacity and then uploading it and some of my favorite pics to Animoto. I had to remix it a few times before it was good enough. Took about 15 minutes total. Enjoy.
Five Card Story: Yearning for Knowledge
Five Card Story: Yearning for Knowledge
a ds106 story created by soul4real
flickr photo by pakalko21
flickr photo by HelenaRAmos
flickr photo by PUBLIreflexions
flickr photo by duncandonuts56
flickr photo by les.epinards
Here I sit gazing out the window, looking for knowledge. Is it out this window? Or down this road and across the great divide? I needn’t go very far, as knowledge can be obtained just by using a mouse. But don’t snooze on that or you’ll miss out on all the bright new ideas that are shining bright and ready to consume.
DS106 Radio (Not Really) Live Show
Welcome to another episode of Pimp My Class. Click the link to listen. Tonight’s show will take you back to old school storytelling. We got a letter from Anna in Cave Creek who wanted to know if there were simple audio tools to use in the classroom for storytelling. Why yes, Anna, let’s Pimp Your Class with some easy to use audio tools.
Assignment Description: Come up with an hour-long, themed show for #ds106 Radio that you both conceptualize and produce, then deliver on-the-air live over. It can be an ongoing show, or a one-time affair.
So I’m taking a stab at radio show hosting. Someone be sure to tell me to keep my day job. I created a radio bumper, 3 mini commercials all rolled into a 5 minute episode of a show I created called Pimp My Class. I recorded in Audacity and added a few sound effects and StackTraxx music which I have a license for.
Links for tonight’s show:
Transcript:
You are listening to ds106 radio with soul4real broadcasting live from Phoenix, Arizona.
Welcome to another episode of Pimp My Class. Tonight’s show will take you back to old school storytelling. We got a letter from Anna in Cave Creek who wanted to know if there were simple audio tools to use in the classroom for storytelling. Why yes, Anna, let’s Pimp Your Class with some easy to use audio tools, but first…
Old school storytelling is all about the story and the storyteller. A good story was conveyed through words, and often by improvisation or embellishment.(Much like I’m doing now) Stories have been shared in every culture as a means of entertainment, education, cultural preservation and in order to instill moral values. The same is true today, but storytelling has certainly changed. Today’s storytellers have so many other tools other than the spoken word or movement of the body to convey the story. Today we have endless types of media, including a ton of Web 2.0 tools that can create everything from a still photo to mashups of video to help us tell a story. It can all be quite over stimulating. However, there are many purists still out there that believe storytelling should be only about the narrative. Just sit down. Unplug. Listen. Just like in the old days when we would all gather around the radio to listen to an episode of the Lone Ranger. SCRRRRRR! Okay, okay. Yeah, I wasn’t alive in the 1930’s, and I’m not buying this purists crap either. Gimme a good old fashioned Web 2.0 created story any day. In fact, let’s get right down to my top 3 super techie story telling audio tools.
First is AudioBoo. There’s nothing better than telling a story around a picture, but who has time to take a picture, go home, transfer it to your computer, pretty it up, and then upload it to the web? Then you’re only half way done. You still have to record the story. Back up there a sec. Snap a picture with your fancy smart phone, open up your AudioBoo app, record your story about the picture you just took, attach the photo and send the whole thing to AudioBoo with the push of a button. AudioBoo then posts your story for the whole world to see and hear just like magic. Truly awesome sauce, don’t you think?
Okay, number two on my list is iPadio. Again, who has time for old technology. That would be desktop computers and uploading photos and stories to the web, in case you forgot. iPadio is another tool that lets you use your mobile phone to create audio. iPadio gives you a toll free number to call, so just dial the number and start telling your story. When you’re finished, hang up and your show is live on the web. In fact, if you wanted to actually be live, you can do a live storytelling broadcast. Totally rad, right?
Finally there is AudioPal for those time when you are stuck in a boring textbased discussion forum reading endless boring diatribes about whatever the teacher has assigned. Let’s assume you are not the teacher. That would be bad. But anyway, why not bust out in story right in the middle of that boring discussion with AudioPal. AudioPal lets you record audio directly to the web browser using a microphone or your telephone. And if you’re truly lazy, you can use text to speech. Any way you choose you get your story recorded, and AudioPal will email you the embed code to your story. You can then embed your story right into the discussion, so when all the other bored students get to your post, they get a surprise story to brighten their day, and all is right in the world once again. Okay, well, maybe not, but anyway, Anna you can pimp your class by introducing any of these storytelling methods into your class. I hope that helps and good luck to you.
Okay, that’s it’s for tonight’s episode of Pimp My Class. If you would like to get some tips on how to pimp your class, send your email to dr.coop at yahoo.com. Until then, this is soul4real signing off. Have a great evening.
Random Assignment for DS106 – Playlist Story
As I was scanning through the DS106 RSS feed reading posts and listening to lots of content, I came across an assignment that had to do with writing a story using your music playlist. I couldn’t find the “official” assignment anywhere on the ds106.us website. I’m still trying to figure it all out. Anyway, this assignment was a bit less academic than the one I was currently working on (reading and reflecting), so I thought I’d give it a whirl. It looks like someone named Colleen created her own assignment. The jist of it is:
Using Windows Media Player*, construct a playlist of songs (using song titles only) that can go together to form a sentence, a poem, a new song, etc. When you are done, print your screen, paste it in paint and upload it to your blog, flickr, etc., tagging it.
By passing the Windows Media Player for iTunes (does anyone use WMP anymore?), I got started making my story. Interestingly enough my story ended up being quite a depressing love story. I recall someone else making a similar comment on his on music playlist story. I guess writing poetry is easier if there is a sad story in it.
Assignment #4: Dailyshoot Redux
This is an easy one. I started doing Dailyshoot over a year ago but grew bored when the assignments seemed to repeat. As a result of not participating, my photo production dwindled to almost nothing. Every time I wanted to take a picture of something I had to go searching for my camera. Before I would always have one with me. So I’m enjoying getting back into photography mode. I’m going to try to not be so obsessive about this time though. 🙂
Some other cool places to participate in daily shoots are on Flickr 365 Project and 365project. There are lots of great photographers out there, and participating is a great way to practice your own skills. Below is a slideshow of my 199 Dailyshoot photos on flickr.
Experimenting with WordPress Plugin to Stalk My Students
I’ve been blogging for years, and I have well over 10 blogs on WordPress.com, self hosted WordPress and Blogger. No, I do not try to update them all, just as I would not try to wear all my clothes on the same day. They are there for when the mood strikes me to post about xyz; I go to the blog that applies and post. But recently I began teaching my online courses out of WordPress blogs. I started with WordPress MU (multi-user), which was pretty close to a nitemare, but recently when WordPress updated to 3.0 the networking and multi-user features were built. Well, sort of. There’s one little step that needs to be done to activate it, but that was a lot easier to do than setting up WordPress MU.
Setting this all up as my course management system to replace Blackboard required a lot of experimenting. In fact, in this second semester of using it for my online classes, I’m still experimenting. For instance, with my ENG101 course last fall I installed BuddyPress to add more networking features, but in my ENG102 and ENH295 courses I did not.
BuddyPress: Social networking in a box. Build a social network for your company, school, sports team or niche community all based on the power and flexibility of WordPress.
I decided I liked the added social networking features of BuddyPress, but I wasn’t comfortable with using it or the look of it just yet, so I put that on hold. Instead I’ve been experimenting with some other plugins to add similar features.
One of my favorite plugins is Who’s Online. I have 72 students in 3 sections of ENG102, and it helps to know who has logged in recently. With this plugin I can add a widget to the sidebar that displays all 72 students’ pictures, names and last logged in status. Or if they are currently online, it will display that. I love looking at all the avatar photos of my students, and it’s easy to take “online roll call” with this feature. What would really be cool is if I could click on the photo or name and be taken to a profile page to read more about each one. Oh wait, that’s what BuddyPress does. Ah, I’m not ready for that just yet. Maybe next semester.
So I’m not really stalking my students. That was a pretty good attention getter though. Don’t you think? If you’d like to see a pretty good WordPress site running BuddyPress, you should check out @Teach42’s Fit42 Challenge. Not only is he running BuddyPress, but he also installed the Achievements plugins that allows him to award badges to users for completing various tasks. It’s really cool. I’ll save more on that for a later post.
Coop Here: Going Old School
The first assignment is to do a short introduction and tell a story about something that happened to you recently. So I made a video in iMovie, as I was trying to learn how to do green screen in iMovie ’09. I wanted to be able to teach a colleague how to do green screen movies for her class and she only has a Mac. I’ve never done it in iMovie, as I use Pinnacle Studio 12 on a PC and not my Mac for movie editing. I was not successful, as you will see, but I have a story none the less. #ds106
Not Your Grandmother’s Storytelling
Okay, I’m jumping in the water. Giving this open course thing a test. I thought: storytelling, hmmm…, I can handle that. But after having a quick look at this storytelling, I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed. What the heck are these people talking about? What happened to throwing some pics together in iMovie and laying down some narration. That’s the storytelling I know. But crowdsourcing, mashups, cyberinfrastructure, fan fiction? WTH? Okay, I can handle this. Calm down.
I’m still not clear what I’m suppose to be doing. The Reverend preaches: “Now let’s create some art, damn it!” Okay, okay, I’m going. I’ll figure this out. You’ll see.
