Figuring Out Life While Aging
Aristotle laid it out over 2000 years ago, and it’s constantly repeated on the web: stories are how we humans communicate meaning. Whether it’s a New York Times article about the importance of storytelling for business and ads – http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/13/your-money/storytelling-to-find-a-job-or-build-a-business.html – or a presentation for a class,
telling stories is how we communicate meaning – and it’s a learnable skill!
The Firechat app is a major development in how communication technology works – now without access to wifi or coverage.
I have been inspired by reading danah boyd’s It’s Complicated to think about how we all, not just teenagers, behave, and perceive ourselves behaving in our digital environment.
Responding to @dougpete, I’m adding some more information about copyright safe practices, this time with images. As described in the previous post on safe sounds for podcasting – https://joanvinallcox.wordpress.com/2014/02/28/safe-sounds-for-podcasting-canada-2014/ – Creative Commons and, using Creative Commons licenses, Flickr, provide copyright safe images. On Google Images, you can find safe content, if you search under Tools.
However, the exciting and savvy new move by Getty, as described by CNN – http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/06/tech/social-media/getty-free-pictures/ – adds more options for images to use, at the same time as making misusing the images using screenshot etc. far less interesting. All Getty asks is that you embed the image, giving them credit and a link back to their site.
The embed icon looks like – </> and takes you to the code.
And this is what you get –
I’m typing on Notability on my iPad Mini in the landscape view and using the correct fingering and I’m astounded at the speed I can type with. I’m enjoying this light tapping of a virtual keyboard, a set of letters laid out qwerty-like.The only thing I miss is a single apostrophe on the top keyboard. I find it slowing to have to tap for the number keyboard and then tap the apostrophe and then tap back to the alphabetical one. But it’s interesting, with my iPad resting on my knee and slightly wobbly, just tapping away.
I’m hungry and I’m playing a little. I just found out that I can type a small “i” and it will automatically turn into uppercase. If I type “im” it will automatically become I’m. I wonder what will happen when I type “its”. Yup, it converts; it’s given an added apostrophe automatically. I had to use a semi-colon to need to get at the numerical keyboard. Good to know.
I’m hearing this a lot lately –
I’m playing with recognizing sounds – guess what this one is:
When my students make group presentations, I like to offer them a video of their performance to supplement and strengthen my feedback to them on what they did well and what they need to improve. Today, with the help of a student videographer and the iPad app Capture, I found an easier way to give them access to their video.
First, because their presentation was longer than 15 minutes, I had to prepare my YouTube account to accept that. On the advice of a student, I went to https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/71673?hl=en to find out how to do that. Once I had verified myself with my phone number, I was allowed to upload longer videos to YouTube. So then it was time to video their presentation. I handed my iPad with the Capture app to a student and she used it to video the presentation.
I have used videos before, but I always found porting the video to my computer and then uploading it to YouTube or Vimeo took many times longer than the video itself. I found it onerous. This time, I received my iPad back from my student videographer, and clicked “Upload”. This is the screen I saw:
I chose the “Unlisted” posting, to give students their privacy. Only those with the link will be able to see the video. I use Wikispaces for my course container, and simply posted the link to the YouTube video of their presentation in their Project page, which only members of the group can access. I could have simply emailed the link out to them. Either way, they have control of the privacy level of their video. They can share the link, or not.
This process, using an iPad with the Capture app which is linked to YouTube, is so much easier than my previous process of uploading videos of student work, and I can give them privacy.
