Figuring Out Life While Aging
My phone rang as I was walking. I pulled it out to answer and ran my finger across the bottom of the screen. Learned that touch screens don’t work when you’re wearing gloves.
Took off my purple gloves, called back, then took some pictures of the patterns in the morning frost.
Joan Vinall-Cox, PhD,
Social Media Consultant
http://jnthweb.ca
The other day I wrote up a collection of information for a non-profit starting to get into social media. Thought I might as well share it more broadly.
Blogs can be free – for example
Chat rooms,
Ask an expert forum,
Social networking site
Webinar,
Webcast,
Podcast,
On-line seminars
Almost all the costs for the ones I’ve mentioned are people-based – needing only expertise and/or time to learn
Joan Vinall-Cox, PhD
JNthWEB Consulting – http://jnthweb.ca/
Social Media & Learning
https://joanvinallcox.wordpress.com/my-e-portfolio/
Halton Peel Communicators Association – http://www.hpcaonline.org/
Lately I've set my search field to search using heapr. I like it because it gives me Google search results, and beside that, a choice of search results from Twitter, WolframAlpha or Wikipedia. I tend to stick to WolframAlpha.
I find words fascinating so I checked out what WA offered me. Much to my surprise, it offered me –
Joan Vinall-Cox, PhD
JNthWEB Consulting – http://jnthweb.ca/
Social Media & Learning
https://joanvinallcox.wordpress.com/my-e-portfolio/
Lots of people are raving about the tv show set in the 1960s, Mad Men, about how accurate the costumes and the stories are. What I find interesting is that people on the radio or tv in the 1960s had a distinctive sound; they talked differently than today. You can actually recognize the era by listening to the voices of people who were recorded then. What is even more surprising is what they take for granted. Listen to this 4:42 minute clip for how they sound, and for what is said about women's job possibilities – http://archives.cbc.ca/politics/rights_freedoms/clips/412/ – especially listen to the comments by the man near the end.
To get a sense of how people sounded in 1948, and what women were listening to, check out this 14 minute slice of radio – http://archives.cbc.ca/programs/942/ Women's lives and possibilities are so different from only 40 years ago! The CBC has a great collection of radio and tv archive, well worth exploring for both the audio and the sociological aspects. – http://archives.cbc.ca/ Joan Vinall-Cox, PhDFor all of you who are visually oriented, look at this tab bar with multiple tabs.
Remember what the one you want now looks like, but not its name?
See the handle bars in the middle? Pull them down.
And now you can see all the tabbed sites. You can close with the same handlebars.
Neat, eh?I’ve been teaching a course called Oral Rhetoric, a course where I work with students on their public speaking, both in face-to-face situations and in creating online audio recordings. Yesterday was the second last class and we spent most of the class time listening to their second last assignment, a commercial/pitch to advertise their final assignment – a story of theirs that they create a recording of and post online. The recordings of their pitches we heard were wonderful, and why wouldn’t they be. These students have spent all their lives listening to radio and tv commercials. They might not have Gladwell’s 10,000 hours of commercial-listening to gain expertise, but they do have hours and hours of soaking in just how persuasion works.
Over the term, I asked them to read about and practice two kinds of rhetorical skills:
Both the traditional and the current forms of rhetoric were in evidence in the pitches we listened to, but what really thrilled me were the spontaneous responses. We’re using PBWorks for our course container and it allows comments on pages. At the bottom of the Pitch page, was a conversation, a series of comments praising many of the pitches. I was thrilled because I had been trying to develop a Community of Practice approach in the course. After almost every presentation or posting of student work, I asked students to describe their own experiences while doing their own presentation/recording and to give positive feedback to at least three of their classmates. This was an assignment and posted on a weekly Discussions page on the course wiki. I wanted them to learn from each other, and to get used to learning from colleagues as a way to continue learning in their futures. The responses in the Comments section of the Pitch page were an unrequired, spontaneous manifestation of giving each other feedback. What that says to me is that some of the students have developed the habit of responding, and could recognize the technical possibilities (the Comment space at the bottom of the page) for sharing those responses. They have both the communication and the digital know-how.
Makes me happy 
Joan Vinall-Cox, PhD (905)
JNthWEB Consulting – http://jnthweb.ca/
Social Media & Learning
It’s unseasonably warm but delightful weather.
Joan Vinall-Cox, PhD,
Social Media Consultant
http://jnthweb.ca
Joan Vinall-Cox, PhD,
Social Media Consultant
http://jnthweb.ca
Check the page number at the bottom.
Joan Vinall-Cox
Learning Living 