Author: joanvinallcox

Joan Vinall-Cox, Ph.D. is a lifelong learner, retired communications professor, rabid reader and poet who has taught in both the college and university systems. Her Ph.D., in 2004 was an Autoethnographic Arts-Based Narrative Inquiry focused on moving from technophobia to technophilia. She is a widow from a happy marriage and a mother to a strong and kind daughter. Her interests include Centering Prayer, Multiple Intelligences, Attention Deficit Disorder and its connection to creativity, Jung, Campbell’s Monomyth, and Arts-Based Narrative Inquiry

So many tools, so little time!

~ joanvinallcox ~ 1 Comment

Yesterday while glancing through my Tweets, I stumbled across a request by @wmacphail to go to an address. Since I've always found his work interesting, I clicked. I ended up on an app he'd embedded in a course wiki, which let me talk to him and another guest. We were on tokbox – http://www.tokbox.com/ – a videochat tool.

I wish I had time to experiment with it. I hope people let me know how it works for them.

When I DMed @wmacphail my thanks for introducing me to tokbox, he sent me another link, showing me how LiveScribe works – http://www.livescribe.com/ – and I fell into equipment lust. I want one, but I'll have to save up first.


I wish I had time to experiment with it. I hope people let me know how it works for them.

Then my colleagues in the HPCA Google Group sent around an amusing video with robot-like characters made with Xtranormal – http://www.xtranormal.com/ – and this tool looked like fun.


I wish I had time to experiment with it. I hope people let me know how it works for them.

While scanning through my Posterous subscription to Steve Rubel's LifeStream this morning, – http://www.steverubel.com/google-preps-server-side-clipboard – I saw the link to the post about the Google Cloudboard – http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/10/google-cloudboard.html – and it looks very useful.


I hope I'll have time to experiment with it. I hope, when it becomes available, people will let me know how it works for them.

In my Inbox this morning, I found an invitation to Google Wave, and I'm so-o-o- curious, and so short of time!


I'm determined to have time to experiment with it. I hope people let me know how it works for them.

Joan Vinall-Cox
Social Media & Learning

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Getting Published Seminar – Brian Henry

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I’ll admit it; I tend to be hyper-critical of people trying to teach writing, but only because I’ve spent over 35 years doing so myself. So when I signed up myself and the young teen I’m mentoring to a seminar on how to get published, I had a cynical edge. I was prepared to spend from 10:00 to 4:00 on a Sunday closeted in a small room in the back of Toronto’s World’s Biggest Bookstore only because a colleague I respect spoke highly of Brian Henry’s impact on her writing, and because the seminar fee was relatively low, aspiring writers being a frugal crowd.

It didn’t start well. Just after 10:00, standing outside the locked doors of a store that didn’t open till 11:00 on Sundays, directly in the wafting stream of pot smoke, with a 16 year old entrusted to me by her parents – I was having negative thoughts. Then I saw someone approaching the door from the inside; it was unlocked and we were escorted in.

We found our seats, and settled in. Within 10 minutes, I was won over. As a long time teacher, it was clear to me that Brian Henry knew both his stuff and how to manage a class. When participants focusing on their own specific questions interrupted, he answered clearly and then steered back to his (well) planned presentation with no show of irritation. I really enjoyed his sense of humour, and his passion for what he was teaching. Both my young friend and I found him easy to understand and we felt we learned what we needed to know for our next step in getting her novel published – how to write a query letter. Listening to an actual agent who is taking on authors was a bonus.

So thanks, Brian Henry – http://quick-brown-fox-canada.blogspot.com/ – and here’s my recommendation to any aspiring writers in the GTA – sign up for one of his seminars – http://quick-brown-fox-canada.blogspot.com/search/label/*%20%20Brian%20Henry%27s%20schedule

Joan Vinall-Cox
JNthWEB Consulting – http://jnthweb.ca/
Social Media & Learning

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Learning my (non-technical) way

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Alternate titles for my recent learning frenzy:

  • Feels so good after stopping banging my head against the wall
  • Arriving where I started and knowing the place for the first time (apologies to T. S. Eliot)

I have just spent most of three days figuring out how to fulfill a teaching commitment, one that I made before I figured out how to accomplish it. It has been a grueling but ultimately positive experience, at least so far.

I teach a course that covers from speaking to a live audience to podcasting, and includes formal group presentations. I want my students to see how they look and sound in their presentations, and I used this as a excuse to buy something I've been coveting – a flip camcorder.

After years of experiencing the result of my "ready, fire, aim", approach to new experiences, I was smart enough to play with my flip a little before using it in class. I recorded a couple of minutes of various friends and then deleted the videos at their requests. I recorded a few seconds of plants (they don't request deletion of their images) moving in the wind. Transferred it to my laptop – directly using the flip-out USB, which automatically opens the flipshare screen, as seen below.

20090926-erxktc6819cprwgafs4rncq1qb.jpg

I glanced at the flipshare screen, got frustrated because I didn't immediately 'get' it and decided to put my short practice video on Vimeo. No problem!

20090926-qcymch6r156cy97b6c76ybkfhj.jpg

So, feeling secure, off I went to class. I recruited volunteers to video each of the 3 presentations, retrieved my lovely new flip, and went home where I planned to upload each presentation to Vimeo and then embed each group's presentation on a wiki page private to them.

Then I encountered a series of "learning events":

  1. Vimeo doesn't like really large files;
  2. HD videos of approximately 15 minutes in length are really large files;
  3. iMovie, which I have only limited experience with, didn't want to accept 15 minutes of HD video whole, no matter how many times I tried and how many times I watched bits and pieces of video tutorials;
  4. iDVD, same experience, but after I had borrowed and set up my husband's Lacie DVD burner, with all kinds of wires to connect everywhichwhere;
  5. I phoned my friendly expert and he tried to tell me how to convert HD to SD but I didn't know enough to understand his suggestions and he was at a meeting and had to disconnect;
  6. He had also suggested YouTube and its private channels, and I forget why I thought that wouldn't work, probably file size and time length;
  7. Google didn't help me, although it took time for me to figure that out;
  8. Twitter people responded, suggesting Box, DropBox and YouSendIt I've used all 3 before and tried them out – same problem with large files, but the YouSendIt Pro trial looked possible.
  9. My long-suffering husband let me send a video to him using YouSendIt Pro's Trial – it took over 2 hours to upload and over 1/2 hour to download – that didn't seem like a good idea to me;
  10. My other responsibilities were suffering by now, but the idea of channels being private had finally met up with a vague memory of my flipshare screen
    20090926-jrtkfiasxnnteyrdk3dj6m8f9s.jpg
  11. Unfortunately I had deleted the presentation videos from the camera;
  12. Luckily I was able to retrieve them from their storage space on my computer;
  13. Still avoiding the manual, I managed to create 3 separate channels and send the links by email to the members in each group (and to me for all three) – it still took hours to upload, but my emails to me appeared to demonstrate success: I could click on the image of the video and see it.

Now would be a good time to glance back to the beginning to see my alternate titles – they'll make sense now ;->

What I have learned:

  1. Persistence is an important aspect of learning;
  2. Large files are harder to move around;
  3. HD video files are large;
  4. Bloody-minded pride in completing tasks is an important support to learning;
  5. Knowing some aspects of what you're buying, the difference is file size between HD and SD, for instance, is a wise approach, even if it blocks impulse buying;
  6. A corollary – not all salespeople know much about what they're selling;
  7. People are helpful, but ultimately you have to find the right set-up yourself.

I haven't yet heard from the students I sent the flipshare channel links to; keep your fingers crossed for me.

Joan Vinall-Cox, PhD
JNthWEB Consulting – http://jnthweb.ca/

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Gmail’s Tasks, and Why I Use It ((no gallery))

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This morning I will assemble a newsletter that has been sent to me by email, an article at a time. I find gmail's Tasks invaluable in doing this.

In the image below, the Tasks link in the left sidebar has an arrow pointing out its position. It used to be in labs (the green lab jar at the top just to the right of your gmail address) but is now integrated.

Arrows also point to what its window looks like opened, and where you can click on the icon to minimize it.

Tasks can sit tidily out of the way bottom right, or, if you click on the bar icon, open in the Inbox window. If you click on the angled arrow icon, it opens as a separate window. Or you can close it altogether by clicking on the "X".

Here's where to find Tasks:

Here's what Tasks looks like close up:

Notice the "related email" links – When they come in to my inbox, I label the message, but I also go to More Actions menu and down to Add to Tasks for every related message, and there I have it, listed in Tasks with the relevant link! You can also see

  • Minimize, Separate Window, and Close icons at the top right
  • Actions menu bottom left for a number of possibilities

  • 3 icons, bottom right, for adding another task, trashing, and going to a Tasks menu.

All-in-all a handy little tool!

(Now I can't put off working on the newsletter any longer ;-> and will go to work on it, using gmail's Tasks!)

Joan Vinall-Cox, PhD
JNthWEB Consulting – http://jnthweb.ca/
Social Media & Learning

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