I now post almost all my updates on joanvinallcox.ca
Hope you can enjoy my posts there.
Category: learning
The News and Learning
If you don't know the answer to the question in the image above – "But just what does [proroguing] mean?" You are likely out-of-touch with Canadian political news. If you want to learn more about Canadian, or any other politics, just start paying attention. That may initially seem unattractive, but let me tell you a story.
In my mid-twenties I knew little about politics of any sort. But I had a boyfriend, later a husband, who paid close attention to all the news, including Canadian and American political news. When I was with him, I was subjected to radio, television, and even newspaper news, often several times a day. At first, it was boring. But a strange thing started happening. I found myself knowing more about the news.
At one point early in my career, two older colleagues moved from talking about workplace gossip, which all three of us took part in, to talking about politics. I listened for a while and then I surprised myself by having something to say, and I said it. The three of us continued our discussion, and I enjoyed being part of a conversation with fellow workers whom I liked and respected. Later,one of them stopped me in the hall and told me he hadn't realized I was so knowledgeable and thanked me for my contribution to the conversation. I was thrilled, and it was good for my reputation where I worked, too.
So what does this have to do with learning? Well, I learned about politics without even trying. The thing about learning about politics is that at first you know nothing, so it's boring. But if you keep watching, listening, and reading, everything gets repeated with small changes, over and over again, and some of the stories start to sink in. Then one day, a piece of news gets reported and you'e surprised to notice that you have a question or opinion on it. Without doing anything except hanging around when the news was on, I found myself with a foundation of knowledge, and it became easy and interesting to keep up with the news.
So here's what I suggest if you don't know what proroguing parliament means:
- Go to Google or some other search engine and see what you can find.
- Check the dates on articles or blog posts to see how recent they are. (Check the image above; you might be surprised.)
- Find a site that appears to explain it – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_session (or a better one).
- Even better than looking it up, find someone you know who knows politics and ask them.
- Start going beyond the headlines and see what different political parties are saying, and try to find out the facts underneath what is being said and don't just fall for emotional one-liners.
Political news can be a great conversation-starter, but be discreet, politics can also be a conversation-stopper if you disagree.
I recommend you just hang around news sources for a little time each day, and see what happens ;->
Joan Vinall-Cox, PhD
Social Media & Learning
Learning my (non-technical) way
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.
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!
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":- Vimeo doesn't like really large files;
- HD videos of approximately 15 minutes in length are really large files;
- 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;
- 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;
- 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;
- 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;
- Google didn't help me, although it took time for me to figure that out;
- 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.
- 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;
- 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
- Unfortunately I had deleted the presentation videos from the camera;
- Luckily I was able to retrieve them from their storage space on my computer;
- 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:- Persistence is an important aspect of learning;
- Large files are harder to move around;
- HD video files are large;
- Bloody-minded pride in completing tasks is an important support to learning;
- 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;
- A corollary – not all salespeople know much about what they're selling;
- 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, PhDJNthWEB Consulting – http://jnthweb.ca/
The Web is a Creativity Generator generating a Culture of Creativity
Photo by Tabea Dibou, from Flickr 
We can see more people creating more works than ever before in history. And it’s because of the web and because the web is social. On the web, much is possible. Whether you are finding the right beautiful photo (with the right Creative Commons license) to illustrate metaphorically the connectivity and the beauty of the internet for a blog post, or whether you are playing with a web app (Skitch – http://skitch.com/) to draw
or to explain something
The web is a space where people want to make, to create. I’m creating this blog post, because it’s FUN! And easy. The phrase “user-friendly” developed with the personal computer. Web apps are aimed at being user-friendly to entice and encourage people to use them, to be creative.The social aspect of the web, the possibility of being seen/heard/recognized, even if only by a very few others, encourages people’s creativity. I might not have composed this blog post if the one I created yesterday hadn’t been re-tweeted, and got a comment. That thrill of recognition is energizing. So people are playing on computers and posting their creativity on the web. As we get responses ourselves, and even if we just see others get responses, we are encouraged to join in the play. And playfulness spreads.
So serious people who sell cars and race cars become part of the crowd playing:
Two typographers ( Pierre & Damien / plmd.me ) and a pro race pilot (Stef van Campenhoudt) collaborated to design a font with a car.
The car movements were tracked using a custom software, designed by interactive artist Zachary Lieberman. ( openframeworks.cc )
Which I downloaded – nl.toyota.be/iqfont and played with.
Art, play, creativity – that’s how we humans learn and that’s what makes us happy and healthy. And the web is our creativity playground.
Why I Use More than One Social Bookmarking Service
Not that I’m paranoid (or maybe I am but I like to call it cautious skepticism) but I am always aware than any of the free web services that I use, or even ones I’ve paid for, could go belly up and my stuff on it (them) could vanish into a black hole. So when I read about speculation that my wonderful collection of bookmarks on del.icio.us could disappear, I feel my paranoia is justified.
Internet search marketers could lose some invaluable free tools from Yahoo such as their Site Explorer. Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb was concerned what the deal meant for Build Your Own Search Service (BOSS), Yahoo’s search developer platform Search Monkey and social bookmarking service Delicious, which he described as “one of the last era’s most heartbreaking symbols of untapped potential in social media”.
Bing is exciting as an effective challenger to Google, but if that competition comes at the cost of cannibalising Yahoo’s innovative search work – then we won’t be so excited about Bing any more.
via guardian.co.uk
I also celebrate that I have a strategy to deal with this. What are the odds that two similar web services will disappear at the same time? Not good, I hope.
My web stuff paranoia has led me to set up another social bookmarking service called Diigo. So I have two active accounts on different social bookmarking services.
So does that mean I have to save everything I like twice? Well, sort of, but that’s because I’ve recently taken to using Evernote, a broader and more visual saving application. But back to strictly social bookmarking. I only save once.
How? you ask. In Diigo, under my account name, I go into “Tools” where I can “Import Bookmarks”, but more importantly, I can “Save Elsewhere”. I have added my del.icio.us account here, and every time I save to Diigo, I also save, without any extra work, to del.icio.us.
So I’m prepared! If Yahoo and Microsoft let del.icio.us die, I still have all my bookmarks in Diigo. (Same thing if something happened to Diigo.) And I have Evernote too!
The Web is a Bottomless Toy Chest
I like to play on the web, and my biggest problem is my “I-can’t-catch-up” anxiety. There is always more to explore. And for free, either for the basic version or for a month. I can never try everything out. I can’t catch up. Ever.
I make things even more intense by following people who suggest really interesting web toys. Like Jane Hart, with her Jane’s E-Learning tip of the Day
If you teach or train, or just like to play on the web, you should check out her blog, and subscribe to it.Another of my current people to follow ’cause they give really neat toys – whoops, I mean URLs – away, is Steve Rubel – http://www.steverubel.com/ – Twice he mentioned Posterous. The first time, I tried it but left it orphaned. The second time, months, maybe years, later, I found my original account and started playing, even sort-of lifestreaming, copying him. Great fun.
His constant exploration and evolution is inspiring. Check him out, and subscribe to him in Posterous, and maybe to me too;-> As they say on tv, “Time well wasted!”
Reading Content; Content Reading
All learning is contextual, in my opinion. You have to already know some aspect in order to learn more. I remember my Psych 101 prof, many, many years ago, saying that any book with more than 10% new content would be unreadable. So this video, found through krea_frobro747 on Twitter, appeals to me because it makes sense of my experience both as a reader and as a teacher of reading. Anyone concerned children learning to read, here’s foundational knowledge. (Might help mild dyslexics, too.)
In fact, when I roam the web trying to learn, I have problem trying to understand posts where I can’t bridge the gaps because I’m missing crucial knowledge. I guess the real take-away from this video is the more content you know, the more texts that are accessible to you, and the more you can teach yourself.
It’s like watching (or reading) the news. Initially it’s all disjointed and confusing. But watch and read long enough, and you pick up what you need to know to understand it. You see the patterns; you learn more faster. That’s why experience is valuable; your knowledge net is large and finely detailed.
Styles in MS Word – A Jing Video
I’m attending the PBWorks Camp for teachers, and this is my homework for my second week, a screencast made using Jing on how Styles in MS Word can help in writing long pieces such as academic papers or business reports:
2009-07-02_1211
I re-did this a number of times, dealing with –
- fitting what I wanted to say to the time available
- figuring out what to leave out
- making sure my set-up worked
- reducing the size of my Word screen so I could fit everything into a smaller frame
- stumbling while I was recording
I really like learning from screen captures myself, so I enjoyed creating one
Twitter Means Business
I’m ambivalent about my title because I use Twitter mainly for learning, communication, and entertainment. I recognize, however, that business is becoming increasingly a part of Twitter. I recently posted a picture on TwitPic …
and commented that it reminded me of a Liberty print.
(I have fond memories of a dress made from material I got at Liberty’s in London, and several scarves I treasure, including one my husband discovered in a second-hand store and bought for me. I haven’t shopped there for years because I haven’t been in London for years.)
What happened next was this –
plus an invitation to follow them. I looked at their site and saw that they had a number of people tweeting using the business name plus the (I assume) first name of the person posting the tweets, which strikes me as a good way to display a business and keep the personal touch so important a part of Twitter.
I didn’t chose to follow them, because I live a continent away and because my prime interest is people I know, web businesses that can have an impact on what I want to do, and people I can learn from. (I love the freedom of not following back without feeling rude. So different from invitations in symetrical social sites.)
I found it very interesting that my casual mention of their business brought them directly to me; they are obviously monitoring Twitter, which I didn’t expect from such an old and traditional company – which shows me I should be careful about stereotyping. ;->
Today, in a Google Group I am part of, Gloria Hildebrandt – http://ohouse.ca/ – linked to this site –
It is clear to me that even businesses not directly connected to the web and social networking are seeing the business possibilities that Twitter offers.
So while I keep on enjoying the learning and entertainment that Twitter provides me, I also recognize that it has many uses beyond the purely personal.
WordCamp Toronto 2009
Live Tweeting vs Live Blogging
At the Toronto WordCamp 2008, I live-blogged, and that was fun:
- https://joanvinallcox.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/live-blogging-at-wordcamp-toronto-08/
- https://joanvinallcox.wordpress.com/2008/10/05/live-blogging-wordcam-day2/
At WordCamp Toronto, 2009, I Tweeted using the hashtag #wct09, and that was fun, and more social for a couple of reasons.
- I was less focussed on getting every piece of wisdom and could relate more f2f with the people around me; and
- I could have conversations via Twitter with others at wct09 (if they were using the hashtag) pick up pieces of wisdom from their tweets, and talk f2f with them after meeting on Twitter.
So, for me, with the current social applications, Live Tweeting was a richer experience than Live Blogging, but both were fun.
Learning
I learned from the mix of new information in presentations and conversations around and between the sessions, and my most frequest conversationalists were –
- Dawn – http://www.dawncomber.com
- Alfred – http://www.butterscotch.com
- Ruth – http://www.dandelionwebdesign.com
- Clarence – http://www.picpu.com/
I enjoyed great conversations on shared interests with them – who could ask for anything more?
Sessions
- Erin Blaskie was very interesting – http://www.erinblaskie.com/ – Her social media case study was amazing! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtscIOwTvSU
- Leveraging Social Media, which I embedded in a previous post –https://joanvinallcox.wordpress.com/2009/05/09/wct09-leveraging-social-media/
- Joey DeVilla – Accordian Guy with fascinating stories –
- James Walker – Your Blog is Your Social Network
There was much more of value there, and others will be blogging about WordCamp Toronto 2009, but this is my contribution for now.
Thanks to http://www.flickr.com/photos/lexnger/
Oh yeah, and I won:
Learning Living 