Sometimes I wake up in the dark and my mind begins to chatter. Sometimes I worry about painful things, but often I can redirect my stream of words into ideas, sentences that are planning rather than fretting. So at 5:00 I lay restlessly and thought about a new course I'm planning, about scripting and audio and documentaries culminating in podcasts. After I'd heard the furnace kick in and felt the air a little warmer, I got up and made some notes. Good ideas, if I do say so myself, including wondering if I should ask the students to learn a little about how the brain deals with sound as part of their thinking about audience. With that as an excuse, I woke up my computer and started googling. Many search terms, many sites briefly checked and rejected – and then a HIT! – http://www.learningthroughlistening.org/Listening-A-Powerful-Skill/The-Science-of-Listening/History-and-Overview-of-Listening/91/

I find the information clearly presented and it appears to be up-to-date. I especially love the use of the same video clip with different sounds to illustrate the affective impact of sound – http://www.learningthroughlistening.org/Listening-A-Powerful-Skill/The-Science-of-Listening/Learning-Through-Listening-in-the-Digital-World/How-New-Technologies-are-Changing-our-View-of-What-Listening-is/Helicopter-Videos/264/

Although it is aimed at teachers, especially those who teach dyslexic and/or disabled students, the information is valuable for a more general audience, in my opinion.

A little further exploring of this extensive and very rich site, and I discover that it advocate a Universal Design for Learning (or UDL). http://www.cast.org/research/udl/index.html

I quickly bookmark these sites (and write up this post) and wrench myself away from exploring further (later!) so I can get on with my planned day. (Sometimes insomnia can be valuable;->)

Joan Vinall-Cox, PhD – joanvc@jnthweb.ca
JNthWEB Consulting – http://jnthweb.ca/
Social Media & Learning
https://joanvinallcox.wordpress.com/my-e-portfolio/

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An amazing performance in a great venue with delicious food and richly companionable friends. Wonderful!

Hugh’s Room – http://www.hughsroom.com/ – worth a trip to Toronto

Dr. Draw – http://maplemusic.com/artists/drd/default.asp – think Russian, gypsy, happy Jimi Hendrix – throbs through your body and fills your mind!

Joan Vinall-Cox, PhD,
Social Media Consultant
http://jnthweb.ca

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Saw this on http://robertpaterson.posterous.com/ and it resonated

It made me think of Phyllis Gotlieb’s Death’s Head

at 3 a.m. I run my tongue
around my teeth (take in a breath)
(give out a breath) take one more step
approaching death. my teeth are firm
and hard and white (take in a breath)
incisors bite and molars grind
(give out a breath) the body lying
next to mine is sweet and warm
I’ve hears that worms (take in a breath)
the coffin meat of human kind
and if they did I wouldn’t mind
that’s what I heard (take in a breath)
(and just in time) I think it’s all
a pack of lies. I know my flesh
will end in slime. the streets are mean
and full thieves. the children in
the sleeping rooms (give out a breath)
walk narrowly upon my heart
the animal beneath the cloth
submerged rises to any bait
of lust or fury, love or hate
(take in a breath) my orbic skull
is eminently frangible
so delicate a shell to keep
my brains from spillage still my breath
goes in and out and nearer death

and yet I seem to get to sleep

Most of Gotlieb’s poetry is free verse. Because of that I’d assumed this was, until a student in my poetry structure class insisted it was iambic tetrametre, and I heard the rhythm of breath, and the uneven gasping at hard awarenesses. Consciousness is difficult and painful.

Joan Vinall-Cox, PhD
JNthWEB Consulting – http://jnthweb.ca/
Social Media & Learning
https://joanvinallcox.wordpress.com/my-e-portfolio/

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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

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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

• Blogger – https://www.blogger.com/start – It’s free and totally WYSIWYG, plus there’s lots of information on how to use it.
• WordPress.com – http://wordpress.com/ – A stronger more flexible host, that requires some know-how but is basically WYSIWYG. Again, tutorials and videos are available; use Google & search for them.
  • Both of these require only people to learn how to use them and then to write, post pictures etc.
• You can also pay for experts to run blogs and for more expensive systems. I’d go for the simplest, that is, Blogger, if I were you.

Chat rooms,

• What do you want chat rooms for?
  • If you just want a way for a group’s members to communicate, check out Google Groups – http://groups.google.com/?pli=1 – It’s free, email-based and asynchronous. People send to their Google Group and it goes to all the members, who can then reply if they want to.
  • If you do want to talk to a small group all at the same time, you might try Skype – http://www.skype.com/ – also free
  • There are other ways to set up chat rooms, too, but that’s a start.

Ask an expert forum,

• Probably you should just set up a FAQ on a wiki where people could share expertise.
  

Social networking site

• Ning is a very good free one – it does take time and expertise to set up and maintain – http://www.ning.com/
  

Webinar,

• I’ve never used Vyew – http://vyew.com/site/product/vyew-in-action/uses – but this could be what you want – again, someone would have to know or learn how to use it.
• I’ve attended webinars that were run with WebEx for literally thousands – http://www.webex.com/ – but it wasn’t entirely satisfying and it isn’t free.
• You might want to check with local podcaster and webinar producer Donna Papacosta – http://trafcom.com/services.html#webinars
  

Webcast,

• Again, what do you want it for?
  • If for live webcasting, check out Ustream – http://www.ustream.tv/ – free, but time and expertise required
  • If for presentations or tutorials, check out SlideShare for PowerPoints – http://www.slideshare.net/ – it’s free and only requires the creation and uploading of slide shows
  • Screencasts are interesting – people get to see what’s on your screen and hear you speak – Jing – http://www.jingproject.com/ or Screenr – http://screenr.com/ – both are free but you have to learn a little to use them
  • Also, if you create a video, you can upload it for free at a number of sites, including YouTube and Vimeo
  • You might find VoiceThreads interesting too – http://voicethread.com/#home
    

Podcast,

• There’s lots on Google about podcasting, and it’s easy enough to add an audio file to a blog post – here’s some information – http://computer.howstuffworks.com/how-to-podcast.htm. There’s free recording software called Audacity – http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ – and lots of tutorials available on it. It takes a while to learn.
  

On-line seminars

• See webcasts
  

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/

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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/

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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, PhD
JNthWEB Consulting – http://jnthweb.ca/
Social Media & Learning
https://joanvinallcox.wordpress.com/my-e-portfolio/

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For 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?
Joan Vinall-Cox, PhD
JNthWEB Consulting – http://jnthweb.ca/
Social Media & Learning
https://joanvinallcox.wordpress.com/my-e-portfolio/

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Winter approaches.

Joan Vinall-Cox, PhD,
Social Media Consultant
http://jnthweb.ca

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