Wire 106 Twitter Watch Along

Posted on September 24, 2014 by Reverend
Screen Shot 2014-09-23 at 9.15.30 PM

Glad to see Omar dressed up for the wire106 twitter watch-along

Last week was focused on introducing audio so we did three Wire 106 Listen Alongs via ds106radio that focused specifically on audio. This week we’re introducing visual/photography, so we wanted to switch it up and have folks watch and not listen. Do do this, Tim Owens pointed me to 6IRCNet Synchtube, which allows you to take a video uploaded somewhere online and watch it together with others. I had uploaded an episode of 6 of Season 2 without audio to another site, and I simply grabbed the raw URL of the mp4 and ran it through Synchtu.be which allowed eleven of us to watched it together in the wire106 channel for an hour with Twitter as our commentary tool—all of which is aggregated around the hashtag #wire106.

Last’s week ds106radio experiment, and this week’s Twitter Watch Along is a fun way to reinforce the course as community and remind everyone that online does not mean alienated and alone. What’s more, there are free tools out there that make the experience that much simpler and compelling.

As for watching the episode without sound, I think Carmella Mitchell and Kris Hooks got it right: it’s hard to focus on an episode of TV without the sound. You become so easily distracted. While listening to the sound last week, on the other hand, was the exact opposite experience. You are totally sucked in with audio. It reminds me of the idea Jen Ralston brought up in her interview about sound in The Wire: “sound doesn’t blink.” That was never truer when trying to watch an episode without it, you can peel away from the action without the soundtrack to keep you anchored.

Posted in digital storytelling, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 9 Comments

Cropped Road Signs: Fallout Fan

Posted on September 23, 2014 by Reverend

I love today’s Daily Create, namely taking a cropped road sign and provide a different context. My idea of turning a nuclear fallout sign into a fan was quick and easy, although not nearly as creative as some of the others. Nonetheless, this post allows me to feature the awesome resources that is the Noun Project, your one-stop-shop for just about any icon you can imagine. I used the public domain fallout icon and Arthur Shlain’s fan.

I opened the fallout icon in GIMP and then imported the fan icon as a layer.  After that, I hid the fallout sign layer and erased the fan blades, but kept the base and outline.  Erasing the blades was easy, I simply chose the erase tool and used the elliptical select to make sure I didn’t erase anything else.

Screen Shot 2014-09-23 at 11.40.45 PM

When they were erased, I made the fallout icon visible again and scaled it to fit. The nice thing about the png images you get from the Noun Project is they are infinitely scalable, so you never have issues with pixelation. One I scaled the fallout shelter icon and centered that layer we were set. It was really pretty simple. But one day I;ll be able to create as awesome as the ds106 internauts. They are #4life—below is a sample of their work!

Credit: Nixmemita

Image credit: Travis Peed

Image credit: Travis Peed

Image Credit: Jessica Rheingold

Posted in digital storytelling | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

A Subdomain of One’s Own (with potential!)

Posted on September 22, 2014 by Reverend

The following screencast by Michael McGarry Chris Mattia provides an introduction to CI Keys platform, illustrating how to get up and running with your web hosting account in seconds. It’s pretty awesome, watch the first minute or two, your mind may very well be blown.

As I mentioned in my post yesterday about the various developments on the Reclaim Hosting front, CSU Channel Islands is providing their community with a subdomain of their own, something like jimgroom.cikeys.com, that gives them a fullblown cPanel-equipped web hosting environment. Not unlike the next generation of tilde spaces (/~jimgroom) I spent much of last year presenting about.

Now I understand this is not necessarily a Domain of One’s Own as UMW imagined it (where’s the domain?), but it does represent a very interesting hybrid of possbilities. The Channel Islands community has access to all the same open sources applications provides through cPanel. What’s more, at signup students and faculty alike have the option to purchase or simply point their own domain to their web hosting account if they want. I like the fact it recognizes that institutions may not be able to purchase domains for their community for whatever reason, but doesn’t preclude it as an option either. In fact, the purchasing of the domains is a significant cost when setting up a domains pilot, and may be a conversation killer for some who are interested in doing this. So an option like this might enable even more folks to experiment with such an environment for their campus. Access rules.

Finally, the way Tim Owens set this bad boy up for Channel Islands is so slick. It’s integrated with their authentication system, and it really does challenge the assumption that managing your own LAMP environment is too confusing or complicated. Damn that Timmmyboy is good. We’ve come a long way, baby! So what’s your excuse not to get with the future now, hippies?

Posted in Domain of One's Own, reclaim, reclaimopen | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Wire 106: Week 5 – Taking a Closer Look

Posted on September 22, 2014 by Reverend

This week we will be exploring visual elements of storytelling. And below is a quick list of things to do, followed by some more extensive resources:

  • The Wire Episodes: We will be watching episodes 6, 7, and 8 of Season 2 this week. You know where to find them.
  • 12 stars worth of visual assignments, and don’t do the same assignment twice. Couple of things to keep in mind:
    • Upload all visual assignments to Flickr via your Known site. Be sure to send the images out to Twitter and the Wire106 hub from Known as well.*
    • Be sure to write a post in WordPress for each assignment describing your thinking, process, etc. and be sure to tag it with assignment tags.
  • 2 Daily Creates this week.
  • A 20 minute Photoblitz. Be sure to grab the code and include the seven tasks you were assigned in a blog post, along with the photos you took. Tag this post “photoblitz” (no quotes). Thanks John Johnston.
  • Like last week, you need to watch at least one of this week’s The Wire episode’s live (this time without sound) and tweet along with the class. This will be happening this Tues/Weds/Thur at 9 PM on http://ds106.us/wire-106-live/
  • Video Discussion: Sign-up to join here. Remember, you have to be a part of at least 3 video discussions before the semester ends:
    • Season 2, Episode 6: Wednesday at 5:00 PM;
    • Season 2, Episode 7: Thursday at 10:00 AM;
    • Season 2, Episode 8: Friday at 3:00 PM.
  • Sign-up for a Wire 106 Lunch this week (lunch is always optional).

As for resources, we’ve been doing a lot of summarizing and reacting to the episodes of The Wire. Let’s try and look at this week’s episodes specifically with an eye towards the photography. To that end, look at the Becoming Better Photographers section of the Open ds106 syllabus (http://ds106.us/open-course/unit-5-visual-storytelling/#becoming-better-photographers) and try to find examples of the different points and analyze them. How many can you find?

  • selection
  • contrast
  • perspective
  • depth
  • balance
  • moment
  • lighting
  • foreground/background

Not all of your visual assignments need to be based on The Wire, but we’ll continue to use the episodes as a common text we can refer back to so the class has a common object of desire. That said, feel free to create where ever your inspiration takes you.

*Remember, you upload your image to Flickr from Known, and also send it to Twitter and the Wire106 hub in one fell swoop. Just be sure to include the #wire106 tag in the image title.

Posted in digital storytelling | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Wire 106 Listen Along on ds106radio (#4life)

Posted on September 22, 2014 by Reverend

— John Meadows (@Physx28) September 17, 2014

Week four of Wire 106 was dedicated to listening to audio. Given that, Paul Bond suggested we load three episodes of season 2 of The Wire that we assigned this week (i.e., 3, 4, and 5) on ds106radio and have the class listen and tweet to them broadcast live. So we did, here’s how:

You need to listen to, and live tweet along with, at least one of this week’s The Wire episode’s happening this Tues/Weds/Thur at 9 PM on http://ds106rad.io/listen


And they did, Grant Potter tweeted out the stats on Thursday’s listening party when twelve people were listening to the live stream! I love the stats.

Whose on the live stream? Freddy’s in the house.

Paul Bond has already blogged his reflections about the sessions, and so did #wire106 internaut Meredith Fierro, who had the following to say:

I really enjoyed live tweeting the episode, it gave me a chance to connect with other members of my class. Since this is an online class I thought I was going to go through the class not really meeting anyone from the class. But I definitely was wrong.

This comment gets to the heart of ds106. You can have community in an online, distributed course using the open web; it just takes some time and tenacity. By week four a community on Twitter and in the blog comments is beginning to cement. What’s more, the class is starting to get into a groove of how to navigate the various class spaces on the web. It takes time and energy to do ds106 right, but I still contend the rewards are well worth the work.

And to that end, Stephen Downes was wondering what my take on literacy was in regards to Sandy Brown Jensen’s recent article on digital storytelling. I have no real stable answer, and digital storytelling always seemed like an awesome trojan horse to teach whatever I want. That said, I’ve come to a few principles about literacy more generally as a result of teaching ds106. Literacy is directly linked to the realization that knowledge and power are relational. Literacy comes as a result of reflecting and sharing openly within a network of your peers. It depends upon regular practice and participation. To gain it demands time, attention, and most importantly interest—namely your own. Finally, an excellent sign you’re becoming literate in something, anything really, is the further realization that the relationship between knowledge and power is still as potentially damning as it was when Eve bit the apple 🙂

Anyway, that was an aside, but I appreciate Stephen asking. But to the original point,  I think the simple act of listening closely to an episode of The Wire alongside 11 other people while tweeting your thoughts suggests this new media provides brave new possibilities for being and thinking together. I love that we are able to explore different ways of being together, because everything else seems to come from that. There’s a literacy of being digitally that’s happening really subtly in our contemporary moment more broadly, and I love that ds106 can sometimes provide a stage for how that’s unfolding in online education for a handful of students at UMW.

Posted in digital storytelling | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Catching Up with Reclaim Hosting

Posted on September 21, 2014 by Reverend

In episode 106 of Digital Campus (a.k.a dc106-coincidence? I think not) the director of the Roy Rosensweig Center for History and New Media, Stephen Robertson, gives a shout out to Reclaim Hosting suggesting how “absurdly easy” it is for students and faculty to setup and manage their own applications on their own domains. I couldn’t agree more.

I included a minute and 15 seconds of the discussion before Robertson mentions Reclaim because I’m interested in what Tom Scheinfeldt suggests is the paradox of teaching digital media: you can’t teach it online. I think one of the greatest learning experiences for me over the last five years of teaching ds106—it’s really been that long!—is that you actually can teach digital media online. But it requires the right platform and a lot of time and freedom to experiment. Giving students their own web hosting space and a domain is one way at it, and ,as Robertson notes, it provides the platform for both an individualized and distributed online experience that institutional learning systems aren’t even beginning to imagine.

But I want to believe that’s changing a bit, and the work Tim Owens and I are doing with Reclaim Hosting has been awesome for this very reason. We think we’re starting to provide different possibilities that people can consider. And given the regular notes I get from folks near and far about it’s value to them, it just reinforces that a lot of people want alternatives. Why aren’t more schools providing web hosting for their students and faculty? Hell, if a domain is too costly for your students and faculty, you can still provide web hosting through a subdomain model.

CI Keys

CSU Channel islands Subdomain of One’s Own 🙂

In fact, Tim built a setup for CSU Channel Islands CSU Channel Islands that provides users with a subdomain setup by default, but allows them to choose at the time of signup, or any time after that, if they want to addon a domain they purchase themselves. And this isn’t rocket science, you don’t need Reclaim Hosting to do this, you just need the will to recognize that by-and-large we are not providing viable digital spaces for our communities to explore the web.

Emory Domains

Emory Domains

Emory University (http://emorydomains.org/) has been exploring the Domain of One’s own approach for over a year now, and this academic year they got their own server and are doing some amazing things. To give a well deserved shout-out, the work David Morgen is doing down at Emory University in just this regard is amazing. Just take a look at the number of faculty exploring this, and the feed of posts being created on the various domains across the university. So good.

The University of Oklahoma's Domain project "OU Create"

The University of Oklahoma’s Domain project “OU Create”

Display at Unviersity of Oklahoma promoting open source apps on OU Create

Display at Unviersity of Oklahoma promoting open source apps on OU Create

But crazier yet, the University of Oklahoma has gone full bore providing up to 1000 students and faculty with their own domain and web hosting through their pilot OU Create. Tim and I spent time with Adam Croom and Mark Morvant in Norman, OK in late July (I still have to blog that), and they really have an amazingly strong handle on what’s possible. Adam has blogged about his thinking around the project a couple of times recently. Like Tim and I, he really believes in the transformative potential of  such a pilot. He’s even going full bore with tag-based course syndication! It also doesn’t hurt that he OU community is digging deep to help build excitement and gain traction. In particular, their provost, Kyle Harper, not only groked what Adam and Mark are trying to do, but was as excited and supportive as any administrator I’d ever seen. Tim and I came away from Oklahoma thinking this just might be scalable beyond our wildest dreams. It’s the biggest pilot Reclaim has done yet, and we couldn’t have asked for better partners. Hell, they even have their campus tech stores promoting what’s possible with open source applications through this pilot. I’m a Sooner #4life!

image (4)

OU Create Window Display

So, all this to say, I’ve been remiss posting about all the awesome stuff happening in the Reclaim Hosting world. Tim is finishing off the Davidson College server that will launch Davidson Domains very soon. CSU Channel Islands are exploring a slick subdomains project, and the great Pete Rorbaugh has more than 200 faculty and students with their own domains and web hosting through Reclaim at Southern Polytechnic State University.

The excitement and momentum around Reclaim over the past three or four months has Tim and I a bit dazed, to be honest. And given how intense our day job has been lately, we haven’t had much time to think about it, no less plan for the future. But whether through Reclaim Hosting or some other avenue, moving beyond what’s readily available to provide an extensible platform like a LAMP web hosting environment for both faculty and students has arrived. In fact, it’s been here for the last 12 years, we just couldn’t get out heads out of the LMS long enough to see it. Where and how we teach, learn, research, publish, and share in the future is not inevitable. It’s time to reclaim!

Posted in reclaim, reclaimopen, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

#d&ds106

Posted on September 21, 2014 by Reverend

tumblr_m8hws8Jy1i1ro2bqto1_500While playing with my kids today, I started thinking how cool it would be to do a themed version of ds106 dedicated to Dungeons & Dragons. I’ve been wanting to get back into D&D anyway so that my kids and I could read the early manuals, trip out on the art, design maps, build characters, and create campaigns. Done right, these tasks would make for the building blocks of an amazing ds106 course. I even have a few boxes of lead figurines I could pull out and let people paint—old school all the way.

So what do you think? Would this be a compelling approach to digital storytelling? Way I see it, D&D provides a pretty rich universe/creative framework from within which to create. It was in many ways one of the earlier collective and participatory games I was ever a part of. And those adventure modules I bought at the Incredible Pulp (a local comic shop in Baldwin, LI) still capture some of the most imaginative play I’ve ever done in my mind without ever rolling the dice. Hell, we could use the 3D printer to create characters, dice, campaign elements, and more. How sick could this be?

Posted in digital storytelling | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Tech Noir meets ds106?

Posted on September 21, 2014 by Reverend

Miles, his friend Andy, and I caught a rather clean, but brooding, 35MM print of The Empire Strikes Back (1980) at the Library of Congress, Packard Campus in Culpeper, VA last night. I got to thinking that Empire is very much inline with aesthetic of other tech noirs at the time. It got me thinking a potential theme for next semester’s ds106 might be tech noir hosted by Dr. Oblivion. Here are the films I was thinking about including:

Admittedly, it’s a bit 1980s guy teenager heavy. So help me out here, what am I missing? Or is this way too lopsided? If it’s possible, I was thinking about turning the class into an irregular movie event at the ITCC, and use the building with Oblivion to have some fun 🙂

Posted in digital storytelling, Movie Lists, movies | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

A New Hope in 35MM

Posted on September 20, 2014 by Reverend

star_wars_new_hope

A week ago I went to the Library of Congress, Packard Campus in Culpepper to see Star Wars in 35MM. It was as good as I had hoped. With a remarkably clean print of the 1997 re-mastering, there was no mistaking the beauty of film. Although the addition of Jabba in Mos Eisley still stands out as the single worst alteration of the original.

What was cool is this was the first time I had been to a sold out theater in a very long while. In fact, the last time I was in a sold out house was for the re-release of Star Wars at Mann’s Chinese Theater in Los Angeles in 1997. There was a palpable feeling of excitement, and a few folks even brought their light sabers. The experience was awesome, and it was little Tommy’s first time seeing Star Wars. Tess was right beside me, but unfortunately Miles missed it because he was attending his first sleepover (damn kids growing up and all with their own agendas!).

Couple of things about the movie. It was loud, and I think that’s how I remember it. It’s a straight stereo theater with some big speakers on the side walls. I remember Grant Potter remarking favorably about the sound when we watched The French Connection there a couple of years ago, which makes me think it’s solid.

Also, the scene when Han Solo, Chewbacca, and Luke Skywalker jailbreak Princess Leia from the detention center was gorgeous. Much more brilliant than I ever remembered between the colors and the sound during the extended shootouts.

1138_Episode_IV

I was struck by the trivia slideshow that was playing while we waiting with anticipation.A couple of things I thought were interesting:

  • Alec Guinness was one of the few cast members who believed the film would be a box office hit; he negotiated a deal for 2% of the gross royalties paid to the director, George Lucas, who received one fifth of the box office takings. As a result, he became extremely wealthy 🙂
  • Mego refused the licensing deal for Star Wars figurines, and it was picked up by Kenner. Bad move.
  • Kenner wasn’t ready for the unprecedented public response to the Star Wars and the concomitant demand for toys. Unable to create enough figures in time for the Christmas season, they sold an “Early Bird Certificate Package” which included a certificate which could be mailed to Kenner and redeemed for four Star Wars action figures. 
  • When Star Wars made an unprecedented second opening at Mann’s Chinese Theatre on August 3, 1977, after William Friedkin‘s Sorcerer failed, thousands of people attended a ceremony in which C-3PO, R2-D2 and Darth Vader placed their footprints in the theater’s forecourt. Only 3 months after its first opening it was already a classic.
  • Star Wars was re-released in 1978, 1979, 1981, 1982, and 1997. Crazy.

I would blog more, but I am just about to put the kids in the car to drive out for The Empire Strikes Back in beautiful 35MM 🙂

 

Posted in movies, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

The Incubator Classroom

Posted on September 20, 2014 by Reverend

Tim Owens and I had some fun this week in our new incubator classroom that is attached to the DTLT suite in UMW’s new Information and Technology Convergence Center. It’s a completely awesome space, and we haven’t really had the time to experiment with it until the beginning of the semester slowed. Early this week Tim started to get that look in his eye, and soon enough wires were flying, Crestron controls were being dissembled, and music was being made.

The room has all moveable furniture, two remote control cameras, a stationary lecture capture camera, two ceiling mics to capture discussion, a lectern mic, two mains screen projectors, a confidence monitor on the back wall, and four roving monitors. Each of the screens can be projected to by any laptop in the room, and split into quadrants to have as many as four devices on one screen/monitor. So, theoretically, you could have twenty one different screens showing at once. Are you confused yet? Good, I am too.

The room is insane, and I have been teaching The Internet Course in it for the last four weeks alongside Paul Bond, but haven’t really been able to take advantage of the room because it wasn’t done when classes started. This week we played a bit of catch-up, and on Thursday night I had the students presenting on how the internet works broadcasting their laptops to two different screens in the room. What’s more, Paul was at the table with the rest of us over Google Hangouts through a fullscreen roving monitor—you can see an example of this in the image below with Mikhail Gershovich—and we were pulling in the room audio off a couple of table mics (we’re still figuring out how to get an output for the ceiling mics). And we sent a stream of the class back to Paul, as well as what was playing on a given screen/monitor.  All of this voodoo was a result of Tim’s relentless tinkering all week long.

incubator_image

The room is an experiment in a different kind of presence. Not necessarily telepresence, which it can do pretty well, but a sense of networked presence. The idea that the room is itself an IP address—or a series of them—on the web that other can experience and explore. The cameras can record what’s happening, and we can also stream out the course, and have it automatically archive.. I’d could share the IP and code for others to share their screens and audio from afar. And we’ve only just begun, there is much more to be done in here, but major kudos for Timmmyboy locking in this week and getting this all hooked uo

Now, below is a link to the DTLT Today video that’s over an hour. I would start around the 30 minute mark, which is when Tim and I get rolling a bit on the building and more. Also, we are trying to figure out the room while filming this, so the quality and exactitude should be considering with this in mind 🙂

Finally thanks to both Barbara Sawhill and Mikhail Geshovich for sharing there screenshot on Twitter.

Posted in dtlt, DTLT Today, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments