I learned about memes shortly after the term was coined in 1976 by Richard Dawkins as “the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation”.
I consider “connected learning” and “learning by making” to be memes that are being transmitted within the CLMOOC (and now by me). I intend to expose dozens of organizations to these memes in hopes of their further transmission.
Art, Ann, & Crasher Squirrel
Memes and learning
A meme made me learn how to insert images within images. When “Crasher Squirrel” got into a picture shot via wireless shutter release, I decided to join 1000s of others and photoshop it into a similar picture of my wife and me. I did not know how but struggled for hours learning to add layers, resizing, how to remove background and transparency, all so I could get likes and comments on Facebook.
Scott Glass explained in his blog Post, My Agency, Meme Style, why he decided to pass on the easy cookie cutter meme generators, and demonstrate creativity, control, resourcefulness, originality, etc. when making his meme. He copied “The Dude’s” selfie, but then almost like the “Crasher Squirrel” pasted himself into a beautiful sun set at the lake scene. This and his reference to #MeMeme inspired me to modify my original meme by putting myself into the Lebowski selfie as if I were the bartender.
I remember late last year discussing ICT with a guy I know who loves technology and he suggested to me that you need a complete vision for technology in school. Don't say, 'I wan't iPad's in Early Years or laptops in Secondary', you need to have in mind a complete vision as to what a 21st century classroom looks like, for students, for teachers, for parents, for administration, for everyone.
I understood what he was saying, that when it comes to 21st century learning, it is important to have a narrative, a story to tell, a painting to show in order to provide the reason and purpose behind the call for change. The problem is that a part of me felt that every time I started imagining such a reality it simply collapsed in heap. All I could see were the road blocks, the hurdles to be jumped. For as I spoke about in my post on excuses, we so often worry about what is not possible and start there. Instead, I have decided that I am going to lay down my dreams, create a vision of my future and start there. So here is my dream for technology in education, actually for education in general ...
An Appropriately Funded Education System
Graham Brown-Martin recently posted a graphic comparing military and educational spending around the world. Although there are some countries which spend more on education, such as Norway, Mexico and Canada, more often than not there is often an unequal divide. However, even this only tells part of the story. For what inadequate funding is provided is then often inequitably shared out. There simply needs to be more public money spent on education for it is an investment that all of society benefits from. The Gonski-cum-Better Schools plan was a step towards a more equal divide in Australia, but even that was undermined as it was in stark contrast to the recommendations that the panel headed by David Gonski put forward. The reality is, it does not matter how much technology you have in the classroom, if you don't have the appropriate structures in place to support it, then it is often meaningless. Funding is a big part of education.
No More Technological Hurdles or Hindrances
I want a learning environment where connection to projectors, to the Internet or school networks is seamless. No more disconnect, connect or finding a cable for the screen. Although many schools have moved to devices such as Apple TV, I feel that the better answer needs to be more open. In addition to this, I want devices which don't take forever to load up or need to be managed in regards to battery time. Technology should not hold us up, instead it should allow for the more effective use of learning time.
1:1 Powerful Devices
Fine many schools are moving towards BYOD, however I think that as a part of a properly funded education system, all students should be provided with a powerful device to aid their learning (powerful is in reference to a point made in a discussion as a part of Episode 185 of the +Ed Tech Crew Podcast.) I just don't think that it is either equitable or necessarily fair to have a situation where there are some students in the classroom that due to a range of circumstances are unable to bring a device or have one provided by the school. I am fine if students bring in a second device, such as a tablet. However, making sure that all students have access at the point of instruction is a necessity.
Teachers Given Access to Multiple Devices
I love my laptop, but feel that in a classroom it has its limits. I love my iPad, but feel that when it comes to more series work that it has its limits. I believe that every teacher should have access and be supported with two working devices. +Rich Lambert wrote a fantastic post exploring the issue of whether teachers should have to pay for the technology they use. He suggested that devices should be subsidised and a wider choice provided. Having been provided with a iPad due to my role in the school, I find it frustrating that this access is often limited to those who choose to bring their own. I would go a step further than what Richard is suggesting and argue that all teachers such be provided with two devices to support their teaching, a point I have also made elsewhere.
Access and Infrastructure
Associated with the need for funding for teachers devices is the need for acceptable access and infrastructure. There are too many tales of public schools going out and purchasing their own lines, because the Internet and access supplied by the government is either unreliable and inadequate. In addition to the pipe coming in, there needs to be appropriate support and investment in regards to the infrastructure within the school. The worst scenario in regards to technology is having a classroom full of devices which are limited to themselves or a digital camera with no computer cable or battery charger. No point owning a fast car if there are no roads to drive it on.
Curating not Consuming
Too often the focus of ideas and information seems to be around consumption. Take for example English, there is still the focus in too many classrooms on how many books have been read, rather than what is actually done with that reading. +Heather Bailie makes the suggestion, in her post 'Curation as a Tool for Teaching and Learning', that we should no longer read, write and react, but rather create, curate and contemplate. In this situation, students (and teachers) would not just collect information, but "comprehend, critique, think critically and use digital media strategically." To me, the biggest change in the 21st century is that whereas in the past information was often considered in isolation, as we move towards a focus on curation, everything becomes interconnected and ideas move between subjects, across years, between classrooms and across borders.
Teachers a Part of a Community
A big part of curating is sharing information. A sad irony in today's world of growing connectedness is that you still hear stories of teachers keeping their thoughts and ideas to themselves, instead of actually giving back to the wider community. Now when I say 'sharing', I'm not talking about sharing to make teaching easier, rather I believe that sharing makes learning richer. +Dean Shareski even goes to the point of saying that without sharing, there is no learning." For me, being a connected educator has not only had a positive influence on me as a learner, but also my work teacher. A part of this is change has been openly reflecting on my practise online. The big challenge is to make this deep and meaningful for everyone, not simply dry and tokenistic, something ticked off on a sheet, but something intrinsic to who we are, something that we want to do, rather something that we are forced to do. In this environment, teachers are then instilled with more ownership over their learning. Rather than buying goods from a small corner store, where what is available is often curtailed by what the owner has bought, teachers can have the choice and variety available at a shopping centre, where they can mix and match, coming up with their own cocktail.
Students Publishing for an Authentic Audience
I am always left wondering when teachers run around after student work, ringing home to complain, chastising students for falling behind, who is this all for? Here I am reminded of Alan November's story about the student who spent hours writing stories for Fan Fiction, yet failed to get her homework done. The explanation that the student provided was that she makes the choice to publish for the world over publishing for her teacher. Instead of completing tasks for themselves or worse, for teachers, students need the opportunities to publish for authentic audiences. For example, after consulting with a teacher from another state +Cameron Paterson got his Year 9 History class to create picture books around the topic of World War 1 for a kindergarten. If not publishing for a purpose, at least publishing for a wider audience as +Bec Spink has done with the eBooks created by her Prep classes or through a classroom blog as +Celia Coffa has discussed. For what is the point of having a fast car if there is nowhere to actually drive it?
Collaboration not Competition
A part of the problem that I find with a lot of assessment is that too often it is done in isolation, where everyone maybe responding to the same question, they do so individually. There is so much discussion in education about feedback, in particular peer-to-peer feedback, I have concern though that when this is done in an environment where the focus is being the best and therefore being better than everyone else, we miss out on an important aspect of learning, that is collaboration, connections and global communication. Technology provides so many means for this to occur, whether it be working on a project using a Google Doc or connecting all over the world using Twitter. +Anne Mirtschin provides endless examples in her blog as to how technology can be used to open up learning to the world. Whether it be learning how to use Scratch or having a guest author Skype in, Mirtschin always has a story as to how technology opens doors in her classroom to deeper learning. Just as it is said that if a question can be Googled then it isn't a very good question, I would like to pose that if a task is corrupted by being done in collaboration with others then maybe it isn't a very good task?
Students Learning at the Centre
Although students are often the focus of learning, I wonder if they are necessarily at the centre of it? There are too many choices about the what and why of learning that are made for students. +Ewan McIntoshmakes the point that the challenge of finding a problem, one of the most important aspects of learning, is often the first decision taken away from students. Ideally, learning should be at the centre. In his excellent series on learning theories, +Steve Wheeler spoke about heutagogy, the study of self-determined learning. Ultimately, as we aspire to develop lifelong learning, actually learning how to learn in different contexts for different purposes is most important. For as Wheeler suggests elsewhere, "pedagogy is leading people to a place where they can learn for themselves." Sometimes though it feels like students are learning for us?
Learning Supported by Space
I must admit, the structure of space is something that I haven't necessarily thought a lot about and probably should. I think that one of the reasons for this is that so often it feels like such decisions are made for us, not by us and certainly not by students. I remember reading a post by +Matt Esterman on what your schools would say if they could talk. Along with +Stephen Collis' response, I was quite challenged. At the very least I think that we need to create flexible learning spaces. This maybe team teaching and open learning spaces, but it also maybe having different uses of the spaces we already have, as was outlined by +Michelle Hostrup on Episode #20 of +TER Podcast. The reality is that although we can make some changes to what we have now, many schools need to be refurbished to account for this change. At the very least, as +George Courospointed out, technology should not be an event, done in a lab, rather it should be a part of all learning, whatever space that maybe.
Integrated Assessment & Reporting
At present, teachers often give feedback along the way and some sort of detailed assessment at the end. Using technology this can not only become more streamlined, but also more effective. What's more, it means that the conversation is not always one way. For if a student wants clarification then they can follow up whenever they like. This will hopefully blend with a more fluent reporting system which continually grows and develops to show a students progress over time, rather than the current culture where students get a report at the end of each semester, which other than the previous progression points, exists as an isolated historical snapshot. As +Catherine Gatt so succinctly put it, "assessment is just charting the next part of a student's journey, invariably owned by them and not by me." Technology only aides and increases this dialogue that is too often missing in education.
...
I feel in many respects that this vision could be more cavalier, could be more bold. However, I am sure that the more I grow and evolve, so to will my dreams and ideals about education. This then is my starting point. It may not be a vision for tomorrow, but it is a vision for a better future. The challenge is to stop making excuses. Although ideals aren't always ideal, working towards them is the least I can do.
If you have any thoughts, ideas or suggestions, I would love to hear them. Even better, what are your dreams for technology in education or education in general? For if there is one thing that I have learnt, we are all better off together.
In case you haven’t seen the Connected Learning MOOC yet, you should consider checking it out. Still plenty of time to jump in and make, collaborate, and play, or even just lurk. Peter Kittle, Jarret Krone and I just finished a week leading the charge in making and thinking with memes. It has been awesome.
There is no shortage of onlinetutorials and guides on how to search for images on the web. To overly generalize, this boils down to “here is a list of sites, go there and type your keywords in a box”, with the added bits about how stealing is bad and a few links or videos from Creative Commons. You might get some power tips about using advanced search features.
To me this is not teaching how to search (as a strategy) but how to use search sites (as a skill). More than semantic word play, this is the difference between knowing how to hit something with a chisel and how to sculpt art with a chisel.
More than that, it’s easy to find images when you need specific subjects- like an image of a computer keyboard, a rhinoceros, a train engine, a knitting needle, a sunflower. Search engines are good at literal searches. You can easily find hundreds, thousands of images, and often the suitable ones right off the first screen of results.
But in writing online, blogging, presenting, media editing, web making, I often find = a need for images that communicate ideas, concepts, ones that communicate via metaphor, not literal depiction. What keywords might produce images that suggest a representation of concepts such as bravery, honesty, struggling to learn, complexity, aggression, trust? If you use these as literal keywords, you might get lucky, but the results are much more diverse. Or not relevant.
Unlike most blog posts, this one is taking several sessions to compose, and it keeps getting longer! For those not wanting a bunch of background and technical warbling:
How Do You Currently Search For Images? a separate Webmaker Activity for starting a session with having people show/share how they search now. It uses a Thimble itself remixed from one made (A Question From Zoltar) to generate a prompt with random generated varieties, and a hint that slowly materializes as an image.
A place to discuss Creative Commons, attribution, etc. This is left open to be remixed, since there are plenty of resources to point to – a few are in the kit. In looking at resources is how most of them focus on a message of “STEALING IS BAD!” rather than what I prefer- giving attribution is just the right thing to do, an act of paying it forward.
The ImageSeek “Tool” itself To me this is perhaps more like an interactive web worksheet, without the smell of ditto ink. It guides the process, but also acts as a way (if remixed) to save one’s work and demonstrate more than coming out with a single image at the end, but documenting the process.
One reason I am excited about the Mozilla Webmaker approach is that the lesson plans, the activities, the makes are not an end to a means, like a magic thing you just pull off the web and distribute (like worksheets). Via an architecture and philosophy they are the start, the remix button is an invitation to modify, customize, and share.
Yikes, even my summary is long. I need a tl;dr for my tl;dr
What is ImageSeeking?
It’s a made up word.
The very image I used on the teaching kit is itself an example of what I am trying to explain. I did not find it by using keywords such as “seek” or “search”, but by the kinds of things that you use when engaged in seeking. In fact I searched for “binoculars”, maybe even “child binoculars”. I used compfight, my go to tool for locating creative commons licensed images from flickr, and found this perfect image:
The photo in this case is not literally the subject, but something that suggests the subject. When you see the image, it should convey the act of searching.
And for larger irony, among all the results of the search, this photo is one created by my friend and colleague Tom Woodward (and that is his son, now a photographer too, whom I recently went on a photo walk with in Virginia).
The Back Story
The road to making ImageSeek all started with a tweet
Mozilla was ramping up their collection of Teaching Kits, and what Brett and colleagues were looking for in “Got Curriculum That Teaches Web Literacy?” was tutorials, activities that they could repurpose into the format published on Webmaker.
I cannot remember the three thing I submitted, but one was from a workshop I first did in March 2012 while visiting the Yokohama International School. The materials are on a Wikispaces site
The idea for this session came from Kim Cofino but was prompted by other colleagues who asked how I find images I use in my blog posts. This has become almost the required part of my blogging- opening (and closing) with a visual metaphor for the post, or just a fun way to draw people in. I usually cannot write the post until I have that first image. The image is not essential to the writing (like a schematic diagram), it sets a tone or hopefully generates some interest via the visual senses to read the text that follows.
I also go about ImageSeeking when I create my presentations, where I keep shifting to fewer words and more full screen images. The title screen in my recent storytelling talks plays with the metaphor of telling stories, which we often associate with campfires
I love talking about this images in a context of talking about how digital storytelling can add a different dimension to the tradition (stories around a campfire) with a twist (these are Lego Storm Troopers around a votive candle).
At this point I cannot remember the search term, it may have been “Campfire” because that is the kind of activity people do when they are storytelling. It was one of many times I noticed that you get fun images if you include “lego” in your search because there are almost a trillion photos people have shared with lego figuresdoing everything.
For example, you want an image that represents excitement; using that as a keyword you find a few pictures of excited kids, but also daredevils, and a lot of expecting parents (many pregnant bellies).
But if you think of an action that suggests excitement (and knowing something of the kids of photos people tag in flickr), if you search on leap you find a ton of interesting action shots. It’s popular to take mid air jumping shots… like
“Leap” might not seem like the first choice to represent “Excitement” but I think it works.
Or let’s say you want a photo to represent how boring this blog post is. A search on the keyword “boring” does get a few people who look bored, but you also get beetles (who bore into the ground), and drilling equipment.
But what is the action people are doing when bored? They yawn! Using yawn a keyword, you find many cats, dogs, even a cheetah yawning, but also cute babies:
Everything in the ImageSeek Teaching Kit is built in Mozilla’s Thimble tool. It’s tempting to consider this as a web page editor, but the things I assembled for this I think almost make it like a dynamic web app.
The beauty of Thimble is that it can help you understand how the elements of HTML, CSS, and Javascript make things work in a browser; you get side by side views of the code and the web page. Ingredients of Me was one I made in September. Anyone can remix the thimble, By editing content in specific parts of the code, you change the content of what appears on the can:
And once you see how editing stuff between the tags works, you might start experimenting what happens if you change or modify the tags. Many of the Thimble Makes revolve around changing the content, maybe the imagery to do things like Make Memes, Personalize a Book Cover, or even Design Your Own Planet.
But there’s more- when you are editing Thimble, any included jQuery scripting will be generated each time you make an edit, so you can have interactive components on the right side that change as you edit, say the value of a Javascript variable.
Huh?
If you remix the ImageSeek, you are first directed to lone 269 where you can enter the topic you are seeking inside the div tags:
This is what shows up in the green shaded box at the top
If I change the text on line 269 to:
re>
amazingness
, it not only changes the green shaded box, but all of the orange shaded ones in the prompt questions AND the search box that pops up when you click a keyword.
This is because the content of those lower headings are not hardcoded in the HTML, but are generated dynamically when the page loads using the value of whatever is in the code on line 269.
This means that the right side is not just a visual preview, it is a functioning prototype.
But yikes, I am getting ahead of myself. I wrote about the ImageSeek tool when I mostly finished it last month. I could have built a WebMaker Activity around it, but I felt that there was more to add, enough to build out as a teaching kit.
The idea (as I saw it) of the Teaching Kits is not to give just a complete lesson that someone can just pull off of the shelf and plugin to their class, workshop, community meeting, etc. They are built in Thimble too, so any Teaching Kit can (and is encouraged) to be remixed so people can tailor them to their needs/interests.
Zoltar For Prompts, the Opening Activity
The first section I made using a WebMaker Activity Template-- it is called How Do You Currently Search For Images?. Part of this is just to find out the baseline search skills of the group. You ask your participants how they might search for an image of a shark or the planet Saturn.
I wrote it in a form that gives flexibility how it is done- from as simple as a group discussion, to using yet another Thimble I devised called How do you Find Images of Things. This has 5 different search subjects, all which should be easy to find-- when the page loads it picks one of the five at random, and slowly (30 seconds) a background image slowly fades in as an example.
I really did this to see if I could figure it out, it's actually a derivative of a more general one I build called A Question From Zoltar. This allows you to create any kind of prompt question with a number of variations, and you can create an answer or hint that slowly fades in.
Under the hood, you edit a series of JavaScript arrays to include the prompt word. in my case it is search for ________ where the blank is "a balloon" or "a shark" or "the planet Saturn", a matching array to hold URLs for the images, and a third array with an attribution string.
When the page loads, it generates a random number between 0 and the number of items in the arrays, and dynamically populates headings, the credits, and the CSS for the background image. The fun trick is using a jQuery command (one line!) to slowly fade in the background. The value of fade_rate is something you can edit for the number of seconds it takes to fade in, it being a div with an id of stage.
// assign the background image for the main stage
$('#stage').css('background-image', 'url(' + imglinks[$img_id] + ')');
// fadeIn rate in milliseconds for the background.
$('#stage').fadeIn(fade_rate *1000);
For this activity, the goal is for people to be aware of the way they do searches, but also to reinforce an understanding that you are never really searching image data, but the information that is contextual to an image on the web (e.g. text on the web page where it is embedded, the and tags, categories if it is one a photosharing site).
It is also a place to discuss why these kind of searches are easy to do; because they are literal things.
Creative Commons and Attribution is More than Avoiding "Getting in Trouble"
As mentioned above, the middle part of the Activity Kit agenda is a place for a conversation about media re-use, creative commons, and why giving attribution is a Good Thing to Do.
I embedded this video How to Attribute Images, it's short, sweet, and has a story element
But in reviewing this and other resources, especially ones aimed at kids, I was overwhelmed by how many are laden with language of fear, of avoiding breaking the law, of how "stealing images is bad".
It's not far off the message from the MPAA
So the reason to give attribution is to not get into trouble. I do not find this compelling or encouraging. Why do we not also talk about how it's a respectful thing to acknowledge the use of someone else's media? of how it is a way to thank the person who created it?
I find the way people feel about "just downloading images found on Google" changes when you ask them how they feel when someone uses their photos. It's more than "I don't want someone making money off of my stuff" (this is such a ridiculous fallacy; it's really really REALLY hard to make a even a pittance off your images)-- does not feel good to get credit? to find out someone valued your image enough to put it in their web site, powerpoint, video?
Hence in the teaching kit
However, it is better worth talking about as a respectful thing to do for someone that has shared their photos online. Wouldn't you prefer to get credit for your own images if someone else used them on a web site? Wouldn't you like to know that this has happened? When you share your own photos and also give attribution credit to others, amazing stories can happen.
What I really like as a new feature in Thimble this year, is the ability to embed a tutorial (left side)
This is slick. Until now, following the logic of a Thimble code meant reading it linearly and working through the comments. Attaching a tutorial enables more scaffolding and explanation - is it self another Thimble that you connect to yours via a tag (see the documentation).
You break down the instructions into a series of steps the viewer can step through with the blue buttons. And if you click a link that reads line 256, the Thimble code scrolls down to line 256!
What makes my (monstrous) creation different is that the work you do with the ImageSeek is while editing it. You first edit a div to insert your topic, and those changes propagate through the document (thanks jQuery).
Then for each prompt, say I am looking for something to represent "life", the first prompt asks "I looked for these kinds of actions that demonstrate life in action.", so I start editing the tags for the keywords with some guesses, like "birth", "feeding" (maybe momma birds feeding baby birds?)
As I edit the code, the buttons on the right change. And they are functional- click "birth" and you get a dynamically generated search tool, rigged with URLs to search for the words in four different sites of content licensed for re-use (the search patterns lifted from Creative Commons search)
The idea is to work through the prompts to generate possible keywords, run searches, and most importanty, keep track (in a text file, on paper?) of the search results. There is lower part of the document where the ImageSeeker can embed the four best images:
as well as include the information that would be needed to include image attribution:
And once you save an Image Seek remix, you have a document that shows not just that you can find one image by plunking a keyword in the search engine, but that you have tried several searches, and show your process.
An interesting second tier activity might be to have participants switch their ImageSeeks, remix, and see if they come up with different results for the same search topic.
Would You Like Fries With That Image Seek?
On the right side, are a fee related reference links
Again, I could have spent a gob of time trying to find the Supreme List of Resources, but (ahem call em lazy), the idea here is for YOU, the person that remixes this Teaching Kit, to customize it with the links you find relevant.
Thanks for all the Fish
Now what? Well this is something I have been tinkering with for a while, and maybe I'm too close to the trees. I wondered all along, am I making something to complex? Will people get lost in the long Image Seek tool? Does it do enough to compel people to go through a process, when just chucking keywords into Google is So Easy?
That's what I'd like to know. Feedback is good, even the critical ones. Especially the critical ones.
Dear friends like I write in my blog in previous year, I rediscover last year more than 100 edtools and ipad apps using #iste13 hastag http://bitly.com/iste13edtools but now when is organized #iste2014 I @LucianeCurator launch #startupeuchat (a chat for european startup tools and ipad apps ) organized weekly, friday from 7 p.m to 8 p.m to Bucharest time and I will share here in my blog Top 100 every week .
Between 27 june and 1 july in ATLANTA is organized ISTE’s Annual Conference and Exposition who provides four days of inspiration, learning and networking with more than 700 sessions and interactive learning environments and : -Four full days brimming with robust, inspirational professional learning opportunities that will help you build the skills to support digital age learning -Unlimited networking opportunities with nearly 18,000 educators, education leaders and corporate representatives from around the globe -Three powerful keynote addresses from edtech leaders and experts -The opportunity to choose from hundreds of sessions in a variety of formats, including lectures, BYODs and hands-on learning environments -Access to a massive expo hall featuring the latest ed tech products and services from more than 500 companies and 4,500 industry -One-year standard membership to ISTE If you have ipad, a mobile device you can usee free conference app https://www.isteconference.org/2014/glance/mobile_app.php who is is your ISTE2014 command center, available in the Apple App Store, on Google Play, Windows Phone, Windows 8 and via the mobile web .
Dear friends like I write in my blog in previous year, I rediscover last year more than 100 edtools and ipad apps using #iste13 hastag http://bitly.com/iste13edtools but now when is organized #iste2014 I @LucianeCurator launch #startupeuchat (a chat for european startup tools and ipad apps ) organized weekly, friday from 7 p.m to 8 p.m to Bucharest time and I will share here in my blog Top 100 every week .
Between 27 june and 1 july in ATLANTA is organized ISTE’s Annual Conference and Exposition who provides four days of inspiration, learning and networking with more than 700 sessions and interactive learning environments and : -Four full days brimming with robust, inspirational professional learning opportunities that will help you build the skills to support digital age learning -Unlimited networking opportunities with nearly 18,000 educators, education leaders and corporate representatives from around the globe -Three powerful keynote addresses from edtech leaders and experts -The opportunity to choose from hundreds of sessions in a variety of formats, including lectures, BYODs and hands-on learning environments -Access to a massive expo hall featuring the latest ed tech products and services from more than 500 companies and 4,500 industry -One-year standard membership to ISTE If you have ipad, a mobile device you can usee free conference app https://www.isteconference.org/2014/glance/mobile_app.php who is is your ISTE2014 command center, available in the Apple App Store, on Google Play, Windows Phone, Windows 8 and via the mobile web .
The trails of distraction. If I worked for anyone else besides myself, I might get fired for my wanderings.
This all started at lunch time, I noticed I had about six oranges in my fridge, and that also I was out of orange juice. I thought I would take a few moments to squeeze them using this little plastic gizmo I had in my cabinet… except I could not find it.
Instead, I came across this antique one I had found and liberated from my Mom’s kitchen when we emptied out her house.
The Juice-O-Mat
Wow, it worked much better than the hand powered plastic gizmo! The pressure applied to the handle, the clever grooved insert– it is so elegant.
Yes, I spent 20 minutes squeezing 6 oranges into one cup of juice. But the feel of that metal appliance, and the design of it– am I turning into some kind of raving retronaut?
I got curious about the fancy engraved name in the top the Juice-O-Mat, and beneath “REG US PAT OFF” — Registered US Patent Office.
American Streamlined Design: The World of Tomorrow, focuses on a design era that emerged during the 1930s and 1940s, characterized by curving forms, and smooth, clean silhouettes. The style, which suggested speed and glamor, entered American design in the post-Depression years. It was widely applied in new forms of architecture, interior decoration and everyday household goods for the home and office.
My invention relates to ice crushers, and more particularly to a device for crushing ice into small fragments for use in icing drinks, juleps, and ice bags.
One object of my invention is to provide a novel ice crusher adapted rapidly crush ice into small fragments.
Another object of my invention is to provide a device for crushing ice in which the fragment size may be controlled.
One can easily lose days tracking out these trails.
I am still curious of the person, Joseph Majewski Jr- further searches ended up in LinkedIn profiles of people with the same name, and ancestry tree links which just want you to pay or signup for more info.
Rival was founded in 1932 by Henry J. Talge as the Rival Manufacturing Co., which specialized in die casting. They soon began producing food preparation products under the “O-Mat” line, such as the Juice-O-Mat juicer, Can-O-Mat can opener, and Broil-O-Mat broiler. After shutting down to produce ammunition during World War II, Rival expanded their product lines in the post-war era. They acquired Waverly Products, Inc., expanding their products into the home appliances market with Waverly’s popular Steam-O-Mat iron.
In 1963, the company was sold to Stern Brother Investment Bank, and went public in 1964. Soon after, they acquired Titan Manufacturing Company and their line of portable electric heaters. In 1970, they acquired Naxon Utilities Corp., makers of a little-known product called the “Bean Pot” slow cooker. Rival re-introduced the Bean Pot as the Crock-Pot in 1971, and it quickly became one of their top products.
From the Juice-O-Mat directly to the denizen of the 1970s, something I use now, the Crock Pot. Look, my own is a Rival Brand!
The Rival Company is a leading manufacturer and marketer of small household and personal care appliances, as well as commercial and industrial fans and ventilation equipment. The company also manufactures a line of sump, well, and utility pumps. Rival became a household word in the early 1970s with the introduction of the Rival Crock Pot, a slow cooker that literally changed the way dinners were made for many people. Other items manufactured include can openers, meat slicers, grinders, toasters, ice cream makers, space heaters, ceiling fans, shower head massagers, humidifiers, air purifiers, and more. Rival products are sold under many brand names, including Rival, Rival Select, Simer, Pollenex, Patton, Fasco, Bionaire, and White Mountain.
Rival was founded by Henry J. Talge in 1932. Talge was born in Russia in 1892 and moved to the Kansas City area in 1925, following sales jobs in Chicago, Detroit, New York, and St. Joseph, Missouri. Then called Rival Manufacturing Co. (a name carried through the early 1990s), the firm started as a specialty die cast operation. With eight employees, Talge set up his first factory at the former Hempey-Cooper building at the corner of Archibald and Pennsylvania in the Westport district of Kansas City.
Rival’s first product was a manual citrus juicer, called the Juice-O-Mat. The “O-Mat” tag later become a trademark on many new product names, including the Can-O-Mat (can opener), Broil-O-Mat (broiler), and Ice-O-Mat (ice crusher). Talge saw a need for many products to make cooking and other food preparation procedures faster and easier.
It would look like the Talge family went a long way on the design ideas of Joseph Majewski Jr (and maybe others). I am still left wanting on the inventor’s story, and I might dig more but it’s already 3:00pm and I have wandered far down the trail.
But there is a lesson there- we have to products, the patents, the juice-o-mats– but where are thr stories of the inventors?
It’s not even done much in the realm where Jon saw it first, the tech developers. It’s left vacant in my rarely updated rss reader.
Most everyone is too busy to be bothered by narrating, having left their blogs dry for Facebook, twitter, wherever sles, hanging out the Busy Backson sign
creative commons licensed (BY) flickr photo by Billy Rowlinson: http://flickr.com/photos/billyrowlinson/3515157369
I was talking with a coordinator yesterday and I heard a word that I hadn't heard in quite a long time - proxies. A few years ago, around the same time as the introduction of 1:1 devices in the school, there was a spait of incidents involving students using proxies to access websites that would normally be blocked. The answer then was two fold:
It was explained to students the dangers of using such means in regards to viruses.
Students caught lost their laptops for an extended period of time.
As time passed, it stopped being an such an issue. Less and less people were being caught out. However, what this recent situation highlights is that maybe it stopped being an issue for teachers, while for students the practise simply went underground.
Whatever the exact state of play maybe, it left me searching for a better solution. For the case in question involved a student naively sharing with a new teacher how to access YouTube at school via proxies. What is interesting is that in some schools YouTube is open to students. However, there is a fair fear amongst staff that allowing students to access YouTube opens up a whole new can of worms. Like email, such applications and websites like YouTube add a level of responsibility that not all teachers are willing to accept. The irony though is that we end up dealing with such incidents online whether we chose to 'accept' them or not.
For example, if a student was caught by another student watching an inappropriate clip at school and reported to a teacher, surely the answer given I'd not 'that clip is not supposed to be accessed at school.' Instead I would imagine that there would be discussions about why it maybe inappropriate to watch the video at school, whether this be because it may make others feel unsafe and is too often unrelated to what tasks are meant to be completed.
This is no different to when students bring issues associated with inappropriate online activity into the classroom. For although such incidents do not directly occur in the classroom, the fact that they inadvertently impact learning in the classroom means that we do need to deal with them.
The question then that comes to mind is whether blocking access is the best solution? In an interesting interview that I seem to come back to again and again, +Alec Couros spoke about the importance of bringing social media into the classroom. He suggested that we need to be modelling with students everyday appropriate actions online. Yet, as I have discussed before in regards to taboos, for too many schools it is easier to ignore such issues as if doing so both absolves them of responsibility and means that they don't exist.
I am not sure of the perfect answer, but I would like to say that simply blocking every program is not it. I would love to know your thoughts. Are websites like YouTube, Twitter and Slideshare blocked in your school? If not, what are the consequences, both good and bad, of allowing students open access? Please share below.
Now I am big fan of #TVSZ, a zombie twitter game as you may or not know. I've written about it here and here. I've created movies (sadly more than one!) about zombies. So you can tell that I think #TVSZ is an wonderful learning experience. The brainchild of Jesse Stommel and Pete Rorabaugh it is a petri dish of online learning.
Now let me explain why you should play #TVSZ 4.0 if you have never indulged. This round of play starts Friday June 20th, 2014!
1. It's a game. This means it's fun. It's not an obligation, it is play. And like all play, the learning is not always effortless but it is driven by the compulsion to participate, which means the learner moves forward over the obstacles because of their desire to participate fully. What are the benefits? Through play I learned to:
Use Twitter and Tweetdeck effectively
Attach a picture to a tweet
Make a sound recording and attach it to a tweet
Make a movie using Popcorn Maker
And what was so wonderful was these were skills that were transferable! So by playing #TVSZ it opened up a whole host of other learning opportunities. I've been reaping the rewards ever since.
2. Creative production. Since #TVSZ is played on the web, to play you must communicate. This means that to play effectively you end up writing stories, taking photos, creating videos, making music, etc. as the game evolves. To play wholeheartedly you must produce and often to a deadline. If you've ever participated in DS106, they use a similar method of stimulating creativity. Within my blog are lots of #TVSZ posts I wrote while playing #TVSZ 3.0. They were silly, but fun. Some of my writing was, dare I say it, elegant, over the subject of zombie feeding habits.
3. Friendship. Truly an unexpected side benefit of #TVSZ. Who knew that being a member of the zombie hoard would be so life affirming? I am still in communication a year and half later with the people I bonded with playing #TVSZ 2.0. And that has been enriching my life ever since.
4. Learning. With #TVSZ you are learning constantly because the rules change every 12 to 24 hours. There is no complacency in this game so you must be flexible and adaptable. And aren't those the qualities we want to nurture in ourselves and our students?
I look forward eagerly to every game of #TVSZ as another opportunity to learn, create and play. Register here for #TVSZ 4.0. And have fun!
CLMOOC is a community where people can learn how to do or be anything they want to.
One of the goals for CLMOOC is to engage participants in interest-driven, making-centered experiences that embody Connected Learning Principlesand to adopt a collaborative approach and a reflective stance toward the processes of making and learning.
As an open participant, I have tried to complete assignments like everyone else. Read the article (a couple of times), posted nugget and concept experience, commented on a few posts. And tweeted here and there. And watched some archived video.
But mostly, I’ve been digging into the odd corners of the Thoughtvectors site, trying to see all it offers and how it works. It’s the corners and edges I like to hang out in. Here are some of my findings.
Blog syndication seems to be working well. It’s an hour refresh cycle, so don’t look for your post to appear on the main page right away. But, there are so many blogs, so many posts, I need some sort of index to remember what I read and where it was. The list of all the blogs helps, unless I don’t remember the name of the blog. [Also, not everyone has put their name on their blog anywhere, so either it is unknown, or I guess.]
The link to find a random post is cool and interesting and of merit, but unfortunately is stuck on the same post. Alan, I think it’s somehow related to the randomization function. I see you have made groups, but each group that I have tried (if it works) goes to the same post (I think within that group) each time.
The Twitter visualization and related functions is cool, but again it isn’t quite real-time. And the linkages for tweets, retreets, mentions don’t show up all the time – might be browser related. Also, at the bottom of the page, the link for showing all tweets vectorized, though it seems to have 39 pages to show, each page selected merely repeats the first page of tweets.
Let’s see, what else? I wanted to use the logo in the upper left corner (Doug Engelbart and “Thought Vectors in Concept Space”) for an image I was working on. Screenshot didn’t work, it grabbed the main part of the body with vectorized blogposts instead. But I was able to use view source and find the actual image used…which is the hard geeky way of doing it, since I could have right-clicked and save picture as.
OK, what have I been learning about people and thought vectors? Looking at several posts this week, I see that some folks are unsure and wondering why we are using all the technological tools. Yet, this is part of the point, I think. The concept space is the augmentation to our communication, and our memory, and our thinking that the Web promotes. We need to develop a fluency and literacy in the use of various tools in this concept space, else our thought vectors fail to make connections. Writing papers, compositions, essays is so twentieth century.
Others (maybe most of us) express some personal details of our lives, our hopes, our plans. This is good! We need to think about our use of the open concept space in relation to what we reveal of ourselves. We also need to think about how we curate and archive our own digital identities. Personally, I have created a mess. I have two google accounts that keep getting mixed up so both have joined the thoughtvectors community. I have started and abandoned several blogs. I should step back and reorganize them, but probably never will.
Scottlo & Alan Levine photo by Bill Smith CC-BY
Alan & Dr. C photo by Bill Smith CC-BY
On a personal level, I am enjoying this whole experience along with some friends from previous experiences. In particular, I am grateful to and always learning from Alan Levine (creative use of technology and openness), Gardner Campbell (things to think about), Scottlo (using audio for thinking), Talky Tina (Ninja fun), and several others. And getting to know all the other participants (students all) is a great way to appreciate the variety of people.
The four modules of Webmaker Training are somewhat non-specific. They are mainly designed to be an on-ramp for people who don’t have much experience with trying to #TeachTheWeb or people who are new to our community and the idea of Connected Learning. The four modules are the basics of what we as a community care about and why. We’ve tried to gather information that is useful when people are beginning to think about their involvement in the Mozilla community and in Maker Party, and we’ve tried to help people develop digital skills by prompting them to make using free and open tools.
Since we have a wide reaching and global community, we have lots of different interests to think about. With Webmaker Training, I feel like we’ve found a model that can work for any interest, so I’m excited to see if I’m right.
Enter the Librarian.
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="200"] made for TV gone B Movie Franchise![/caption]
In the fall, we will be running Webmaker Training: For Librarians as our first specific interest group. In thinking about the specific learning modules librarians would need, I felt like I need a little bit of backup. So I used me some connected networking skills and I reached out to some Mozillians who know libraries and librarians*.
Notes about this audience
1. Jennie said that one of her favorite quotes from the “sleep cell librarian crew” in our community was
“Librarians are trained by vendors.”
She explained that it’s normally proprietary software that ends up in libraries and, thus, librarians are helping people use that stuff.
Solution 1: We’re a “vendor”, our software is the Web. Bam.
2. It was also pointed out to me that whether or not a librarian can justify his participation in #TeachTheWeb to a library director will determine if the modules are successful or not.
Solution 2: Everything is open and free. I guess that most libraries in N. America are members of the ALA, but their e-learning resources are…uh…not free. Also, there’s not much in the way of information literacy or digital making in their e-learning catalog, so programs like Webmaker Training can augment. I don’t really know what a library director is looking for, but libraries are the perfect establishments for things like Maker Parties, digital skills workshops, web - ahem - literacy work.
3. There is a huge age gap in librarians, so there’s also a huge skill gap when it comes to technology.
Solution 3: Karen suggested facilitating connections between generations, and I like this idea. I also think that modules for developing specific technical skills are a good idea.
4. There’s a difference between academic vs public libraries.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="300"] Public[/caption]
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="291"] Academic[/caption]
Solution 4: I think we can solve this with modularity. Kaitlin and Greg over at the Mozilla Science Lab and Software Carpentry have been working with academic research librarians, so we have a jumping off place for things like data skills, indexing, unix, etc. I mean, look at these lessons.
5. There’s a difference between urban vs rural libraries.
Solution 5: Oh yeah, I know! What can a rural librarian teach an urban librarian and vice versa? How does technology play a part in each library? What resources do libraries need? Let’s MAKE them together!
6. Librarians have some of the pedagogy stuff, so we need to have a stronger focus on the technical details.
Solution 6: That aligns with my sense that we need some smaller more focused “skill” modules ;) It was also mentioned that Webinars, videos and anything people can consume at work world be helpful, so I’m thinking popcorn videos should make their way to http://training.webmakerprototypes.org
7. This group needs to understand how they can use this network and why it’s valuable to them.
Solution 7: This is a discussion we should have together, but we have lots of case studies we can put together in an easily digestible format. Webpage to ebook anyone?
Digestion.
I’ve had quite a bit to think about in terms of how :For Librarians can fit into overarching visions of what Webmaker Training is or should become. These are my initial thoughts after digesting everything the “Mozillarians” had to say. I’d appreciate it if you collaborate with me on this by giving feedback, adding thoughts, curating content, donating ideas for good make prompts and otherwise help me push :For Librarians further.
Ideas for NEW modules
Logistics (how to organize a Webmaker event / Maker Party - could be an education remix of the Event kits!), maintaining and developing free public spaces (finding funding and programming opportunities, understanding distribution).
Privacy and Security for Public Spaces (How to make online anonymity default, 3rd party cookies, https, do not track, Lightbeam)
Ideas for Building :For Librarians
As I said, we have lots of amazing baseline content. We don’t need an entirely new Building module, we need learning activities that would be valuable to lots of librarians. So what does each librarian want to make that would immediately benefit his/her library? A couple ideas for make prompts:
Make your typical learner profile (who are your largest group of patrons? Marginalized teens? Seniors? Children?)
Teaching Kit for Computer Basics (click, double click). I found this resource, got excited about what the community could do with it.
Top ten programs at your library
Top ten problems your library has
Teaching Kit for Searching (Especially in North America, library patrons are often elderly or disadvantaged who need basic training in everyday internet usage. Librarians are teaching people how to find health info, filing taxes, etc. How can we teach those basic skills in a way that people to keep coming to the library to level up?)
What else? Help!
Discourse discussions we should have
Best practices for encouraging critical literacies
Honest and Open communication; (Exploring - could be based on typical learner profile)
Community building (Connecting - could be based on “top ten programs”)
So that’s where I am in my :For Librarians thinking. What do you think? Leave a comment, or better yet, join the discussion.
* Thanks to Emily, Jennie, Kaitlin and Karen for brain dumping for me, and to the folks feeding me ideas in email ;)
Kim Jaxon is an assistant professor of English (Composition & Literacy) at California State University, Chico. She received her Ph.D. at UC, Berkeley in the Language & Literacy, Society & Culture program in the Graduate School of Education. Her research interests focus on theories of literacy, particularly digital literacies, participation, classroom design, game theories, and teacher education. In her research and teaching, she uses a variety of digital platforms and considers the affordances in terms of student learning and participation. She has published a variety of book chapters and articles focused on classroom design, mentoring, and the uses of digital tools.
With support from a National Science Foundation grant, Jaxon’s recent project is a collaboration across disciplines, co-teaching and researching in an upper-division science class for future teachers with colleagues from Biology and Physics. Their research pays particular attention to the ways in which multimodal composing—informal science notebooks, diagrams on whiteboards, images shared online, and conversations around these inscriptions—model and reflect the composing practices of scientists.
Jaxon is also a curator for the website, Digital Is, hosted by the National Writing Project with funding from the MacArthur Foundation. The site provides a range of support for educators interested in digital literacy and the use of technology in their classrooms. Kim was recently awarded the Teacher of Excellence-College Award by the California Association of Teachers of English. She’s also a gamer and a self proclaimed geek. @drjaxon
Elizabeth Losh is the author of Virtualpolitik: An Electronic History of Government Media-Making in a Time of War, Scandal, Disaster, Miscommunication, and Mistakes (MIT Press, 2009) and The War on Learning: Gaining Ground in the Digital University(MIT Press, 2014). She is the co-author of the comic book textbook Understanding Rhetoric: A Graphic Guide to Writing(Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2013) with Jonathan Alexander. She is currently working on a new monograph, tentatively entitledObama Online: Technology, Masculinity, and Democracy.
She writes about gender and technology, the digital humanities, distance learning, connected learning, media literacy, and the rhetoric surrounding regulatory attempts to limit everyday digital practices.
She has written a number of frequently cited essays about communities that produce, consume, and circulate online video, videogames, digital photographs, text postings, and programming code. The diverse range of subject matter analyzed in her scholarship has included coming out videos on YouTube, videogame fan films created by immigrants, combat footage from soldiers in Iraq shot on mobile devices, video evidence created for social media sites by protesters on the Mavi Marmara, remix videos from the Arab Spring, and the use of Twitter and Facebook by Indian activists working for women’s rights after the Delhi rape case. Much of this body of work concerns the legitimation of political institutions through visual evidence, representations of war and violence in global news, and discourses about human rights. This work has appeared in edited collections from MIT Press, Routledge, University of Chicago, Minnesota, Oxford, Continuum, and many other presses.
She is Director of the Culture, Art, and Technology program at Sixth College at U.C. San Diego, where she teaches courses on digital rhetoric and new media. She is also a blogger for Digital Media and Learning Central, and a Steering Committee member of HASTAC and FemTechNet.
Dr. Alec Couros is a professor of educational technology and media and the Coordinator of Information and Communications Technology at the Faculty of Education, University of Regina. Couros is a scholar and advocate of openness in distributed learning environments. He has given hundreds of workshops and presentations around the globe on topics such as openness in education, social/networked learning, instructional design, digital citizenship, and critical media literacy. His graduate and undergraduate courses help current and future educators understand how to use and take advantage of the educational potential offered by the tools of connectivity.
made for TV gone B Movie Franchise![/caption]
In the fall, we will be running Webmaker Training: For Librarians as our first specific interest group. In thinking about the specific learning modules librarians would need, I felt like I need a little bit of backup. So I used me some connected networking skills and I reached out to some Mozillians who know libraries and librarians*.
Kim Jaxon is an assistant professor of English (Composition & Literacy) at California State University, Chico. She received her Ph.D. at UC, Berkeley in the Language & Literacy, Society & Culture program in the Graduate School of Education. Her research interests focus on theories of literacy, particularly digital literacies, participation, classroom design, game theories, and teacher education. In her research and teaching, she uses a variety of digital platforms and considers the affordances in terms of student learning and participation. She has published a variety of book chapters and articles focused on classroom design, mentoring, and the uses of digital tools.
Prev
