What kind of world do we live in where "vlog" becomes a common word?
I'll answer that. We live in a world complete with accessible communication technology, so abundant, that just about anyone with a computer and a video camera can easily produce a video blog. And we live in a world that is so adaptive to new technology, that we are constantly coming up with new words, like "vlog", to accomodate these developments.
I enjoyed seeing the video blogs produced by the class on the various chapters of Pink's book which were covered in week 8. Everyone seemed to uniquely interpret both the chapters and their ideas of how they should be represented on video. The results were a lot of fun.
I enjoyed learning from Erika's presentation on Google Docs, and feel that it is a service I will now be using more regularly. I enjoy being able to access certain documents from wherever I am, and thought that Erika showed some good examples of how it can be used purposefully.
It was also my groups first opportunity to meet with Dr. Foreman to discuss our project. I am excited about the opportunity to take a number of Web 2.0 technologies and synthesize them into a group learning activity for future 830 classes, as well as Dr. Foreman's students and teachers in Africa to learn from.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Week 7 - Recap and Video Blog
On we move into week 7 of the semester, and further and further we move into Web 2.0 technologies. This past week in class we got some great demonstrations from John, Kate, and Leo on some really helpful and fun tools.
Kate got us started with an overview of Second Life. Now for years we've been talking about virtual reality (or virtual insanity as Jamiroquai would say.) But I truly have never seen anything that approached virtual reality until I got my first taste of Second Life. It truly does present an alternative reality that provides incredible capabilitites.
Leo's presentation on Tagging was really well done. Not only did he provide an excellent overview of what tagging is, but showed a great range of examples of how it can be applied both on your local machine and on the great wide web. I certainly learned a lot of new organizational techniques, and will continue to apply tagging to many of my technical endeavors.
John presented video blogging, and in addition to describing what it is and how it's done, he also revealed a lot of information on different blogging sites, and specifically the positives and negatives of various formats, including 3rd party hosting, streaming, or downloading. It gave me the confidence to create my own video blog this week on Daniel Pink's chapter on Empathy, from his book "A Whole New Mind."
Enjoy my video blog below...
Kate got us started with an overview of Second Life. Now for years we've been talking about virtual reality (or virtual insanity as Jamiroquai would say.) But I truly have never seen anything that approached virtual reality until I got my first taste of Second Life. It truly does present an alternative reality that provides incredible capabilitites.
Leo's presentation on Tagging was really well done. Not only did he provide an excellent overview of what tagging is, but showed a great range of examples of how it can be applied both on your local machine and on the great wide web. I certainly learned a lot of new organizational techniques, and will continue to apply tagging to many of my technical endeavors.
John presented video blogging, and in addition to describing what it is and how it's done, he also revealed a lot of information on different blogging sites, and specifically the positives and negatives of various formats, including 3rd party hosting, streaming, or downloading. It gave me the confidence to create my own video blog this week on Daniel Pink's chapter on Empathy, from his book "A Whole New Mind."
Enjoy my video blog below...
Thursday, March 8, 2007
Week 6 Thoughts - Visual Stories
Week six's class focused on a theme of story. Each student created a story using just 5 pictures, and each story gave slack to multiple interpretations. Nowhere was this more evident that when Dr. Foreman asked each student to write the story that came to mind when viewing John's photos. It was interesting to hear how different students interpreted the pictures' meaning, and all of the photo stories were amusing and emotive.
As a class, we also spent some time navigating through the flickr site to user-test the interface and design. Everyone seemed to agree that there were a number of aspects to the design that weren't very intuitive. Personally, I felt that the site was adequately designed, and I didn't seem to have very much difficulty figuring out how to tag a photo to a map, but I did agree that many of the steps could have been simplified.
Carmen and Areej presented Eluminate, a software available for group presentations and conferencing. It seems to have a good interface for both users and presenters, and hopefully more and more of this type of software will become available at affordable prices. It's too bad that the trial period had expired before their presentation, but I think the class got a good chance to understand the basics of the program.
Finally, Darren, Peter, and I decided to work together on our final group project. We hope to come to some understanding of what type of project we will be doing in the next week or two...
As a class, we also spent some time navigating through the flickr site to user-test the interface and design. Everyone seemed to agree that there were a number of aspects to the design that weren't very intuitive. Personally, I felt that the site was adequately designed, and I didn't seem to have very much difficulty figuring out how to tag a photo to a map, but I did agree that many of the steps could have been simplified.
Carmen and Areej presented Eluminate, a software available for group presentations and conferencing. It seems to have a good interface for both users and presenters, and hopefully more and more of this type of software will become available at affordable prices. It's too bad that the trial period had expired before their presentation, but I think the class got a good chance to understand the basics of the program.
Finally, Darren, Peter, and I decided to work together on our final group project. We hope to come to some understanding of what type of project we will be doing in the next week or two...
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Man, it burns...
A five frame story of my adventure at Burning Man 2006
The Man Lives
Desert Art
Cocktail Hours
Caveman need dinner
The Man Lives
Desert Art
Cocktail Hours
Caveman need dinner
The ultimate bonfire
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