If you are looking for a post about MOOCs or techie stuff, come back another day. Today was… well I don’t have to say much beyond

Motherless children have a hard time
When the mother is gone
Motherless children have a hard time
When the mother is gone

Motherless children have a hard time
There’s all that weeping and all that crying
Motherless children have a hard time
When the mother is gone

My Mom passed away in late August of last year, in the middle of my road trip odyssey, transforming it from a plan to visit her in November to having to see her lowered into the ground in September and then cleaning out her house. Today was Matzevah, being the date my sisters and I had picked to unveil the tombstone marker for her, adjacent to the ones for my Dad and my brother at the old Baltimore Hebrew Cemetery in Baltimore.

There were butterflies in the air, and of course, left there on her gravestone as the symbol of something she has so personally enamored with, and shared so sweetly.

She can tell her own story

Mom and Butterflies

Yes, I have appreciated the amazing support I got through this process from friends all over the internet. But the accepting of this still eludes me; rationally I have accepted it, but down there in the deep bowels of my innards, it just baffles me, because everything was indicating she would be around for longer than she was.

It is comforting knowing she did not suffer, but I cannot but help feel cheated of missing those last bits of her; that morning I called her to say I was thinking of her on the 10th anniversary of my Dad’s passing, we spoke, laughed as usual but for 3 minutes. 3 minutes. I am thankful and remorseful for all 3.

My sister Judy pulled together two lovely poems that she read today ones that both saddens and helps the heart at the same time (I hope to add them here when she sends them to me), but one is about how to remember those who passed- and it is about not focusing on the loss, but by carrying on the spirit and sharing it with those around you. They way Mom did- and it was not really until we heard the stories of the people she touched in her community in Fort Myers– that I realized how much I underestimated what a selfless influence she had on so many people.

And it hits home, after all of this, how little of the grieving I’ve been able to get close to inside. And it makes sense with a more recurring feeling of being adrift in life right now, despite being surrounded by people who genuinely care, I cannot say I am always giving back even a fraction of what Mom did.

So I am looking inside, to find the ways to learn her lessons, and act more on them. “Butterflies are the symbolic representation of the eternity of life.”

I have audio, I have pictures, and I have stories.

While we gathered at my sister’s house, we asked my niece to get a photo of my sisters and I, and I was moved tonight to make an animated GIF out of a photo of 2012 and the old kids pose from (??) 1968? It strikes me that we are now older than our parents were at the time of this photo, something that seems implausible as a child.

An infinite repeated loop works for me. Judy, Harriet and I always laugh about the lecture Mom would say to us, “When I am going you kids better be there for each other” as if that really was anything but a certainty. Yes, we are all motherless children, but we don’t have to have a bad time now that mother is gone.

I await this step from mourning my Mom’s loss to celebrating her life. The former does not go away, but the latter? Well, I still have lots to learn, Mom. I love you forever.

Things are shaping up nicely for the summer course of ds106 I am co-teaching with Martha Burtis, we have been super busy supervising and doing a lot of the work at Camp Magic Mcguffin. If you have every mused about trying to take ds106 as an open participant, this is perhaps the best time, during the summer, to come to camp, and let your creativity go wild. Go check out our welcome video and see the special info we provide for online open participants (yes Lisa Lane, we have a tag for you;-).

We were excited to hear that canmpers are already getting into the spirit, Lee has already done and created a first camper submitted assignment.

So I wandered down to the shored of Lake Macguffin to see how the cleanup was going.

It is still off limits while the crews finish the work, after emptying the lake, and removing all fo the debris with backhoes. Yes, there is a bit of reality distortion that happens in some spots, as you can see, but the water looks great, eh? Martha has been busy working on the new docks (she is handy with those power tools), and today, I took one of the new kayaks out for a spin:

As you can see, there are a lot of interesting nooks and crannies to explore, and the Fish and Wildlife Service has confirmed we are adjacent to the location of some nesting bald eagles. We hope we get a chance to spot some of them soon. Just make sure you stay clear of that fenced off cove at the south end of the lake.

Well, that’s about all the news fro Camp, remember we start on May 21, but if you are an open online participant, heck, just drop in when you can, Just catch the creative fever.

Can’t wait to see you in camp- I’m working on setting up a side blog to post some video updates.

cc licensed ( BY ND ) flickr photo shared by hans s

Based on the recommendation of Barbara Ganley (one of whom I would recommend following recommendations thereof) for the past few weeks I’ve been dabbling in Cowbird, an online storytelling platform that center heavily on photography as well as original writing.

Cowbird is one of several inspiring projects by artist Jonathan Harris (if you have not spent time there before, check out We Feel Fine, The Whale Hunt, and 10×10).

Tagged as “a witness to life”, Cowbird is described as

Cowbird allows you to keep a beautiful audio-visual diary of your life, and to collaborate with others in documenting the overarching “sagas” that shape our world today. Sagas are themes and events that touch millions of lives and shape the human story.

Our short-term goal is to pioneer a new form of participatory journalism, grounded in the simple human stories behind major news events. Our long-term goal is to build a public library of human experience, so the knowledge and wisdom we accumulate as individuals may live on as part of the commons, available for this and future generations to look to for guidance.

Essentially, what is created revolves around a high resolution image that becomes the first focus of a story, and is accompanied by text and/or audio. In typifying Harris’s style, it is both rich and simple at the same time. When you write something in cowbird, you are asked for meta data (without them saying, please give us meta data) that includes location, time, people, keywords that become a way to create meta organizers of content from across the site.

There are no comments in cowbird, and the feedback you give is more than giving it a like, you “love it” (technically the same thing of course), and you can follow the work of others as well as share outwardly through social media. One of the unique features is the idea of sprouting a story, where you can write a new story inspired by the work of another (hey, it’s like a trackback only more spiritual?).

There are rich experiences just in the exploring of the space, and in fact, they suggest when you start that you first explore, and express your loves before starting to write (this is a useful suggestion for any creative site), I believe that access is still by invite or responding to a request for an account, but I found it did not take long for this to happen.

There’s plenty more covered in the FAQ. Enough of the what it is, what the bleep am I doing there?

I’ve been spinning the neuorons trying to figure out what, if anything, I would do with my experience last year of not working and traveling- I have tons of things written as blog/diary and photography, plus all the stuff I collected in the storybox.

Writing a book? meh, too much work, the world has plenty of stories like this. Making a movie? ditto. I was really looking for something that was of the web.

So here are my cowbirdings.

What I am doing is going back to my photos from a year ago, flickr’s archive lends itself easily- May 8 2011, I was walking about Manhattan, and using those as my own sprouts for creating something- only sometimes narrative of events or places, but more so just stories. Sometimes it is a look back at myself and what I was doing/thinking, but in other cases I am just writing fiction. Mostly it just emerges after selecting what I think is an interesting photo and seeing what comes out of reflecting on it

In tine for a change, I open it with a stretch back to my first day of self-unemployment.

What is it about for the cheese we are about to receive? I don’t know, it is just what that image brought back.

Sometimes it is just gibberish– for this photo of a weathered pip at the bottom of Fossil Creek Canyon

I ended up just babbling w words – is “w’d” a story?

weathered, witness, worn, washed, withered, was, watching, wizened, wayward, witchy, wonder.

whatever…

In other cases I make up other people’s conversations- we gotta talk

And as a sprout example, my cowbird of a stack of wood, written as parts and whole was sprouted by Barbara in her Five Cords. I’ve hear her tell the story, and it is powerful in all forms (as good stories are)- and her story has sprouted 3 more – how cool is that; plus her was featured last week as a Story of the Day.

There are interesting things here just in shaping your own space but as well the networked space of stories- the notion of stories sprouting stories sprouting stories is the kind of viralness that is more interesting than cat videos.

Right now, I do not know where, if anywhere, I will go with this. Like my trip, I just have chosen a vehicle and a general direction. I like the idea of this as both a reflective and creative activity; I can look at the stories as a lens to myself inward but also the world outward.

It may just end up as another of my piles f digital stuff that does nothing on this own. But I remain convinced the doing of activities like this, be it daily photos, writing, etc, is one that does more than we realize at the time.

I plan to keep at the cowbirding, especially as the clock rolls into late June when my trip last year started. Right now it is pretty much my personal thing, and that is my audience. It sits nicely in the space of narrating and making shit up. And it puts photos front and center, where for me, the creative metaphor juice is freshly squeezed.

Moo.

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by Phil Romans

Still back logging the Slices of Life audio reflections on my first round of teaching ds106, parsing back here to the last week of February, 2012.

Slices of Life 15: The Leap

We start first after class on Monday Feb 27. Today’s class was easy because I did not have to do anything- this was time set aside for work on their group audio projects, creating a radio show (see work for week 7).

I am no accepting excuses for not turning in work by the Sunday deadline or missing class. One student who said he missed last class “because his roommates asked him to dinner”. I said wow, it must have been some awesome dinner, where did you go? He said, “The dining hall”

Me: “You missed my class for dining hall food? Seriously? You have to show up, you gotta be there (for life)”

Each group has to turn in audio for shows the Monday after spring break, but to keep them on task, I am requiring for Wednesday’s class, that they need to prepare a 15 second bumper, one commercial and 5 minute preview and add the links to a class wiki page

I only id one bit of leading, a quick demo on using the Audacity envelope tool for adjusting levels, something I thought was key to dealing with multiple tracks. I did not have this video at the time, but it will be useful going forward

After this, the bulk of class was the students working in their groups, I just walked around and listened- or just got out of the way, and all groups zeroed in on their show idea by the end of class. Activity level was high.

Five minutes before the end of class, I called out each group to say on the spot what their show was about. These are the show topics:

• Call in show on embarrassing stories and pet peeves (sort of a vox populi?)
• Science jokes
• Post apocalypse radio show
• Call in show from the wild
• people sharing bucket lists
• advice from drunk people (done before, I warned them to make it structured!)

For me, this was a welcome break from having to design class/activities. For them, they got to do stuff the whole class.

——- cut to Wednesday ——– 8< --------------

I thought I was recording, but the red button was not clicked; and even after redoing, Siri seems to think while talking that I want her, and she turns off my recorder app. Amateur hour(s).

But it is a rainy day, the sky is crying. Yet this is a giddy slice! This was another great class for me, this day of the leap year, where the time rounding errors yields us every 4 years, a day to lump it together for extra time.

Tonight I will upload their bumpers to ds106radio (they are still there as of May 2012)

Best week I have taught, because they are doing stuff.

Might do a bit of singing in the rain, I am so excited to see the energy in class tonight.

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by Kalexanderson

Someone lend me a rope, I have fallen deep into one of those internet rabbit holes.

It began as a simple “I’ll look this up in a few minutes” query. I’d seen this quote in at least 2 presentations:

“images are processed 60,000 times faster than text”

A number like that smells like it comes from research. First cut google–

Most cite 3M as the research source, e.g. This ASTD book on Visual Literacy:

Research by 3M Corporation shows that people are able to process visual information 60,000 times more quickly than textual information

The link reference makes me feel a tad closer:

3M Corporation research cited in “Polishing Your Presentation.” 3M Meeting Network Articles & Advice (2001) [Online Article]. Available:http://www.3m.com/meetingnetwork/readingroom/meetingguide_pres.html

Except, alas, she is a dead link.

Enter the Internet Archive to the rescue

and the original PDF is still available:

Did you know that visual aids have been found to improve learning by up to 400 percent? Did you realize that we can process visuals 60,000 times faster than text? Would you guess that the average person only remembers about a fifth of what they hear?

These findings from behavioral research confirm our daily experience: we rely on all our senses to bring ideas and concepts to life. Effective presenters today realize that preparing to take the podium means more than having your index cards in order. As photos, illustrations, graphs and text make their way into presenters’ toolboxes, audiences are coming to expect impressive visual aids. However, high-quality images aren’t the whole story. Visuals should support you, not replace you. Use them instead to shed light on your key messages and capture the audience’s interest.

Yet nowhere have I been able to find any of this “behavioral research” just reference to it. The 3M publication is not research, it was actually more or less a sideways assertion for the value of their media offerings.

Yet all over the internet, this pseudofact is asserted as a truth, “research says 60,000 times faster” said enough times makes it– truthy?

I firmly believe the research is out there, and hoping maybe some of my more library or research experts can zero in on it for me… and in fact, I really don’t need to know it for anything specific, but at this point… we”ll I will saee you down the hole.

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by jpockele

Just wanna stake my claim…

Look for big announcement soon about CogDogx cause just like the ‘i” prefix of a few years ago, an “x” suffix is the new shnizzle

— Alan Levine (@cogdog) December 30, 2011

Of course, the “big announcement” is 404, because I was just playing. But the “x” factor is going to be spreading widely, witness MBSx

The funny thing about twitter is how hard it is to find your own stuff– I knew I had snarked this a while back, but had little hope from twitter itself I could find it (oh twitter, index thyself, willya?).

So I knew I had something of a record in my rowkeeper archive, but what I found was someone retweeting me back in December- this at least got me a chunk of text

which gives me a few useful shards – none of them found on twitter, but whoah, I had completely forgotten I had made an account on Grabeeter — who is apparetnly doing what twitter ought to be doing!

With me forgetting that! Grabeeter has indexed 68% of my twitter spewing. This link is now sitting on my toolbar, because I can barely remember what I tweeted for lunch. And even more, there is an API for tapping into box.

More proof- I am not tweeting much about lunch

And while this post was started with some Snarkx in mind, it ended up with me futzing around with a forgotten tool. Is this some sort of localized serendipity?

As a fan of Steve Austin I could not help myself in response to today’s news of edX. Hastily and sloppily edited in iMovie, oh well.

“Higher education, learning. A concept barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world’s most massive online course. Edx will be that course. better than it was before. Massive. Open. Online.”

Bionic learning is coming.

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

Dear Photo,

In the alternate path universes, today I am calling you in Florida to wish you a happy 85th Birthday. You will want more to hear me talk about me than me talk about you. I might be talking about the next trip down I have planned.

Instead I am looking through just digital images that are fragments of memories, and I seem to have more of your objects than your face (there are more of those in the boxed photo albums 2000 miles away in a closet). I want to have one more conversation with you, yet the closest I can get is that imprinted memory of your voice. Does it even matter if I can recall it exactly or just more I can tap into it?

I hope for anyone whose fill in the blank verb for ‘Today _________ is my Dad’s birthday” is a present tense one really appreciates the mening of that verb.

You would not want anyone skulking around on your birthday, you’d rather be grilling your own steak dinner or trimming the grass, so I will listen to your [imagined] words of advice, “Old Man”.

love, Alan

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by SabrinaDan Photo

Oi.

I dropped the ball of my slices of life audio reflections- slice 14 here is almost 2 months old! I did get up to slice 20, so ahve some posts back logged, given that my ds106 semester will end this week. But let’s roll it back to late February.

Slices of Life 14- the Coughcast

This was 2 segments, walking to campus in the morning talking about the plans fo a Wednesday class on audio, and then after class, when I literally might be skipping (as in happy) as the activities I had set up seemed to fly well.

This again was February 22, 2012, and there is a bit of my coughing into the mic with a cold coming or already in- “I need me an immune system:. Yet it was an atypical winter sunny day walking into campus.

Tonight’s class plan (see full materials) to start with a rapid prototype challenge- using Audacity to edit a 5 sound story with files they were asked to come to class with, ones downloaded from freesound.org.

This would then flow into them, working on into group projects. A question remained on how to introduce ds106 radio – how to make it relevant? does anyone listen to radio?

They were given assignment to listen to episode of This American Life or RadioLab and to write a blog post analuyzing ther use of audio, especially effects and use of music.

The groups for audi projects would need to be formed tonight, so ideally they could get work done before spring break (in hind sight oops! this did not work well, a few groups fell apart and left the work on others to pick up.)

I had also sent a “depth charge emai”l to one student not doing anything, and noted that on blogging others seemed to be doing hasty work. Coming this week as well was the first round of required mimd term appointments, where I meet individually with students to review their work to date, and to get them to starte thinking about their final project.

— break —
After class… would it be weird to come out of class skipping? class was great, energy was good, maybe the best week ever.

The in class sound story exercise activity worked well, 2 students were done in 15 minutes, but others were so into it, I let them go a bit longer. The beauty is that I gave them thre most minimal of software instructions; they figured out most of the key things in the act of doing audio work.

This only left about 10-15 minute for am overview of ds106 radio- I played bit of Scottlo’s Japan Earthquake live broadcast, as samples of last year’samples of student audio stories, especially an all time favorite, Callaloo

They then did a great job of assembling teams for their audio project, and even tweet out their show idea and plans.

Another highlight was one student who had tweeted getting into listening to This American Life.

Yeah, that’s me skipping off campus like a school kid…

Now a bunch more of slices to go….

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

Jim Groom and I are in the last home stretch of ds106 at University of Mary Washington, final projects and last blog posts being due Sunday, and next week being individual review sessions. After an intense semester, as hard working academics we ought to head off to an idyllic summer retreat, a tropical island, the south of Spain… we’ll maybe one of us is moving on.

But not this dog- with my colleague Martha Burtis, we are ramping up a summer version of ds106; a 10 week online class for students at UMW, but as always, wide open to the rest of the masses on the internet. Are those monsterous sized moocs wearing you down? Maybe the grind of Udacity is not heating your kettle?

Come to camp.

Yes, on May 21, Camp Magic Macguffin will open for all to enjoy the ds106 summer of digital storytelling. We will have the same structure of storytelling, visual, digital, audio, video, remnix assignments,, but in a new setting. A new camp space is about to be opened up as a positive environment; unlike last summer which went strangely awry, the new operatiors of the camp have a well crafted plan modeled from the Finnish Hygge Model of Self-Actualization.

How can you be part of this? Just stay tuned to http://ds106.us for more information and a link when the workers have finished omn the remodeling of the camp facility. You can prep by either setting up a blog (preferably of the WordPress flavor), or deciding how to use a current blog for your ds106 work (we can accept your work via a blog feed on a tag or a category, thats what I do here). We will set up a camp enrollment form right away

Get in the creative flow now by practicing The Daily Create.. daily? Give a peek at some of the 365 assignments participants have added to the Assignment Bank; give some feedback/comment love to the final projects that are rolling out over the few days to the streams for my class or Jim’s section.

Go outside and start looking for that perfect marshmallow stick. Go back to your own past summer experiences, and stir up your favorite camp fire stories. Get some camp swag.

Can you feel the camp spirit coming?

Yeah, it just doesn’t matter! But making summer art with ds106 does, damnit.