Touch the firehose of ds106, the most recent flow of content from all of the blogs syndicated into ds106. As of right now, there have been 92466 posts brought in here going back to December 2010. If you want to be part of the flow, first learn more about ds106. Then, if you are truly ready and up to the task of creating web art, sign up and start doing it.

  1. ary

    The Sounds of our American TV Stories

    by
    Audio week is coming up in ds106, and we've already experimented briefly with creating our own stories using only sound effects. During that week, I also thought about TV sitcom theme songs from the 70s, 80s and 90s, and how these songs summarize a sho...
  2. ary

    Designing Great Comment Love in Peer to Peer Learning

    by
    Sally Field's  "You like me! Right now!" Oscar acceptance speech 
    One of the most important aspects of being part of a peer to peer learning environment such as ds106 is engaging in the art of giving, receiving and eliciting critical feedback. What makes giving, receiving and eliciting feedback or comment love as it's called in ds106 so difficult is that we are basically strangers, even if we've hung out once or twice on Google for another MOOC, or chatted in real time. It's even harder when participants have done none of these. Critical feedback works best when there's a trusting relationship between learners and among the group of learners. These relationships are difficult to build in face to face learning communities so even more challenging in learning environments like ds106. However, it can be done! Many times communication among participants is limited to asynchronous interactions, often making it difficult to read tone and intention. In peer to peer learning, it's important to "always assume positive intent."  When giving or receiving comment love, it's important to keep an open mind, pay attention to one's feelings and reactions, whether receiving or giving the criticism.  

    Week 6 in ds106 explores the art of design. It's the beginning of the week so this is a my pre-assignment post because I have been thinking a lot about how we as human beings struggle with designing feedback. Peer assessment and feedback in MOOCs is a hot topic of conversation because it often fails and becomes highly contentious for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, peers aren't really peers at all, so participants feel feedback is not coming from an expert. There are limited, if any, opportunities for conferencing between teacher and student to design and build feedback loops necessary for growth and mastery. In peeragogy, it is mentioned that "to assess learning, we do not just measure “contribution” (in terms of quantity of posts or what have you) but instead we measure “contribution to solving real problems”. Sometimes that happens very slowly, with lots of practice along the way."  In a learning experience like ds106 how exactly do we contribute to solving real problems? How do we design our feedback to forge stronger connections, collaborations, and harness the power of our network to improve feedback loops that will help participants bond, and keep conversations evolving for years to come as our needs change?  How is the art of feedback loops embedded in the course design optimize engagement, success and self-efficacy?   

    http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2013/02/15/designing-great-feedback-loops/

    Last week I noticed a tweet about how participants in ds106 are often perceived as the fun people. DS106 is fun, but deceptively deep! There is method behind the madness and our experiences in the course do help us solve real problems. Participants have personal and professional goals, and what we learn we apply to impact how others learn. DS106 opens our eyes to see the world through a creative lens and become more creative individuals. When we become more creative, our relationships and our problem solving approaches improve. This can change the world! As mentioned in peeragogy, this may be slow to pass, but it is happening and will continue to happen over time. I do wonder how our feedback loops in this peer to peer learning experience, and any other can strengthen our connections and collaborations. I found this post by Alan Levine that answers my questions.

    Whatever it is we design, we do so with a purpose, function, audience in mind and hopefully with a passion to motivate ourselves or an audience to act. "Designs can be used to nudge behavior, and great feedback loops are a vital piece of pulling it off." When it comes to designing great comment love, first, we need to plant the seeds of trust to set the feedback loop in motion.  The Golden Rule is always the best way to get those feedback loops going. 

    So, in thinking about designing comment love, I also thought about how my blog's design functions to increase traffic and invite my professional learning network to dialogue about the topics I'm learning in MOOCs? Are my words and its design encouraging comment love from my peers? Is my blog's design optimizing the reading experience for my visitors? Essentially, who is the audience I'm writing for? Am I writing and thinking aloud for me, or for others? Is my voice academic or conversational? How do I make my learning visible through my blog's design to give occasion for feedback loops to occur? 

    I have concluded that, for now, I like the design of my blog. I realize others may not. I like that it's busy. Maybe I'm stubborn, or tacky, or both when it comes to design, but my blog's design is my personal choice. My blog is my digital home. If I were enrolled in formal course then perhaps I would have to make concessions to conform to the course expectations of a blog. 

    I thought again about the idea of the personal cyber-infrastructure. When we design it, whose expectations do we keep in mind? Our own, the world's, or the learning community we've joined? (That would be tough to meet the expectations of so many.) Are there then certain standards that must be met when designing one's personal cyber-infrastructure so that one's blog design is universally accessible to all, optimizing every visitor's reading experience? I have a hunch, without having read any of the resources yet, that design is subjective. It's about personal taste and style, and what is personally visually appealing. Even regarding blogs, design is all in the eye of the beholder, and one size does not fit all. However I also know that sometimes designs have no choice but to appeal to what the masses prefer, what is more visually pleasing to the human eye, or what we are brainwashed to think is beautiful.  Sometimes when designing an online or F2F learning space, we must balance personal preferences with what looks/works best to optimize learning.  Balance is always key, but  I like coming to this digital learning space where I have freedom to design however I want.  I've personally designed it to write from my heart. I think it's pretty, and this blog matters to me. Some people aren't going to like the design. I can totally live with that because I didn't design it with them in mind. I designed it with me in my mind. How boring and truly tragic would life be if our personal designs were only meant to meet others' expectations and not our own. Like I said, sometimes designs must conform to meet the needs and make affordances to the general public, optimize usage and be aesthetically conforming to societal expectations ..schools often look like
    Stepford Wives Movie Clip
    prisons...the Stepford wives look...the bland suburban gated communities...I get it. These designs work for some, not for others to achieve certain ends, but no design is truly universal and optimizes usage for everyone. We are all unique individuals with a right to create and explore designs for self-expression. Some of our designs may appear ugly, busy, plain, or weird to others while some may totally dig our designs. That's a metaphor for life. We can't please everyone all the time. That's why color exists. Designs are not meant to be one-size-fits-all. Designs should optimize usage when possible, but optimizing usage in a peer to peer learning environment is relative. One must reflect on a tough question: Am I designing my blog to optimize how I learn, or do I consider a blog design to optimize how others learn, or both? And, in that case, how in the world do I design my blog to meet everyone's learning needs? Is the design optimizing the reading and commenting experience for all my peers, known and unknown, who visit? It's a tough question in peer to peer learning because of the nature of digital interactions, the need to build trust first, and the informality of one's participation.

    Giving, receiving and eliciting comment love about design becomes highly sensitive and subjective. I do think that in a MOOC and peer to peer learning environments, as long as we are sharing, and having productive conversations among multiple platforms, following the Golden rule, when we set out to design our blogs, our designs may be self-serving, and provide no other function than to create a personal digital space to openly think aloud and reflect. When we design our comment love, as Alan Levine wrote in this post, we must be sensitive to "include useful feedback or ideas for improvement. Think about giving the kind of feedback you’d hope to receive. And when you get comments, reply if it merits a response. Think of this as a conversation." Through our comment love we can build trust, community, and design many beautiful conversations to help us all grow and be better human beings!   






    • ary

      Talky Tina’s Got Soul- Week 3-4-5 #DS106 Reflections

      by

      Since joining the ds106 cult, I have learned many lessons, above all how important it is to create something everyday. It's not like I didn't know this, but I had never truly incorporated this philosophy in my life. Too often, we know certain truths in life, but we just don't apply them in our own. I can now fully understand the motto ds106 #4life. Even if it's a little something; whatever it is, a silly photo, a quick drawing or 30 second video, a poem or sentence, sounds of silence, or one's magnum opus, the act of creating something is cathartic and as Kurt Vonnegut said, a way to make life more bearable! It's been for me these last couple of weeks when life has thrown curve balls and lemons.  



      In the last few weeks, I've learned about the importance of my personal cyber-infrastructure, the power of digital storytelling through sound and photography and how the storytelling arc should evoke 2 key emotions: distress and empathy. I've learned that digital stories can span various digital mediums. They are often interactive, inviting the audience to collaborate in its composition. Storytelling, whether digital or not, must have soul and enable us to recognize the common context of being human. 


      In Week 3, we had to identify what makes a story? or part of one? What works about it? What does it tap into?

      Pick one or more stories and write a blog post about it. Why do you like it? What makes it special? What makes it a digital story? Is there an arc to the story? Might it be part of a larger story or does it work on its own?
      I thought about how ds106 is not just a headless open learning experience. It's also a digital story. There are key players, like Talky Tina, for one. Each of the ds106 participants plays a role, some more loudly than others, but we all contribute to this ongoing narrative through our blogs, G+ posts, our tweets, our daily creates, and Flickr accounts, Soundclouds, the ds106 radio station. The ds106 narrative unfolds on daily basis, and we compose it together and individually.  The digital story works because we engage all of our senses; we create an experience where participants have various outlets to express creativity, to quench the thirst for life long learning, and perhaps a way to make life long friends as Talky Tina would probably say. Like a good digital story, ds106 has purpose, meaning and soul. When we participate, we feel we belong. There's a sense of community so we feel safe to take creative risks.
      There's intellectual stimulation because we are teaching and learning with like minded individuals who welcome challenge, feedback, and want to actively engage in a global learning community. DS106 is a living, breathing story, evolving just as its members do each time they master particular forms of digital expressions. The story of ds106 works both on its own and as part of the larger narrative of what it means to be a connected life long learner and educator, a digital global citizen. 

      In Week 5 of DS106, we were encouraged to tweet Barbara Gangley @bgblogging. I didn't tweet her, but I followed her, and was inspired by one of her tweets. The blog post her tweet recommends explores how "stories as communication tools are becoming a focus of attention because people want to make things closer to human scale, and stories accomplish that goal." Although the post is essentially about the Science of Science Communication, how scientists can leverage storytelling to engage their audiences, the concepts apply to all storytelling. The blogger explores how the key to effective communication is to establish trust through storytelling.  According to Melanie Green, a researcher on the art of persuasion, she contends that you are perceived as an expert if you uses statistics, but you are perceived as warm and trustworthy when you use story. The post also explores how our social media and networks connect us, and how we can leverage it to tell our story. As I prepare to participate in a digital story contest called StoryhackVT where I must compose a digital story within a 24 hour period using three digital mediums,  and leverage my social network to vote for my story for the win, it was interesting to learn how there are four kinds of digital networks which help to propagate one's narratives, whatever those narratives may be:
      • Social networks - who you know
      • Cognitive social networks - who they think you know
      • Knowledge networks - what they think you know
      • Cognitive Knowledge networks - what who you know knows 
      I was not surprised in learning what I have always observed and experienced that our networks are often a bit homogeneous. Yes, social media helps us connect with our global peers, but therein lies the problem, they often tend to be people just like ourselves so our narratives echo each other.  The presenter mentioned in the post suggested the best way to silence this "echo effect" is by analyzing our networks and looking at "the bridges and brokers".  If we closely examine the narratives shared by those in our networks, and we notice a one sided perspective, then we should seek ways to listen to stories expressing other views. Obviously, the internet can make this happen easily if we are willing to listen to that other point of view and consider all the angles.   

      So the point I am trying to make is that when we compose our stories, digital or not, we need to listen more as we were encouraged to do in week 4, we need to notice if there is an echo. We need to notice if we are considering multiple perspectives; we need to uncover the back story so all voices are being heard and the story is not always the same old single story. Sometimes human beings tell single stories that are uplifting and raise our consciousness to help us become better versions of ourselves. Unfortunately, sometimes the single story is destructive and spreads only hate and violence. I was reminded of a great TED Talk I have shared before on this blog, "The Danger of the Single Story". Digital, paper based, or spoken stories need to break down barriers and influence people's thinking about our common humanity and the universality of our human emotions and problems.    

      In week 3, we had to write a new blog post and explain a story that you’re familiar with in terms of Vonnegut’s approach. Pick a movie, TV show, book, poem song, etc. The idea is to outline the shape of that story in a visual and descriptive form. Use some kind of media to do this, make it drawing or video or whatever you like. Be creative!

      I chose Ray Bradbury's short story "The Veldt" because Ray Bradbury like Vonnegut was a master storyteller who influenced people to think about our technology and conveniences in the modern world. This short story packs quite a message about our society's relationship with technology, our parenting skills, the deterioration of the nuclear family, how technology can alienate us, even make us lose our grip on reality. We had to outline the shape of the story we chose in a descriptive and creative manner so I failed at this a bit. I can't draw very well and found Simple Diagram. This is what I managed to do without any tutorials. (Sorry.) 

      From the get go, it's bad news in "The Veldt". Bradbury introduces us to mother/father archetypes, and we also recognize a familiar conflict often blamed on modernity and progress: the children are out of control, what do we do? Who's to blame? Can we fix it? Let's call the shrink and see if he can fix the problems we have brought upon ourselves! So Vonnegut said that Hamlet was a masterpiece because Shakespeare told us the truth, and people so often tell us the truth in the rise and fall of a story. In "The Veldt", Ray Bradbury tells us nothing but brutal truths about how technology has the potential to dehumanize us, and how technology has affected child rearing and our own psyches. Although, it's bad news from the onset, and the reader is on a downward spiral we never recover from, we enjoy this type of story because it is a cautionary tale, "the Man in Hole" as Vonnegut puts it! Ironically, human beings enjoy hearing what idiots we can be at times. It's heeding the advice we learn from these cautionary tales that is more difficult to strive for everyday.  


      Additionally in week 3, we had to find an example of something you have seen recently on the internet or elsewhere that you might describe as a digital story. It need not be just be a video. In your post about the shape of stories include a description of what you selected and why you would call it a digital story (do not forget to link and/or embed).

      I discoverd Storyhackvt, and their site has several examples of digital stories told across various mediums, and even an opportunity to participate in a storyhackathon.  The point is to write a story either alone or with a team of no more than 5 people and use at least three digital media to share the story online. These digital stories can be fiction and non fiction, and they are interactive. Here are a few examples


      I have also come to know Talky Tina in ds106, the doll formerly known as creepy. She has undergone extensive rehabilitation, so she says, to become a high functioning member of the ds106 cyberinfrastructure. She is its mascot, and the personal cyberinfrastructure she has created epitomizes for me what digital storytelling is all about. As an audience, we feel more engaged when we hear a narrative about events where we experience distress and empathy. "Metaphors work well because when we hear a story we want to relate it to our one of our experiences." The emotional and cognitive effect of the Talky Tina narrative creates a fun, creative, childlike environment. Talky Tina is ds106's metaphor. Her persona shows what it means to create a digital identity, and how cyberspace allows us to role play and explore aspects of our own identity that will help us be more creative, reflective, connected and engaged. Talky teaches us it's ok to return to our inner child because this mindset frees us from the constraints that we often unnecessarily impose on ourselves as adults. The Talky Tina persona in the ds106 narrative establishes a fun, authentic, unique and unexpected tone and mood. There's not a megalomaniacal bone in Tina's body! She's not plastic! She's got a real soul, and is extremely real! (And, we need more authenticity in the world, if you ask me!) 

      Through Talky and the various resources in week 3 through 5, I learned that stories in the digital age stand out and capture people's attention when:

      1.) "The story is Unique and Unexpected- unexpected content is what makes things go viral."  Talky is a perfect example of the unexpected. Our daily creates challenge us to be original and express our unique brand of creativity. The more we engage with each other, the more we recognize everyone's style and signature talents. 
      2.) "The Story is told in a public space, active communities, like the streets, FB, G+, Twitter, Flickr, blogs, radio; the story is easily accessible for people and designed to foster discussion." The ds106 story unfolds on multiple digital spaces. People experiment, take risks and support each other as they learn to express themselves on various digital platforms.

      3.) "The Story is about the audience." The other day someone said in the G+ community that Talky Tina is us and we are her. It instantly made me start humming I am the Walrus.."I am she as you are she as you are me And we are all together.." but it's true...we are all Talky Tina. We are involved with her, and ds106 through our daily creates and digital interactions. The ds106 story is a compilation of all our individual stories. We all have private and public stories we share with different audiences. In the best stories, people are involved and directly addressed. "People listen to themselves." We each have our blogs where we get to talk about the topic we so often find most fascinating...ourselves, our lives, and what we create! We are both the DS106 storytellers and its audience, an ever expanding one too!

      4.) "The Story helps create real life connections-physical element to really turn people from simply interested into highly enthusiastic." Talky Tina connects us. We connect through sharing our daily creates, our weekly assignments, etc., but also through the characterization of Talky's persona. She is not just the ds106 mascot, she is its cheerleader, a mother figure of sorts, watching out that we be nice to each other, and of course she's a friend to us all. 

      Yesterday, while perusing blogs of ds106 alums, I accidentally found out Talky's true identity. She's a double agent! ( I won't link to the post to protect her!) I felt like I did two years ago when I discovered Santa wasn't real! I tweeted her as soon as I found out! She sent me direct tweets asking me to reveal my source. She mentioned something about an Uncle. I warned her to leave her poor Uncle alone, but Talky is a super true friend because she makes awesome GIFs and gives life to ds106! Who cares about her past! I want to learn a lot from her. I also want to Collabogif with her and write cool interactive stories. She liked the idea. This made me happy!  When I tweeted that I joined StoryhackVT the other day too, she thought it was interesting. This made me happy too! This post is dedicated to Talky Tina because I threw her against a wall yesterday when she said the MEAN WORD: #rules. Sorry Talky I will be nice because I know you killed Telly Savallas. But, "Who loves ya baby?" -- I do... because you know in storytelling we can break all the rules! 

    • ary

      i.am.ary. and i.am. ds106!

      by
      DS106 has been chosen as a top innovator in the open education movement so for Saturday's daily create, the ds106 cult faced the task of creating a short video to give audiences at the Reclaim Open Learning Symposium on September 27th a sense of who or...
    • ary

      ds106 Week 4 Audacious Audio

      by
      Week 4 is all about experimenting with sound by listening, creating radio bumpers, and stories using sound effects. Here are two radio bumpers I created for #ds106 Radio using Garage Band along with my first Sound Effect Story.
    • ary

      What Story Means and How It Matters

      by
      There's a high school chemistry teacher I know. He's unsatisfied with his job and his life. He can't afford to support his family on a teacher's salary, so he has to work a part time job at a car wash where his boss belittles him everyday. Just when he...
    • ary

      Nurse Ratched’s Digital Nips and Tucks No More! – Week 2’s #ds106 Reflection

      by
      One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
      McMurphy (Personal Cyber-infrastructure) VS.
      Nurse Ratchet (Public Ed Infrastructure)
      Week 2 in #ds106 was tough because life got in the way, but nevertheless I learned how to make GIFs using some of my favorite movie scenes, and I managed to learn so much from Gardner Campbell through the assigned videos and article. As I watched, I had many strong emotions regarding the bags of gold because I am a former high school English teacher, and I know exactly what he meant. I taught for 20 years and decided that my health came first so I needed to pursue a new line of work. However, whenever I try to separate myself from the bizarro world of education, I have this "yearning" to continue being a teacher. It's who I am, what I'm good at, and always wanted to be since I was 5. Through the internet, I stay connected to this world, and like Gardner Campbell, I believe that "we can do better and we need to encourage that". This is why I MOOC and blog to collect and share the bags of gold as I build my personal cyber-infrastructure. Friends often ask me the same question a student asked Dr. Campbell in his video address to the ds106 class at University of Mary Washington: "What's the reason for blogging? What's the incentive for creating a personal cyber-infrastructure?" For me, it's exactly what Dr. Campbell explained. When I first discovered the "surprise generating machine" of the internet, although I did not know exactly what everything was, (and sometimes still don't) or how it all worked, I felt the only way I was going to figure it out was to delve right in and participate, to engage in the act of "bootstrapping". As Dr. Campbell explained, I needed to "proceed as if the doing in the dark will actually lead you to a mode of knowing" which is "the secret to all real open learning". Ironically, now that I'm outside the system, I have been able to globally network with hundreds of kindred spirits, so many like minded educators who have no problems sharing great ideas and resources with a stranger. Unfortunately, I had never experienced the authentic learning partnerships in face to face life I have formed digitally with complete strangers/fraingers as I like to call them. In face to face life, my PLN consisted of two or three teachers within my school, and a few former colleagues. Online, I collect and share bags of gold with hundreds of K-12 educators and professors from around the world. 
                          
      Bag Of Gold from Tim Owens on Vimeo.

      Why do people not want a bag of gold? 
      Whenever I picked myself up by the bootstraps, and experimented, successfully, with podcasting, digital storytelling, blogging and other acts of content creation I faced resistance. Too often, there was no value recognized in any bag of gold I shared, or my students created. I persevered nonetheless. The problem is as Dr. Campbell stated with such finesse, people don't want bags of gold for a variety of reasons. To paraphrase him, when people are asked to use the digital, it "unlocks a realization, something about the act of asking people to establish an interesting and inquiry driven presence on the web that quickly exposes the parts of the community that aren't going to be authentic learning partners. People feel challenged because they aren't used to doing that in their professional lives." Some people do feel challenged being "substantive", even more so in a public global space that is the internet. But this mindset, this bad "habit of mind" is what we must fight to eradicate in our K-12 schools, so students can be successful globally networked citizens in HE and in life since our democracy is at stake.   
      “Pointing students to data buckets and conduits we’ve already made for them won’t do. Templates and training wheels may be necessary for a while, but by the time students get to college, those aids all too regularly turn into hindrances. For students who have relied on these aids, the freedom to explore and create is the last thing on their minds, so deeply has it been discouraged.” – Gardner Campbell, A Personal Cyberinfrastructure

      What are the potential benefits/drawbacks of personal cyber-infrastructures? 
      "We should be teaching fundamentally and offering opportunities fundamentally for students' ability at a conceptual and practical level to knit together a meaningful network of their own within this larger space we cyber space we inhabit." - Gardner Campbell

      Sadly, in some (generalizations are always dangerous, including this one) K-12
      schools, students and teachers who develop personal cyber-infrastructures threaten to destroy the Nurse Ratched led infrastructure of public education. In some school districts, digital infrastructure is designed as either a weapon of mass distraction and/or destruction. Some districts claim in their double speak mission statements to have retrofitted schools with cutting edge tech to meet the needs of 21st century learners. However, there are no signs of "Narrating, Curating or Sharing" among staff or students. The retrofitting and training are led by Nurse Ratched's key players, distinct personality types, bureaucrats, who nip and tuck to maintain the status quo through control of the digital infrastructure. Computers, i-Pads, smart boards, laptop carts and other tech equipment often languish in storage closets because training is unavailable or costly; someone forgets to buy software, the purchasing process takes months or standardized test prep takes precedence over creation and critical thinking practice using the digital. When tech is used, it denies students the opportunity to create their own content, or equipment is obsolete, or too slow to effectively integrate in a lesson. Wikis so students can log on to static pages to answer multiple choice questions for standardized test prep is one of many examples of K-12 digital nip/tucks. Sometimes digital bags of gold are used for punishment too. Fall out of the principal's favor, all access to tech is denied! When Nurse Ratched's in control of the digital infrastructure, community building, collaboration, reflection and creation threaten her power because personal cyber infrastructures make others' incompetence and mediocrity very public...like frogs

      Being John Malkovich "Dance of Despair and Disillusionment"
      For me, it becomes a criminal offense when teachers and students are forbidden to become "contributors to the project of civilization" because they are forced to passively deliver and consume content through scripted teaching, common assessments, standardized test prep, multiple choice questions, timed writing tests which receive no feedback, required paper based activities and assessments in worksheets and workbooks. These practices suck the life out of students and teachers! As Dr. Campbell said in a democracy we need permission-less innovation. We need to "harness that potential so folks understand what it means to knit own network within the network independent of the conglomerates." What if students and teachers were asked "What would you like to have happen?"  

      But, enough about Nurse Ratched, I root for a Chief Bromden/McMurphy escape, and the Rainbows and Unicorns, and not the crisis and aPOPcalypse Jim Groom speaks about in his TED talk! There's a ds106 bus on a freakin' world tour handing out bags of gold, and "Reading, Writing, Arithmetic and Networking" is happening in many public K-12 schools who have effective leaders. Bags of gold in the hands of effective leaders make teachers and students billionaires! Through social networking sites so many K-12 educators have managed to escape Ratched's system to connect globally with brilliant and passionate educators and administrators who are not afraid to be public like really smart frogs. Educators are building their personal cyber-infrastructures to reflect on their practice, and obtain feedback from global peers. Web 2.0, featured on sites like freetech4teachers.com, and learning communities like Edmodo, Collaborize Classroom, KidBlog, Teachertube and hundreds of others, including MOOCs for professional development, allow K-12 educators and students to safely engage in Narrating, Curating and Sharing

      What does this mode of communication say to you about the way ideas spread in a place like ds106?
      The yearning for learning spreads like wildfire in learning spaces like ds106 and others because these are safe digital learning communities where as Jim Groom explained "discursive practical application of the personal cyber-infrastructure constantly reinforces and re-informs one another."  Learners and teachers aren't afraid to take creative risks, to share and riff others' brilliant ideas, and make them their own, or to receive and give feedback. Creativity becomes contagious and learners feed off each others' creations.  Good teachers, even before the birth of the internet, have always known, all learners need the freedom for self expression, and deserve opportunities to voice who they are, what they think, what they can do, what they want to learn, etc. Learners need opportunities to connect learning with real life experiences, to be exposed to a variety of print and non print texts to stimulate thinking, and to be a member of a thriving community where sharing is encouraged for continual growth and reflection.    


      Some day in the near future, passive learning, like lobotomies, will be remembered with horror, shame and disgust! Personal cyber-infrastructures will be the norm. The days teaching and learning in Nurse Ratched's society are numbered because the bus is headed to everyone's town and the Reverend's driving!   

       
                    

                                       

    • ary

      Shoes, Anniversaries, and Wonder Woman!

      by
      So, yesterday was Giulia's birthday in ds106 world. Today Google said it was Rochelle's, (someone who submits a lot of the daily creates, I've noticed), and #ds106  is celebrating the 600th anniversary of the Daily Creates! We also can't forget it...
    • ary

      My Cute, Cuddly, Crayola Memoir

      by
      When I was five, my grandfather bought me one of those Crayola crayon boxes with the built in sharpener on the back. One little girl in my class was jealous, and she plotted revenge and set me up! I had four aquamarines, lots of hot magentas; lemon yel...
    • ary

      “Frainge Days Indeed!”

      by
      Last night after I got tattooed, I wrote my first post for #ds106 and was thrilled to find my first comment was from Alan Levine, who is really not our teacher ...no one heads the course...but there are some very present masterminds behind all of this ...
    • ary

      Digital Tools to Design Art Museum Activities

      by
      moma teen | MoMA | Voluntaries Service: MoMA Teens + Dean Moss
      Sometimes for logistical or financial reasons, students are unable to visit art museums. Today’s interactive technology, like Google Art and other sites like it, enables students to take an up, close and personal tourobserving every brushstroke of Van Gogh’s Starry Night without ever leaving the classroom. MoMA and so many other museums have opened their doors virtually, sharing their exhibits, art history and instruction to reach visitors far beyond their physical walls.  Educational programs in many art museums are leveraging the power of free web 2.0 tools, social media and MOOCs to expand learning on a global scale for educators and students of all ages and means.   However, visiting an art museum whether virtually or in person is not enough if teachers do not offer art museum activities so students can engage with the works of art in meaningful ways.

      In Week 3, MoMA’s Art and Inquiryexplored the concept of discovering meaning
      in artwork through activities.  In art museum education, activities include any strategy not involving a group discussion about artwork.  Activities are meant to address the needs of different types of learners, deepen students’ encounter with art and help students discover how art informs other disciplines and experiences.   

      Week 3’s reading describes 3 types of museum activities, which allow students to engage with art purposefully and hone their critical thinking skills. When students are unable to visit art museums in person, there are many sites and tech tools for students to still have the opportunity to engage in art inquiry. I have listed the museum activities from the week’s reading along with a brief description of how particular digital tools can facilitate learning about art in the virtual or face to face classroom.    

      Activities that frame encounters with artworks

      1.) Activities can introduce a key concept- If the goal is to examine the role of materials in a variety of artworks, students can use FlickrMentorMob, Pinterest to curate artwork by theme or concept, historical period, or role of materials. Students can even write emails to each other to describe the rationale they used to curate the artworks they chose.


      2.) Activities can act as hooks into a work- With Voice Thread the teacher can frontload and prepare students for deeper inquiry by adding an image, a video, article, or other print or non print text that hooks students’ attention about a work. Students can add their verbal or written predictions, comments, questions or a variety of reactions before delving deeper in the work itself.

      3.) Activities can help record a sequence of encounters- After a virtual tour of artworks, students can create a Mixbookincluding the images they viewed, and write a curatorial comment card to describe their impressions and any contextual background learned. They can also engage in synchronous discussions with other classrooms around the world via Today’sMeet to evaluate and synthesize their encounter with the artworks.


      4.) Activities can facilitate reflection about a museum session- Students can use Twitter to tweet themes, questions, comments, critiques and more. They can reach out to connect with the artists to ask them questions as well, or use Facebook Voice Thread, Google HangoutsSkype, email to connect synchronously and asynchronously with other teachers and students around the world through written and spoken reflections. Podcasting, video-casting and blogging are also ways students can express their virtual or face to face museum experience. 

      Activities that deepen and enrich an engagement with a work 
      Bloom's Taxonomy and Digital Tools

      1.) Activities can foster close observation- Voice Thread

      2.) Activities can access immediate responses- Fotobabble

      3.) Activities can elicit embodied responses-  Bomomo  Google Sketchup

      4.) Activities can access the emotional tone of a work- Vine, Audioboo, Voice Thread, podcasting

      Activities that connect experiences with artworks to other realms of learning, creation and experience

      1.) Activities can take an idea put forth by an artwork to other areas of learning or of the students’ world- Thinglink, Storify
      2.) Activities can help develop non-art skills related to the school curriculum- Wordle
      3.) Activities can help inspire artistic creation- Glogster, Storybird, Storyjumper

      4.) Activities can help develop discrete art making skills – Google Sketchup

      Whether students visit an art museum in person, or virtually, designing art activities integrating digital tools ensures students engage in high order thinking skills they need to develop meaningful relationships with art.    

      My Week 3 Inquiry Based Conversation and 
      Art Activities using Digital Tools: Twitter and Storify

      For this week's assignment, we had to use the artwork we posted last week in the discussion forum, ask a friend or family member to help us practice leading an inquiry based conversation around it, and talk about it in the forum: describe our experience. 


      • What was easy? 

      I led an inquiry based conversation with two 16 year olds, both rising juniors in high school, my daughter Elizabeth and her friend, Michael. Both of them are National Honor Society students and enjoy learning for learning's sake. They are both interested in art and photography so it was easy to get them to volunteer to talk about Abelardo Morell's "Empire State Building in Bedroom". Our conversation lasted about 30 minutes, on and off camera. Other than some initial camera shyness on all our parts, we felt comfortable conversing about the piece. It was easy to ask the students the following questions because they were eager to express their thoughts.
      1. What do you see?
      2. Why do you think the photograph is in black and white? 
      3. Would the use of color have changed the tone of the work? 
      4. What does the bed/room suggest about who sleeps/lives there?
      5. What do you think the artist was trying to tell us?
      6. Why do you think the artist juxtaposed the image of a bed and the Empire State Building?
      7. How do you think Morell created the upside image effect in the photograph?
      8. What is Morell trying to tell us about our perception of the inside environment and the outside world? 
      9. What images would you pair together from the outside and inside world and why? What message would you want the pairing of your images to convey to viewers? 
      10. How does your perception of the photograph change if we juxtapose it with Richard Blanco's poem "America"? 
      • What was challenging? 
      While asking the questions was easy because the students were quick to share their interpretations, knowing when to interrupt students to weave in contextual background posed a challenge because many of their responses anticipated questions I wanted to pose to lead into sharing the background information. For example, before I was able to explain the camera obscura technique Morell uses to superimpose images, Michael, shared what he thought the artist had done to create the upside down effect. I allowed him an opportunity to speculate, and then I defined and explained Morell's camera obscura technique.
                                                

      A personal challenge for me involved having the time to prepare, research and gather enough contextual information about the artist, the piece, the camera obscura technique and even the poem and poet to provide students with the necessary background that would inspire them to explore all of these further. After our conversation, I found a National Geographic Youtube video explaining how Morell uses camera obscura, and felt had I had more time to prepare for the conversation, watching this one minute video during the conversation would have benefitted students in gaining a better understanding of the camera obscura technique, and would have possibly inspired them to create their own photography using the technique.  

      Overall I was impressed with both Elizabeth and Michael's interpretations. They both brought up the topic of the work's tone without me asking them this very important question, and they cited examples from the piece to support why and how they thought its tone was somber. When asked what contrasting images they would pair, Michael said he would juxtapose the image of a lush forest with that of an industrial plant to convey a message about protecting our environment. Elizabeth mentioned she would pair the image of a tree house and a child's apartment bedroom to contrast how the lives of children differ in urban and rural settings.

      Both Elizabeth and Michael had attended Richard Blanco's poetry reading in Vermont a few weeks prior and recalled the poem "America". When I asked them how this poem might influence their perception of the photograph, Michael talked about how the images of the plain bed and surrounding furniture revealed the hardships faced by immigrants and how the image of the Empire State Building bleeds into the living space overwhelming the inhabitants. Elizabeth pointed out how the plain bed sheets, and the night table both suggested a modest life and the Empire State Building invaded the space as a constant reminder for the people/person who live there to strive to live a better life.  

      I enjoyed hearing Elizabeth and Michael's insightful analysis and without much reminding they offered examples from the photograph to support their interpretations. It was challenging to get them to pause and take their time to think. They preferred to offer responses seconds after I asked them a question, and we discussed why I wanted them to allow some wait time before they responded.

      We closed the conversation with one activity because of time constraints. I asked them to tweet their questions, comments, interpretations, etc. using my Twitter account and the hashtag #artinquiry. Elizabeth asked if they could pose questions to the artist himself, which I had not thought about, and so they did. A few hours later, Abelardo Morell, the artist himself, replied to Elizabeth's tweet about what he meant to convey with "Empire State Building in Bedroom." His reply disheartened us a bit at first because we had spent so much time analyzing, perhaps overanalyzing the piece, we felt certain Morell's photograph had some sort of message for its viewers.
      His tweet taught us a most valuable lesson to always remember during art inquiry. My frainger Cathleen Nardi explored this topic in her latest post. During art inquiry, the viewer brings his/her past experiences, personality, and knowledge which influences his/her perception and is just as important and relevant as the artist's intentions for creating the piece. So Morell was not making any sort of social political statement at all, but nevertheless, as viewers, his art and art in general, invites viewers to take the time to think and discuss what they see because when we take the time to see art, it enriches our life in ways that are not always plainly understood.


    • ary

      Conversations Around Art Help Us See More Than What We Think We See!

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      Week 2 of MoMA's Art and Inquiry challenged educators to think about "how teachers can help students use contextual information productively within dialogues about art". Our required reading prompted us to think about “how educators can ensure facts will act as catalysts for significant meaning making”.

      Significant meaning making and relevance is often missing in many classrooms. Inquiry and conversation about art can be the catalyst to help students find meaning and purpose in what they are being asked to learn across the disciplines because the visual literacy students acquire during discussions about art develop 21st century habits of mind, skills such as encoding, decoding, observing, inferencing, analyzing, evaluating, synthesizing, etc.


      When we discuss art, educators must determine what matters most about the works' contextual background to help students create coherent and personally meaningful interpretations. There should always be an exchange of contextual background and personal connections. Artists' biographies, art history or critics' reviews are never a hindrance when these facts and personal insights are gradually interwoven and "grounded on what students see". What matters most is providing contextual background that shows students how art is relevant to their lives, improves global awareness and historical perspective and motivates students to explore how art informs other subjects. 

      When students discover how to interpret and appreciate art, they learn there are individual and shared perspectives  and contextual facts to consider involving the artist's intent, the
      artwork's form, its time and place and more. Discussing all of these aspects of Form, Theme and Context allow students to discern personal and factual meaning to develop a sense of design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning needed to develop 21st century habits of mind.

      For this week's assignment, we were asked to browse through MoMA's online Collection, choose an image, research some information about the work of art using MoMA.organd/or other online sources, and respond to these questions:
      • What drew you to this work of art?

      A few weeks ago, I visited Woodstock, Vermont to hear the inaugural poet, Richard Blanco recite his poetry at a literary festival called Bookstock. Blanco told the audience he was assembled in Cuba, born in Spain, and imported to and raised in the United States. He recited several of his poems, which reveal his cultural heritage. Since the recitation, I have been thinking about lesson ideas for pairing his poetry with artwork that would prompt students to explore the themes of his poetry: place, home and identity and would motivate them to explore historical, political, social and cultural aspects of his work.

      This past June, I visited the Art Institute of Chicago and had a chance to see Cuban born American photographer Abelardo Morell’s exhibit The Universe Next Door where I saw Empire State Building in Bedroom, 1994. This piece is also included in MoMA's online collection. I chose it because I believe this particular photograph when paired with Blanco’s poem America can be used as catalyst for significant meaning making in many disciplines. Juxtaposing Morell's Empire State Building in Bedroom, and Blanco's poem America will help students reflect on how a photograph can evoke a different layer of meaning for a poem, and how a poem can influence one’s interpretation of a piece of art. The photograph and the poem together are powerful tools to teach students how art informs other subjects, and how similar ideas and themes can be expressed differently through images and in writing.  The subject of both of these pieces also allow students to explore various events in world and American history, such as Cuban Missile Crisis, the Freedom Flights of 1960s, and the Bay of Pigs invasion. Both pieces can also spark social and cultural discussions about acculturation and the effect of re-contextualizing the familiar. In essence, the possibilities for historical, political, social and cultural discussions by juxtaposing the photograph and the poem are endless.
      • What information were you able to find about the artist's work?
      Both artists are Cuban-American, and immigrated to the United States as children. Both Blanco and Morell’s families were Cuban exiles in New York, who escaped Fidel Castro’s communist government. What I discovered about Morell is how he uses the camera obscura technique to reconstruct and present an altered reality of the everyday. In Morell’s Empire State Building in a Bedroom, he superimposes a famous landmark onto the image of a bed covered by a plain white sheet.  Using Camera Obscura he uses the commanding image to invade the living space of a modest bedroom because he wants us to pay close attention to this new context. He wants us to think about this unseemly arrangement of the everyday with the remarkable, so we consider "there’s more to seeing than what we think we perceive". 
      Abelardo Morell's Empire State Building in Bedroom, 1994

      • If you were to teach with this work, what aspects would you like to introduce to your students?

      Teaching with both Morell’s photography and Blanco’s poem Americawould explore this theme of how "there’s more to seeing than what we think we perceive”. The artwork and the poem explore the subject of re-contextualizing, taking things, people, places, situations out of one context and introducing them into another, how that changes the individual, his/her perspective of the everyday, and how changing someone’s context affects an individual's identity and sense of what feels and looks like home.

      I would also want to introduce students to the idea that art interpretation and appreciation is filled with multilayered and ever changing perspectives shaped by our experiences and fact; that one’s perspective about a piece can change after learning more about it through discussion, or reading, watching, hearing a related text, and that facts are important as well to help us shape evidence based perceptions. Pairing art with poetry teaches students how their interpretations will be fluid, how their encounter can lead to further exploration in different disciplines, and how print and non-print texts can express similar themes. Why does the outside world invade a private space in Morell’s Empire State Building in Bedroom? After students share their personal reactions and connections, this piece can mean something entirely different for students upon reading Blanco’s poem America. Students need opportunities to learn how to synthesize their initial perspectives with their reflections at different points throughout their conversations around art, supporting their reactions with details of what they see.  This type of discourse will allow students to see the bigger picture, find relevance in what they are learning, discover their innate creative ability, and hone their critical thinking to lead richer lives in the  21st century. 

      Painter and Sculptor Keith Haring said: “Art should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further. It celebrates humanity…”  Our lessons should give students opportunities to achieve this type of relationship with art!





    • ary

      A Brief History of Humankind in 20 Lessons!

      by
      Over 60K humans...including me... are enrolled in Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Coursera MOOC A Brief History of Humankind to learn about our past, present and future! Distinguished historian, Dr. Yuval Noah Harari, promises us a superfici...
    • ary

      The Cure for “Ozymandias Melancholia”: MoMa’s Art and Inquiry MOOC

      by
      In my most recent dabbling in the world of MOOCs, Art and Inquiry: Museum Strategies for Your Classroom, a five week Coursera MOOC taught by MoMA, we are being asked to think about why we should engage in inquiry around art. While pondering this important question, I’ve also been thinking about permanence, and remembered one of my favorite Woody Allen quotes.

      Woody Allen came up with a condition he calls "Ozymandias Melancholia." He defines the phenomenon as, "that sad and depressed feeling you get when you realize that no matter how great and majestic and important something is at the time, in time it's going to pass. Just like the poem - eventually, time kills everything. It's just that rotting statue of Ozymandias, a once-great statue, and now a broken-down piece of marble in the desert. So you get a depressed feeling because it gives you a sense of the futility of life, that all that you're working for, and all the things that seem so meaningful, are nothing."   

      Saul Steinberg, The Spiral 1964

      We know Woody Allen is a self-proclaimed whiner, a statue will decay if left in the desert, and art in all its forms is fragile. Whether on a prehistoric cave, or preserved in a museum, art can live for centuries to be discovered, admired and studied for generations, but inevitably art dies. Although we are aware of this, and our own mortality, this does not stop us from creating art because through art, we seek to understand what it means to be human. We create and preserve art for the purpose of inquiry, to express human thought and emotion, our frailties and strength. When we look at and talk about art, we teach and learn about our past, and discover how art, whether modern or ancient, reveals so many parallels to our present day existence. Through art, the artist speaks to many generations, transcending time, engaging the beholder to question, debate, even recontextualize the art to bridge the work’s past purpose to fit a modern day function. Art lives on throughout the ages with the sole purpose of helping us recognize our common humanity, not the futility of life. We engage in inquiry around art to bear witness and marvel at what the artist, the human being, is capable of expressing and achieving.


      We never stop creating art even though we recognize time kills everything. If ever we are affected by "Ozymandias Melancholia" and think of the futility of life, art exists to remind us of the power of our desire to express ourselves and to leave an indelible mark. The artist forges ahead to make art in a meaningless world because the artist, and we, as the beholder, know art has meaning and purpose, and defies time. Perhaps it's our quest to defy time why we never abandon creating and looking at art.    
                
                               

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