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 92468 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. karenatsharon

    The Headless Waltz

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    In keeping with the Headless theme I have used Movie Maker to create a small movie. Please remember that I am one of the few people who have not succumbed to the lure of Apple so I have no iPad, iPod or any iEquipment. I also have the distressing tende...
  2. karenatsharon

    Photoblitz!

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    Now for some reason, the idea of a photoblitz triggers the song "Ballroom Blitz" in my mind. Don't ask me why, it may be just the word blitz is common to both.So I did my photo blitz at home over the lunch hour. My camera is at home, the strongest shad...
  3. karenatsharon

    Headless Horseman

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    It's amazing what publishing your first sound does for you. It's gone right to my head and I am feeling downright cocky. So, this time when creating a sound, understanding the program was not as much of an issue as finding the right sound to do the Sou...
  4. karenatsharon

    Sound

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    So  I've been playing with sound over the last few days. It has been a little frustrating partially because tools and devices that worked when a tutorial was built in 2008 or 2010 or 2012 may not be as useful as they once were due to the ever chan...
  5. karenatsharon

    Out of gas

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    Let me sing you a lullaby as we lull you to sleep.Life is short and painfulbut death is long and deep.In life, friends are fleeting,in death they're the ones you eat.Slip the chains of your mortality,Enter the depths of calm,Being undead is so moving,y...
  6. karenatsharon

    Rhonda

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    It is lonely where you are.You are alone.No human can rescue you.But we offer love and companionship, friendship and food sharing.Embrace the zombie horde.We love you, we will cherish you, we will savour you.Come into the light so we might welcome you.
  7. karenatsharon

    You can run but you can’t hide…

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    I don't think it is right that I am being made to feel like I am the Big Bad Wolf chasing down the Three Little Pigs.A zombie girl has got to eat.And I love chocolate. So please eat lot's of chocolate. And then you'll be a lovely sweet treat. Look&nbsp...
  8. karenatsharon

    Eating educators for Supper

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    My dear friends,How sad that you mourn my passing to the undead. I feel your pain and would love to alleviate it. And I will. I realize you have fled to a #safezone in a feeble attempt to hide from the growing zombie horde but you will be assimilated. ...
  9. karenatsharon

    Renovations made easy

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    The beautiful thing about being a zombie is that we're not house proud. We'll live in anything and anywhere.We'll live down here quite happily, as long as we're fed regularly. And we're equal opportunity eaters. We'll eat everyone. Hoping to make your ...
  10. karenatsharon

    Zombie Living

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    While most of you think of us as undead, zombies do have a sense of style. Since we require human flesh to survive we often find ourselves living on the edges of society.In places like this:Not very pretty is it? No wonder we want to move in with you. ...
  11. karenatsharon

    #overrun

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    Zombies think of little else than food. How to get food, where to get food and how to get food. We need the flesh of a living human to survive, but not only that, we need their souls. For a few brief minutes as we slowly suck on the warm fresh heart of...
  12. karenatsharon

    Gravatars and Blogger

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    So now I know why DS106 wanted me to use Wordpress instead of Blogger. It's because of the gravatar, a relatively simple thing to set up for Wordpress (which I have done) but a horribly convoluted mess in Blogger. I was working my way through reading o...
  13. karenatsharon

    What storytelling is to me.

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    So DS106 Headless has asked me to reflect on the idea of what I associate with the word storytelling? Um, that's tough because I basically tell stories all the time. Someone asks about my day and the next thing I'm doing is conveying a story. "Fine, ho...
  14. karenatsharon

    Why I am Headless this fall

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    Yesterday I posted about Design Thinking Action Lab on the last day of that particular course. I didn't get as much out of it as I had hoped. However, I have enormously high expectations of Headless DS106. Why? Because I've been mucking about on the si...
  15. karenatsharon

    Design Thinking Action Lab

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    Well I enrolled in Design Thinking Action Lab offered by NovoEd (the new name for Stanford's Venture Lab) thinking it would be a similar experience to Designing in New Learning Environments (DNLE) which was the first MOOC I ever loved and led me to rea...
  16. karenatsharon

    Using Piktochart

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    I have mixed feelings about Piktochart. I like that it was easy to sign up with a Google account. As a free user there are not a lot of themed pages for you to access (just seven) and you have to move to a pro account to get access to more. I chose the...
  17. karenatsharon

    Liebster Nominee

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    Well Sheri Edwards has sent me a challenge!
    She's nominated me for a Liebster so I have to follow the list below and answer her list of questions too.

    Liebster Nomination Rules
    1. Link back to the blog that nominated you.
    2. Nominate 5-11 blogs with less than 200 followers. 
    3. Answer the questions posted for you by the nominator.
    4. Share 11 random facts about you.
    5. Create 11 questions for your nominees.
    6. Contact your nominees to inform them of their nomination.

    So with the intent of completing the list above I started to look though my network to see who I should nominate that has the all important "less than 200 followers" ( and I know I am on that list!) portion of the challenge. Stumbling block #1: where do I find that? Does every blog have a location for the # of followers? I am tempted to just change this portion of the list to: Bloggers I think everyone should be reading but have yet to find. And if I nominate someone and they have more than 200 followers will they be insulted? Sadly, because I am deficient in this type of internet/blogger knowledge it almost stops me from completing the challenge.

    I have chosen to nominate people were participants in ETMOOC, Open Spokes or clmooc. Sheri Edwards would be on this list if she hadn't sent the challenge to me. 

    So in no particular order:

    Christina Hendricks who writes a wonderful blog and who is brave enough to have a True Friend relationship with IamTalkyTina.
    Glenn Hervieux Always a reflective thinker. Glenn has teaching experience at all grade levels.
    Brendan Murphy Brendan is a math teacher who drifted over to the educational technology side. He's currently getting all of the mentors organized prior to launching OOE13 this fall.
    Susan Spellman Cann: A teacher who is always mindful of the impact she has on her students.
    Gallit Zvi:  I'm always interested in what Gallit has to say as she and I share a lot of common traits (including talking our way to learning!) She's a person who is not shy of starting new challenges.
    Bart Miller: Because anyone who can write a symphony deserves to be on this list!

    I'd love to include Jeremy Inscho in the list but I'm not sure where he blogs.


    So here is the list of questions Sheri posed to me. Now some of these I won't be able to answer as I no longer work in a classroom, but once a classroom teacher, always a classroom teacher! So I will write about it as if I was still in the classroom.

    1. Why do you blog?
    2. What’s the most important thing a teacher can do for his or her students?
    3. What’s the most important thing a teacher can do for his or her colleagues?
    4. If you could change one physical thing about your classroom, what would it be?
    5. Describe one of your most memorable classroom experiences.
    6. What memorable experience do you hope your students have?
    7. How many students/teachers do you have at your school?
    8. What is your favorite classroom use of technology?
    9. Who/what is your teaching inspiration?
    10. What is 1 teaching goal you have for this school year?
    11. In six words, what is your teaching philosophy?


    1. Why do I blog?
    Initially I began blogging because it was a course requirement for MOOCMOOC. I'd never blogged before. I've always written, just jotting down thoughts about different things I was thinking about as well as personal letters to my husband (when your spouse is away as often as mine is, written communication is a must to maintaining a decent relationship. It is often easy to misconstrue what is said, but writing requires/allows for  more thought and clarity.) I blog more frequently when I am in a course and that course is asking me to think, make and reflect. I do not yet blog as an outlet for my personal inner workings (still shy about that!) but I have no barrier to sharing my professional ideas and thoughts (though they often veer into the personal.) I have started to blog as a matter of habit, as the education world shifts to accommodate the rise of social media, the idea of remixing as legitimate art ( and when wasn't it legitimate?) and the impact that creating will have on teaching and the field of education. 

    2. What’s the most important thing a teacher can do for his or her students?
     This question is a blog post on it's own! I think the most important thing you can do for a student is believe in them. Trust them as learners. Allow them to be learners. Don't dismiss their love of hockey cards, or manga or dinosaurs or novels or kittens as something not worthy of knowing. Use their natural interest in a subject to allow them to explore. Join them in that journey,encourage them to widen the net but also to delve the depths, validate their search for knowledge and appreciate the product.

    3. What’s the most important thing a teacher can do for his or her colleagues?
    Share. I was thinking originally about empathy but classroom teaching can be quite isolating and I love the idea of connected learning not only for our students but for ourselves. We need a strong professional network, a sounding board for ideas and a place to experiment for ourselves as learners. Hard to model being a learner if you're not learning with your peers.

    4. Now this is a tough one since I don't have a classroom but I think it may be getting rid of individual desks. Desks make it hard to share and collaborate. I'd rather have a cubby for everyone and a flat surface that we can write on together. If I was in a classroom with desks, I might get whiteboard paint and paint them so we could write on the surface.

    5. Macbeth with my Grade 6's. I love plays and drama as a way to help students explore stories and so I chose Macbeth. We started with Greek mythology and I had the students convert them into a play that they then put on. I worked up to Macbeth by first showing them a cartoon movie, then a one page cartoon, then a seven page dog cartoon, then a historical story about Macbeth and then the actual play (which I had edited and hung together with choral speech.) I invited actors and directors from the local area  into the classroom to talk to my students, and one of my students designed the set and we built it out of boxes. I'd write to them as Macbeth and have them respond as Lady Macbeth.The music teacher actually taught them Elizabethan music and dance which they also performed. I had them create a website and design the invitations as well as write reviews of the play. We put the play on and the students were giddy with the excitement of accomplishing something amazing. 

    6. I wish them the joy of exploration where they are able to see that they are capable of great things, big thoughts and seeing connections. I want them to have that ah ha! moment that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

    7. N/A

    8. I love using presentation technology that allows students to create and share something that they have learned. PowerPoint, Haiku Deck, Prezi, YouTube, Storify are some of the different software students can use to illustrate and share.

    9. My mother is my teaching inspiration. She was a teacher when I was growing up. She completely understood my need to explore and helped foster my love of learning. She gave us regular opportunities to explore new places and answered all of questions with enormous patience.

    10. My number one teaching goal is to be in the classroom again. I miss it very much.

    11. Learning together helps us all grow.

    11 Random Facts about Me:

    1. I have blue dot tattoo on my left knee from where I accidentally stabbed myself with a pen when I was a child.

    2. When you put a dandelion under my chin my skin glows yellow. Supposedly this means I like butter. This is true. I do like butter.

    3. I have made Peking Duck from scratch. Since I didn't have a meat hook to hang the duck on to dry (this makes the skin crispy) I used a large empty bottle of Quebec beer. It worked well! The duck was delicious.

    4. I went to university instead of art school. 30 years later I still wonder if I made the right decision.

    5. I have seven different cowlicks on my head and a double crown. If I cut my hair too short I look like a mad professor (or that I have been sticking my finger in a light socket.)

    6. I am the shortest person in my family (even shorter than my parents.) That wouldn't be so bad if I also wasn't the heaviest, the blindest and inherited my father's colour dysfunctional-ity. I also had 6 wisdom teeth. I told my mother, that as the eldest, I was the clearing house for all of the bad genes (she thinks I'm kidding.)

    7. I passed my six wisdom teeth problem to my eldest son. He had his wisdom teeth removed- twice.

    8. When I was eight I could swim 50 laps of the racing pool in 30 minutes. When I was 30 I could do the same. I swim like a stately barge up and down the pool ( my mother's description.)

    9. I read in the shower. (If you wish to know how to do this successfully without wetting your reading material send me an email.) I still haven't figured out how to complete puzzle books in the shower so if you have, send me an email with the solution.

    10. I love to garden. There is something so renewing about seeing the birth of spring, planting in the soil, the texture and smell of the earth and seeing the first seedlings poke out of the ground. Gardens sooth both the mind and body.

    11. I put ketchup on my French toast in the morning (unless I am at a restaurant and they've mixed cinnamon into the egg batter.) My parents are from England and Australia and that's how I ate it when I was growing up. My husband (of Canadian background on both sides) thinks that's disgusting and eats it with maple syrup (as do my three sons.)



    11 Questions for my Nominees

    1. Why do you blog?
    2. What’s the most important thing a teacher can do for his or her students?
    3. What’s the most important thing a teacher can do for his or her colleagues?
    4. If you weren't a teacher what would you do instead?
    5. Describe one of your most memorable classroom experiences.
    6. What memorable experience do you hope your students have?
    7. How do you incorporate connected learning into your classroom?
    8. What is your favorite classroom use of technology?
    9. Who/what is your teaching inspiration?
    10. Where/what do you hope to be doing ten years from now?
    11. In six words, what is your teaching philosophy?
  18. karenatsharon

    Using the tools of the web

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    I am continuing to reflect on my learning within the clmooc environment. The learning curve in clmooc has not been as steep as either MoocMooc or ETMOOC as indicated by my prezi contribution of a few weeks ago. I'm not feeling guilty anymore because I ...
  19. karenatsharon

    Infinite Monkeys: Part III

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    Well here it is: My first app.Feedback welcome! I ended up making a document with links to my YouTube playlist and a number of blogs so that I could add some more information to the app. Publishing the app is very easy.So my overall rating for using th...
  20. karenatsharon

    Infinite Monkeys: Part II

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    So yesterday I was writing about creating an app (short for software application) for teachers using MS Paint for Grade 1. I'm still working on it and since Kevin asked for a debrief on the software I thought I'd write another post on the process of bu...
  21. karenatsharon

    Microsoft Paint and my first app

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    So as part of the clmooc, I've decided to build my first app (I'm using Infinite Monkeys) and I chose Microsoft Paint as my subject. Why? Because in the ICT curriculum in Canada and the US, Grade 1 is where you start using Paint. Those of us in the Edu...
  22. karenatsharon

    Maps

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    Maps! I have a lot of maps in my car, stuck into the pockets of the door. Maps of states and provinces, maps of attractions, museums, historic sites, maps of army bases. Some of the maps are in map books, some on the large sheets of paper that you try ...
  23. karenatsharon

    Connected Learning Mooc (clmooc)

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    So I've joined clmooc and I'm a little late to the party. But that's ok because this is a "participate when you want, where you can, do what you want to do" mooc. A "choose your own adventure" mooc. Similar to Teachtheweb, which I didn't do as much in ...

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