Here at the ILT program at UC Denver there is an emphasis on effective design. There is a set of basic design principles taught in each class, summed up with the acronym CARP. It stands for Contrast, Alignment, Repetition, and Proximity. Go ahead and Google it – there are a zillion ways available to describe, explain, and illustrate these principles.

But why CARP? CARP is certainly shorthand for something – the premise is that by following these principles, your design will be “correct” or “good” in some sense. There must be some fundamental mechanism at work, though, undergirding these principles.

Consider any document that you design. What are you trying to do with it? You are trying to communicate, at least initially. Perhaps you are trying to sell something, or convince someone of something. In my case, I am always trying to teach something. I need to consider how a person learns and try to align my document with how learning works.

Engagement

There are two aspects of learning that I want to address here. One is the broad principle of engagement. Without engagement, your document is effectively ignored. Without the right kind of engagement, your document will be less effective as a teaching medium. Visual clutter and confusion, for instance, creates a kind of anxiety as the eye tries to figure out where to go. This is not conducive to learning. Nor are extraneous visual elements which can be entertaining or decorative but also distracting or confusing.

Garr Reynolds presents the CARP principles in the first edition (2008) of his Presentation Zen (p. 153). I think it’s telling that he replaces CARP in his second edition (Presentation Zen Design, 2013) with principles related to beauty, balance, and harmony, states of mind conducive to learning (p. 221). Not coincidentally, these principles are applicable to digital modes of presentation, like video, audio, and synchronous eLearning, for which the CARP principles may not apply as readily.

Coherence and Structure

The second aspect of learning I want to address is an aspect that concerns me as a physics teacher. It is possible to teach physics as a collection of vaguely related topics and practices, but I prefer to teach physics by constantly referring back to the coherent series of basic concepts on which it is built. When I design a document for my students, I try to be careful about what my design implies. Is it implying a connection where there is none, or is it implying levels of organization that do not, in fact, exist? Or does the design reflect the coherence and structure in physics that I hope my students can sense?

Microsoft’s PowerPoint is a common document format, a tool that seems to result in notoriously incoherent design. A classic critique of PowerPoint design is Edward Tufte’s essay, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint (2006). Tufte explains in detail the kind of structural incoherence that can come about when a designer does not pay attention to structural levels of information.

A designer needs to know that all graphic elements carry information, not just in the literal sense (these letters form a sentence which can be understood) but in a structural sense. When a font changes color, for instance, the brain is alerted to the possibility of a new level of information for the literal text. Consider, for instance, what happens when text in a blog post changes color to indicate that the text is a hyperlink. Or consider, as Tufte does, what it means to create bullet points. Bullets are not just a graphical device for separating text. Bullets are like the headings in an outline. They indicate levels of organization arranged coherently according to some principle or concept. Hinting at organization when in fact what you are presenting is arbitrarily arranged causes confusion. It does not create a frame of mind conducive to learning.

It can take a lifetime to discover and absorb the principles of how a person learns from a document, and how that learning can be augmented or interfered with by the graphic design. With the easily remembered principles of CARP, a designer at least stands a chance of producing attractive and effective presentations without having to become a metaphysician of design, communication, and learning.

References

Reynolds, G. (2014). Presentation zen design: Simple design principles and techniques to enhance your presentations (2nd ed.). Berkeley, CA: New Riders.

Tufte, E. R. (2006). The cognitive style of PowerPoint: Pitching out corrupts within (2nd ed.). Cheshire, CT: Graphics.

A Final Reflection on INTE 5340

I am in my first year as a graduate student, and Learning With Digital Stories was the fourth course I've taken. It has been very interesting being a graduate student - it is unlike any other formal 'student' experience I have had. Here is what I have noticed, a model let's say:

• I'm expected to learn much of the technical aspects of media production myself.
• The professor isn't going to tell me how I'm doing. He or she is more likely to help me see what I am doing, and what I could do further.
• The production of work isn't as important as the critical stance I take in producing the work.
• I am expected to critique or comment on the work of my peers. The professor will model this activity for us in various ways.
• I am expected to collaborate with my peers; respond to their critiques and comments on my work, provide encouragement and feedback, and honor my commitments to a group.
• In these ways I become a model and inspiration for my peers, and they for me.

This course is perhaps more strongly in line with this model than any of the others I've taken. To disconnect from Canvas and use our blogs and Twitter was intimidating but very cool. The only part of Canvas I missed was the threaded discussions (which is hard to do in Twitter), though they did become unwieldy past a certain point. Most importantly, thanks to Lankshear and Knobel's New Literacies, I now understand and can analyze the model above. I see that the model is not ad hoc or accidental, but is a designed approach, a platform, for having us, as graduate students, practice taking on identities as professional academics and technicians. Reading about the graduate class in Chapter 8 made me laugh, because it sounded very much like my experience with my UCDenver SEHD courses.

I learn very quickly, I'm very efficient at it. I've found that the best approach is to fling myself at the work and see what happens. I also employ what I call The Committee of Sleep (which I made a video about for my last course). As an older student who is also an experienced teacher, I have come to appreciate the role I can play as a leader among my peers. I'm not voluble in that role, but the right gesture at the right time can mean the world. So I pick up on the modeling that the professors do, and then keep in mind that my communication with peers is modeling too. (A quick example: when deciding whose work to respond to, I will sometimes look for the student who seems to not be getting a lot of attention and give him or her some comment love.)

My main contribution to this course was in the work product. Like the disc jockey on the radio who has no idea whether anyone is listening, I created my media projects and posted them on my blog and made announcements on Twitter. Anyone who clicked the link and took a look would be rewarded with a multi-faceted project that tried to address the assignment at many levels simultaneously. This is my favorite kind of work, and in this class consisted of taking 'storytelling' seriously and creating traditional and not-so-traditional stories-within-stories, or self-referential stories, or interwoven narratives, or even just a title that was a tiny story. Even my contention that physics is 'story' is heterodox (or eccentric - you decide).

As much as I really enjoyed the media assignments and Twitter camaraderie, my greatest accomplishment in this course was understanding New Literacies. I have copied below a paragraph from each of several weekly Reflections in this course. I think these paragraphs demonstrate a progression in my understanding, and also demonstrate a consistency in what occupies my mind, and how I hope to apply my graduate work in my life.

• As the school year winds down, my thoughts turn to next year. I want to pursue this idea I have of using story to teach physics - specifically, having the students express physics in their own stories. By reading Lankshear & Knobel on literacy, I think that I may gain a broader perspective on physics-as-story, something along the lines of a physics literacy. (Week 2)
• Thinking more about next year, I am beginning to understand that teaching my students to use story to understand physics is going to be a multiple-literacies experience. When I imagine what I would like them to do, I see primarily the technical practices: using equations, graphs, diagrams, and charts as parts of a certain way of explaining; using online sites for finding and accessing texts, images, audio and video files, simulations, and models; and using other digital tools for creating presentation material, software like Photoshop and hardware like Smart Boards. In other words, I imagine what it is that I already do, the ways in which I am literate, and how I can model these technical practices for my students. (Week 3)
• I'm thinking again about the next school year, and about all the instructional materials I'm constantly designing and tinkering with. Of course, this is remix as well. I steal shamelessly from the Internet and from my fellow teachers. I watch how students respond, and re-remix accordingly. The concept of remix allows me to see more clearly how my students, using remix techniques, could improve their ability to "speak" or "write" physics , and I'm eager to try some ideas. I'll be remixing, of course, from materials that already work for me. (Week 4)
• Here's a question - a lot is written about learning and learners and communities of learners, and almost nothing is written about teaching. In these communities of learners, whether digital and online or not, who are the teachers? And more importantly, who qualifies as an engaging and effective teacher? Exploring this question has been part of my focal theme, not just this semester but for decades throughout my teaching career. In my work this semester, I am acutely aware of being both a learner and a teacher. The learning is in mastering a technique or tool to achieve an end product. The end product, for me, is always an attempt to teach, either overtly or covertly. L&K left a hint in Chapter 7 where they mention mentoring (p. 221), and I hope they enlarge upon this in Chapter 8. (Week 6)
• It was exciting to read Lankshear & Knobel's final chapter. It left me with a lot to think about, not just concerning different approaches to literacy and learning, but also concerning L&K's language and concepts as tools for analyzing a learning environment. In other words, I'm beginning to shift my focus from the social phenomenon itself to how a social phenomenon can be analyzed. As I pointed out in Week 1, I've never studied sociology, so this has been my first exposure to a sociological study of any social practice. I'm only just now getting a feel for how sociologists see and study the world, and how I, in my small way, could do the same. (Week 7)

By the way, I'd like to point out that L&K did NOT enlarge upon the role of teaching in an overt way in Chapter 8 as I had hoped. They did use an important word in briefly describing the role of the professors in the graduate course (p. 236): elicitive. I liked that - it's good start.

A Reflection on Week 7 of INTE 5340

It was a tough week! There's a two-week stretch every summer where I am responsible for tuning the pianos at three music festivals here in Rhode Island, and this was the first week. I'm driving a lot, tuning many pianos, managing an assistant, and coordinating with production managers. One more week to go!

It was exciting to read Lankshear & Knobel's final chapter. It left me with a lot to think about, not just concerning different approaches to literacy and learning, but also concerning L&K's language and concepts as tools for analyzing a learning environment. In other words, I'm beginning to shift my focus from the social phenomenon itself to how a social phenomenon can be analyzed. As I pointed out in Week 1, I've never studied sociology, so this has been my first exposure to a sociological study of any social practice. I'm only just now getting a feel for how sociologists see and study the world, and how I, in my small way, could do the same.

I posted the following:

• My own Daily Create that I proposed to ds106
  
• My Web AB assignment


• My Response to L&K Chapter 8


• My two Peer Comments (1 2
  
• and this Reflection

I would give myself a 9/10 for the week. I knew that I wanted to try one of the web assignments in the AB, but I also knew that there would be a time-consuming learning curve. I also chose another web assignment tool (Kumu) to begin working on my portfolio for week 8. I've already started climbing that learning curve. I was not planning on doing a Daily Create, but then an idea came to me for one that I submitted to ds106. But it was a tough week - I couldn't spend much time on Twitter with my classmates, and in spite of a decreased assignment load, two of my assignments were late.

A Response to Lankshear & Knobel, New Literacies, Chapter 8

It is often impressed upon me in various ways that science education can always benefit by engaging students in science-y projects. I have never been terribly enthusiastic about many of these proposals. Yes, projects are fun, they provide a hands-on experience, but the connection to actual learning is murky. The physics learning standards established by my state may amount to a shopping cart of seemingly arbitrary topics, but I am bound by the standard, so time spent on any project must be pedagogically fruitful in that context. Projects are also promoted as a way to engage students in their learning, but the engagement tends to be based on competition rather than learning. Teaching science with projects seems eminently sensible, so I have found it difficult to fully explain my objections.

If I take the view presented by Lankshear and Knobel in the final chapter of New Literacies, I find that I have access to language and concepts that help me understand my hesitation to adopting projects in my classes. The curriculum that Lankshear and Knobel describe at the Quest to Learn School in New York would appear, at first glance, to be a successful project-based curriculum. Lankshear and Knobel make clear, however, that the education is situated, that the students take on meaningful roles as learners within a community of practice (p. 247). The school uses projects not as part of a program but as part of a platform. In particular, the school uses games as the main platform:

The point here is not that students are learning by playing games as such . . . Rather, the learning principles of games are used to create learning environments . . . (p. 247)

The kinds of projects I object to are projects that do not create an authentic learning environment for my students. These projects are heavily programmed in a traditional 'push' fashion. If a project is seen by the students as simply another assignment, then they are not being engaged by an opportunity to take on identities as learners, to 'learn to be' according to the 'pull' model of Brown and Adler (2008). And once I state this, it becomes clear that the same can be said of any activity I ask my students to engage in; labs, demonstrations, hands-on activities, worksheets. By using games, simulations, models, and stories as platforms, my students can take on more authentic roles as learners.

Here is an example I can describe. NASA, in its role of educator, has a programmed project available for schools that asks students to form teams of 'rocket scientists' with the goal of designing and building a rocket. There is an elaborate collection of activities with role-playing and assignments that can take up to two full weeks or more of class time. The main engagement is through the chance to actually build and launch a rocket and to compete with the other teams. The entire project is very much a 'push' project. The experience of physics teachers before me at my school was one of almost literally pushing students through a process that was viewed by them as inauthentic. What learning was accomplished or reinforced was uncertain. They did enjoy making and launching the rockets, though. The competition part was of much less interest than one might expect.

Based on this reporting, I decided right away to eliminate the inauthentic 'push' elements of the project and focus on the rocket designing, building, and launching. Students are given basic materials, are shown a few example rockets, and off they go. They are allowed laptops to research design ideas, and the rocket building is very much trial and error. They work in teams and keep a close eye on the work of the other teams. Because this is a technical school, students already have a habit and expectation of building or making things on their own. They share their varied skills, and have permission to take their rockets to their shops for raw materials, spray-painting, logo design, etc. There is a deadline - the launch day. This happens outside, with multiple classes, and with results that range from spectacular to comical. Everybody is happy, and it's all over in four days.

The students do learn some things about rockets per se, but the rockets are really just a platform the students use to experiment with identities as learners and makers.

I woke up in the middle of the night, climbed out of bed, and headed for the bathroom. When I returned, my wife, who was only half-awake, muttered "DaVinci Man Goes to the Bathroom." I figured out what she meant, and starting laughing. She woke up e...

I have been looking forward to finally picking an assignment from the Web Assignments Bank at ds106. There are a lot of cool digital tools/programs listed - it's worth taking a look at all of them! This week I decided to take a look at Grant Potter's...

A Reflection on Week 6 of INTE 5340

I had forgotten to read Chapter 6 last week, so this week I read both Chapters 6 and 7. Chapter 6 was quick reading, but Chapter 7 was like Chapter 2 - a lot of new ideas and research, and a lot of new vocabulary to digest. It made me think about my teaching, and my school, what seems to work and what could be changed. My written response to L&K ended up being a story about my school, in fact.

Here's a question - a lot is written about learning and learners and communities of learners, and almost nothing is written about teaching. In these communities of learners, whether digital and online or not, who are the teachers? And more importantly, who qualifies as an engaging and effective teacher? Exploring this question has been part of my focal theme, not just this semester but for decades throughout my teaching career. In my work this semester, I am acutely aware of being both a learner and a teacher. The learning is in mastering a technique or tool to achieve an end product. The end product, for me, is always an attempt to teach, either overtly or covertly. L&K left a hint in Chapter 7 where they mention mentoring (p. 221), and I hope they enlarge upon this in Chapter 8.

I posted the following:

• My first and second TDC assignments
• My AnimatedGIF AB assignment
• My Response to L&K Chapter 7
• My Critique
• My four Peer Comments (1 2 3 4)
• and this Reflection

I would give myself a 9.5/10 for the week. I had fun putting a lot of late-night work into my animatedGIF assignment. I was happy to really focus on my theme of physics teaching this week. I was a day late posting my reading response, though.

It had been a week of cloudiness, but on the day this Daily Create was published it was gloriously sunny. My wife was so inspired she went out with her camera and took a zillion photos. I picked this one out of the pile, a photo of what Marcel Ducham...

A Response to Lankshear & Knobel, New Literacies, Chapter 7

I noticed that the left rear tire seemed low on air pressure. I finally measured the pressure, and sure enough had to add air. I kept an eye on the tire, and every so many days I had to add more air. Then I had to add air every day. Finally one morning, after adding air, the tire was noticeably low by the time I got to work. Thank God I work at a technical school, I thought, I'll just drop the car off at the automotive shop and give the kids something to do. When I had the chance I walked over to automotive and waited while the students were given their assignments. The shop was full of cars, most of them from paying customers. An instructor had a job list, and he barked out orders to the students using technical language that I vaguely recognized. The students got to work. "Oh I just have a slow leak in a tire," I said, a little embarrassed to be presenting such a puny task. "Which tire? Where's your car parked?" The instructor was perfectly happy to have a simple task, more real-world work for his students. I gave him my spare key. Later in the afternoon a student approached me in my classroom. "Mr Calhoun? Here's your key. Tire's all fixed, and the car is back where you parked it." He was very business-like, and obviously proud. We talked a bit, but he was ready to go back to work.

This kind of exchange goes on all day in the school. The young children of teachers attend the day-care program. Customers from the community are in the cosmetology shop having their hair done, or go to the culinary shop's Thursday lunches. Teams of plumbing or carpentry students head out to work sites in the community. The graphic design shop prints up agendas for that night's city council meeting. Eighteen different shops provide in-house real-world experience for the students. By the time they are seniors, many of the students don't even come to school during their shop week, they go to cooperative work experiences in the community and receive a paycheck. Seniors often have state certification in various applications by the time they graduate.

As I read Lankshear & Knobel's presentation of the concept of social learning, I kept being reminded of why I love working in my technical school. The students are

mastering a field of knowledge . . . not only 'learning about' the subject matter but also 'learning to be' a full participant in the field. This involves acquiring the practices and the norms of established practitioners in that field or acculturating into a community of practice (quoting Brown and Adler, 2008, p. 218).

When I was in high school, students in the technical program were thought to be less intelligent. They were not prepared for college and were thus doomed to menial labor in the work-a-day world. What did it mean that one was prepared for college? I recognize this now as the "push" process described by Lankshear and Knobel (p. 226). In college one would finally join a community of practice. Or maybe not, maybe college was to prepare for graduate school, where one would finally join a community of practice. And possibly the joining of a practice might not happen until one was finally hired into a practice. The "pull" process exemplified by the technical programs in my school allows students to participate in a community of practice right away. The shops themselves are platforms that allow for learning by novices while still providing professional services in the real world.

In my own practice as a physics teacher, I am aware that very few of my students will participate in any kind of physics community in their lives. A push program would accomplish little - I have nowhere to push my students. What I can do is add my practice to the practices they experience in their various shops, where "physics" is happening all the time, and add one more facet to the pull process in which they already participate.

There is a concept in physics called the arrow of time. We experience the physical world as proceeding in a time direction we call "forward." The laws of physics, though, work equally well either forward or backward in time. What explains our sense ...

Well how could a physicist not love today's Daily Create? We are directed to a website that is worth exploring at length, but in particular we are instructed to create a hyperbolic tiling of an image. Right away I knew there would be something perver...

Pulp (or "trashy") novels are known for their lurid cover art and low-brow content. Still they are an identifiable literacy practice! Because I teach physics, I couldn't think of anything more ridiculous than a physics pulp textbook, so here it is. ...

A Reflection on Week 5 of INTE 5340

The competition for my time became intense this week because my wife broke her foot. She tripped over our dog Lily and, trying not to crush the poor dear, caught her fall with her foot and cracked three bones. Fortunately this was after the weekend's big parade.

I've had some concern about the Assignment Bank at ds106. In the first three weeks, there were so many assignments to choose from that I had no problem picking something out that I liked. In week 4, the pickings seemed a bit slim, and this week there were very few interesting options. What do I mean by interesting? First you should know that I'm not an avid consumer of pop culture. I don't watch movies, or much television, and I don't have cable TV or Internet radio or a smartphone loaded with apps or even an iPod. So when an assignment starts with "Pick your favorite TV show . . . " my eyes glaze over. And it's not just that I'm older, I've always been this way.

The problem became more severe when I needed to make the assignments be about my focal topic, which is the teaching of physics. My solution was to look for assignments that were focused on a technique, and in which the content could be open-ended. These criteria tended to narrow the options considerably, though.

I posted the following:

• My first and second TDC assignments
• My Mashup AB assignment
• My Response to L&K Chapter 5
• My Critique
• My four Peer Comments (1 2 3 4)
• and this Reflection

I would give myself a 9.5/10 for the week. I really put a lot into all my assignments and writing this week, especially the mashup, but posted my critique a day late. It was fun to read Lankshear & Knobel on blogs since I have so much experience with them. I have been avoiding learning how to build a wiki, though, and even wondered if they were relevant anymore. L&K's take on wikis has convinced me to take up the challenge on behalf of my students.

There is no problem uploading an animated GIF to Flickr - Flickr just converts it to a JPG. Of course it is then no longer animated. There is an easy way to display the animation, though it won't show on your Photostream or Camera Roll.Start by uploa...

This week's chapter in Lankshear & Knobel's New Literacies was about blogs, so I thought I'd take a look at the little blogosphere that my wife and I occupy. In particular, I will critique a blog entry that I created for my wife's painting blog, a blog post about her painting called Day of the Dead.

Emily Lisker is a professional painter and illustrator. Her paintings are brightly colored surreal images, emotional and psychological commentaries on life and relationship. The imagery could be called narratives, stories told with a single image, like photographs from another planet. Lisker's paintings almost always present a theater stage, with characters, props, costumes, backdrops, theater lighting and perspective, a sense of drama, and quite often red stage curtains. Her body of work is clearly the product of remix practices. Certain characters appear and reappear as do certain objects, shapes, and colors. As is the case with many artists, Lisker seems obsessed with certain themes and emotional settings, so her compositions often feel like rearrangements of a basic set of elements. These elements often reference the work of other artists. Lisker exemplifies Lessig's idea that cultural artifacts, and culture itself, are made from the practice of mixing and remixing (Lankshear and Knobel, p. 97).

Lisker's blog is designed to be a gallery of her work. Usually a blog entry consists of the painting title, a photograph of the painting, short commentary by me, and details about the painting, including purchase price. There is a page that summarizes information on all the paintings using thumbnail photos and links to the appropriate blog entry. I had the idea one year that I wanted to document the evolution of one of Lisker's paintings. Knowing Lisker's work habits, I knew this would have to be a multi-year project, and that I would have to catch just the right moments. This project resulted in two additional blog posts; one summarizing the painting's evolution using an animated GIF image (An Emily Painting Comes to Life), and another detailing Lisker's process and how the animated GIF was produced.


I referred to Lankshear & Knobel's appendix to Chapter 4 in New Literacies about remix practices to examine both Lisker's and my own literacy practices.

The animated GIF shows Lisker's literacy practices as a painter. The practices start with Lisker collecting images that appeal to her. These images inform and inspire Lisker's daily practice of sketching and drawing. A sketch may be transferred to a canvas, sometimes interacting with a pre-existing sketch on the same canvas. Lisker then refines the image, enhancing some details and eliminating others, while adding and changing color. Lisker enters a process of refining and finishing, with an eye toward a finished product. This is primarily a projective configuration with proprietary possibilities. The participatory configuration consists of a dialogue Lisker has with herself and her own body of work, with the works of artists which influence her, and with commentary (both live and via email) from the small audience that sees the work as it progresses.

The animated GIF is itself a story of how a painting evolves. My literacy practice began with photographs I took over time. These photographs were imported into Photoshop and prepared for eventual inclusion as frames in an animation. The preparation made use of typical Photoshop literacy practices. Of special note was the distortion I introduced into the first two images so that the spatial relationship of the elements would correspond with the painting's elements. I added a transition between frames that allowed one to briefly see how the images looked overlapped - a mashup practice. I paced the animation so it would proceed in a stately manner, not rushing the viewer.

A Response to Lankshear & Knobel, New Literacies, Chapter 5

I remember my wife asking me that, 9 years and about 8,200 posts ago.

I was excited about reading Chapter 5 because it explored certain literacy practices with which I am very familiar - blogs, wikis, and Google Docs. It occurred to me that these are the practices that the teachers in my school are also most familiar with. I have created almost a dozen blogs for me and my wife over the years. They serve many different purposes: as notebooks, as publications (of text and imagery), as websites, as stores of information, as advertising and promotion, as grad school portfolio. Interestingly, none of our blogs employs a participatory or collaborative configuration.

Almost a decade ago, during the financial crisis and Great Recession, I discovered the world of economics blogging. Blogging has become the primary way that economists try to have their voices heard. This econoblogosphere ranges from the political left to the political right, from academic economists to political advisers to financiers. There is the salt-water - fresh-water rivalry, Keynes vs. Hayek, macro and micro economics, history and philosophy. It is a remarkably lively community. A prominent blogger is the Princeton professor and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, blogging for the New York Times. He writes that the traditional process of economic discourse through journal publication lost its relevance 25 years ago. It was first replaced by an informal publication process called white papers, and eventually replaced by the much nimbler Internet in the form of blogging.

Does this new, amorphous system work? Yes! In just the past few years we’ve had what I’d consider three classic economic debates — on the effects of monetary expansion at the zero lower bound, on fiscal multipliers and austerity, on the effects of high debt ratios; the emergence of major new themes involving issues like private-sector leverage and the need for safe assets; and more, all strongly informed by data (The Facebooking of Economics, 17 December 2013).

Here are links to two blog posts he wrote on this topic: Open Science And The Econoblogosphere, and The Facebooking of Economics.

Lankshear and Knobel wrote in great detail of a fan blog called Blogging Project Runway. It was fascinating to see how the blog changed so profoundly over time and yet was still recognizable as "a blog." One aspect of the blog and its relationship to the television show disturbed me, and I was surprised that Lankshear and Knobel did not bring it up. I noticed how much the television show was benefiting financially from the blog, and wondered if the blog was benefiting as well from its relationship to the television show. Was the relationship symbiotic, or were the blog owners and writers effectively working for the television show, and for little money at that? When does a participatory configuration unwittingly become hijacked by a proprietary one? Lankshear and Knobel did mention this dynamic earlier in Chapter 3 (p. 81).

There were a few more points that stood out for me in this chapter. I was intrigued by the exploration of the idea of collaboration in the context of wikis. Different literacy practices tend to get lumped under the broad category of collaboration but need to be more clearly explicated (p. 161ff).

I have had the opportunity to participate at length in a forum associated with a computer program called Celestia. The forum is defunct now, but I recognized myself in the description of how a wiki participant can transform from novice consumer to collaborator (p. 162). (I did wonder why Lankshear and Knobel did not address forums as a literacy practice.)

I was struck by the idea of a kind of knowledge that is produced at the level of the community, and the role of "boundary spanners (Halatchliyski et al.)" as mentors and mediators in this process (p. 164ff).

I have never created or participated in a wiki (except as a consumer, like with Wikipedia), but I have seen wikis created by physics teachers and students, and have been curious about it. The opportunity exists in my school, and a few teachers there have created wikis - so maybe now I'll finally explore what they have been doing.

I decided to try Dylan Gott's mashup assignment Twittr at ds106. Instead of two websites, though, I chose two Twitter accounts.Did you know that in a few days a satellite will zoom past Pluto and take a jillion photos and measurements? NASA launched ...

At first I wasn't drawn in by this daily assignment from ds106, but as so often happens, when examples starting coming in I was inspired. I guess I have rockets on my mind because yesterday I cleaned out a couple-of-year's worth of student rockets - a...

A Reflection on Week 4 of INTE 5340

I guess every week is going to have something competing for my time. My marching band performed this weekend, and I was kept busy all week with the details (not to mention the marching itself on the Fourth). I thought I kept up with the course pretty well considering. Playing music this week made me think a lot about music as remix: composing, producing, performing, recording, are all remix practices.

I'm thinking again about the next school year, and about all the instructional materials I'm constantly designing and tinkering with. Of course, this is remix as well. I steal shamelessly from the Internet and from my fellow teachers. I watch how students respond, and re-remix accordingly. The concept of remix allows me to see more clearly how my students, using remix techniques, could improve their ability to "speak" or "write" physics , and I'm eager to try some ideas. I'll be remixing, of course, from materials that already work for me.

I posted the following:

• My first and second TDC assignments
• My Design AB assignment
• My Response to L&K Chapter 4
• My Critique
• My four Peer Comments (1 2 3 4)
• and this Reflection

I would give myself a 10/10 for the week. I really put a lot into my Design AB assignment, and learned a lot. As I did last week, I enjoyed reading Lankshear & Knobel, and now I see everything around me as remix!

Picasso's Three Musicians finally get a gig.So many of my classmates were having fun with this assignment that I decided to join in.(The Daily Create for July 2 2015 at ds106)

This is a fun little video from an animation studio called HouseSpecial that I like to show my physics students. Yes, it's about momentum, a physics concept, but it's also a dramatic and humorous story about gratitude, small-mindedness, and revenge. The story (spoiler alert) is that at the top of a mountain lives a giant rock-man who maintains the mountain. One day he makes a mistake, and the mistake threatens a village of humans down on the coast. The rock-man goes to great lengths to save the village, but his final move collapses the village church. The villagers attack mindlessly, annoying the rock-man, who responds by allowing the village to be destroyed. I am still amazed that such a powerful story can be told in so short a time (1:10 min).


The computer-graphics animation has the look and feel of a video game. Video games have to employ the laws of physics to render physical interactions and motion believable. Yet video games find sly ways to break the laws of physics if needed for the sake of drama, or for the sake of the story. In addition, human perception does not always "see" in accordance with the laws of physics. For instance, how big is the full moon? If you hold your thumb up at arm's length to compare, you'll see that the moon is no larger than half your thumbnail. But in a video, if you render the full moon that actual size, it looks ridiculously small to your eye. Videos and photos using the image of the full moon end up making the moon quite large so it will be believable.

I will show the video three or four times to my students. The first time is just to "see" it. The second time is to point out the obvious displays of momentum and inertia, and the use of physics in the animation. The third time is to review the story. Finally, I like to have them spot places where the laws of physics have been violated.

I referred to Lankshear & Knobel's appendix to Chapter 4 in New Literacies about remix practices to examine this story.

Though not a remix in the classic sense, this video animation uses the grammar of both movie and video game storytelling, so it is a remix in the expanded sense advocated by Lessig (2008). The animation studio is clearly using this video to promote their work, so it could be thought of as a projective configuration by an affinity of animators/programmers/storytellers, ultimately for proprietary gain. The quality is quite professional, and the humor is a little dark (no happy ending). The intention is probably to create a video that could "go viral," or at least gather a fan base that could go on to further remixing. In this way the studio could expand its reputation among fans as well as potential customers.

Well maybe I got too carried away, but this is a response to @giuliaforsythe's design assignment Learning by Design at ds106. This is both an explanation of how an electric motor works and instructions on how to make a tiny one. I have my students do...

A Response to Lankshear & Knobel, New Literacies, Chapter 4

Last week I reacted positively to Lessig's (2008) idea of digital remix as a new kind of "writing" (Lankshear & Knobel p.67). So I was happy to find that Chapter 4 was a thorough dive into just what Lessig was referring to. Lessig's idea, striking at first, is that culture develops and is enriched through a process of remixing, that remixing is a necessary condition for culture (p.67). As a creative person who has been involved in several different "remixing" affinities (a few digital, others analogue), I was very comfortable with Lessig's idea. I'd like to respond by describing one such community.

I had some training early in life with musical instruments, particularly the piano. Though I was regarded as talented (meaning skillful), I knew I was not a real musician. What did I think "musician" meant? I wasn't sure, but I knew it meant more than being able to read written music. As a young adult I discovered the blues and realized that this was what I really wanted to play. The problem? Blues are not written. That is not how one learns the blues. I began to teach myself how to play by ear, and began, tentatively, to experiment. A musician friend of mine was keen to help. We would sit at a pair of pianos and he would show me and have me mimic certain blues moves and lines. Eventually he told me about blues jams, and how learning the blues (and learning how to perform) happens in that environment. My wife and I (she plays bari sax) started attending various jams, at one point going to as many as three per week. It was the most terrifying yet exhilarating experience to learn this way. We made a lot of friends, got invited to gigs, joined bands, and eventually started playing professionally. We were in our mid-forties.

The blues are a perfect remixing medium. In some simple ways, all blues are based on a handful of basic patterns. Improvisation is highly encouraged and regarded, and one is meant to develop one's own approach and voice. This is done bit-by-bit as one's skill develops. A blues jam is a perfect remix community. Everyone gets a chance to play, supported by experienced musicians who are very helpful. The audience at jams is quite special. They come specifically to watch newcomers grow and improve. I remember my wife's first solo. In the terror of the moment, she could only play one note over and over. She did it with style and rhythm, though, and the audience, who knew her by now, erupted in cheers. This is what it meant to become a "real musician."

We could have, of course, taken lessons and classes and had a teacher guide us through the path of becoming performers. This may have been a more efficient learning experience, assuming we had found the right person. Instead we went to blues "grad school," for the nightly price of a beer. And even if we had taken a more formal route, we would still be remixing the blues.

I wanted to emphasize one aspect of the creative act, be it performance or anything else, and it is this: the audience is a crucial part of the experience. As one musician explained to me, it is the presentation of one's art to an audience that completes the creative act. In other words, the presentation of one's remix, one's practice, to other members of a Discourse or larger affinity group completes the "conversation," the ethos of making culture. This is regardless of the contribution or the response.

Note to self: check out the serviceware mashup sites that Lankshear and Knobel identify. I have some programming expertise, so I want to see what is currently happening in this space, even if just for my own purposes (a projective rather than participatory configuration, but who knows?)

Something about this Daily Create with the instruction to "tell us about your first time making art" caught me. I've always drawn and doodled, as far back as I can remember. But there must have been something that was the first really deliberate, con...

Here's a photo of me recycling softballs. These balls are frequently abandoned in a baseball field near where I live. My wife and I pick them up for our dog Lily to play with (recycle #1). I also clean up the best ones and use them at school for phys...

A Reflection on Week 3 of INTE 5340

This was the last week of school, and it kept me busy. It also provided material for some of the assignments, which, now that I think about it, has happened each week so far. I like the way that grad school work contributes to my high-school work, and vice versa.

Thinking more about next year, I am beginning to understand that teaching my students to use story to understand physics is going to be a multiple-literacies experience. When I imagine what I would like them to do, I see primarily the technical practices: using equations, graphs, diagrams, and charts as parts of a certain way of explaining; using online sites as references for accessing texts, images, audio and video files, simulations, and models; and using other digital tools for creating presentation material, software like Photoshop and hardware like Smart Boards. In other words, I imagine what it is that I already do, the ways in which I am literate, and how I can model these technical practices.

I posted the following:

• My first and second TDC assignments
• My Video AB assignment
• My Response to L&K Chapter 3
• My first and second Critiques
• My four Peer Comments (1 2[post][comment] 3 4)
• and this Reflection
• I also worked some more on my Video AB assignment. When I record video indoors with the Surface tablet, funny things happen to the color in the low light. I didn't really know how to tweak the color in the video clips, though I did experiment, but I was not happy with the final posted video. It satisfied the assignment, but I really wanted to get the color right, just for my own enlightenment. I did it finally, and the result is here.

I would give myself a 10/10 for the week. I was very pleased with my work, and I really sank into my reading response. I am getting better at video production - I feel like I'm really developing my video "chops." I continue to enjoy reading Lankshear & Knobel. I'm beginning to see everything around me as a potential literacy issue!

I was so happy with my recent audio assignment that I couldn't resist trying Kathy Onarheim's video assignment for ds106. I used the audio file below as the audio track for a video that would tell the story visually.I wanted to preserve the pacing and ...