Project simplify

I’m trying, but not always succeeding, to simplify my life. The whole family is looking through all the crap that has accumulated over many years in our house. My rallying cry has been “We don’t own our stuff, our stuff owns us” and I’ve tried to be discriminating about what is going to own me. Case in point – university notes. I’ve kept my notes from university classes going back almost 30 years. (Jeebus, I’m getting old). For most of the notes from my B.Sc. and B.Ed. I can count the number of times I’ve looked at it on zero hands. Zilch. So why was I still hanging on to them? (Most have now been recycled).

I’m fascinated by the reasons people hoard stuff. Sometimes there are practical reasons for hanging on to things. Quite often, though, I have kept things for no rational reason. I have analyzed my reasons for hoarding, and I’ve pretty much been able to find 3 reasons why I (and possibly other people) hoard:

  1. Something represents or reminds me of who I have been in the past. University notes partly fall into this category. My high school sweater is another in this category. It has long since ceased to fit, and one of the arms has unraveled to the point of resembling the wrappings on a mummy. And yet I kept it because I like to remember the person I was in high school. Maybe hanging on to it makes me think I’m still that person, and maybe I am but I don’t need a 30 year old sweater to make me that person.
  2. Something lets me think that I’m the sort of person that I would like to be. I can’t think of any specific examples from my purging of stuff, but I think this is the reason why people have long unused treadmills stuffed away in the room where stuff accumulates in the house (all houses have one of these, right?). There is often no rational reason to keep the treadmill around. Let’s be honest – in 99.9% of all cases, home treadmills get used for about 3 months after purchase then lay dormant. But it let’s us think that we are the sort of person who exercises regularly.
  3. Guilt. We have a Roomba that I purchased 2 years ago. It was never used that much owing to the large shifting mass of small toys (mostly lego recently) on the floor. Maybe at first I kept it because I wanted to think I was the sort of person who kept my house tidy, but I’ve since resigned myself to the fact that were it not for my wife providing me guidance and reminders to tidy up I would be featured on one of those hoarding reality TV shows. Yet the Roomba is still there, looming in that room where stuff accumulates. Why? Because it was a waste of money (although it was on sale and that helps me rationalize the purchase somewhat) and I feel guilty about that. So I keep the Roomba as a way of avoiding facing my own guilt and foolishness.

As part of the simplification, I’m cutting down on the number of domain names I own which peaked at about 12. Not all of the domains were actively used. And cutting down on the number of domain names and sites has allowed me to move to more modest web hosting with Hippie Hosting, which was lauded by D’Arcy Norman. D’arcy has never steered me wrong where web nerdiness is involved. So far the migration has gone well, with a fairly simple, in a geeky sense, way:

  1. Use the wordpress backup to dropbox plugin to back up my web sites (which were all running wordpress). I’ve found this to be an amazing plugin. It will let you set up regular backups of your wordpress site (including files and database) to a dropbox account. Automated backup to the cloud. I can restore my sites relatively easily from any computer.
  2. Create a new site at Hippie Hosting. This is pretty trivial through the admin interface (I think it’s Plesk Control Panel).
  3. Create a new database to hold the site data. As in the previous step, this is pretty trivial.
  4. Tweak the exported MySQL data file to use the new database, and adjust any entries that contain links to the old site. In a couple of places, the file path to certain files or directories was specific to the old host and didn’t work on the Hippie server.
  5. Import the tweaked data file.
  6. Tweak the wp-config.php file to use the new database, database user and password.
  7. Secure copy (SCP) the files onto the server. I’ve never used SCP before since FTP always worked for me before but I figured this was a good reason to learn.
  8. Ta-da – the site is restored. If you can read this, that means it worked.

There’s still a lot more simplifying I need to do but minimizing web sites is an easy step in the process. Exercising some of my long dormant web and Linux geek skills certainly makes it a thoroughly enjoyable task.

Gargoyle

Reclaiming my media starts here.

20120419-210002.jpg

Why the change?

  • Boredom
  • Fear
  • Ennui
  • Post mid-life crisis crisis
  • Too much coffee
  • Not enough sleep
  • Side effects of seizure medication (prevents, not causes – just for the record)
  • Existential angst
  • Awesomeness
  • Whimsy
  • Despair over the decline of RSS in the wake of Twitter
  • Procrastination
  • Blame it on the rain that was falling falling
  • Tight shoes that pinch my toes
  • Spring frenzy
  • Meh
  • Tenacious iconoclasm
  • Black mold
  • Envy
  • Yada yada yada

Pick one or more of the above. Or leave one of your own in the comments.

Onward to Edmonton

The long period of stagnancy (7 months!?!) on the blog is broken. Thanks to two future film directors/producers for giving me the impetus to write. The students in question recently represesnted NBCHS at the provincial Skills Canada comptetion for Saskatchewan, competing against teams from other schools across the province in the category of TV Video Production. This is the first time I’ve sent students to the Skills competition, the Communication Media program being a relatively recent addition (2 and a half years) to the school’s program offerings. Given that, I was somewhat surprised that they returned from competition with the gold medal in the category. I wasn’t completely shocked – they’re very talented film-makers.

Having earned the gold, they will now be heading to Edmonton in May to represent the province of Saskatchewan at the Skills Canada national competition. I have no doubt that they will do well – as I said, they are very talented. Check out the videos on their film production web site – Overactive Imagination Studios – for samples of their work. Will they win a medal? Maybe. Will they be better for the experience? Definitely!

Here’s their winning video:

Secrets of their success

I wasn’t at the competition in Regina (family obligations took precedence) but the boys told me a few things about the competition that I found interesting. A disclaimer – these are my thoughts on an event that I did not attend, but was told to me by someone else.

  • Our Communication Media program was a relatively novice competitor. Many of the other schools had well established programs that have been running for several years longer than we have, including one that is a school within a school specializing in media production. (I don’t want to be misconstrued as running down their program or saying that ours is better. On the contrary, I respect the work they do their and the amazing program they have built). Despite that, the students that went were of the same calibre as students from established programs and large urban centres. The talent that we have in The Battlefords is world class. The notion that the most talented and creative people are only in large cities is a myth.
  • To put another myth to rest, it’s not about the technology, or at least not about the quality/cost/brand name of technology that you have. The boys told me that they were feeling a little outgunned when they saw that other teams had Canon 5D Mk II cameras (the gold standard for HD SLR video production) or professional ENG cameras. We have very good prosumer cameras, but they certainly don’t have the cachet of the big name equipment. They also have a lower price tag so I’m able to have more students working on simultaneous productions. Despite our lower status technology, they obviously did quite well. As the saying goes, the best camera is the one you have with you. The recent interest in iphoneography (using Apple’s iPhone camera as the primary tool, either as a hobby or simply out of fancy, in capturing and creating photographic images – from Urban Dictionary) has grown from the quality photographs that can be taken with an iPhone (or other smartphone camera). Another example I’m exploring of the use of iOS devices to produce “serious” work is a grade 9 optional course in which we use iOS devices to take photographs and video. You can see the results for yourself – some are decent quality photographs and fairly prosaic in quality, but some of their photographs have notable artistic merit to them. The most important tools for creating great photographs or video are your eyes and your brain. The external tools are of a secondary nature. This idea probably deserves a blog post of its own – maybe I’ll get around to it in the next 6 months. :-)
  • Planning is key. The other teams were transferring video onto their computers by 10:30 a.m. (competition started at 8 a.m.) at which time my students were just starting to get out the camera and record. Up until that time, they were planning their video so that when they did pick up the camera, they already had the end product in mind. The results were that the other teams (according to my students) had fairly similar, derivative videos – talking head interviews with standard “this is what a widget looks like” B-roll. Their video (go re-watch it above if you want) had a narrative to it despite the time limitation of the competition. Proper sequencing of the shots so that the product has a beginning, a middle and an end is the result of good planning, and that is what makes the difference between a video and a funny cat tricks video. My program might be a new one, and my experience as a media production teacher might be limited, but this is the one constant rule of media production that I constantly emphasize to students, regardless of the media they work in – your work will only be as good as the planning you put into it before you pick up your camera (or microphone or whatever else you work with).

So for now, we wait until May then onward we go to Edmonton. Regardless of results it will be a high-level learning experience for my students and me.

My 15 minutes

It’s 6:45 a.m. and for the next 15 minutes I have the house to myself. I found out in late May that if I am up early enough, the house is completely quiet. I have a few minutes for coffee and maybe even a little read through my very neglected group of RSS feeds.

I’m also trying to put together a quick blog post. I’ve greatly reduced my twitter intake over the summer so maybe I can rechannel some of the half formed thoughts I’d usually put there into a blog post, even if it is a lame “blogging about why I haven’t been blogging” sort of post. Sorry this seems to be heading that way but maybe it’s necessary to break open the creative logjam that I’ve been feeling has kept me from writing.

Uh-oh – only 2 minutes left until the silence is shattered for the day. Putting together a blog post in 15 minutes is way tougher than it ought to be. Time for that last bit of quality time with my cup of coffee.

Connections – new book (and more) from Rick Schwier

My friend and mentor (frientor?) Rick Schwier has recently announced the publication of his new book Connections: Virtual Learning Communities. Rick describes it as …

… an eBook that explores how online communities form, who joins them, and how they operate in learning environments. This book is available as an .epub document, suitable for viewing on most mobile devices and desktops.

The book is already on my iPad and in the top three for my summer reading list (and no, Rick, Stieg Larsson is not on my reading list and I certainly wouldn’t put it ahead of your work). I’m impressed with it so far for three reasons.

First, it might be academic in content but it doesn’t read like an academic book. Maybe that’s because Rick and I have talked about these things so often, I recall some of our conversations – I can almost hear him speaking the words as I read. But I’m pretty sure anyone interested in online learning, informal learning or educational technology in general will get a lot out of the book.

Second reason I’m impressed – Rick has released this as a free, creative commons licensed work. This is how all academic work should be released, in my opinion and also in Rick’s:

this book will not be commercial. Ever. It will be free. Forever. If there are any costs associated with its production or distribution, I will eat them. This is more than just a friendly gesture; it is a philosophical position. I am an academic who has been paid generously from public coffers. You shouldn’t have to pay me twice. I also believe, as my friend Dean Shareski once stated, that sharing is a moral imperative— a responsibility we have as educators—not just a nice thing to do.

Yep, he talks the talk and walks the walk.

A third reason I’m impressed is that Rick is publishing the book in a way that transcends time (I’ve always thought of Rick as being slightly time-lordish). I love it when people push some boundaries between different media. My mind is blown by some of the boundaries Rick is pushing and erasing with this book. Along with the book, Rick has put together some videos for an introduction to each chapter. Most books are linear and finite – they are read in a certain order and are done when you reach the end. Connections has many (but not thrown in gratuitously) hyperlinks to web pages, videos and even Elluminate recordings. Rick sees the book as a starting point for an ongoing discussion about virtual learning communities.

I will return to this book when I can to reshape and repair it. And I hope to include some of your stories in the next edition.

If you want to be part of the ongoing conversation and part of future revisions of the book, you can participate at the VLC book wiki.

P.S. I’m trying a bit of an experiment with this blog post, continuing on from my last post. I’m writing in IA Writer on my iPad in markdown format. From here it will be emailed to my posterous blog which should autoforward it to my main personal blog which should then tweet out the new blog post (if this ends up looking like crap, the process broke down somewhere along the line). Although this is perhaps the most convoluted workflow I’ve ever heard of to post to a blog, I’m hoping that being able to start the blogging on my iPad (without a doubt it is my current most favoured way to connect to the digital world) will get me blogging a little more often. Like, maybe three or four times a year. At this rate, I might even get a new podcast out! :–)

Hiatus

Apparently I’ve been on hiatus from blogging for a while. Don’t take
it personally – it’s not you, it’s me. I haven’t had much to say or
maybe just haven’t had the time to put together any thoughts that need
more than 140 characters.

I’m playing around with auto posting via posterous. Maybe that will
help get more stuff on the blog. Maybe not. But it’s always fun to
play with new toys/geek tools while I’m supposed to be working on
other things. Alas, I must now yield to the siren call of the dishes.
Let’s see how this experiment works out.

Hacking pedagogy via netbooks

Netbook with Linux installedNetbook with Linux installed

Phase 1 of the school’s 1:1 netbook has begun (and I’m documenting some of my activity for that project in my Netbooks at NBCHS blog). This year, all teaching staff will be given a netbook to play and explore with. One of my first explorations has been to install the Ubuntu Netbook Remix. My findings so far is that it is has a much better interface and is more responsive than the pre-installed OS. The Unity GUI is designed specifically for the screen size of a netbook so my big sausage-like fingers can easily move the cursor into position without having to dance around a tinier icon that is the result of a scaled down version of a desktop GUI. I’ve left the Windows 7 partition on the computer only so I can use it for demos to students who are only have access to Windows 7 laptops and netbooks.

The importance of having Ubuntu or some other version of Gnu-Linux isn’t just because of performance or GUI improvements. It has more to do with what we think students need to learn. A Gnu-Linux OS is inherently more open that a locked down OS like Windows 7 or even (my beloved) Mac OS. Gnu-Linux (OK, let’s just call it Linux from now on for the sake of brevity. If Richard Stallman wants to take me to task on that, he’s free to leave a comment) systems are meant to be hacked, tweaked, altered and customized based on the users needs. They encourage exploration of the functioning of the OS and allow users to easily — well, relatively easily if you don’t have root access; it takes a bit more work but it can be done for your own account– add applications to the computer. They encourage creation of your own solutions, or at least research, to problems like “how do I backup files onto an external drive?” Aren’t exploration, creation and research of genuine problems some of the qualities we want students to have while they are in school and for the rest of their lives? Sure they are, and we need to give them permission and freedom for productive play in order to develop those traits. We also need to help them learn from their failures, which is where that backup script can come in handy. :-)  A locked down netbook prevents any kind of tweaking or tinkering, which is where the really valuable learning happens.

I’m hoping to demonstrate the Ubuntu driven netbook at school division’s technology committee at our next meeting. I think that the case to be made for having Ubuntu installed on the computers is a strong one and I hope that it might be part of our eventual division wide 1:1 netbook initiative. I could also point out to other staff and students that it is possible to make a USB drive that can be used to boot into Ubuntu Linux instead of the operating system installed on the hard drive. All the data and changes while running Ubuntu are stored on the USB drive, not the hard drive. The OS, applications and data on the hard drive remain untouched. Finding out how to do this might provide an excellent problem for research and tinkering.

Winter cleaning the RSS feed


cc licensed flickr photo shared by twicepix

Time for some winter cleaning. There are a lot of people who prefer to do spring cleaning, but once spring hits I’d rather be outside. I like this time of year so that it clears out the space I’m going to be in for the next few months. If I don’t need it or use it, it is in danger of being evicted.

I’m looking at the same thing for the RSS feeds in my Google Reader. The current count of unread items is well into the 4 digit range. Some of them are unread news sources and some are unread blog posts. I’m going to clean out the news sources by the standard *mark all as read* technique but for the blogs I’m going to be more heavy handed. They are all going to be cleared and unsubscribed. I’m not sure yet which ones I’ll resubscribe to or if I’ll bother to resubscribe to any at all.

There was a time when we in the educational technology used our blogs not only to throw our mental spaghetti at the world to see what stuck, but also to stay in touch with each other. It wasn’t just our ideas we put out there, it was also how we stayed in touch by commenting on each others posts and responding via blog posts. RSS was the conduit for finding out what others were saying or thinking. Bloglines, then later Google Reader, became the community gathering place.

Twitter makes a lot of that unnecessary. We can find out what others are saying and thinking in real time. All the small talk that is the social glue holding a community together happens on Twitter. I wouldn’t use a blog post anymore to thank Rick for bringing me back a Cubs baseball from Chicago, I’d use a tweet. Twitter hasn’t replaced blogging, but it has replaced some of what a blog used to be used for because it is a better tool for doing that. Twitter has had the same effect on my blog post reading as well – I usually read posts that I’ve found via Twitter instead of on Google Reader. Maybe I only need Google Reader to keep up with various news sources (although many of those are also broadcasting links on Twitter).

OK – here goes.

Whew – that was easy. In case you felt a disturbance in the force, I might have just unsubscribed from your blog feed. But don’t feel like I’m rejecting you. It’s not you … it’s me. I haven’t given you nearly the time and attention you deserve. I hope that we can still stay in touch and be twitter friends.

Levity aside, I have three questions for you and your comments here or on twitter are truly appreciated. First, did you find out about this blog post from an RSS feed reader or from Twitter? Second, are you finding most of your reading online via twitter or an RSS feed? Third, if I do decide to start subscribing to some blog posts again, who are your “must read” bloggers?

Anecdotal records using iPad

One of my professional goals this year is keeping some anecdotal records of what my students are doing in class so I have a better record of what they do during class in addition to having some artifacts of their work, such as exams, audio or video projects. My tool tool of choice is my iPad, not (just) because it’s so darn cool, but because it’s something I have with me all the time. I was also inspired by Chris Lehmann’s plan to use his iPad as a tool for facilitating his walk-throughs (and I’m hoping that Chris will share his experience with the world).

After a few days of research and pondering I’ve put together a set of tools and a workflow that I think will work. The two primary criteria I’m looking for are portability and simplicity. I want to be able to access the information not only on my iPad, but also on my MacBook or from any of the school computers. I’d considered using Google forms, but I’d also like to have the data actually residing on my devices simultaneously, not just accessible through the cloud. I already use Dropbox for syncing/storing many other files on different computers so I’ll be making use of it for this project. I also want my data to be portable in the sense that I can use/edit it between different applications – no proprietary data formats allowed!

By simplicity, I mean that the tools needed to work with the data should be simple tools that I can have on my MacBook, iPad or whatever device I have at hand. Straight ASCII text is the simplest data format for which tools are readily available on multiple platforms so I’ll put all the data into straight text files.

There are a number of iPad apps that edit text, but only a couple that I know of that sync with dropbox – Plain Text (currently free but soon to adopt a freemium model) and Elements ($4.99). (I did a quick google search while writing this post and found that another app called iA Writer ($4.99) also looks promising. There is a Dropbox app directory for various platforms that connect into the Dropbox APIs). Since Plain Text is currently free, I’m using that but if a better alternative comes along, I can easily use transfer over since all the data is in plain text files. I’m storing the records in a separate file for each student.

Usually adding components to a workflow or other system increases the complexity of the system. In this case, however, there is one additional element that makes the system simpler. I already use TextExpander on my MacBook and it is one of my indispensable tools. There is also a version of TextExpander for iOs devices that allows me to create text snippets then assign a text trigger for it. When I type in the text trigger, if I’m in a TextExpander aware app, it is instantly and magically transmogrified into the text snippet. For example, i have a text snippet for the current date in the format YYYY-MM-DD which is triggered using “dymd”. I type in those four characters and today’s date in the desired format appears. I’m creating some text snippets for templates that I will use for creating the records.

So the whole thing basically consists of text files stored/synced with Dropbox. I can create/edit the files with any text editor that can get access to Dropbox. TextExpander helps to save on the typing, which is especially handy when typing on the iPad. The only part that I need to figure out is some way of tweaking data out of the text files in a manageable way, but I think I’ll be able to put together some simple Python scripts to do all the data extraction.

Stay tuned for details as to how this works out.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad