Make a comic-strip style set of instructions for a practical task. The task you choose is entirely up to you. It could be something that relates to your subject area, or alternatively you can do something more generic like starting up and shutting down a computer, how to set an alarm clock, or how to use the office photocopier.
I've always liked making comics both with with pupils and for myself, a few years ago I made this set for my daughter when she went to university: Recipe Comics - a set on Flickr.
For this assignment I decided to use ComicLife on the iPad, I've used ComicLife on the desktop a fair bit but not done much more with the iPad app than quickly demo it. This looked like a good opportunity. I've been doing a fair bit of iPad workshopping this week, and one of the things I've been showing teachers is some map activities. These are based on ones I've carried out a few times with pupils on an iPod touch. Basically taking screenshots of the maps app and using them for Maths or literacy. So the comic was made with the techniques shown by the comic.
Software Thoughts
Although there has been suggested web apps for each of the edtechcc assignments I've used desktop applications for the first two (Fireworks, audacity) and now an iPad app. I have used web image and audio editors in the past but never found a compelling reason to use them before a desktop app other than price. I am editing this post in TextMate and will post to my blog via the MetaWeblogAPI rather than by using a browser. The problem with browser applications is with, imo, workflow and integration with other application which is not as mature as desktop or as simple as iOS. ComicLife on a mac is a good example of this, easily showing your images to ad to your comic without having to upload them. Or TextMate, here to add an image to a post I drag the image from the desktop onto the document I am typing in, it uploads it to my blog and inserts the code.
Design Thoughts
I had planned to try planning a bit with pencil and paper for this assignment after watch other folk go through the notes/mind-mapping/sketching process. But again I just got started and played about as I went along. I've noticed my 'planning', if you call it that, occurs when walking, driving or doing some other activity so I have some idea of what I am hoping for when I sit down. No excuse really and I will try a bit harder on a future assignment.
There was not much thought in this one anyway, I've stuck to ComicLife defaults, perhaps over familiar but they do the job I think.
It’s also highly important that students are offering feedback to their peers, and reacting to that feedback in a way that models good constructive criticism and improving upon ones work. Opening up students work to the web means that it’s not just the teacher that’s responsible for leaving the feedback and providing that extrinsic motivation for continued growth; it’s now on the shoulders of everyone in your learning community to help one another in a much more public and open way.
There is a requirement to read and watch both carefully but as I am taking this course a a college dropin I didn't feel the need to take much care
This is one of those videos/podcasts/blogposts that fire off lots of thoughts as you watch as it hits a lot of nails right on the head. I'll only lazily touch on a couple.
The video is worth watching by anyone interested in Web 2.0 so I am imbedding it here:
Sounds Good
First thing I notices was the rhythm and musicality of Gardner Campbell’s voice. I've been listen to Tom Wordward's remix A Bag of Gold « Bionic Teaching and used on Radio Edutalk a few times (that was a great idea). Gardner Campbell is a powerful, humorous speaker.
I guess the audience is familiar with the argument addressed, the tension between LMSs and the open web in US higher education. I an not but it sounds like the same sort of argument we have had in UK education between NLEs and WEB 2.0/google/open technologies, between systems set up for teaching and learning and more open and general software that can be bent to teaching and learning. Gardner Campbell defends the open with great humour and the marvellous bag of gold metaphor.
A Personal Cyberinfrastructure
In part Campbell is suggesting Students control their own domain, decide what sort of social software to install and manage it from themselves. As someone who has been doing this sort of thing for a while (here on this blog, personal wiki and a bunch of other stuff) I cn see where he is coming from and love the enthusiasm. I do wonder if it is for everybody. I am fairly relaxed about backing up, losing stuff and the like. I also host with someone who I know well and who has dug me out of a hole or two in my time.
If a student sets up, say, wordpress on their on domain they need to make sure they keep wordpress and any plugins up to date to avoid any wee hacking problems (FAQ My site was hacked « WordPress Codex) that can happen. You also might have to worry a bit about being fireballed or slashdotted if you ever write something the rest of the world want to read (More likely you will be hacked).
These are risks I am happy to take, given my host and the fact that I like playing with this stuff and don't mind the time spent. If you value your time it might be preferable to head over to wordpress.com. (NB I am just using WP as an example, this blog is not a wp one, it runs off pivotx).
This leads into the though that there would need to be a fair bit of understanding by teachers and time for development if this was extended back into primary & secondary education. There is a lot of positivity about blogging in schools at the moment, this recent wave crested by Mr. Mitchell at Heathfield CPS Blogs in England (see the Heathfield in the News section) and a ton of blog work by the Glow Scotland team. I hope there is an understanding of the amount of knowledge and skill that goes into a good school blogging site, the time and energy needed to keep it going (a lot of support by Creative Blogs. in Heathfield's case along with Mr Mitchell's obvious energy and dedication). The pile of abandoned one, two and three post blogs out there suggests it might not be.
43 Minutes In
There is a question from the audience suggesting that this could be started earlier, this goes right primary school territory
there is an authentic version of any concept that can be taught to any child who can read and write. You pitch it to the appropriate level of development and then you keep coming back to it spiralling upwards and upwards and until that magic handoff moment... 45:46
The last section is really powerful pushing the need for teachers to help pupils make the decisions and on how using these techs in school could flow into higher education.
narrating curating & sharing
What learners should be doing.
Danger Edupunk
I have to be careful or it is down the youtube rabbit hole of edupunk videos, mostly of Gardner Campbell debating with Jin Groom, beware the related video...
Standard YouTube License
Be nice if this was a creative commons video.
If I had a bit more time & skill I'd like to popcorn this it would be a great one to some twitter video mashup, perhaps a hashtag could add the tweets as timed comments...
For this assignment, combine audio effects into a soundscape to represent a place or an event. This assignment may not be suitable for all educational areas, so please feel free to create a soundscape for a scene from a favourite book or a poem, or come up with another idea.
Took me a while to figure out a text. Limited my searching to Freesound to save time. Downloaded a bunch of files and loaded them into audacity. Just sliced, changed the volume, and made some fades. This is a good fun assignment that I'd really like to try in a classroom. Would need plenty of time as I guess this is the best part of 3 hours play for me. A fair bit of this was being distracted on freesound.
Time Saving Attribution
The only tip I can offer is only tangentially linked to the task and mac only. To gather the links for attribution I open the links in a set of tabs in Safari and then run a wee AppleScript this puts a list of html links to each tab on my clipboard, paste into TextMate and wrap in li tags. (I use FastScripts for running applescripts).
As a huge Google fan, I am disappointed that you will be closing Picnik. It has been a life saver for my creativity, since I don’t know, nor want to learn, Photoshop, to do the amazing things I can do in Picnik. It was simple. User friendly. And education-friendly.
As a middle school teacher, it’s sad to see such a service disappear. I don’t believe there are any other photo editing websites that exist with the ease and the options that students can use, and get professional-looking results.
One of the 1,474 comments (by Evan, no link) on the announcement that picnik is closing and some of the features are being added to google plus.
All the comments I read were negative.
I found picnik useful a few years ago and build it into my flickr CC search toy. I've used if occasionally in schools and build an online 'glow' task on its back. As I've never paid a penny for it I can't really complain but it will be missed.
This is my personal blog, opinions are my own and not those of my employer (the blog is produced in my own time). My opinions are not set in stone, I frequently change my mind, make mistakes and contradict myself.
