Moblog # 1

Moblog # 1
Originally uploaded by janalon.

This is a test of mobloging. Picture taken with my Motorola Verizon cell phone. Sent to my Flickr account, which should be configured to post directly to my blog. No problem uploading the image to Flickr, but didn't transfer to the blog. I'll have to troubleshoot and tweak the options.

This image is of the local transfer terminal at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) . I liked how the glass blocks were lit by colored bars of light. Appears crisp on the cell phone, but close-up reveals the current limitations of the cell phone camera.

Tags: moblog, flickr, photo, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, DCA

Cyber Bullying & DOPA

I just submitted a 10-page/resource paper for graduate school. The professor assigned us to identify a contemporary problem plaguing the school district- an issue that was both real and immediate- research the current literature, and then propose a policy or course of action. Considering my interest in technology and education, my focus was on cyber bullying. This topic is both fresh and salient; however, it may soon be outdated thanks to a new piece of legislation.

The House of Representatives just passed Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA), which requires schools and libraries to ban chat rooms and social networking sites in order to qualify for funding to defray technology costs. Consider it “my way or the highway” legislation. Most schools already sites such as MySpace as part of the COPA bill that requires schools and libraries to install Web filters.

It has all the appeal of doing the right thing without follow-though thinking about potential implications. Educators fear the bill will be so loosely worded that many other forms of technology, such as blogs and product review sites, will end up banned as well. Schools and libraries are safe; we need to worry about those households where children’s computer activity goes unsupervised and uneducated by parents. My research paper points that issues of cyber bullying and sexual predators occur at home, not the schools.

You can follow the event as it unfolds on Will Richardson’s blog, Webblog-ed. Additionally you may want to check out former posts and comments: DOPA Passes… and DOPA Alert. This is a major news event that is getting through with little attention outside the technology and education community. Additionally you can also download a copy of my research and Cyber Bullying Policy Proposal through my own website.

Tags: DOPA, school policy, education, cyber bullying

Frenchtown Writing Retreat

This past weekend I took a writing retreat with the National Writing Project from Rutgers University. This was my time to get away and focus on my writing. The car was packed with only the bare essentials needed for survival: guitar, laptop, running gear, journals, a research project, and Ralph Keyes The Courage to Write. I mean really roughing it like a Hemmingway or Joseph Conrad. Six others would join the stay the weekend; just so happens that I was the only man. Never a complaint from me.

The National Inn was a scene out of some unwritten novel: restored colonial house, jute rugs, burlap lampshades, leather sofas, leopard printed pillows, wooden chests, old-world maps. Sagging windowpanes. Dim lighting. Walls thickly painted in earth tones. Perhaps it the Rathskellar, a basement tavern, that anointed the Inn as a retreat. Blocks away the Deleware, bloated from rain, dredging muddy waters out to sea.

Unfortunately I didn’t accomplish as much writing as planned; you never do. Rather this weekend was a time to get together with writers to talk about the craft. Edward Ramond, author and former high school teacher, joined us Friday evening for a poetry reading. Saturday morning Bill Connolly, of the Rowan NWP site, led a discussion about publication. Teachers as writers. Teachers as publishers. Inspiration enough.

The retreat was capped by a writing marathon. As my final piece, I wrote a reflection of the weekend past. Not so much poetry as snippets of conversation. Very much an “insider” piece. Each line is the to a thread of conversation woven through the entire weekend. Out of context it takes a whole new meaning. Consider it the punch line to a joke you didn’t hear.


Memories of Frenchtown

Muscleman the Catholic Priest,
Rathskeller late nites,
Define flirt – sexual or intellectual?
Never had a chance to say goodbye,
Oh well, see you in Nashville,
Bill’s valiant rescue of the garden-grill mice,
Rhonda and the road,
Are you wearing a bra?
Cala lillies look like a woman’s… SHH!
I am an ass-model; Assman,
Brokeback and his dancing dudes,
Laundromat literacy: inside the dryer,
Thank you,
Until we retreat again…
For now – let’s grill.

Tags: Rutgers, writing retreat, Frenchtown

Blake Kilgore, "September"

This week my 21st Century Literacy class delved into multimedia: podcasting, screencasting, videos, images, and the concept of multi-modality. For a long time I have been jealous of the Mac’s offerings for multimedia. Their programs are far advanced to what the PC has to offer in user friendly, cheap, and an integrated software package. Caroline and & are considering purchasing a Mac PowerBook Pro come this fall. In the meantime, I was relieved to learn about multimedia software offered for the PC.

This week I choose to get a feel for digital video. Windows offers MovieMaker, their answer to iMovie. Not having prior experience with iMovie, I can’t offer a side-by-side comparison. At best I would describe MovieMaker as an adaptation of PowerPoint software. It has a completely different look, but the feel for editing transitions resembles PowerPoint. MovieMaker has far more control over audio and video via drag and drop, and editing station offers you to view audio and video through what could best be described as a timeline.

The controls are blunt. I had difficulty syncopating music with scene edits. The program does not allow you to either edit on the fly or frame-by-frame. You would think that you could play the audio track, pause, and slide in your edit; however, every time your mouse clicks over the timeline, you readjust the blue bar that marks your spot on the timeline. This made precise edits nearly impossible. I had to estimate scene transitions by eye and ear, and adjust accordingly. It was easy to adjust by the second, but trying to get nanosecond precision was like tying your shoes wearing mittens. Get my point?

The other major drawback is limited controls. It felt like I cycled through many of the options and effects within a few minutes. Not a problem for me – I am the “less is more” type of guy. The limitations presented a challenge for me to think outside the box, and I came up with some creative shots by overlapping shots and use of fade in/out. Though, in my experience, those programs that limit options to the most essential are more user friendly for the amateur. Having previous experience with Audacity and PowerPoint, it took me only a few minutes to orient myself to MovieMaker’s menu system. There is no doubt that I could have my students up and running on this program within a minimal amount of time.

Check out my first MovieMaker project. I worked from an MP3 downloaded from my co-worker and friend, Blake Kilgore. He is a tremendous local singer songwriter – just listen to the power and timbre of his voice. Check him out at http://www.BlakeKilgore.com. Amazing. Not to mention I was pressed to download an MP3 that wouldn’t violate copyright laws. Listening to the song, I searched through Flickr for images that matched the music’s overall tone and imagery. The rest was arranging the images in a way to support the narrative. Keep in mind that the medium was arranging still slides in syncopation to the music (without one medium upstaging the other).

Blake Kilgore, "September"

Tags: multimedia, MovieMaker, Flickr, Blake Kilgore, music video

RSS Feed - Killer App?

This summer I enrolled in a class titled Current Topics in Reading Education: Teaching 21st Century Literacy Skills at Rutgers GSE. I am thrilled about this course offering; in fact, I would go as far to say that I've anticipated such classes for the past three years. Education is slowly dragging its feet into across the threshold (or what Bill Clinton labeled the "Bridge") to the 21st century. Here we are, sorry we're late!

Today we started to learn about RSS feeds. For the past year or so, I was vaguely aware of XML such as RSS and Atom. Required reading for this course - Will Richardson's book, "Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classroms".

Chapter 5 is labeled "RSS: The new Killer App for Educators". A rather bold statement! Richardson does an excellent job of defining an RSS, giving relevant examples, a detailed how-to, and offers suggestions for classroom usage. This chapter, as well as the entire book, is written from the perspective of an educator which is mirrored in his writing voice. The information is comprehensible for a wide audience, yet he doesn’t pull punches with tech talk.

For all that it is worth; I don’t know if I necessarily agree with his belief of RSS as a killer app for educators. Interestingly enough, many of his examples came from the world of news media. Most of his discussion relating to education was merely conjecture of what could be possible. At most, he offered an example how he utilizes RSS as a way to quickly read through his student’s blogs.

I can buy the idea of useful, but in my opinion, “killer app” is a bit of an overstatement. Then again, I haven’t initiated a student blogging project. I can settle on the idea that the idea of XML such as RSS and Atom remains to be realized.

Today I attempted to subscribe to my blog's feed though Bloglines, and came up empty handed - all items were well over a year old. You can check out the direct Atom.xml without an xml reader or aggregator at http://www.wordsareworlds.net/atom.xml. I reset the XML options through Blogger's dashboard, and my fingers are crossed that this post will arrive via a Blogline subscription to my own blog. So far - nothing.

Stupid Blogger doesn't allow the RSS brand of XML, and everything has to be accomplished through their version of Atom. Even worse, they pass users along to a site named FeedBurner (which passed me along to Bloglines). My faith in Google based products is somewhat shaken, especially since I can subscribe to an RSS of Google's own blog. Maybe this is something I just need to tinker with.

Tags: RSS, Atom, XML, aggregator, FeedBurner, Blogger, blogs, Will Richardson

Periodical Infidelity

It all started with a simple subscription to Runner’s World – the magazine that quenched my need to read about amateur runners, workout schedules, local races, historical moments in the sport, etc. Caroline ordered her Martha Stewart Living. We were a happy couple back then, monogamous in our magazine subscriptions. It all started out simple enough. Terrapin Productions – organizers for the Gathering of the Vibes festival – gave us a one-year subscription to Relix in thanks for our patronage. I was a one-magazine type of guy, but I suddenly found myself in a position that I hadn’t considered before: Caroline and I mutually sharing a relationship with this new magazine. This pairing suddenly became a three-some, and the glossy pages filled our lives.

Over the past few years I accumulated through attending the twin NWP / NCTE conventions. Apparently there is some use-it or loose-it clause in the fine print. We had to redeem the points. In my personal opinion, I had accumulated a fair amount of miles; however, like boardwalk skee ball, the top-tier prizes cost an exorbitant amount. We were left selecting from the catalogue equivalent of plastic spider rings and the cheap plastic menagerie that was made to simulate fine crystal. So, we went buck wild subscribing to various magazines: GQ, Vogue, Shape, Outside, Time. It was a sudden transformation, but this three-some had flourished into the periodical equivalent of a swinging lifestyle.

It was a wild time that quickly careened out of control. All of a sudden magazines arrived unannounced at our doorstop. Thanks to an address change or some such, NJEA Review and NEA Today started arriving at fairly regular intervals. I caught Caroline cheating on Martha Stewart Living with her cousin, Blueprint magazine. Somehow, we started to receive Rolling Stone magazine for free at the same time. Oddly enough it lists “Tweeter Waterfront” as part of our mailing address. Explain that one! The next month Guitar Player and AM Mag (audioMIDI.com’s magazine) showed up out of nowhere. I swear that my name and address is circulating third-party mailing lists like some phone number scribbled on the wall of a bathroom stall.

This reckless lifestyle swinging periodicals like there is no tomorrow has gone beyond the point of no return. The periodical harem has grown too large; I don’t think my wife and I can go back to a monogamous relationship with magazines. Call it periodical infidelity.

Tags: periodicals