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A Piece of Mind: The Dangers of Distracted Driving
10 hours ago
unFacebooked
I followed a tweet from Tim O'Reilly (Web 2.0 guru) to Danny Sullivan's post here: http://daggle.com/facebooks-microsoft-moment-1556
Danny breaks down all of the exhausting and utterly strange changes, unchanges and rechanges to Facebook's privacy settings in the last few days.
In 2005 when I joined the Facebook, it was a college only space. Designed to replicate the Harvard Face Book, a sort of living breathing yearbook of all your classmates.
In 2006 the network changed dramatically, allowing anyone and everyone with an email address to join the site. Which was fine until most recently Facebook's privacy settings have changed. Now anyone on the internet can see a lot more information than I really want to share.
Suddenly, the Facebook is more hassle than its worth. So..this is my second attempt, and probably not my last... but I have now, indefinitely left the Facebook.
Danny breaks down all of the exhausting and utterly strange changes, unchanges and rechanges to Facebook's privacy settings in the last few days.
Under the new regime, Facebook treats that information — along with your name, profile picture, current city, gender, networks, and the pages that you are a “fan” of — as “publicly available information” or “PAI.” Before, users were allowed to restrict access to much of that information. Now, however, those privacy options have been eliminated. For example, although you used to have the ability to prevent everyone but your friends from seeing your friends list, that old privacy setting — shown below — has now been removed completely from the privacy settings page.
In 2005 when I joined the Facebook, it was a college only space. Designed to replicate the Harvard Face Book, a sort of living breathing yearbook of all your classmates.
In 2006 the network changed dramatically, allowing anyone and everyone with an email address to join the site. Which was fine until most recently Facebook's privacy settings have changed. Now anyone on the internet can see a lot more information than I really want to share.
Suddenly, the Facebook is more hassle than its worth. So..this is my second attempt, and probably not my last... but I have now, indefinitely left the Facebook.
Ira Glass on Storytelling
It is really difficult for me to describe how I get to where I go on the web.
The best analogy I have comes from observing my father control the television as a child. At first blush, it seems almost random; channel after channel each for only a few seconds sometimes it seems we would watch seven programs at a time. After years and years of complaining, I am starting to see the bigger picture. When my father watches TV there are certain things he will almost certainly do: check the ESPN crawl, scan through the movie channels, scan through the news channels and then settle in on about two programs. The process repeats itself several times every half hour. Re-check scores, see where that classic movie is, get the latest news update and then settle in on two or three new programs (you can only fully watch one, but you need to have back-ups for commercial times).
That strategy works for someone who is entertained by the television. Things happen at a set schedule, and you are forced to make a decision about the programming you want to watch at any given moment within a very specific 20-70 channel parameter. (Tivo is an entirely different story).
At the end of a TV-surfing day you can recommend different programs to watch at different times and expect that a friend might catch the next episode so you can have a chat about it. But on the internet, time and content do not drive decisions. On the internet, it is all there all the time whenever you want it. You are only driven by your interestests and at the end of web-surfing day you have nothing really to show for it unless you share some links.
What the heck does this story have to do with storytelling? I'm not sure. What I do know is that the point of my story is to say, I am not really sure how I found my way to this series of videos about storytelling, but I felt like you needed something to make you interested in watching them.
Ira Glass on Storytelling:
I hope you enjoyed.
The best analogy I have comes from observing my father control the television as a child. At first blush, it seems almost random; channel after channel each for only a few seconds sometimes it seems we would watch seven programs at a time. After years and years of complaining, I am starting to see the bigger picture. When my father watches TV there are certain things he will almost certainly do: check the ESPN crawl, scan through the movie channels, scan through the news channels and then settle in on about two programs. The process repeats itself several times every half hour. Re-check scores, see where that classic movie is, get the latest news update and then settle in on two or three new programs (you can only fully watch one, but you need to have back-ups for commercial times).
That strategy works for someone who is entertained by the television. Things happen at a set schedule, and you are forced to make a decision about the programming you want to watch at any given moment within a very specific 20-70 channel parameter. (Tivo is an entirely different story).
At the end of a TV-surfing day you can recommend different programs to watch at different times and expect that a friend might catch the next episode so you can have a chat about it. But on the internet, time and content do not drive decisions. On the internet, it is all there all the time whenever you want it. You are only driven by your interestests and at the end of web-surfing day you have nothing really to show for it unless you share some links.
What the heck does this story have to do with storytelling? I'm not sure. What I do know is that the point of my story is to say, I am not really sure how I found my way to this series of videos about storytelling, but I felt like you needed something to make you interested in watching them.
Ira Glass on Storytelling:
I hope you enjoyed.
Will you speak Creative Commons with me?
In my high school French class one of the activities for every unit was to create and perform a skit/play using the words from the unit. In addition to performing the skit live in class we also always had the option to perform our skit through video. I always opted for video, and after three years of producing videos, I eventually became very skilled.
While my films were a hit in all of the French classes. They were nevercirculated beyond the classroom, because I almost always violated copyright in some way. Or maybe the teacher did not know what the copyright policies were or she was not up to speed on educational fair use. It was as if she and the media specialist and the administration chose to ignore the problem and pretend I was not using copyrighted material in my films, or that somehow we had a blanket fair use.
I am guided by this vision:
Imagine a digital archive of free to use, share and remix band, choir and orchestra concerts from the school, or the recordings from a talent show. Essentially I want to create my own in house archive for students to create now works from the past. Not to forget all the resources available on http://archive.org
To some extent, I am afraid that my unfulfilled dreams of being a great film producer are being projected onto my media program. On the other hand, I feel like we are at a critical juncture in the policies that we as a society develop for the production/creation and distribution of creative works. In the spirit of intellectual freedom, I will champion critical consciousness and conversations about intellectual property concerns in the school. Parlez vous Creative Commons avec moi?
While my films were a hit in all of the French classes. They were nevercirculated beyond the classroom, because I almost always violated copyright in some way. Or maybe the teacher did not know what the copyright policies were or she was not up to speed on educational fair use. It was as if she and the media specialist and the administration chose to ignore the problem and pretend I was not using copyrighted material in my films, or that somehow we had a blanket fair use.
Now, more than ever, the problem of fair-use and copyright protection in student productions cannot be ignored. When I was in high school from 1997-2000, I was working with two VCR's and occasionally I had access to a computer, but only to mix the sound. I had analog media on VHS or Hi-8 videotape.
Today's students have access to much more sophisticated and user friendly non-linear editing software applications. They also have an unprecedented amout of media in a digital format available at their fingertips. They can remix and mashup and use any type of media to create new works.
To the extent that we value these new forms (digital storytelling, mashups, zines and other such memes) of constructing meaning. We should be aware of fair-use, copyright and alternative versions of the strict copyright (and outdated) regime we live under. I have been overwhelmed by how difficult it is to track and follow all of these rules, and as a result I have not produced many videos since high school. I have created and collaborated on some fun stop-motion vids with my little brother in-law and I also have worked as a wedding videographer, but I have been
reatively blocked. For the purposes of this reflection, I will blame my creative wall on copyright.
First, he argues that the way today’s young people in societies like our owncome to know their world is “by tinkering with the expression the world gives them in just the way that we [of earlier generations] came to know the world when we tinkered with its words’. To this Lessig adds the claim that this new writing needs the same freedoms as did the writing of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuryies. To do it well, he says, to understand how it works, to teach it, to develop it and to practice it require freedoms that are currently outlawed.I can’t over turn traditional copyright, but in my media program I can advocate for creating multimedia works using resources in the creative commons, with share-alike attributes. Then those creations can be stored on my servers for future students to search and re-mix and re-appropriate and share again on a creative commons platform. This can extend beyond classroom creations and into extra-curricular activities.
I am guided by this vision:
Imagine a digital archive of free to use, share and remix band, choir and orchestra concerts from the school, or the recordings from a talent show. Essentially I want to create my own in house archive for students to create now works from the past. Not to forget all the resources available on http://archive.org
To some extent, I am afraid that my unfulfilled dreams of being a great film producer are being projected onto my media program. On the other hand, I feel like we are at a critical juncture in the policies that we as a society develop for the production/creation and distribution of creative works. In the spirit of intellectual freedom, I will champion critical consciousness and conversations about intellectual property concerns in the school. Parlez vous Creative Commons avec moi?
Doogie Howser, M.D.
Sorry if that last post was a little too Doogie Howser for you. Hope you are having a good week. Expect a post this week on conversation theory, connectivism, and participatory librarianship.
I can't mention Doogie without showing a clip:
Have a good week!
I can't mention Doogie without showing a clip:
Have a good week!
Thinking and Riding
I was riding my bike into school this morning and I thought about how fun it would be to travel back in time and tell myself that someday people from all over the world would be reading work that you published.
It seems that if I were to tell myself in 1989 or even 1999 I would have a worldwide readership in 2009, I would have thought that I was some kind of prolific writer and I had done something important or extravagant. I certainly would not have believed you.
I thought about how I could explain this improbable feat to my younger self....I am my own publisher. I share my thoughts on the world wide web. I have conversations with educators in Canada, China and Mexico. I do this all from the comfort of my living room...
In this one person production environment the walls that separated out the signal from the noise in traditional publishing are torn down. The elaborate systems that intervened on unbridled thought are gone and it is up to me alone to uphold that sacred storytelling contract between the reader and the writer.
As I parked my bike in my office and stared at my computer monitor and scurried the web for the next flashy new technology to share or my machinations on something I read, the pile of books to put on the shelves grew. I started to wonder if this blogging thing was really worth it, worldwide audience and everything.
Tonight as I reflected on my day I began to wonder why I ever thought this new media stuff was so important. With that malaise came a lot of other doubts and uncertainties about being in school (I really miss being in the classroom). Suddenly I recalled a dream from Thursday October 1st. ...
As I fall asleep tonight and my dreaming mind continues to unravel the details of this assignment, maybe I can remember that my waking life is resembling an elaborate dream from my past.
It seems that if I were to tell myself in 1989 or even 1999 I would have a worldwide readership in 2009, I would have thought that I was some kind of prolific writer and I had done something important or extravagant. I certainly would not have believed you.
I thought about how I could explain this improbable feat to my younger self....I am my own publisher. I share my thoughts on the world wide web. I have conversations with educators in Canada, China and Mexico. I do this all from the comfort of my living room...
In this one person production environment the walls that separated out the signal from the noise in traditional publishing are torn down. The elaborate systems that intervened on unbridled thought are gone and it is up to me alone to uphold that sacred storytelling contract between the reader and the writer.
As I parked my bike in my office and stared at my computer monitor and scurried the web for the next flashy new technology to share or my machinations on something I read, the pile of books to put on the shelves grew. I started to wonder if this blogging thing was really worth it, worldwide audience and everything.
Tonight as I reflected on my day I began to wonder why I ever thought this new media stuff was so important. With that malaise came a lot of other doubts and uncertainties about being in school (I really miss being in the classroom). Suddenly I recalled a dream from Thursday October 1st. ...
I was sitting in a middle school classroom lecturing my students on why social media is so exciting. They were all buzzing away on their computers and web enabled cell phones. Nobody was paying attention, they had this "out of it" sort of look on their laptop enlightened faces. I stepped out of the room for a moment to take a break, and to respond to a text message from a friend. When I walked back in the seats were filled with my former high school classmates. Most of them were asleep. I became furious and yelled at them, "Wake up, we have an assignment to complete."Are we the Dumbest Generation on Earth? Are the first generation of digital natives just asleep in learning's waiting room? Is graduate school frying my brain? I don't know.
As I fall asleep tonight and my dreaming mind continues to unravel the details of this assignment, maybe I can remember that my waking life is resembling an elaborate dream from my past.
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