There’s the whiff of conferences in the air right now. Monday starts the 3rd annual AUC (Apple University Consortium) Create World Conference at Griffith University in Brisbane. I’ll be working with a team of podcasters headed by Alan Carrington from the University of Adelaide. We will be gathering comment not just from presenters and performers,
Continue reading ...photo credit: miheco I’ve been intrigued for many years by the philosophy of Zen and its impact upon the aesthetics of traditional Japanese art … particularly Noh theatre, a topic I teach in a history course. I also love good design. So, I’ve been a fan of Garr Reynolds’ blog Presentation Zen for some time.
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When I was a kid, and it rolled around to back to school time, I used to love stocking up on stationery and getting my new textbooks. The trip to the newsagent (stationery supplier) in January was like Christmas all over again. I remember sniffing the new pages … exercise books provided an entirely different olfactory experience than did text books. I’d marvel over the contents … would all of this unfamiliar knowledge be all mine before the year was up? Then it came to the writing implement of choice for this new academic year … the colour of ink and the heft in the hand had to be right. I remember when those new fangled yellow Biro pens came in, but I loved the smell of Quink ink and the feel of a fountain-pen nib on paper, and still do. A whiff of Clag paste still jolts me back to days of grade school innocence. When I got to university, I experienced the same thrill browsing the shelves in the bookstore. By then it was agonising over the right folder or ‘student portfolio’ to capture lecture notes and to store class handouts in. Now I am all grown up, I still enjoy trawling the shelves at the local office supplies warehouse. But my, how they have grown too; is there no limit to the number and kind of pens these days? I walked the aisles of my local Officeworks a couple of days ago, checking out the latest in the office supplies department. There is more choice than ever, but what you only get a hint of … the tip of the iceberg as it were … is the relentless incursion of the digital world into the quiet backwaters of prepping for a class.
Continue reading ...Image by Colleen AF Venable via Flickr Depending on the content and the form of your podcast, you’ll want to think about the style of your delivery. I most often use podcasts to provide course material to students, and more often than not the audio track will be accompanied by slides to support what I
Continue reading ...Teaching actors how to find the right voice for a character is something I work at in my day job. Finding the voice for a character is something an actor works at whilst prepping a role. It’s not just about dialect and accent either, although developing these skills is important. Clear speech, acceptable pronunciation, phrasing
Continue reading ...You know when you are having a good time at a conference. The meal breaks sneak up on you quickly. Today was a cracker of a start to Create World 2007, even if the interactive playroom isn’t q-u-i-t-e available yet. Oh yes, it’s always the usually teeny techy glitches that spoil the party. Paul Draper’s
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Day 18 and some comment forensics
Image: thanks to Stephen Downes
Which of my posts have attracted the most comments, and which have kicked off the best conversations? I thought it a worthwhile exercise to track back over all of my posts to get a feel for this, not just those during the current 31 Day Comment Challenge. Whew!
OK … well I have to ‘fess up that I received very few comments at all during the first life of my blog. This blog Spinning a Learning Web started as something else altogether, and got a makeover during 2007 into its current focus on adventurous e-learning, and with a big nod to good design and Mac things.
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