Select-all is one of my favourite user controls. It allows me to quickly move, archive or delete large volumes of data quickly and easily. It’s also a means of defining my ownership over my content. In an increasingly undemocratic web of surveillance, abuse of power and corporate control, I believe users deserve improved control over their data.
All these cool new applications and services have one thing in common: They make it easy to get signed up and contributing, but not so easy to leave. There are also many documented cases of security bugs that have resulted in the publication of private user data. What’s that? You still don’t care? Read on.
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Continue reading ‘Select-all delete: Endangered species?’
Behold On The Danforth Magazine! Just launched yesterday!
The magazine above was created by my (recently graduated) students as the final project for my Magazine 2.0 course, which is the web component of the post-graduate Book and Magazine Publishing program at Centennial College’s Centre for Creative Communications.
While I cannot take credit for their hard work and inspirations, this magazine is everything I had envisioned when I developed this course (and advocated for the use of Wordpress as a CMS).
All of the content on the site was the product of their other courses in the Magazine and Publishing program. My course was simply a means of showcasing what they had learned via the creation of a dynamic web2.0 magazine website. I can only take credit for the provision of tools, philosophies and examples. The rest was up to them.
Here’s how we did it … Continue reading ‘Teaching web2.0: Creating an online magazine’
A couple of months ago I started experimenting with the use of Twitter and other social media in my wired college classrooms. Meanwhile, out in California, Howard Rheingold was exploring the question of wired attention spans with his UC Berkeley social media class. Rheingold turned these explorations into a series of compelling vlog posts called “Training Attention.”
All of this got me thinking about the nature of engagement in a wired world. It struck me that we’re in need of some form of scaffolding for particpatory and social media use. Specifically, the creation of some sort of attention scaffolding that transports the user beyond a state of random gratification and sensory overload.
These thoughts led to an inspiring conversation with fellow educator and webby Rabble.ca columnist Wayne Macphail. Macphail turned this dialogue into a Rabble column he called “May I halve your attention please?”
Continue reading ‘Attention rabble-rousing with Wayne Macphail’
About a month ago I created a short Twitter survey. The idea for this survey emerged out of discussions about using Twitter in learning environment and the varied responses I received from students and educators. This inspired me to capture and share these responses in hopes that we might, collectively, demystify this weird new moment of microcontent. I distributed the survey via my blog and Twitter network and solicited responses for two weeks.
Download it here: Twitter Survey [PDF]
Of all of the questions I asked, I was most interested in knowing HOW we can use Twitter for productive ends. Read on (below)
Continue reading ‘My Twitter survey: results’
I just returned from another wonderful Magazines Canada Web Weekend event where I presented my talk “Magazines2.0: User is King” to a dynamic and engaged group of Mags Canada member publications. Find out more about my presentation below …
Continue reading ‘Web Weekend Vancouver’
The many-to-many conversation model of Seesmic.
This weekend, I spent some more time exploring the content at YLive and Seesmic. While YLive allows for the immediacy of live streaming, it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of noise to signal. Seesmic, on the other is rich in maturity, civility and kindness - all qualities that build trust and community (though this could change when alpha goes more public). I could write more about the pros and cons of each but what interests me more is this: what makes for a meaningful broadcast?
I spent a bit of time meditating on this and have come up with a few strategies of my own. Read on …
Continue reading ‘How not to be a blowhard: Best practices for lifecasting’
Are you using Twitter? What do you think of it?
Do you have any ideas … about how Twitter might be used - for education, media, publishing, personal use, work, study, etc?
Having tried it in my own classroom, I’m especially interested in hearing from students, educational professionals/teachers and content producers (citizen or professional):
This weekend, I tried out Seesmic and YLive! with my brand new Microsoft Life cam (nothing fancy but it works - and it’s the best they had at The Source). Some are calling this “life streaming” (AKA streaming chat).
Continue reading ‘YLive! … Seesmic: I can has user controls?’
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