TechIntersect

Late last year I wrote about reading “Human Connection and the New Media“ ©1973 edited by Barry N. Schwartz. It was fascinating to see a glimpse of what people at that time expected the future to be like.

The book is a compilation of essays about the “future” and how new media impacts the human experience. One of the best was by Buckminister Fuller, whom I first learned about in a Chad Davies physical science class as an undergraduate. Fuller writes:

Born utterly helpless, and gaining independent competence only slowly, youth’s reflexes are preconditioned to expect some older authority to be responsible for its welfare. Youth assumes that the political authority is a public parent. When dissatisfied, youth protests to the authorities assuming the authorities can, if they wish, make everything satisfactory. Often, the “authority” lacks such capability….

It’s a question of problem ownership

Hmm, an insight I had not before considered, but almost certainly true. Thirty-five years hence, nothing has changed with these youthful expectations. I have been watching with great interest the US presidential election of Barack Obama. People are excited and incredibly optimistic about everything he is going to fix. I predict a certain amount of disillusionment because some problems simply are not as solvable by political authority as they are by the person(s) closest to the problem.

Stephen Covey in “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” calls it the “Circle of Influence” Dave Ramsey simply says, “You fix you!”

In It’s Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy author Michael Abrashoff writes about his experience as a destroyer skipper who went against the traditional Navy hierarchical approach to decision making by empowering the sailors closest to a problem to solve that problem. It is an ingenious approach that makes a lot of sense but is a little scary to the leader who feels like they might be giving up control.

But as Jim Fay explains with his Love & Logic philosophy, control is at best an illusion. Fay says that control is a bit like love in that you only get it when you give some of it away. The notion of letting the owner of a problem solve the problem is a classic Love & Logic approach to teaching responsibility, yet how many times do we see authority figures using top-down management techniques that do not empower the owner of the problem to solve it for fear of “losing control”?

Hierarchies vs Flat Organizations

Much has been written recently about a “flattening” that is happening thanks in no small part to the popularity of Thomas Friedman’s “The World Is Flat:A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century“. Friedman discusses how technology is enabling participation in the global economy of anyone, anywhere at anytime.

Hierarchies tend to remove the leaders further from the people doing the work and solving the problems, leading to bureaucratic inefficiencies. With all of the improvements in communications technologies, I find it amazing that still today the number one problem most organizations face is a lackof communication.

One of the best books I have read about combating the tendency of buck passing and general lack of personal responsibility is “QBQ The Question Behind the Question” by John Miller. If it is an issue where you work and live, I highly recommend this read!

This clip is a good example of multi-track audio mixing. I wouldn’t have thought to screen capture the editing environment as it plays; pretty clever!

My digital media students will be doing this sort of editing with the free program Audacity. We have a new digital media degree, and this semester will be the first formal introduction to non-linear editing.

Tags: audio

One of the things I most enjoy is discovering relationships between art and technology, and one such relationship exists in Pointillism. Each year I do a Pointillism project with my students , with some pretty cool results as they discover the process by which a digital camera makes a photograph by recording thousands of tiny little dots of color.

I really think it is fascinating that Georges Seurat explored the possibilities of optical blending of color in his Pointillist paintings over a hundred years ago, and our most modern of technologies, the digital camera, uses a similar concept.

I will never forget standing in front of the “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” painting by Seurat at the Chicago Art Institute staring in amazement. It is so big, and powerful; it sucks you in. It is posted online, and they have a tool with which you can zoom in to have a closer look, but you really must see it in person to fully appreciate it.

I do my best to convey a sense of appreciation for the past while exploring technology in these Pixel Pointillism projects. When we make these pictures as a class, it is always fun to watch the students as the pieces come together and they attempt to identify who or what is in the picture.

Marilyn and Mt. Rushmore were drawn by hand with paper and pencil, while Elvis and Jack Nicholson were printed on a laser printer from a computer. All projects are composites, with multiple students contributing a piece of the work, not knowing what the end result would be. I think the paper and pencil ones are more distinctive and interesting because while each person has an individual style and interpretation of how the pixels should be drawn, when all of the parts are put together, it still works out nicely.

Tags: art, digital photography, Pointillism

Thanks to Dr. Alec Couros aka courosa on twitter, I just learned about the Life Magazine photo archive on Google.  World-famous Life photographer Gordon Parks is a special hero of mine, hailing from my home state of Kansas. I am eager to begin exploring his Life Magazine photography.

I expect I will spend hours browsing through the Life archive. It is definitely a keeper in my Delicious bookmarks.

I marked this day on my calendar a year ago because I didn’t want to let the occasion pass without pause and reflection. On November 12, 1987 I entered into the realm of King Neptune, in hopes of gaining the title of “Trusty Shellback”. For those unfamiliar, a “Trusty Shellback” is one who has crossed the equator aboard ship and successfully endured the acompanying ritual hazing.

(This cartoon by my friend and shipmate Eric Thibodeau sums up what was going on at the time. Check out his fascinating website if you have some time. His career and personal development are nothing short of amazing!)

Lengths of firehose were cut and fashioned into a “shilleleigh” with which the initiators could beat on “slimy polywogs” or sailors who hadn’t yet crossed the equator. In 1987 on my ship the USS Cochrane, the old-style intiation was still administered with a few concessions such as permitting knee protection to be worn by ‘wogs as they crawled around on the deck on hands and knees, but after it was all over, my backside was sore for days! A few years later, as Thibodeau points out, the captain of the USS Missouri wisely limited the initiation to non-physical abuse.

At the time, I remember feeling cheated because I had endured much more than what we were allowed to administer on my second Equator crossing. Looking back, that was just immaturity and our captain was showing great wisdom and leadership by re-writing the rules of the game.

If you think about what was going on at the time, personal camcorders were coming into widespread use. Although these were expressly forbidden during the initiation on the Missouri, our CO A.L. Kaiss knew that anything that happened under his command could wind up on CNN.

The tradition of the “crossing the line ceremony” is an old one, and at times the hazing certainly has gotten out hand. Participation was voluntary, although it was not without peer pressure and chastizement if you elected to sit out.

Perhaps this new world of information in which we live is forcing us to treat each other better. People who behave badly are often exposed on the Internet for the bullies that they are, although some relish the attention.

Handling the Bullies

I think it is important that we help kids understand how to deal with the world’s bullies. I have learned a lot on the subject from the Love and Logic institute. It has really helped me to teach my own kids how to handle teasing.

Last summer at Wakonse, in a room full of 200 people, I cracked up the room when I quipped a quote I picked up at a Love and Logic conference. The audience had just witnessed a tense role-playing exercise involving a stressful faculty interaction including tenure, race relations, and a big bad bully. I suggested that you can disarm a bully by answering crazy talk with crazy talk. Look them straight in the eye and say:

No thanks, I just had a banana!

The room erupted because it is a silly response to a silly situation. Sally Ogden has a great video about teaching kids how to handle the bullies in this way. If only I had known this one-liner, maybe I could’ve talked my way out of the initiation twenty years ago…. Naw, probably not

Usually, I take a long time to post videos after I record them. Sometimes I never post them. Today, I am testing the immediacy of Web 2.0. I am uploading videos from the party that is currently going on as I type this. If this works, you gotta love it! If it doesn’t, it’s because the YouTube is still processing. Check back in a bit.

Edit: Ok, the Flip Video advert at the end is a surprise. I used the Flip’s built in software, so I guess that’s what you get. I’m still playing. Here’s another video made entirely with Flip Camera software:

Tags: flipcamera, web2.0, YouTube

Last night I began to consume Don Tapscott’s new “Grown Up Digital” book with great interest. I was a big fan of “Growing Up Digital” when it was published around a decade ago. I was curious to learn what he has discovered since then.

After only a couple of chapters I can tell that this book will be a fantastic read, telling me much about my students who have reached adulthood completely immersed in digital technology. One thing I find interesting is my own kinship with the Net Generation, even though technically I’m not counted among them.

I was born somewhere between the end of the Baby Boom generation the beginning of Generation X, yet I identify with many key aspects of the current Net Generation. For example, Tapscott talks about the popularity of making mashups… selecting video and audio content created by others and repurposing it into something new. As a high school student in 1983, I remember doing this very thing, albeit with far simpler technology, mashing Bugs Bunny together with Judas Priest on our VCR.

I have always been a fan of recorded media, but what kids today have that I lacked was a global network through which I could share my creations.  I was also using slower, less flexible analog technologies. But I completely understand what is compelling about digital media, and why young people want to be involved with it.

Another thing I share in common with the Net Generation is an openness to diversity and people from other cultures and perspectives. I have to say that this comes less naturally to me than it does my younger counterparts. Having grown up in rural Kansas where the population was composed of nearly 100% Christian Caucasians, joining the Navy and traveling around the world did more to change my perspective than anything.

The current generation is more accepting of differences than any generation before it, and I think that is fantastic. This generation is also more skeptical, and this is no surprise to me. When digital technology allows John McCain to dance like Elvis, I can certainly understand where an attitude of healthy skepticism comes from.

One idea Tapscott mentioned that I found very interesting was the notion that the dynamic of the family is changing. Before this generation, parents were the authority on virtually everything in the household, and the children passively followed the lead of the parents. With the rise of the Net Generation, children are able to know things and be the authority on some aspects of family life; particularly those aspects dealing with technology.

This notion of shared authority also applies in the classroom. As a computer teacher, I have long understood that I will have students who know things about computing that I do not know, and I should be comfortable with sharing authority on the subject. Not every teacher is comfortable being in this postition, but for me it would be disingenuous to behave as though I have all of the answers and know everything my students know.

We live in truly amazing times. I am writing this in my living room easy chair, typing away on a wireless laptop, sharing my thoughts with anyone who is interested from potentially every corner of the Earth. What is even more amazing to me is that I am far from any city or population that could remotely be considered cosmopolitan, yet I regularly converse with people from all over the world. No wonder the current Net Generation is full of hope and optimism; they have been doing this stuff their entire lives!

Tags: millenials digitalmedia

This summer John McCain gave a speech in front of an unfortunate, and ugly green background, prompting Stephen Colbert to take advantage of the chroma-key properties a green background offers by putting video footage in the background. Colbert challenged his viewers to submit their own entries that would “Make John McCain interesting.”

These are two of the best I have seen so far.

You have to love the Web 2.0 creativity displayed here. This work is amazing. I think these are great examples of how far technology has advanced. Not too long ago, the tools needed to make videos like these were out of reach for everyone but Hollywood studios. Now, even teenagers can easily get their hands on these tools to share ideas with a global audience. Simply amazing!

Tags: mashup, web 2.0

Photo Credit: Flickr user: Kristinb

I had the pleasure of hearing Frank Warren of the PostSecret project speak at South By Southwest last spring. I was somewhat familiar with PostSecret, but hadn’t really paid close attention before then. Something Frank said at the conference really resonated with me. Frank said, “Everyone has a secret that would break your heart if you knew what it was.” So true. I know I have heart-breaking secrets that people don’t know about. (No, I don’t plan to air them here.)

If you are unfamiliar with Postsecret, it is now a wildly popular worldwide phenomenon that began as an art project in Washington DC. People were invited to share secrets in an artistic expression on postcards that were distributed around the city. Share they did, and the idea spread like wildfire. The results can be found at http://postsecret.blogspot.com where a new set of secrets can be read each Sunday.

Some are surprised at the popularity of Postsecret, but I’m not. Catholics have long known it is good for the spirit to unburden secrets to another human being with the sacrament of reconciliation (confession). It really provides a psychological boost to those holding in deep, dark secrets. Unfortunately, Catholic clergy too often play the guilt card with regard to this form of secret sharing, rather than playing up its positive benefits.

Of course private confession doesn’t appeal to people’s voyeuristic tendencies the way secret postcards displayed on the world wide web do. There’s something a bit satisfying about other people’s secrets. I should also mention that the PostSecret website really isn’t appropriate for children, since mature themes are often addressed. However there is often some very creative and inventive artwork to be found on the website. PostSecret is a fine example of working at the intersection of technology and art. If you haven’t been a regular follower and want to see what you’ve missed, there are several printed books of PostSecret postcards available.

One of my all-time favorite authors is Og Mandino. His best known work is “The Greatest Salesman in the World” but he wrote many other wonderful books in his lifetime. In one of them, I think it was “A Better Way to Live,” Mr. Mandino wrote that we should treat everyone we meet as if we secretly know that today will be their last day of life. What wonderful advice to follow. If everyone really has a heart-breaking secret they carry around as Frank Warren says, how much nicer would we be if we keep Og Mandino’s advice in mind? After all, everyone really does have a last day to live, and we never know when that day will be, so aren’t we better off just treating everyone like today might be the day?

Wampserver is cool program i discovered this summer when i needed to install an Apache webserver with PHP and a MySQL database on my Windows XP based laptop. WAMP stands for Windows Apache MySQl PHP.

In the networking class I teach, one of the labs we always do is to download and install Apache. This year, I might have them use WampServer instead because it is just as simple to download and install, and you get so much more than basic Apache. (Apache is the popular free web server program that will run on just about any computing platform you can think of. Whether it is Linux, Windows , Macintosh or whatever, Apache will probably run on it. You can download a simple Apache webserver here.)

Webservers

When you download a web page from the web using your browser, the web server is the machine running the server software that your browser communicates with. For example, your browser is currently talking with the webserver located at edublogs.org. Students who want to learn web development and web programming skills often find it is easier to learn with a copy of the web serving software installed locally, rather than on some machine out on the Internet. This allows students to develop web pages and view them through an actual web server without needing to have online hosting. You can even develop entire websites without internet access, which is why I wanted it on my laptop. I was travelling without internet access but still wanted to work on my web project.

PHP and MySQL

If you are only making static webpages without dynamic content, you don’t really need a locally installed webserver, you can just view your HTML in a browser. However, if you wish to write server-side PHP scripts with MySQL database connectivity, you need access to a server running these technologies. You can find hosting that will provide this, usually for a fee, but if you are running Windows and just learning, WampServer is the way to go. (I see there’s a similar tool called MAMP for Macintosh, but I haven’t tried that one yet.) If you are a Linux fan, you will probably find that LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL & PHP) is the way to go, but that is another future post all by itself.

PHP is a simple programming/scripting language that allows web pages to have dynamic, always changing content. A widget or plugin on a blog is an example of dynamic content on a web page. These are automatically updated with external data, which is not possible on a static, unchanging HTML page.

MySQL is a relational database management program. It works particularly well with the Apache webserver and is often used for storing database data that will be used by websites. MS Access is an example of a commercial database that many people are familiar with, and was one of the first databases that I ever worked with. What I learned with Access translated well to what I needed to know to use MySQL.

The best part about all of these tools is that they are free! Open source software is very powerful, and available to even the smallest of budgets. Tutorials for using these technologies are all over the internet. Download a copy of WAMP or MAMP and get started learning some great web development technologies!