Bill: Online and E-Learning

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 02:44:55 GMT

One year worth of images give some amazing videos.

One year in 40 seconds from Eirik Solheim on Vimeo.

So far I’ve made two videos of the images I describe in this article. The one here at the top and another two minutes version. Read on to learn how I did this, to see the other video and to download the videos and images in high quality. And if you want to watch this video here at the top in HD quality you have to click through to Vimeo.

The story

Back in 2005 I did an experiment shooting images out of my window for one year. It turned out pretty cool and in the end of 2007 I decided to do the same. But in much better quality.

So I started shooting images with my Canon 400D. From the same spot each time, but not through my window. I found a spot outside that gave more or less the same framing each time I placed my camera. So, I went out on our balcony snapping some images at pretty irregular intervals all through 2008 .

Each time I snapped the following images:

3 exposures @10mm (Canon EF-S 10-22 F3.5-4.5 USM)
3 exposures @17mm (Canon EF-S 17-55 f2.8 IS USM)
3 exposures @55mm (Canon EF-S 17-55 f2.8 IS USM)

All images shot in RAW. The three exposures where: normal, +2 EV and -2 EV.

In addition to the images I decided to record some audio at the same place. Using my Canon S2 IS and my Canon HF10 I recorded simple background sounds trough 2008 as well. Not with exact connections to each image. More with a focus on getting audio from winter, spring, summer and autumn.

All together giving me a pretty decent range of material to put together some experiments.

Then what? The videos…

Link to this video in HD on YouTube.

At the top of this article you find a 40 second version that show one year. Using the 10mm wide angle images. Right above you find a two minute version made from the 55mm zoomed in images.

First I used Photomatix to make HDR images of the ones I decided to use. Mostly because the HDR effect makes the images flat so that the difference in light and shadows won’t disturb the transitions in my video.

Then I used Photoshop to align all the images. Placing the camera manually at the same spot each time won’t give the exact same spot. So I needed some fine adjustment. Photoshop does this. Here’s how:

First load the images you have chosen into layers by using “File->Scripts->Load files into stack“

When you have found all your files make sure to check “Attempt to automatically align…“

Give your computer huge amounts of time and get back when it has finished. Now Photoshop has adjusted all the images and put them on separate layers in one file. The next thing you have to do is to crop the image. Because of the adjustments the images are not the exact same size. A crop will do the trick.

When the computer is done cropping you export the layers to files. “File->Scripts->Export Layers to files“

Now you have a folder with a bunch of images with the same framing. I decided to do simple dissolves between them.

And ended up with a project in Final Cut Express that looked like the image above. I didn’t want one dissolve at a time. I wanted to make some kind of flow where one dissolve is taken over by the new one before it is finished. As you can see from the timeline my dissolves overlap.

The free downloads

First of all: please comment here or contact me if you use the images. I’ll link to all cool projects made from these files!

All the images are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license. In other words: Use them non commercially as long as you give me credit and as long as you share the work you do under the same license.

For commercial use please contact me. I have all the images in the original 10 megapixel RAW files.

And where are the files?

Images:
10mm wide angle aligned HDR images in this flickr set.
All the images from that Flickr set in a ZIP file.
55mm zoomed in aligned HDR images in this flickr set.
All the images from that Flickr set in a ZIP file.

Audio:
The audio as WAV in a ZIP file

Video:
40 second movie, 8 mbit/s H264, 1280×720 25p
Two minutes movie, 8 mbit/s H264, 1280×720 25p

But I know what I’m doing and want the full resolution RAW files to make something really cool!

Please comment here or contact me and I’ll provide you with what you want. RAW files, video footage, more audio from the same spot etc…

Whats’s next?

Eh. Well. I just upgraded my camera to a Canon 5D Mark II. Giving me a possibility of getting even higher quality footage from this nice view of some trees… Guess I’ll snap some images on my balcony through 2009 as well.

[eirikso.com]

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 13:08:35 GMT

Networked Learning: Why Not?.

So there seems to be a little string of really good blog posts that are laying out some definite re-vision of what schools can look like. This one, by Bill Farren, fits nicely with those Mark Pesce posts that I’ve been drifting in and out of here and here. But with Bill’s post the graphics are almost too good for description. How’s this for a visual on networked learning?

And I just love this description:

Opening up the institution may seem like a counter-intuitive way of protecting it, but in an era where tremendous value is being created by informal and self-organized groups, sharing becomes the simplest and most powerful way of connecting with external learning opportunities. Why limit students to one teacher when a large number of them exist outside the institution? Why limit students to a truncated classroom conversation when a much larger one is taking place all over the world? Why not give students real-world opportunities to learn how to manage and benefit from networked sources?¬[sgl dagger] Institutions that are opening up are betting that the benefits obtained by sharing their resources will outweigh the expenses incurred in their creation. These institutions understand that larger and richer sources of knowledge and wisdom are to be found outside their walls. They understand that allowing students to access these sources, sharing their own, and helping students learn how to manage and understand all of it, will add value to what it is that they do as institutions.

Again, this is higher ed context more than K-12, but I think there is much to think about here… Has me wondering what, realistically, we can expect from schools not just in terms of opening up their eyes to confront what is in front of them but then re-envisioning themselves accordingly. Funny, but as I read more and more of this, I grow increasingly excited and increasingly skeptical all at once.

[Weblogg-ed]

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 07:36:44 GMT

Edusim. Edusim is a free opensource 3D virtual world specifically for use with interactive whiteboards. Edusim is a 3D virtual environment that allows direct haptic manipulation of the 3D virtual learning objects directly from the interactive whiteboard surface. [edna]

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 22:33:19 GMT

The Learning Federation and the Victorian Department of Education and Training trial of online curriculum content with Indigenous students: video clips. These video clips show three Koorie educators and some of the classroom teachers in the trial schools in the Gippsland region of Victoria talking about their use and experience of The Learning Federation digital online curriculum content with students. Features: Vera Harrold, Terry Marks and Zak Haddock. [edna recently added]

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 21:56:57 GMT

eLearning case study - Anderson Creek Primary School. This elearning case study focuses on the experiences of the staff and students of Anderson Creek PS as they have sought to develop a curriculum that integrates the use of ICT in the classroom. This school was selected as centre of ICT expertise and innovation and to support whole school as part of the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development's Creating e-Learning Leaders (CELL) program. [edna recently added]

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:18:33 GMT

“School as Node”.

I’ve had George Siemens’ “Pots, Kettles, and other small appliances of like appearance” post open in my tabs for what, three weeks now, and it’s been percolating in my brain as I keep mousing across it from time to time, rereading, rethinking. (As a side note, that’s an interesting little shift in my practice that the advent of tabbed browsing and sessions management in Firefox has brought, isn’t it?) George writes:

We are at a point of real change in education (k-12, university, even corporate training). We (the edublog community) still carry the baton of change, but if we are unable to conceive a broader vision of systemic change, we’ll find ourselves passing the baton to others.

So, that “conceive a broader vision of systemic change” line brought me back (once again) to the shift I think we’ve been trying to make in this conversation. The one that moves from being about tools and “flatness” to one that begins to really think about and, more importantly, articulate school models and systems in different ways. And even in that discussion, there seems to be two natural camps evolving, those who say reform is next to impossible without totally blowing out the model, and those who feel that we already have some inroads to reform within the current structures, that there are already progressive school models that might begin to point the way. I struggle to find my own way here, for a variety of reasons. I admit that I have little contextual knowledge of this whole debate to bring to the table. My understanding of progressive school reform movements is thin at best, and I’m in catch-up mode. Yet I have two children in a system (not just local) that is badly in need of reform in light of what’s coming. Blowing up the model will not work for them (unless we decide to remove them from the system) and, frankly, I don’t think there will be a critical mass of folks willing to do this to the system for decades to come. Yet I am equally negative on the prospects that schools can meaningfully change in some sort of timely way without starting over. As a good friend of mine who is planning to leave education after 15 years said recently, “I have no hope that the educational system as we know it will appreciably change in my lifetime.” He’s in his 30s, btw.

Look, I’m a writer. I list to my right. I think in metaphor. So when George says we need a broader vision of systemic change, my mind runs to find words that might begin to piece that vision together in my own brain that might make sense. And as I’ve been mulling over all of this, of how to best begin to perhaps reframe the way I think and talk about schools that might allow me to think and talk about a “broader vision” of schools, my brain keeps coming back to something that I heard Tom Carroll of NCTAF say last month at that Institute of the Future seminar I was at. And I’m not sure he even remembers that he said it because it was just a few words in a much longer response about the future of teaching, but in the middle of that response he said “…school as node…”

I wrote that down.

I think for most people, school is still seen as the (THE?) place where kids go to learn. I know that’s the way it was for me. Yeah, there was a lot of informal learning that took place on the playground, on Main Street, in the back of cars, etc. But the “real” learning, the important stuff happened at school. It was the center of learning in my life, though I never called it that, per se. But I know that’s how my mom saw it. You went to school to learn because that’s where the knowledge was. And if the teachers at the school were good, they helped you understand why that knowledge was important. And that “vision” worked pretty well for a lot of years. It was pretty easy and consistent.

Problem now is, it’s not working any longer. School isn’t the only place where the knowledge is. Knowledge is everywhere. You don’t have to go to school to get it. And now, because knowledge isn’t stuck to a time and a place any longer, knowledge is contextual. It’s not one size fits all. The whole idea that 30 kids in a classroom need to learn the same stuff at the same pace at the same time just makes no sense any longer. In this environment, we can’t keep thinking of schools as the center of knowledge and learning. Instead, we have to start thinking of schools as a part of a much richer tapestry of an individual’s learning and education.

As a node.

Thinking seriously about schools as nodes in larger more expansive networks of personal learning changes the concept of what schools are for. It doesn’t diminish their role, but it does reframe it, and I think it places the emphasis where it more appropriately belongs these days: helping students create, edit, and participate in their own networks of learning. (What a concept.) What if we started seeing schools as the places where our students learn how to learn, where, when they are younger, the school may be at the center, but when they leave us, they have built a vast, effective network of learning of their own in which school and schooling is simply one node? Where we’ve helped them learn how to nurture and sustain those networks to serve them over the long term? Where we’ve shown them how to leverage those connections in safe, ethical and effective ways? Our roles as educators and systems would no doubt shift away from content delivery toward modeling and supporting each learner’s unique journey. And it would challenge us to rethink the ways in which we assess what our students have learned. But that would be crucial and important work, work that some semblance of traditional school structures might actually do pretty well.

But, as Hugh’s great, great drawing suggests, we’d have a lot of getting over ourselves to do for that to happen.

So anyway, just some thin early Thursday morning thinking thrown out for comment, pushback, hole-poking, name-calling, whatever from a node in the network… There is much, much more to consider here, but it is a reframing and some language that at this moment makes some sense to me at least.

(Just as an aside, after thinking about this for a while, I started imagining how school would look as just “a node” in my learning practice right now. As in following “school” on Twitter, or reading the “school” feed in my aggregator, or adding “school” as a friend on Facebook. All of those seem pretty bizarre at first blush, which either means this whole line of thinking is equally bizarre or it speaks to how inelegantly school currently fits into the personal learning network that I’m already a part of.)

Technorati Tags: networks, learning, education, schools, teaching, George_Siemens, connectivism, Hugh_McLeod, school_reform

Listen to this podcast [Weblogg-ed]

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 11:19:31 GMT

Virtual staffroom: conversations with leading teachers about technology in the classroom. Virtual Staffroom is run as a community podcasting project by Chris Betcher. The site provides educators of young people with the opportunity to engage in conversation and dialogue which explores the impacts that new technologies will have on classrooms. By providing a communication channel for leading teachers to voice their ideas about 21st century classrooms, it hopes to enable others to tap into that collective wisdom and make the classrooms of tomorrow the best possible experiences for our students. [edna recently added]

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 22:52:44 GMT

Laptop Programmes under the Microscope. Tiburon middle school puts a laptop on every pupil's lap -- teachers and students give the idea both passing and failing grades.

Del Mar Middle School in Tiburon is finding itself in the front row of a debate about the use of technology in the classroom. Two years ago, the well-funded public school became the first in the Bay Area to give a take-home laptop to each of its 335 students. Although Del Mar educators acknowledge that laptops have led to inappropriate classroom use by students -- playing games like Tetris and e-mailing buddies can be too much for a wired tween to resist -- the program, they say, has led to a positive shift in classroom dynamics. Teachers are less likely to lecture at students and more likely to assign them to do their own research, resulting in more hands-on learning. But a study in March by the U.S. Department of Education found no demonstrable link between educational software and higher test scores, putting laptop advocates on the defensive. A stream of news articles focused on school districts in New York and Florida that dumped laptop programs, citing high costs, misuse by students and the unfavorable results raised in the federal study.

[Source: SFGate.com] [Central Ranges LLEN CEO Library]

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 10:49:15 GMT

Australia's audiovisual heritage online. Australia's audiovisual heritage is available for free via the internet following the launch of the Australian Film Commission's groundbreaking digital resource, australianscreen online, with a focus on creating a relevant and engaging tool for educators around the country. This $2.4m initiative offers unparalleled access to a vast collection of excerpts of Australian feature films, television drama, documentaries, newsreels and other historical material gathered from the National Film and Sound Archive, the National Archives of Australia, the ABC, SBS and AIATSIS (Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies) as well as from Australia's independent production sector. australianscreen online has been developed in partnership with the Curriculum Corporation, through the Le@rning Federation. Students and teachers can study various audiovisual excerpts, supported with teachers' notes written specifically by the Curriculum Corporation. Australian Film Commission, 18 July 2007. [edna education news]

Mon, 21 May 2007 02:12:36 GMT

NZ schools in line for anytime, anyplace online education. Telecom New Zealand has added enhanced capability to the SchoolZone package it supplies to over a thousand New Zealand schools. SchoolZone is a web-based personalised learning platform that gives students access to all their tools in one place: web access, email, lesson plans and school intranet, allowing teachers, students and administrators to share online classroom and learning information. Teachers can provide students with resources and information as well as collaborative tools that enrich and augment classroom activities, all of which are accessible by students anytime, anywhere. For instance, students can access handouts, participate in threaded discussions and submit work online, while teachers can see which students have accessed trackable resources, comment back to students in collaborative journals and add resources that update immediately for the students. Editure, Media Release, 16 May 2007. [edna education news]

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 09:40:43 GMT

E-learning within the building and construction and allied trades. This report results from a qualitative study commissioned by the Research and Policy Advice Project of the Australian Flexible Learning Framework. It examines e-learning in the building and construction and allied trades areas, and includes case studies of e-learning. [Recent Items]

Wed, 14 Mar 2007 21:49:35 GMT

World ocean forum online event. On February 27-28th, 2007, The World Ocean Observatory presents a unique opportunity for secondary students to participate in a global online webcast exploring the issue of High Seas Fisheries. Attendees of this 45 minute event will participate in real time in an interactive presentation and discussion with leading world experts. [School Education Headlines] [Central Ranges LLEN CEO Library]

Thu, 05 Oct 2006 06:35:28 GMT

Google launches literacy portal. Search engine Google has launched a portal to connect literacy organisations around the world. The Literacy Project enables teachers, organisations, and those interested in literacy to use the internet to search for and share literacy information. BBC News, 4 October 2006 [Recent Items]

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 05:33:16 GMT

AARNet3 has potential to revolutionise education and research. AARNet3, the specialist optic fibre network will change fundamentally the way Australian scientists and researchers participate in global research initiatives and will vastly expand our horizons for delivering innovative education programs and content. AARNet3 will provide leading-edge connections between researchers and educators at CSIRO, all Australian universities and most campuses, including those in regional locations such as Dubbo in NSW and Hervey Bay in Queensland. It also provides access to researchers and educators in observatories, teaching hospitals, cultural institutions and state and federal government research centres. More information: www.dest.gov.au/research/aren and www.aarnet.com.au 14 September 2006 [EdNA Home Page Headlines]

Thu, 07 Sep 2006 00:52:49 GMT

The Teen and Expert Brain.....

The August-September edition of Scientific American Mind magazine has an intriguing report on the TEEN BRAIN by Leslie Sabbagh.

Understanding the capabilities and limitations of the brain at different developmental stages is crucial for education and psychological assessment. Ironically, although the teenage years are widely recognized as a period of tremendous growth and change, the mental capabilities of teens have been less studied than those of children or adults.

As more work is completed, it is becoming apparent that society should not be fooled into thinking that a teen has the mental prowess of an adult just because he or she looks and, most of the time, behaves like one. Brain processes that support cognitive control of behavior are not yet mature. Add stressors to the mix—like a sudden highway jam—and a teen can be an accident waiting to happen.

When teenagers perform certain tasks, their prefrontal cortex, which handles decision making, is working much harder
than the same region in adults facing the same circumstances. The teen brain also makes less use of other regions that could help out. Under challenging conditions, adolescents may assess
and react less efficiently than adults.

[Source: Scientific American Mind]

Also, the August edition of Scientific American suggests studies of the mental processes of chess grandmasters have revealed clues to how people become experts in other fields.

The article suggests EFFORTFUL STUDY is the key to achieving success in chess, classical music, soccer and many other fields. New research has indicated that motivation is a more important factor than innate ability.

Scientific American: The Expert Mind [ PSYCHOLOGY AND BRAIN SCIENCE ]