Fun group project - one idea

I am a fan of "where the hell is matt" videos. I can't remember when I saw the first one, but it was before he has sponsorship.

I saw an interview with Diane Sawyer a few weeks ago about this. Lisa Lavie collected videos from singers all over the world and made a video for Youtube of We Are the World. It is really pretty amazing. Some people are in recording studios, while others are singing in their bathrooms with their iPods. Talk about using web 2.0 to collaborate. This is not just putting a presnetation together, but blending voices and people. Of course someone had to put the pieces together into one video, but the concept behind it was great. Lisa just thought the song shouldn't belong just to the "famous" singers, but it should belong to everyone. She doesn't really explain how she got everyone invloved, but the end result is great.

While I am not suggesting we all sing, we could easily piece together something like this. Be it a lipsync as DI has suggested, reading a short story, or something more Wesch-like. I am not so great with coming up with the idea part, but am open to suggestions.

I am still looking for some other videos, but not really sure what to search for. I will post more ideas as I come across them.

Rehearsals continue

So our cast has changed a few times over the last week. The kid I mentioned in the previous blog who is the protagonist of the show, has dropped out. While he doesn't mind having his story told, he just can't be the one to tell it right now. He was really having a struggle with this decision, he didn't want to let everyone down by not performing. The group was really great with the support they gave him and he will come to the performance.

We also had another young girl drop out because her mother felt she should be getting something from participating. So we have had to do some last minute recasting by calling friends to see who is available.

On Sunday we actually tried running the entire show. The first half was really pretty good, most everyone knows their lines and their blocking (stage movement). But we hit about mid script and it all kind of fell apart. We aren't too suprised, but the cast is a bit worried. At last night's rehearsal someone actually asked me if I thought we were going to be able to pull this off. I said I really thought we could. The great thing about this story is no one knows it, so if someone messes up the audience won't know. The words and the people saying them are powerful. The cast is very supportive of each other and it is funny to see how people know other people's lines and help cue them when someone gets lost.

Kathy, the director, asked me if I was enjoying the process since it is so different from working in the professional settings I am used to. I told her it was great. While I wish there were more structure, we can never seem to start on time, the cast is so excited about the project it makes all the difference. Professional actors are often excited about a role, but not to the extent that this group is. They are personally invested, even those that were just brought in to the group. It isn't that they want to create theatre that is Broadway worthy, they want to tell an important story so that it is heard.

I really think this is something I would love to continue doing. I get to choose the shows I would like to be involved with because they mean something to me. In past I worked on whatever shows were chosen for the season. I think I could return to enjoying stage managing for groups that have passion to present things that could mean more than just getting butts in seats and making money. (not to say all comercial theatre is just about making money, it just plays a bigger role)

Shameless plug: The show performs for two nights, April 9th and 10th at The Arts Center in Carrboro. If you are in the area, please come.

Setting the stage

So I began searching for meet up groups in my area to sign up for to complete our project. Last fall I was part of a women's group that I really liked but they started turning into the kind of group that only wanted to go clubbing in Raleigh and I just couldn't keep up with all of it and my schedule.

The first group I signed up for was a group that met at a local wine and art bar. I was really kind of excited about this since the place was about two blocks from here. A week later I found out that the wine bar was closing.

While searching groups, I did sign up with a group that puts you in contact with volunteer opportunities with not for profit groups. I thought this would be interesting and possibly be something I kept up with after this class. They don't meet up on a regular basis, but they do send out emails about things coming up. One of the email threads talked about a group called Hidden Voices. They were working on a staged reading and needed a stage manager. I thought this is something I could do.

So I responded to the email and got in touch with the founder of the group. Hidden Voices does all sorts of things here in the community. The project they are currently working on is Home is Not One Story. It tells stories of people who have been homeless or lived in various forms of non-traditional homes. Once I had all the information, I did meet with Lynden to basically have an interview, I did not bring my camera as I thought it was inappropriate to do at an interview.

Since meeting with her I have come to see how the theatre world is getting even smaller. The director for the project is a local actor that I worked with a few years ago. So, yes, I know one person on the project, I didn't know that going into it.

Rehearsals have started and I have made it to a few already. I was asked not to take pictures of the group right now as there are quite a few emotions being explored as we rehearse. The cast has a few high school students and other people from the area. The protagonist of the story is an 18 year old male who suffers from PTSD and is manic bipolar. He has had some really traumatic things happen in his life. He began suffering from terrible visions and nightmares at the age of 6. At 9 years old, his father remarried and his stepmother didn't want to have anything to do with him, so his father checked him into a motel and left him there on his own for around 6 months. He tries very hard to get through rehearsals, but I don't think he will stay with the project. I think it is too emotional for him, things are too fresh.

There is also a muslim woman who has divorced her husband. He currently has their 11 children in another country and tells her if she comes back and asks for forgiveness he will take her back and she can see the children again. She talks about how once they were married and she became muslim, things completely changed. He practiced polygamy and became extremely abusive, all in the name of being muslim.

It is a really intense project, but I am very excited to be a part of it. I will do my best to continue to blog about rehearsals and the project. I might not be able to get photos for a bit as I want to make sure everyone feels safe with me. I know I could get photos with the director, but since I already knew her I figured that shouldn't count.

Have couch will travel - maybe:)

So this week's new adventure was Couchsurfing. I had never heard of this site before, although I have heard of the concept. Several years ago I had looked into possibly house sitting/swapping to explore somewhere new, but the few sites out there seemed really sketchy.

At first I really wasn't sure what to expect. But I found making my profile was pretty easy. I like that you can share your couch or just offer to meet up with someone for drinks. You can also keep your identity fairly hidden but still give good information so as not to seem sketchy to others.

One thing I like about Couchsurfing over some sites like Facebook, is while you can become friends or contacts with anyone, you have to give some information about how you know the person and how well. It makes you think seriously about the contacts you make and how to present them as well as yourself to others. They appear to hold safety and security in high regards which is really nice. On many of the other sites, I don't always feel like they care about it.

While I now have several references from my classmates, I am finding myself wanting someone who really knows me write a great reference so people know they can trust me. I guess I need to get some of my friends to join or break out of my shell some to make some new contacts.

I did join three groups, one for North Carolina, one for the Raleigh/Durham area, and another called Theatre Wilderness. The first two seemed logical since it is where I live. The last one is because I think it would be cool to talk to theatre people outside of the US, or who have at least maybe explored theatre outside the US.

I have read several posts on random pages about people's experiences. I really think it is exciting that you can plan an entire vacation around people who could show you around. Yes, you can go through travel agencies and book tours, but you don't get all the little places that a local would know.

I like to travel, and in looking at several past vacations, I always seem to find someone I know who wants to show me around or tell me the cool places to check out. I am getting more internet savvy and feel pretty good about finding places to eat and such while visiting somewhere new. But Couchsurfing puts both of these worlds together. You get the options of asking people who have lived there or currently live there to not only suggest places, but meet up with you to show you around, or allow you to stay at there place.

While I am not sure I will take people up on staying with them right away, I am really excited to hopefully meet up with some new people. As my fiance and I start planning our honeymoon, I look forward to seeing if we can find people who would show us around wherever we go.

What color is the sky in your universe?

My nephew is 4 years old. He recently started pre-school. About two weeks prior to him beginning school, he told his mother he did not want to go to school because the bigger kids would beat him up and throw him out. We have no idea where this thought process came from. He watches a lot of cartoons, but nothing seemed to show anything like that. When asked why he thought that, he said he just knew it.

I know this isn't an example about an educational topic, but it does go to show that people, especially children, collect data and refer to it in the most interesting ways. It is our jobs as educators and even just as adults to help them know what to do with all the information they are presented with.

The first project I had this semester for my multimedia class was to read 5 different research articles and write about them. One article I found, Using Popular Films to Enhance Classroom Learning talked about a study using various historical facts and historical movies in learning. Of course, many of you know that Hollywood does tend to elaborate historical facts to make them more dramatic to the viewers. They get away with this by saying "this is based on a true story/incident" and it is left to the viewer to decipher truth from fiction. Disney is very good at elaborating, I won't even go into my opinion of Pocahontas and their version of Jamestown and the events surrounding.

Anyway, it is a hard road for educators these days. Not to say it was always easier 50 years ago, but I do think that many students come into the classrooms with so much other information from various sources, it is hard to realize you need to almost retrain them to learn the facts.

Watching this video made me see how easy it is to get facts and preconceived notions mixed up. Towards then end even I was a little confused about explaining the phases of the moon. It was obvious that when the teacher brought in the models to class that the students understood better. But some of the students had difficulty seeing the models and it was obvious that even after the demonstration Heather still didn't quite get all of the information. This is where I could see bringing in different tools, something that wasn't just presentational but more interactive. This might mean more initial research on the teacher's part to find the right tools, but hopefully it would create a better dialogue between the students, helping them to explain to one another under the instructor's guidance.

As the internet grows and so does media and other information sources, outside the classroom learning will also grow. As educators we cannot control what information students recieve when they are not in our "classroom" (real or virtual). We can do our best to make sure they have the most up to date information, continue to create dialogue with them and keep them interactive with the correct information. This means teachers cannot just look at the information in a text book and repeat it to their class. We need to be actively involved with our students and get them actively involved in the learning process by any and all means available.

You will notice I am doing my little part by adding a modle of the moon phases to my blog. Found it online and it doesn't explain much, but at least fun to check out.

SLED event

Last night I joined Morgan and Zaneta in SL to look around and then attend the SLED event Island Educator Social.

The first part of our evening was a bit of an adventure as we decided to explore some new places that we had never been too. Our first stop was a nice island doing some studies on bunnies. We next adventured to a place that seemed like an alley with some rather interesting advertising and a lot of cats roaming around. There were no other people there, and I surmised that it was a place that might get busier later in the evening, I couldn't come up with an explination for all of the cats (and probably don't want to). Next we went to Chilbo. A rather nice community with a learning center. I definitely plan to return and do some more exploring.

Next stop was Alice in Wonderland. This was set up like an amusement park. We looked around at several of the rides, I was followed by what I could guess was a high school student who suddenly disappeared when his mom entered his room. I learned some dance moves, and Morgan and I wished we could figure out how to video capture things in SL.

At 6pm SLT time we went over the the ISTE island to check out the social. I think we arrived after the larger group event had finished. We went down to the "newbie" area to find a camp fire set up with people sitting around chatting. It was really kind of neat, although really very quiet. We had been using audio to communicate, so it was a striking difference to move to chat via text.

We were welcomed right away. I found it a little difficult to follow all of the conversations since several people were chatting at once. It was hard to read what had been said before it left the screen. I met some very nice people who gave me names of places to explore.

It was fun to talk to other people who were more familiar with how to get around and share some ideas. I heard a lot of people talking about doing presentations for their students in SL and someone mentioned showing power point in SL. I didn't get a chance to ask how you do that, but plan to see what I can find out.

I did some wondering around the island and found a lot more things to explore and will definitely continue to visit. I do see that there are more ways to try to incorporate something like SL into a learning environment, but depending on the students you would need to make sure you created the right environment. After randomly visiting a few places, I could easily see how some students/parents could wonder what the value of SL could be without guidance.

At the moment, SL is not something I would use for our organization. I don't think the hospital is quite ready for something like this. They have only started seeing the value add of doing e-learning assessments for re-certifications and annual training that has to be done to keep us in good legal standing. We are slowly trying to show how blended learning is a good idea, but currently I am only part time assisting the LMS administrator, who is a department of one for an organization who has over 10,000 employees to train each year.

Embedding re-do

This week as I have been catching up on my homework as well as on everyone else's things, I have come see that I don't always follow directions well. I do seem to get the majority of assignments correct but at times, I either gloss over the details, or just plain forget what the assignment is really telling me to do.

In the process of embedding things, I did get everything into my CMS site, and I did blog on all of the tools I used, but I did not embed thing into my blog. So I am dedicating this blog to hopefully correcting this oversight. (by the way, thank you Maureen for pointing this out)

Youtube makes it very easy to link or embed videos. Each video has the codes for either options right next to them. I understand why so many people use Youtube as it is very user friendly, even those of us brand new to posting can upload a video and find favorites.

Here is a funny little video that has really got a following.

My sister directed this to me as something my fiance and I could do to let people know to save the date for our wedding. Needless to say we won't be doing something quite as dramatic.

I did create a really short slide show using flickr. Flickr makes it very easy to take any of your uploaded images and put them into slideshows. Once you have your pictures ready, in the upper right of your screen you have the option of "slideshow" or "share". When you click slide show the window changes and your slideshow begins. Again in the upper right you will see some options, one of which is share. Click this and you get two options, one is the code to link to your page, the other is the code to embed. Just copy and paste.

Now for audio, I started out using Chirbit, but found that you couldn't actually embed it into anything. You can create a link to it, but anyone who clicks the link must also join Chirbit to hear what you have linked to. I didn't think this was the most user friendly option. So after reading other people's blogs and posts, I checked out Woices. Woices says it is "location based audioguides". There are a lot of things posted here.

The above seems to be a school project. I don't know the urban

legend it is supposed to be based on, but I thought it was fun to see

how people are using this site.

When I first started trying to embed things, I was just copying and pasting

code right in the text area. I kept wondering why nothing was actually

showing up other than the actual text of the code. Well, then I realized I

should be going into the HTML and pasting the code in there. Low and

behold it worked. I found it was then best to preview what I had done to

make sure it worked because the object didn't always show up immediately.

So while I didn't quite do the assignment correctly in one step, I hope that I

have now included everything and it was fun looking things up to include.

Totally free images

So, I realize after posting about what type of license I would use, I was also supposed to find an image with no restrictions and post that in my blog. Boy, that is a challenge. It was kind of fun though. Now that I know a little bit more about copyright, creative commons, etc, I knew what to look for. Most times I have just looked at images and if I didn't see the copyright symbol I assumed I was ok. But that isn't always the case. Just because it isn't visible doesn't mean it doesn't apply.

Like Neil, I typed in lots of things hoping to find something relatively easily. I did check out the sight he suggested, deviantart.com. Pretty cool sight. I found plenty of things under creative commons, but had a tough time finding something completely free with no restrictions. So, I went to google and typed in "copyright free images". Of course a lot of things pop up, but I started looking and reading and found the above image. It came from a blog page that says"all images are of a high resolution and copyright free, so feel free to use them as you wish." It also refers you to biologybigbrother.com to see more images.

So, I have learned, while it might take a bit more effort to find things that are truly for the public by the public, it isn't as impossible as I thought, and I can still give someone credit for at least posting it.