Tag: sfu

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NV13 Northernvoice 2013 – some sketches

This past weekend was the 9th annual Northern Voice conference, June 14 – 15, 2013 which was being held at H. R. MacMillan Space Centre / Museum of Vancouver

http://instagram.com/p/ai9qZMJlzG/

(the above photo was added as a link in my post to the instagram page using this technique)

I wanted to publish some reflections and since I’ve been so busy making and sharing drawings, I will let them do most of the talking.  Normally I would be uploading these photos on flickr, and I may yet still do so, (for promo purposes?) but I’m still putting the WordPress new media library features through its paces and need to get some new pics in here. The following images were all added to my own image library. I tried to add as much relevant metadata as I could think of, and included the twitter handle of each drawings subject in an attempt to create an ad-hoc community or discussion around these photos. Lets see how it goes.

NV13 @dbarefoot session - Sketchnote
NV13 @dbarefoot session – Sketchnote

First up on day 2 was Darren Barefoot long time NV rock star and one of the original coordinators. His talk was alot of fun, and one of the most original and interesting topics presented this year.

 

NV13 @jpovarchook session on Museum of Vancouver
NV13 @jpovarchook session on Museum of Vancouver

Jillian Povarchook (our host) from the Museum of Vancouver presented some of the innovation MOV has been up to including an augmented reality app, open data, and funky timeline tools. I’ll be watching these and future projects, they seem super cool.

 

NV13 – @smith – Ingress – Sketchnote
NV13 – @smith – Ingress – Sketchnote

One of the highlights for me was the panel discussion from Richard Smith, MarkDee (@MarkDee)‏ and Allyson McGrane (@AllysonMcGrane) I’ve known Richard to be interested in augmented reality games for awhile now, and it was a pleasure to get up to speed on his latest a̶d̶d̶i̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶, errr interest.

 

 

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Collaborative whiteboard technical report (The knowledge wall)

From  report for a project started July 27 2012

Activity summary: We are seeking a web based product that will allow participants to contribute text, drawings, images and possibly other media to a shared space on the internet.

Dubbed a “knowledge wall”, this living artifact should be persistent and editable over the
duration of the course, viewable by all students, and be able grow and evolve dynamically. One
large shared space where all the students contributions can be seen and shared by all is the
desired experience.

Notes: No perfect solution has yet been identified, although Dabbleboard has been proposed
as good enough to begin exploration. The issue that I see is finding a tool that will emulate a
large physical sheet of paper that can be edited by a large group. By its nature, the internet is
divided into smaller ‘pages’ each with unique locations (urls) and permissions. (open,private)
Most of the tools on this list, offer drawing and/or media collaborations on a single web page,
which, in the context of this project might be equivalent to a single teams weekly contributions to
the greater wall. Essentially, to reconstruct the learning activity proposed, a ‘series’ of drawings
or ‘pages’ should be considered as opposed to one large ‘wall’.
Next steps: To choose an optimal product, several should be tested in conditions that may
duplicate the eventual student experience. This ‘user testing’ can be informal but better results
would arise by obtaining feedback with external participants. I would also like to share this
report and a request for input on the internet through my personal learning network and all.
Dabbleboard
https://www.dabbleboard.com
50$-100$ for ‘pro’ service
? Whiteboard
? Text chat
? Multiple pages
? Images
? Save online
? Good for diagrams, non expressive text tools
Flockdraw
http://flockdraw.com/
free – ad supported
? Collaborative Whiteboard
? Text Chat
? Add text (although I cant get it to work)
? Doesn’t save past a single session
Voicethread
http://voicethread.com/
99$ per year
? Conversation Tool
? “Collaborative Multimedia Slideshow”
? Images, Documents, Videos, Audio
? Doodling on images
? Mobile access
Notes: eg. http://voicethread.com/?#q.b409.i848804 Voicethread focuses on the media itself
(images, video, sound) and provides opportunities for rich asynchronous discussions that can
unfold over time. Drawing is supported via “doodles” which could be used in the context of this
project. Based on the project needs, separate ‘threads’ would be started for each teams topics
and these would be navigated through the voicethread UI.
Google Drive (Shared Drawing)
https://drive.google.com/
free
? Whiteboard and drawing tools
? Comments
? Text, Images,
Notes: Google drive may offer similar or greater features for free than Dabbleboard. In general
the drawing tools feel more natural, and ‘sketch book-like’ than Dabbleboard which seems more
suited to technical diagrams and charts.

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My Northern Voice

technorati ‘northern voice’ feed

    rssLinkList(‘http://feeds.technorati.com/feed/posts/tag/northernvoice’,10,false,false);

The anticipation over last weeks conference had been building for awhile, and it turned out to the very best of times. I put together a weak wiki page of my notes.

It was a thrill to meet the awesome edu-blogger posse that lambo, hangs with. alan, darcy, and scott have been in my aggregator for sometime now, and it was a real pleasure to get to know them on a more personal level. I have linked to their respective insights on the conference which all go into more depth than i plan to here. There were many insightful discussions, that i was happy to be able to record and will be posting to this, now ‘podcast enabled‘ blog.

One of the only reasons to go to any of these things is to meet the people. We are all so cooped up for so much of the year, it is a special time when we can all get out to play, share and see the faces behind the blogs. I was fortunate to meet Phillip J from Twenty Years From Now blog. Phillip is doing his thesis on a subject of special interest to me, tagging.

My thesis explores motivations and strategies used within tagged information spaces for storing and retrieving digital content. I am specifically studying del.icio.us and citeulike.

His talk (which I also tried to record) was well received and I had lots to discuss with him. I cannot wait to get his feedback on our Life of Tags project.

Nancy White, self professed – “online interacion addict” , led a fantastic discussion on Snow White and the Seven Competencies of Online Interaction. I have not listend to alans recording yet, but I am glad he was there to catch it. One of the topics that came up in the discussion was just how risky blogging is from a research academic’s perspective. Ideas posted online, are open for all, and in the competitive ‘publish or perish’ environment, sharing is not always to your advantage. There is resistance, but the situation is changing as the benfits of building knowledge together online becomes realized.

One of the most intruiging ideas I caught, was about the guy(gal?) who does not have a blog, but rather just posts comments on other blogs. Apparently they are quite prolific in this practice and have evolved a strong online presence as an “A-list commenter“. Unfortunatley, I did not get his name, nor do I remember who was speaking at the time, (distracted by my own technology?) but if anyone knows who this person might be, if they can be googled or whatever, I’d love to hear from you. My own searches have proved fruitless.