[image by Carissa GoodNCrazy]

Slate has a new review of web-based task management (to-do list) programs. You might want to check out the details, but just so you don’t suffer from heart-palpitating suspense, the top two applications were:

• Google Mail Tasks from Gmail Labs (30/30)
• Remember the Milk (which I use) (29/30)

While I like the minimalism of Gmail Tasks (as the review notes, the decent design + a lot of capability can make RTM a time sync, particularly if—like me—you find getting ready to do things much more fun than doing them), I spend too much time in different Google mail accounts, and tasks are tied to individual accounts, resulting in two wholly separate lists. That doesn’t work for me. So, RTM for win!

From an interview with Jeff Tweedy in NYT Magazine:

Q: Although “Wilco (The Album)” was released on Tuesday, you streamed the songs free online in May after they surfaced illegally on the Internet.

Wilco: As a musician, I don’t want to expend any energy whatsoever preventing people from hearing our music. I think that’s antithetical to the idea of making it. Yes, we streamed it. Basically we set it up so people who felt guilty about stealing our music could donate some money to our favorite charity.

Oh, and he explains why the band is called Wilco, which you may have known, but I didn’t.

Running into Jamie Smith this morning (and want to talk about some great teaching, check out what Jamie’s been doing with his students this summer) reminded me that I’ve been remiss in putting notes from some of the interesting NMC 2009 Summer Conference sessions I attended.

Ruben Puentedura’s session on “The Infinite Canvas Reloaded: Digital Storytelling, Webcomics, and Web 2.0” (slides in rather large PDF form) was particularly interesting. Using Scott McLeod’s concept of the digital space as an infinite canvas for creation, Ruben explained—and shared examples of—characteristics of the infinite canvas and what they meant to storytellers. Following are my slightly cleaned up notes taken during the session with the all important links to examples and more information… they can’t convey Ruben’s obvious love of the topic and the medium, but they might be a good place to start in considering this important aspect of storytelling. [My personal interjections are in brackets]

Central question: how does the change from the bounds of paper to the infinite canvas of the screen effect the mechanics and conventions of comics?

The "infinite canvas" in 200 words or less…

Example: use of vertical orientation, space beyond what’s possible on paper (note the falling panel) – Scott McCloud’s Zot

Changes with the infinite canvas:

• In a traditional comic, each panel is a "beat" in the story– with the infinite canvas you have as many as you need… pacing is minimally constrained.
• Opening up the "meter" allows the equivalent of pianissimo to fortissimo – dynamic range isn’t (or at least is far less) constrained
• In printed comics, spacing between panels is relatively uniform and constrained… in the infinite canvas distance (can) equal time

A (sometimes) related characteristic: use of groupings/proximity [looks much like the poetic line/stanza] that are conceptual in nature, not dictated by physical requirements.

Example: Scott McCloud – Porphyria’s Lover – note the trails, which are functional and ornamental – one way to indicate when not following standard lexicographic order:

Storis can unfold incrementally (literally). See Demian.5 ’s When I am King. This really looks more akin to film… or a flipbook. Incremental, gradual development of the story, figuratively and textually.

Technique: establish a dominant direction which is then purposefully manipulated [much like using form and meter] to create and then divert/thwart reader/viewer expectations.

Drew Weing – Pup – New comic authors are often purposefully experimental. Note the disappearance and reappearance of panel (frame):

[How have I missed these great comics? I guess the same way I spent so long not seeing graphic novels. But the affordances of digital presentation has some really radical effects!]

Use of visual space to establish time [and a format that resembles instant messaging/texting] – Eros Inc: The Third Degree.

Daniel Merlin Goodbrey – 24:Three (a 24-hour hypercomic):  Excellent design implementation. Experimental in directionality, multiple points of entry, fracturing of the story. Still uses trails, but adds interactivity that carries the reader along the chosen path and zooming for emphasis/de-emphasis.

John Barber – Vicious Souvenirs – some would argue this is less "pure" as an infinite canvas – example of overlays –

Question: why do we (educators) care? Why does this matter?

One reason: infinite canvas provides a rich complex of possibilities [image above, moving really fast here]: image assembly (such as Five Card Nancy) narrative sources; narrative constraints- sequential art: Comic Life – pictorial vocabulary; narrative transitions; text/image integration – moving image Center for Digital Storytellying (CDS) Seven Elements [and CDS Cookbook (PDF)], montage structures- interactive media, Pachyderm narrative structures; narrative flows- interactive fiction, Inform 7 ludic elements

Resource: Puentedura – "Digital Storytelling: An Alternative Instructional Approach" – Slides (Slideshare) and Text (PDF): 

Second reason: Powerpoint, which is so commonly used, has so many intrinsic constraints and default (if not solely available) structures (see Tufte – The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within, 2nd ed.)

Toolkit:

1. The Tarquin Engine (Example: Icarus Tangents)
2. InfiniteCanvas (Mac Only) -  (but no longer being devloped, buggy)
3. Infinite Canvas (microsoft) – example Brad’s Somber Mood (Scott McCloud)
4. Prezi [am I going to have to change my prezi position?] – designed to be an infinite canvas, but not positioning it that way in marketing terms because that scares some people – Prezi still has purposeful constraints, so it’s not just a blank screen, empty page, white canvas – can import flash INTO Prezi – important aspect: the frame acts like the frame around a comic.

Important note about Prezi: the company "gets" the infinite canvas and will be rolling out more features that support this kind of creation.

***

Transitions are particularly important in the comics built on the infinite canvas – understanding the mechanics of panel-to-panel transitions will help clarify when viewing and creating them.

Four approaches to the page (Benoit Peeters): http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v3_3/peeters/

***

Some Prezi examples

• Nice example of almost a concrete poetry approach to using Prezi to convey a piece of Alice in Wonderland (http://prezi.com/56035)
• Second example (http://prezi.com/56151): reenvisioning of a powerpoint presentation, uses proximity and distance, not traditional lexicographic ordering

***

Infinite Canvas as Terrain – the infinite canvas is a terrain; we can apply concepts of mapping to it.

Resource/ToRead: How Maps Work – Alan MacEachren

***

Considerations on "restraints":

• OuBaPo: experimentation on constraints
• Matt Madden – Exercises in Style

Note: music is a better analogy for understanding comics than film– comics aren’t chopped up bits of story akin to chopped up scenes in film.

***

Contact Info:

• Ruben Puentedura (rubenrp@hippasus.com)
• Ruben’s blog: http://hippasus.com/rrpweblog/

Talkbubbles put a new—err—twist on the paperclip.

Office Pr0n… it’s all good.

Because I heart Demetri Martin and (sometimes) social networking, Martin’s Daily Show Trendspotting segment on Social Networking made me laugh:

via @courosa

UPDATE for Canadians and other Fine Foreigners: Above video might not work for you outside of the US, so here are is an alternative at MilkandCookies that might work. If there are other possibilities, let me know!

From Reuters:

“Iranian TV, quoting an unnamed source, said Neda was not shot by a bullet used by Iranian security forces. It said filming of the scene, and its swift broadcast to foreign media, suggested the incident was planned.”

Of course this is in part a cynical ploy by an increasingly desperate government, but it also points to a potentially significant misunderstanding of modern social media. There are many people (not just “over there”) who likewise find the fact that this young woman’s death was filmed and the speed with which it became a global phenomenon incomprehensible or unbelievable. It’s not unlike, but obviously much more serious than, the average cluelessness exhibited by many politicians and administrators of institutions across the cultural spectrum.

Just in case it’s not clear, I think the “postdigital” project is a worthy one. As I read it thus far, it’s recontextualizing the predictions made by, among others, digital nativists (I’m making words up left and right today) w/r/t an assumption of what is currently seen as a separate, digital problematic as a subsumed, integrated part of life. There’s obviously some (critical!) difference in considering when that will happen– some of the digital native enthusiasts appear to think it has already happened in a significant way– but the important work of considering what that means to be a teacher, a learner, a community member– a human being when this technological bubble we live in is no longer confined and divided, when it is no longer digital, but just is… well, that’s important stuff.

It’s also a risky activity, necessarily abstract, still in its earliest days of infancy and highly likely to be completely wrong. We just aren’t very good at these kinds of predictions which are about transformation rather than extrapolation. Recognizing that we are bound inside a cultural and technological frame unfortunately doesn’t provide a way to step outside it.

But this thinking and guessing and feinting and throwing out of ideas does need to be done and I admire Dave and others for tackling it and clearly striking a nerve right away. If this discussion and evolving philosophy is an avenue that can be used to shift the conversation from the machinery to the humanity, then things I’ve written and talked about here and in public for just the past month (not to mention for a long time before) should pretty convincingly attest to my support and sympathy. If it can provide a path so that people like Jen and I can stop talking past one another and get to the things that I know we agree on but can’t seem to find a settled place to engage with and enlarge upon, then consider me signed up and ready to make a donation.

Unfortunately, the only donation I have to give– my thoughts on what I’ve read so far– is wholly inadequate and causing more distress than good. It’s not what I want and the way I seem to be coming across doesn’t represent who I am or want to be.

Ian Truelove writes:

In the context of 52group postdigitalism [link added], dwelling on the digital – even to de-digitalise it, or liberated it from the constraints of binary – is a form of techno-lust. It is digital fetishism, even if it is played out in meat-space.

Through the first two-thirds of my college career, I loved this kind of statement. And I still love the language– there’s a kind of poetry in the language of criticism that evolved from pomo jousting that sadly isn’t perceived by as many readers as it should be. It’s a poetry that creates its own rules, infinite in its historical nutshell.

But the same words that can make music in one context become highly ambiguous and fuzzy in another. The beauty of these words and thinking (and I engage in them plenty) is that they can be endlessly justified.

Consider “dwelling.” What does it mean to “dwell” and why do I get the feeling that it will likely play out in what I suspect will be a meme for a while (the postdigital in this new context) as either whatever the writer wants it to be in the context of whatever current critical engagement emerges or the sole alternative to ignoring technology?

And consider the sudden conflation of binary code with binary constraint on actions, as if there is a productive connection between the former and the latter…. awesome isn’t it?

I’m not knocking it. I’m amused. And amusement isn’t a bad thing. Nor is the process of redefinition and the manufacturing of something new where nothing new yet exists. Sometimes that manufacture carves out a space where something new can emerge. But the first stages are always funny, where the words are beautiful but not much– or not much that is novel– is being said, and whether you find any of it believable or not depends wholly on intuition and a generous dollop of faith in the author(s)… which, incidentally, I do possess.

I’m still trying to gather my own thoughts about it—which goes some way to explaining why this, ostensibly about a paper is actually a tangent—but Dave Cormier and a mysterious posse have created a draft paper exploring a perennially important question: what’s next? Preparing for the Postdigital Era is an attempt to:

shift our thinking away from the simple digital/analogue distinction of technology towards a less divisive and more nuanced context for work; a human context that focuses on the essence of our work rather than the appearance.

I suspect that the ideas in this paper inspired @injenuity’s question for Howard Rheingold:

Ask him what ed tech folks and "integrators" are going to do for a living when technology is assumed and invisible.

I pushed back a little on this concept because it seems to me that “technology” never becomes assumed and invisible… specific instances of it do. So the question is either irrelevant—because there will never be an “after”—or the definition of “technology” needs to be narrowed. My relentless prodding (it’s my lot to be the skeptic, which nets a lot of conversation but very few friends) lead to Jen’s clarification that poses a much more interesting question:

Not questioning advancement of tech. Hoping for age when ppl are curious, engaged and aware to explore without help from specialists.

Setting aside that the term “specialist” doesn’t feel like a good fit with many of the “ed tech folks” and “integrators” I know (perhaps they should be excluded anyway since most of them would love to work themselves out of that particular job, not only to open the door for richer activities, but because they know as well as anyone that the changes which demand their services just keep on coming), I can’t think of a technology that hasn’t involved specialists when it was new… and the more active and participatory a technology is, the more valuable such specialists are. For a while, anyway.

The biggest question might be what happens in a “postdigital” age, but the more productive question is smaller: what happens in a post-current-technology age, when those few technologies and applications (literally and functionally) that survive have become common and commonly-understood enough that specialists aren’t needed (for that set of technologies at least)? To circle back to the reason Dave’s paper is important: nothing. Or at least nothing good. Not unless the actions and states of mind that allow one to be engaged and aware are actively and consciously promoted and reinforced. The lack of curiosity, engagement and awareness that typifies our environment (not just in the single sphere of education) has nothing to do with the complexity of technology. Quite the opposite: it’s reinforced by the affordances of that technology which make it easier than ever to satisfy our need for engagement with the equivalent of junk food.

By analogy: no one really disputes that modern agricultural methods and food production techniques, which have resulted in a greatly higher caloric availability to the average instinctually survival-minded human being, has resulted in an increase in those humans’ average weight. In some countries– like the US– obesity is commonly considered an epidemic and it’s clear from research over the past decade that, in fact, this increase in consumption is directly at odds with our natural instinct to live a longer life. For we lucky ones who live in this environment of plenty rather than scarcity, survival instinct– to eat what you can when you can because you can’t be sure when you will have the opportunity to eat as much (or at all) again– is, in fact, working against our survival.

This doesn’t make me a caloric determinist… in the end we are what we choose to eat. But the effect of the affordances of the technological apparatus that is our food industry does have an effect and it is decidedly not neutral (in any useful sense of the term). In the same way, while we can choose sustained engagement and deep attention, more and more we choose not to. The technology doesn’t make us that way, but the functional result isn’t much different than it would be if it did.

For the most part, people don’t exhibit a lack of curiosity because their natural curiosity is being thwarted by technology any more than they eat poorly because their desire to eat healthy is thwarted by difficulty in finding, obtaining or preparing healthy food.

Dave’s paper is, I think, going in the right direction, reframing the picture in terms of personal, authentic experience—and I’m sure I’ll have more to say about the details later—but it doesn’t go far enough in examining the same assumption that inquisitive activity and exploration are natural activities that informs Jen’s question and the damage that has resulted from those assumptions. If anything, I’d guess that biologically it’s the opposite, and culturally our institutions of education and the edifice of many families and peer groups don’t go very far in instantiation/facilitating that mindset when they don’t outright punish people who go in that direction.

NMC 2010 will be in Anaheim, hosted by USC. Why come to L.A. after being in idyllic Monterey? Three reasons:

1. In Monterey you could go whale watching, in L.A. you can go star-gazing… for Britney and Justin and…
2. In Monterey you get discounts for boating, in L.A. you will get discounts for Botox
3. In Monterey we have been fortunate to honor the man who invented the mouse, in L.A. we’ll honor “The Mouse”