connect. create. question.

This week we’ve been asked to jot down / sketch / brainstorm some ideas about our final design project. I was pretty stumped for a while, and I’m still not sure I’ve really got any ideas. I have several jotted down in my (paper) notebook and have been letting them “sit” in my mind for the last 4 or 5 days. Generally they all come back to writing and how to make it more of a social, interactive experience. Basically, I am uncomfortable (always have been) with the stereotypical image of “writer in solitude.” While I agree that at times one can write better when sitting alone, I also think good writers can emerge from a supported community. It takes some balance. I’m not really keen on teaching / instructing people how to become better writers in solitude. I’ll leave that for Sark, Natalie Goldberg, and Julia Cameron. I’m much more interested in how to capitalize on the hive mind and create some solid pieces of Writing For The People.

Robert Scoble tried a variation of this using FriendFeed and Twitter, but I am much more interested in the idea of having some kind of platform that makes this all possible — that your audience can give you feedback as the ideas are being generated, and that parts of the writer’s words can be shared, and critiqued, before the piece is “finished.” Or perhaps the piece is never finished? I’d like there to be some element of audio / video, as well, so that users can comment this way and so that the focus is not entirely text-based. I basically want writing — that is, communicating via text — to not be as laborious and text-heavy as it is now. In order to blog these days, you have to be pretty text literate. And while that is fine for those of us who are verbal and educated, what about twelve-year-olds who have something to put out into the world, who want to refine their writing, but want some help and interaction to make their writing really phenomenal?

Perhaps I’m thinking too grandiose at the moment…

What’s been sticking out to me when reading Saffer, Sharp, Norman, and Adams is how important it is for the affordances of the interface to be almost instinctual, or intuitive. I also am intrigued by the feedback/ feed-forward ideas Saffer discusses in Chapter 7; it is striking to me how few programs / platforms incorporate this. The key, I guess, is to have everything seem simple to the user but in reality the complexity is all hidden from the user. Which has got me thinking — if it is intuitive to me, how will I know it is intuitive to others? Saffer in particular talks about how so many designers design things for other designers, and how this is just not cool. I have to agree. So I am wondering — hoping? optimistically? naively? — that not being a designer myself or having that background will actually be an advantage in this particular project. Or is that what every designer thinks when they first start out… ? I suppose it comes back to what we’ve been learning in every course so far — a tenet that is fundamental to educators in general — know your user. Do research, talk to them, study them, find out how they will use things, how they think. This reminds me also how intrigued I was about all the user research that went into Quest Atlantis, having read about this for a different course. Knowing your user is key, and I suppose one cannot assume ever that they are just like oneself!

I have to admit that I’m really also loving the ideas of one of my classmates, Poukhan. Check out her ideas. I am tempted to scrap my interactive writing idea altogether and ask if I can join her!

Tags: communication, design, E19.2015, ECT, innovation, reflections, Writing

This week’s Design Journal assignment required us, among other things, to write a 55-word story, in the spirit of  55 Fiction. Frank didn’t say so directly, but I imagine this has something to do with the importance of story-telling in design. And what better way to understand the important elements of a story than to whittle it down to its bare-bones elements. It reminds me a little bit of Angry Alien Productions’ 30-Second Bunnies, in that only the basics remain, and yet the story still functions. Here is my first ever 55-word story.

Dead Giveaway

“Sweetheart,” he gushes.

“Whiskey, darling?”

“Always.”

The waiter pauses.

“Jameson. On rocks, for him.” Sipping wine, she fumbles in her purse.

Pocket vibration. “Sweetheart, I’ve gotta. . . Hello?” He rises. Impatient ice melts into Jameson; she fumbles in her purse.

Only after paramedics remove the motionless body, the waiter remembers crimson nails, fumbling in her purse.

Tags: 55 Fiction, E19.2015, ECT, fiction, storytelling, symbols, Writing

I saw Lee Kolbert’s Worldle Meme about 3 weeks ago, but am only NOW getting to it (and purely because I am procrastinating / avoiding work, I might add, as I have approximately 55 pieces of work staring me in the face to be assessed).  Her meme asked readers to:

1. Create a Wordle from your blog’s RSS feed.
2. Blog it and describe your reaction.  Any surprises?
3. Tag others to do the same.
4. Be sure to link back here and to where you were first tagged.

So, here is mine:

My reaction:  I like, I like!  I am not surprised to see “students” so BIG, as well as “think” and “community” – in fact I like this a lot.  I’m rather surprised, though, that “MYP” is so small.  However, this confirms what I was thinking recently when I felt that I should be blogging more about MYP, as so few people are (I recently discovered that many people discover my blog via Google searches with the terms “MYP asssessment” or “MYP reflection”).  So, this Wordle, with “MYP” being so small, is a good kick-in-the-pants for me to share more about my experiences and thoughts on this IBO programme.

Ok, the tags:

• Clint Hamada
• Lindsea K
• Jabiz (a.k.a. Intrepidteacher)
• Monarch Librarian

Happy Wordle-ing!

Tags: blog, meme, MYP, RSS, wordle

Day 9: Should We Be Commenting on Blogs?

Check out this article and the many references to bloggers who think that comments should be disabled on blogs. Read through those posts and consider whether or not you think it’s better to build community through comments or through conversations occurring across blogs–or maybe a combination of both. What, to your mind, is the purpose of comments on blogs and are we better served by encouraging people to respond to ideas on our blogs or over on their own blogs?

I read the article. Interesting. My short answer to the big question “Should we be commenting?”: it’s up to the blogger. Perhaps you want interaction on your own blog. Perhaps you don’t. Consider your purpose and audience and go from there. Incidentally, lots of non-blog websites offer a space for people to share and interact. Again, it depends on the purpose and what you hope to achieve. And perhaps you can turn on / off comments for a particular post, allowing you to play it by ear.

My perspective

If I didn’t want people to interact with me, I wouldn’t have started blogging in the first place. Whether that interaction comes via a trackback, a Tweet, or a comment makes little difference to me — I just want to connect. And enabling comments is an easy way for that to happen. As I said earlier, I have also realized recently that I often say more interesting and substantial things on other people’s blogs than I do on my own. I’m better at being invited than being the invitee, I guess.

Tags: comment08

[Edit: if anyone can help me properly use footnotes, I'd be much obliged! Thanks!]

Ok, so we’re on what, Day 10? And I am still thinking about Day 7.

Here’s the thing: I’ve been falling behind because I am, on some level, not finding the Comment Challenge to be such a challenge.

Let me explain. The purpose of the Comment Challenge is to:

. . . [become] better blog citizens . . . by actively participating in conversations and [share] your learning, especially with those new to blogging . . .

And I get that, I really do. That is, in fact, why I signed up for the challenge. Indeed, I even was initially intimidated by the challenge:

And I even understand the purpose of the Daily Activities, which is to

challenge our thinking, writing and . . . aid in the process of becoming better commenters.

But here is my problem: I think I am already a good commenter, without the Daily Activities.
Task 1 was a good starting place, and definitely uncovered some areas for me that I need to focus on in my commenting. Basically, after the Self-Audit I felt more mindful of how I make my presence understood as I go about life in the online world, interacting with people who have never met me. I realized that at times, my tone is unclear and perhaps not accurate, and so I have been more cognizant of what I say and how I say it.

Tasks for Days 2 through 6 were things that were not unusual for me — i.e., I do these things anyway, fairly regularly. So I didn’t really, officially, do them as part of the Comment Challenge.¹ And then I got to Day 7 (even though today is Day 10) and thought, Hmm… what am I really learning here?

Answers:

• I often make comments on others‘ blogs that are perhaps even more insightful than what I post here on my own blog. Therefore, I think I am better at responding to others’ ideas than coming up with my own. Question: What does that say about me? Am I not that innovative? Or am I just too social?
• I don’t need prompted tasks to make sure I am expanding my PLN, communicating with the people in it, and respectfully disagreeing with people. Perhaps others do, but I don’t.
• I comment enough, but definitely since the challenge began, I have been commenting more — which I guess was the point, so … ta-da! Mission (thus far) accomplished.

And one more question for anyone reading this: Is there a word which means “not having discovered something new and epiphanous² when one was expecting to?”

---

¹(Even coComment was already installed on my Firefox browser at home, though I had not enabled it in a while. The only new thing I needed to do was enable it on my tablet at school.)
²Ok, I made that word up.

Tags: comment08