Category Archives: adult learning

Learning Welsh

adult learning, Education, reading, tinkering

Just spent some time creating the header image for this wordpress template. I chose the picture of the wolf that my husband snapped along the Bow Parkway in Banff National Park last summer. We had a wonderful trip, which I documented on Google Maps.

Now, I’m working on maps of England and Wales for a trip I’m going to take this fall with my parents. I know I ask this every time I plan a trip, but how DID we plan trips before the web? And, now that Google has added collaboration to its maps, I was able to share it with my parents so they could add their places and see what I had in mind. I haven’t investigated to see what kind of Internet access there is to see how easy it will be to upload photos and even edit the map.

I would have gotten further on the Wales map this morning, but the database I was using crashed and has yet to come back up. It is Sunday and Easter at that so I guess it’s not a surprise. But, it is a reminder that, while the information is generally available at your finger tips, we must be careful about taking it for granted. Networks still go down, as Oprah learned in a very public way recently.

That being said, I’m still excited about the possibilities of Google Maps for organizing learning in almost every content area class. Over at the VSTE Ning site, Mike Scott, an ITRT from Botetourt County, commented that he thought it should be illegal to teach geography with using Google Earth. I agree…and ditto for lots of other content. My content area is English, and I have had a blast plotting my literary and historical tour of England. I have only just started assigning different markers to different themes. For now, the yellow markers are sites related to Llywelyn the Great, a great Welsh warlord who brought Wales as close as it had ever been to independence from England. He was married to King James’ illegitimate daughter, Joan, and their lives are fictionalized in Here Be Dragons, by Sharon Kay Penman. I prefer learning history from historical fiction. Penman’s work is generally accurate and she generally provides notes about can be documented and what she embellished. And, through the story, I learn more than just names and dates. I get a real sense of what it was like to live in Wales in the 13th century.

I can also learn Welsh online from the BBC. I was tagged as rank beginner when I took the placement quiz and was directed to Colin and Cumberland, a pretty impressive interactive website. I particularly like the speech bubbles you can add to the video in either English or Welsh. Here’s what I’ve learned so far: Bore da is “good morning,” and hwyl is “goodbye.” And, hwyl is pronounced hoyle. Who would have guessed?

I also discovered that the BBC runs a Welsh-language radio station that can be streamed over the web. It’s a testament to universal web design that I was able to pick out the play box and open up the BBC player that offers the various program choices.

As I poked around the web collecting Welsh related resources and toyed with the idea of actually learning Welsh, I was reminded of a classmate I had in an adult learning course I took in the fall of 2006. (I used this blog to reflect on my course experiences.) As part of the course, each student developed a learning contract that outlined what they would be learning over the course of the semester. After much wrestling, this particular classmate went from an academic topic to learning French for a trip she was going to take. She basically immersed herself in French from words on the refrigerator to email exchanges with a French colleague, learning about both the language and the culture. She made a commitment to herself to learn it, and she did.

But, even as I think about doing the same for learning Welsh, I hesitate. I’m busy with my dissertation and other projects. Could I really commit to this? Write a personal learning contract? One of the things we discussed in the course was the difficulty of making time for our own learning. And, in this case, I would not even have the pressure of a class. Just me and a desire to at least understand Welsh. For now, I’m going to tinker with the BBC website. I’d be happy just to be able to accurately pronounce Welsh words even if I don’t know what they mean. That’s a feat in itself I think.

I’ll close before I start waxing too rhapsodically about the wonderfulness of the web to support learning. Well, how about just one more chorus before I go to bed. I’m reading “The Living” by Annie Dillard, which is set in the Pacific Northwest in the late 19th century. Dillard lived in the area for 5 years and the novel is historically accurate, even painstakingly so, according to this interview with her. As I’ve confessed before, I love to read; I also love the way the web allows me to explore behind the scenes, to understand both the author and her content in deeper ways.

Digital Storytelling

21st Century Skills, adult learning, Movies, technology, Video

I would like to start by saying that I love my job. Right now, I am preparing for a digital storytelling workshop that I’ll provide over the next two weeks. It is Windows based so I fired up the Dell laptop I’ve got and have spent the last few days playing with PhotoStory and MovieMaker.  I’ll post both video sonce they’re uploaded to YouTube.  (I’ve got them on TeacherTube but didn’t have any luck with embedding them.)  First, I’ll reflect a little bit on the process.

I should start by confessing up front that I use Mac computers exclusively and have even managed to avoid Backpack. I had done a little work with MovieMaker but had only every seen demos of PhotoStory. I was prepared to like the latter program but was sure I would be unimpressed with MovieMaker. I was wrong.

First, I should say that I did like PhotoStory. I drew from digital photos that I already had available and it took about three hours to put together a fully narrated story with a music soundtrack. The only problem I ran into was in using the built-in music creator. I really liked the idea, but it crashed my computer each and every time I tried to save the movie file. I finally resorted to a public domain song I already had and the export worked just fine. Editing was easy, and I’m very happy with the final results.

This morning, I was up early prepared to tackle MovieMaker. I drew on the only material I’ve got: my yard. I shot all the video with my Flip Camera since that’s what my workshop participants will have available. I’ve used the Flip with my macintosh and had only so so results. It seemed much easier with MovieMaker. I just imported the files I had saved from the camera, renamed them, then did some basic editing. A few titles and then I needed some music.

Vivaldi seemed like a good choice. The Mutopia Project had a midi file licensed under the BSD license. I had to convert the midi to wma and used jetAudio, from Cowon to do the conversion.

All in all, I have had a wonderful two days making stories. I put together a wiki page as well.

Think Twice

21st Century Skills, adult learning, Civil Discourse, Media Literacy, New Media, Paradigm Shifts, technology, YouTube

From a colleague of mine as part of a discussion of protecting privacy:

Sorry, if you’re offended that I embedded it, but you need the effect before the story. Here’s the AP version. And, here’s Doug Feaver’s take on it at the Washington Post. Feaver reviews comments from readers on the story. He says, “I’m with the kid, but of course a recording of whatever message he left has not been made available so perhaps I would have a different view if it were.” That’s what I thought was interesting. The only person who can publish Kori’s message is the administrator’s wife. And, as long as we can’t hear Kori’s message, we really can’t judge for ourselves. Did she delete it? Or, is she just not adding fuel? Or was it a pretty reasonable message and she just overreacted? In the end, it probably doesn’t matter, but like, Feaver, I wonder in whose favor the pendulum of public opinion would swing if we heard the original phone message.

Here were two of my favorite back and forth comments about the incident:

readerny said, “I don’t agree with the tirade by the woman who answered the call, BUT as an employer of young adults, I can say that there are some (not all) who are overempowered and think that they know the whole story, or more than you do, and should be running the show themselves…”

But Nicester wrote, “Overempowered kid” and “self-centered youth” – OK, that’s one perspective. Sounds a bit like “whippersnapper” or whatever the Greatest Generation was calling the Baby Boomers when they were dropping acid and rolling in the mud at Woodstock…”

I just feel sorry for this woman, sacrificed on the altar of the digital generation gap. And, like the story about Heath Ledger and the blogs, it’s a story about the future of “news” in the 21st century. What if the kid hadn’t had access to the Internet? He might have sent the tape to the television news, but they have may have demanded to have his recording. He gets to bypass all those gatekeepers and tell his side of the story in a way that kids have never been able to do.

In the end, I find her tirade to be funny rather than offensive. “Snot-nosed brats” was the worst of it. It is more important as a reminder that digital recording and distribution is almost transparent, and perhaps will finally lead to people living by the old adage, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” We have left behind the era of deniability.

I’m tagging this one 21st century skills because I wonder how this fits in? I’m also going to tag it adult learning 😉

Continued Learning

adult learning, documentary film, final cut studio

I’ve been working on my final project for Adult Education…a video that reflects on my own learning and learning in general.  I started, as I usually would, with about four pages of single spaced text.  Something just felt wrong…too many words for a movie.  So, the first step was to start thinking visually…what pictures and video clips was I going to use to tell the story of my learning this semester.  How could they tell the story along with fewer words from me.  I think I have accomplished that.  Once I had the script, I could start collecting the materials which mostly consist of clips from films I’ve watched this semester.  I took care of that on Thursday.   And here’s the secret:  with a clean script and all the materials in one place, putting the film together has gone relatively smoothly.  I still have a ways to go, but writing and editing the script and thinking about the clips as I captured them really put the film in my head before I ever opened Final Cut Pro.  It’s funny in a way because it is very similar to the process I use for writing.  I read, I jot notes, I blog a bit, I start constructing sentences in my head, so that by the time I get to the actual writing, the paper is almost done.  The biggest difference here is that I started putting the visuals together in my head.

My only concern is that I am using single, lengthy clips from the films rather than several shorter pieces.  It seems to work but it isn’t typical from what I’ve seen.  I would like to do one sequence of short, quick shots.  I’ve seen that in some movies and it looks cool.  I dropped in a quote from Knowles at the beginning and I’ve got a great one from Eartha Kitt for the end but dropped the idea of splicing in quotes throughout the film.  I may go back to that but for now I like the transitions between sections.

As with each project I’ve done, I’m experimenting…in this case, it’s using music or the soundtrack of the films along with a voice over.  I may need to redo the voice overs at the end and figure out how to make the films quieter when I’m talking but for a first step, it’s not too bad.  All in all, it’s been a productive film day.

And I keep learning:

1.  After spending about an hour trying to copy the captured clips from the computer in the media center to my hard drive, I discovered that because my hard drive is Windows formatted, I can only copy about 3 gigs at a time.  Since I didn’t want to reformat the drive, I borrowed one from Troy, but I may need to invest in another one. They are so small now.

2. I needed some soundtrack music so I bought a couple songs from iTunes.  (Remember when you had to go to a store?)  After downloading them, I discovered they weren’t in a format that FCP can use and because they were purchased, I couldn’t convert them.  (That seems like a violation of my rights as a buyer.  I would be able to convert them if I bought them on CD.)  So, undaunted, I went to the web and in just a few minutes discovered the work around:  burn them to CD and then re-import them into iTunes and you can convert them.

King Rail at Assateague

adult learning, final cut studio, Video

Can’t believe it’s been a week since I’ve posted…working on my field-based research project as well as thinking about my final project for adult education. More on that later…meanwhile, I am trying to start a weekly schedule of posting little videos. Here’s one of a King Rail hunting in the marshes at Assateague National Wildlife Refuge. I wanted to play around more with titles so there’s no voice over.