The insanity is not only a belief in THE test, but the premise that ANY test is suitable 2 determine another’s worth. #pineapplegate

— Mary Ann Reilly (@MaryAnnReilly) April 23, 2012

I did some research on this Pineapple Story. Such nonsense.

cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by giulia.forsythe

If I did this assignment perfectly the images wouldn’t be necessary but hey, I brought my camera and the sound matches these pictures…

Out of the elevator

Down the tunnel

Many languages of tourists

Roar of the Falls

Because we’re in DS106 now.

This is an ANIMATED propaganda poster based on “We’re in the army now” retro poster. I used Photoshop and very crudely selected out the bits I wanted to erase, used the eyedropper to select the background colour and filled in parts. This was not satisfactory in some sections so I had to use the rubber stamp tool to clone and get the right variety of colours. Thanks to @cogdog I was able to use the opacity animation feature to make a layer 100% to 0% visible across the animation timeline. I never knew that was there! There are also animation ability for position which would have made my bread head assignment way easier to do, instead of using nudge, you can just set key frame position and Adobe figures out the tweening for you.

Learning, learning, always learning! (hmm…sounds like another propaganda poster)

For those of you who can’t sit through 7 minutes of video, here’s a quick outline of the talk:

Introduction to me (In B&W, then in living colour!)
Sources of Inspiration: Text

• Timothy Gower’s Blog- Elsevier Boycott

Sources of Inspiration: Listening

• Brian Lamb Toward Open Sustainability
• Jim Groom & DS106
• Unplug’d

I have housed all my Visual Notes resources on a special page but this video was my first time talking through a few of my work. It took far longer to create than I’d like to admit and in hindsight, I forgot a few key points to remember when taking on the fun challenge of live sketchnoting.

Reading from the twitter stream and looking at the Flickr ds106doodles after the fact, I think Jim had them listen to Ken Robinson’s Changing Education Paradigm. I love that talk and I think it’s a testament to the students that I can identify that’s what they were listening to, just by looking at their sketchnotes.

I read some of their comments and they had difficulty keeping up. And this is common. This is where the real focus and fun comes in because knowing that you have to draw something to convey the essential points of a talk makes you pay very close attention. You need to be selective about what you decide to write and draw. Sometimes you’re able to keep the thought in your head and draw a lot of it and other times, you just have to let it pass.

Some presenters are easier to sketchnote than others because they state right up front what main ideas they will be discussing. I tend to enjoy classes that run this way too. I’ve read from other incredible visual notetakers that sometimes they even ask for an outline from a talk beforehand. The big thing is that it takes practice. TED talks are excellent for this because they are a great length, interesting and released under creative commons. You can listen and re-listen and hone in your skill. Of course, as Jim showed, the RSA videos are exemplary.

SIDE NOTE (how I did the movie):

I took a picture of my hand holding a pen on paper with my iPhone.

Imported it into Brushes on my iPad.
Created a new layer.
Drew on the top layer.
Exported the brushstrokes as Actions.
Imported into iMovie.
Recorded Audio using iMovie as I watched the animation.

I have been meaning to do a video of what this looks like since a few of my visual practice friends are not familiar with layers and I cannot live without them. Life without layers is so flat.

cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by giulia.forsythe

It all came to me via a tweet from @clintlalonde and really energized me to see academic researchers get coordinated.

I’m particularly fond of my new version of Elsevier’s logo, where I wonder what happens when the vines and grapes growing around the tree of knowledge turn into chains and locks.

cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by giulia.forsythe

Of course, this entire issue was brought into sharper focus for me by Brian Lamb months ago during his conference presentation, Toward Open Sustainability at Open Ed 2011 and his subsequent post, Higher Education and the Private Good. As Brian points out, those of us privileged enough to work at universities are able to gain access to most research but what about every one else? If the research is publicly funded, then the public should be able to access it just like we do. Timothy Gower wonders about developing nations, what do they do when they cannot afford access to information? It’s just not right.

While I am skeptical this will change much, it still brings me a bit of optimism to see over 3,000 researchers make the pledge. At the very least, as a stat junkie, I’m enjoying watching my Flickr hits increase daily.

UPDATE: I am pleased that @FakeElsevier is using my new subverted Elsevier logo. Follow the account for some comedic relief and a few quite poignant arguments.

Who is @FakeElsevier?

“I AM FAKEELSEVIER!” please read+RT: bit.ly/xPDjrg

— Fake Elsevier (@FakeElsevier) February 21, 2012

WE ARE @FakeElsevier

— Giulia Forsythe (@giuliaforsythe) February 21, 2012

MORE UPDATES: Also pleased that TheCostofKnowledge has a blog showing the visual graphic. And the petition has over 7,000 7,500 signatories.
Feb 29 UPDATE: British Medical Journal & Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad will both being using the @FakeElsevier logo in upcoming articles about the boycott and Open Access.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

http://americancensorship.org/

She raced up the steps to the top of the parking garage. She knew the perfect spot to catch the last gasp of the sun as it set upon Seattle from her location at the university campus.

As she climbed the stairs she pulled out her mobile phone, readying the camera. At the spot she was anticipating to take the photo a tall figure stood, elbows raised. She was not alone in her mission to catch the sunset. It was a man about her age, slightly taller. He was holding his mobile phone, steadying it as he tried to get the autofocus to shift its attention on the spectacular view.

Brushing aside her usual trepidation around new people she walked up next to him. Although he was attractive, that alone would not be good reason to trust him. She pushed out thoughts of bad horror films set in parking garages; getting the perfect shot was more important than paranoia or embarrassment and he was standing in the exact perfect spot. Besides, it was about the art. They were mobile phone photographers, hunting for beauty. Capturing. Sharing.

As she took her shot, he glanced at her.

“Are you going to tweet this?” he asked.

“ha, yeah, probably through instagram,” she replied.

“it’s breathtaking isn’t it?

She despised small talk but it was breathtaking and she had to agree. Her enthusiasm was bolstered by the beautiful view. She thought of all the sunsets she had watched in her life. Some romantic, some heart breaking; a full range of emotions and memories swept through her. This was the first sunset she could remember that was merely an introduction, a first meeting.

“I’m going to tag it #SeattleSunset” she mused aloud, not really to him but more as a note to herself.

“I have a lot of adjectives I’d like to use too. Tags are imperfect. So many ways to describe a moment. How can you tag a summer breeze?”

She glanced at him sideways, not able to tell if he was being facetious or solemnly serious, “#summerbreeze?” she quipped, “I read that The tag is the soul of the internet, you know. Clive Thompson said instagram is like that poem, Thirteen ways to look at a Blackbird. I can’t stop thinking about that”

She finished uploading her gorgeous sunset to instagram and tagged it #SeattleSunset.

“I read Collision Detection too. Heh. Well, I guess you and Clive have got a point,” he said, “Oh, dear. I’m late. Best be on my way,” and with that, he gave a huge smile, turned and walked away.

She stood there and stared at his back for a moment. Two small pieces of paper slipped out from the folder he was holding under his arm and floated silently to the concrete floor. A small breath of air came out of her mouth, but no sound. She watched him disappear.

She turned on her heel and walked in the other direction towards the other staircase, to go down to the second level to her parked car.

Later that evening when she scanned through her instagram feed, she came upon her Seattle sunset photo again. Impulsively she clicked the #SeattleSunset tag which brought her to a set of 158 pictures all tagged the same.

cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by giulia.forsythe
So many images of the same stunning sun, multiple perspectives, one tag. Skies of red, yellow, purple, blue and gold with intense fluttered clouds were framed by dark silhouetted trees, deciduous and conifers; buildings, from the space needle to low flat strip malls; horizons ranged from very high to very low or non-existent. They all shared that one desire to capture that Seattle sunset and now were linked through their tag.

Would her parking garage rooftop co-conspirator be among them? She couldn’t decide if she should look really intently with that purpose.

If it was meant to be, their tags would align again in the future, she figured.

The tag is the soul of the internet.

==========

Notes:

I am sad to report this is a complete work of fiction but I do need to give special thanks to @injenuity for her Flash Fiction inspiration (which I just may make a DS106 assignment because I like it so much) and her instagram photo of a Seattle sunset and her subsequent tweets.

I have tagged this as Visual Assignment 272: Picturing Prufrock, because my drawing is an illustration of a poem, just not specifically T.S. Elliot’s poem. I am taking the assignment in the broadest sense. Artistic license!

The symbolism in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is so rich. Every line has imagery I’d love to illustrate. I could happily spend days illustrating these stanzas. I chose one of the more boring lines because I wanted to try and draw T.S.Eliot himself thinking about getting old.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot

120
I grow old … I grow old…
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by giulia.forsythe

How I did it!

MIXED MEDIA! I used old fashioned water color paper, water color pencils, marker to draw and color. Then I took a pic with my iPhone and uploaded to Flickr!

ReCaptcha Predictions!

This is the equivalent of reading the random tea leaves at the bottom of your cup. What Black Swans does ReCapcha say Education has in store for the next year?

cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by giulia.forsythe

In 2012,

THE Shumpt is the teacher in a slump, living in his walled classroom, relying on tech support to make things happen. The Shumpt will suddenly be carried by his educational technology support team to the edge of the wall to see over the other side.

Here he will encounter Sir PartsBo and become acquainted with the deconstruction of digital fluency. Immediately The Shumpt will come out of his slump and will be reanimated as if a layer of stone has been removed and his professional life will transcend beyond purposeful but might even include- FUN.

Merely considering what exists on the other side of the wall will be known as the Wallar Proposition.

It will not always be simple, of course, because the apocalyptic veffig will try to attenuate the use of toolitas outside the wall. New legislation will be drafted and redrafted, remixed and repurposed to the point of ridiculousness. For example, the Family Educational Rights Stop Online Piracy (fersop) bill will be the source of much consternation to the liberated educator.

Of course, it is difficult to know how this will turn out. The only thing to do would be to analyze more ReCapchas. I recommend submitting assignment ideas to DS106, as there will be a ReCaptcha at the end of each form submission.

This will serve the dual purpose of working on Assignment 305 and contributing to the reanimation of your creative self.