joanvinallcox's posterous - Roaming around the webscape!

Nov 19 / 4:29pm

Playing with the Opera Browser

For all of you who are visually oriented, look at this tab bar with multiple tabs.

Remember what the one you want now looks like, but not its name?

See the handle bars in the middle? Pull them down.

And now you can see all the tabbed sites. You can close with the same handlebars.

Neat, eh?
Joan Vinall-Cox, PhD
JNthWEB Consulting - http://jnthweb.ca/
Social Media & Learning
http://joanvinallcox.wordpress.com/my-e-portfolio/

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Filed under // browser Opera

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Nov 19 / 7:42am

Second Last Class - Seeing Early Results

I've been teaching a course called Oral Rhetoric, a course where I work with students on their public speaking, both in face-to-face situations and in creating online audio recordings. Yesterday was the second last class and we spent most of the class time listening to their second last assignment, a commercial/pitch to advertise their final assignment - a story of theirs that they create a recording of and post online. The recordings of their pitches we heard were wonderful, and why wouldn't they be. These students have spent all their lives listening to radio and tv commercials. They might not have Gladwell's 10,000 hours of commercial-listening to gain expertise, but they do have hours and hours of soaking in just how persuasion works.

Over the term, I asked them to read about and practice two kinds of rhetorical skills:

traditional -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figure_of_Speech

current -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_%28public_relations%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word especially In Business
http://www.heapr.com/#l=web&q=[%22Sound+Bites%22+]&p=[[1,1]] An interesting new search engine showing many links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator_pitch
- http://mashable.com/2009/03/31/pitchtv/
- http://www.dumblittleman.com/2007/08/how-to-craft-killer-elevator-pitch-that.html

Both the traditional and the current forms of rhetoric were in evidence in the pitches we listened to, but what really thrilled me were the spontaneous responses. We're using PBWorks for our course container and it allows comments on pages. At the bottom of the Pitch page, was a conversation, a series of comments praising many of the pitches. I was thrilled because I had been trying to develop a Community of Practice approach in the course. After almost every presentation or posting of student work, I asked students to describe their own experiences while doing their own presentation/recording and to give positive feedback to at least three of their classmates. This was an assignment and posted on a weekly Discussions page on the course wiki. I wanted them to learn from each other, and to get used to learning from colleagues as a way to continue learning in their futures. The responses in the Comments section of the Pitch page were an unrequired, spontaneous manifestation of giving each other feedback. What that says to me is that some of the students have developed the habit of responding, and could recognize the technical possibilities (the Comment space at the bottom of the page) for sharing those responses. They have both the communication and the digital know-how.

Makes me happy

Joan Vinall-Cox, PhD (905)
JNthWEB Consulting - http://jnthweb.ca/
Social Media & Learning

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Filed under // audio learning teaching

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Nov 17 / 5:39am

Frosty Morning

Winter approaches.

Joan Vinall-Cox, PhD,
Social Media Consultant
http://jnthweb.ca

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Filed under // iPhone nature

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Nov 14 / 5:26pm

Mid-November Outside of Toronto

It's unseasonably warm but delightful weather.

Joan Vinall-Cox, PhD,
Social Media Consultant
http://jnthweb.ca

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Filed under // iPhone nature

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Nov 6 / 2:58pm

Fallen Leaves

Joan Vinall-Cox, PhD,
Social Media Consultant
http://jnthweb.ca

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Filed under // iPhone nature

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Nov 1 / 7:18pm

Do They REALLY Think We Read it All!

Check the page number at the bottom.

Joan Vinall-Cox
JNthWEB Consulting - http://jnthweb.ca/
Social Media & Learning

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Filed under // contract iPhone

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Oct 31 / 6:42am

The Ghost of my Youth guards me this Halloween

Joan Vinall-Cox, PhD,
Social Media Consultant
http://jnthweb.ca

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Oct 29 / 1:25pm

Last Night at the HPCA Meeting

I'm a member of a freelancers' association know as the Halton Peel Communicators Association and last night we put on a a social media workshop. It was fun even though I didn't get to sit in on the other three workshop leaders' presentations. Check out Donna's report on hers here - http://trafcom.typepad.com/blog/2009/10/linkedin-101-for-entrepreneurs-and-business-professionals.html, and Sue's here - http://getitwrite.ca/2009/10/29/twitter-tips-hpca-session/ Rob's may come later.

In an unthinking moment I had agreed to cover audio and video on the web, and the closer we got to the workshop, the more I began to fret. I've had more frustration than success with iMovie and GarageBand, and I've never used MovieMaker or SoundRecorder. I won't say I panicked, but I did regret agreeing.

Donna Papacosta blogged recently on leaving your comfort zone - http://trafcom.typepad.com/blog/2009/10/leaving-your-comfort-zone.html - and as an organizer of the evening, she had put me squarely in that position. I was not in my comfort zone. Why oh why hadn't I asked to do the Twitter presentation, I groused to myself, or the blogging one, or even the one on LinkedIn. But no-o-o, I had to say "yes" to audio and video.

It turned out to be pretty good. The day before, still out of my comfort zone, I made a list of the things I did know how to do with audio and video on the web. Turns out people were delighted to learn how to embed videos and audio clips into Facebook or their blogs. They were also happy to find out that they could make little animated videos at Animoto - http://animoto.com/ - just by uploading photos. They found screencasting interesting and looked at the Twitter-associated tool Screenr, - http://screenr.com/ - and some examples of what I've done with Jing - http://www.jingproject.com/ In fact, you can see a collection of the links I referred to in my JNthWEB wiki here - http://jnthweb.pbworks.com/MultiModal

So it was a good night, a night where I discovered that my audience was happy to learn a number of ways to play with audio and video online, and I was happy to share what I knew with them!

Joan Vinall-Cox
JNthWEB Consulting - http://jnthweb.ca/
Social Media & Learning
Halton Peel Communicators Association - http://www.hpcaonline.org/

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Filed under // HPCA socialmedia

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Oct 25 / 4:54pm