When you tweet about photography you tend to gravitate towards other local photos and them to you. This is how I came to know Tom Boggan a local former East Valley Tribune photographer who is now a professional freelancer. Prior to Easter I’d heard about this photowalk where Tom answered questions and shared whatever information you wanted to know. The classes are held at Bryce Arboretum near Superior, AZ out route 60. I decided to sign up for the June class but was wait listed to July. I signed up even though it was the morning after I flew back from a month vacation. The course was well worth it.

Tom helping out Paul, one of the neophyte photos.

A few things Tom mentioned right away in the eight person class was being prepared to shoot the “peak moment” and how to find the perfect lighting. While many of the comments he made for the group initially I’d already been practicing, it’s always refreshing to hear the technical aspects of photography in a new way. For example, he uses F8 a lot for photojournalism work and keeps the shutter around 500. I’ve always shot nearer F2.8 (and sometimes Tom does, too). Also, the shutter speed should only be one number lower than the focal length. Tom pointed out (and I completely agree) that we all break these rules often. Even my friends and colleagues who shoot often sometimes don’t even understand the Rule of Thirds. With my artist’s eye, this comes natural to me and I choose to break it at times, too.

Tom showed me how to use my light meter so I can shoot without removing my eye from the eye piece. He showed me how to view my histogram, and we discussed ISO and telezooms. All great information; take his class and follow him on twitter.

Consider the information in the video above. What is the purpose behind the video? If we define the video in terms of the rhetorical situation, there’s certain analysis that is evident albeit if I then explain to you that it’s an advertisement for a paper book, how does that change your consideration for the above video?

Comments?

For years I’ve worried about storage and losing files. I’ve been online continually since 1992 now and have way too many files. Everything anymore to me are zeros and ones, and a few years ago I moved to Google tools for most everything. I am a Google whore, just short of flying to a Google teacher day (missed December’s deadline). The one tool I’ve never hooked onto for Google is their photo repository, Picasa. It just never made sense to me, and by then I’d been enmeshed in Flickr for two years (please please buy Flickr from Yahoo, Google!). Everything else has been Google for me.

In 2005 my daughter, Claire, was born and I videotaped my parents meeting her at the airport for the first time. I exported that video to an external hard drive that proceeded to crash and burn. I lost the video. I lost everything. You cannot replicate that sort of thing. I needed the cloud. I recently talked to a photographer friend who suggested that Flickr is my cloud repository for photos, but I need something for all sorts of files. I checked out DropBox, but didn’t like the pay scale. I considered Mozy or something like that, but still, not what I needed.

And then today. Tonight, I saw the follow Tweet. “Google Lets Users Store More Files Online – NYTimes.com http://bit.ly/6isWSp” from Traci Gardner . I immediately clicked on it and was thrilled. The title reads “Google Lets Users Store More Files Online”. Google’s mythological GDrive that’s been floating around the ‘nets since 2006 is coming true. For free, 1g has been added to your Google account now to upload any type of file with a maximum of 250mb per file (sorry videographers). This storage, your Picasa storage, and Gmail storage will equal close to 10G for free. You want more? I know I do! It’s $0.25 a gig annually. That means for $40 a year I can back up my entire hard drive, and for me that rocks!

It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty damn cool. You access everything through Google Docs, which for me is just ok. I’d like to see a file structure similar to a gui in Windows or OSX, but that’s because that’s the design with which we’re all familiar. I’d like to be able to set some files (or even folders) to nonsearchable (i.e. I know they are there, but they don’t show up in my everyday file searches… like archives that I need to keep. For example, grade sheets I will never need unless a student contests something).

DropBox seems to be a biggie right now, and wouldn’t it be cool for the Google API to offer something similar between GDocs and your desktop (I can see the arguments against this right now with the cloud, netbooks, tablet PCs, mobiles, etc… why bother with files locally?) My thought here is I want to sync my new GDisk directly to external hard drives (yes, I keep THREE now as backups). Talk about redundantly important. I don’t think we need (internal) computer hard drives that match or are larger than our personal cloud storage or external hard drive backups, but why can’t the netbook/laptop/tablet act as a funnel between the cloud and external backup drives? I bet they can! (Disclaimer: I am not a coder, but I bet one can comment below and tell me if: 1) this is a pipe dream or 2) this is already being done (provide me a link!)

A few other notes I saw when researching the GDisk include a YouTube sync that includes, for example, a button “Do you like this video? Save it to your GDisk now!” Google doesn’t necessarily need to make another copy of the file, but it can give you, the user, access to that same file. The same with uploading music. If the song already exists, give us access to that file rather than wasting some of our storage space by uploading another copy of that file? One user on the Google blog even mentioned, and I paraphrase, “If I upload my whole iTunes library, then I’ll have my personal streaming music anywhere I have internet!”.

And I leave you with “I want my GDisk!” (sung in Sting’s Voice from 1981.)

Your thoughts? Leave a comment!

Reading Alan Levine’s blog post entitled “What? Another Do X A Day Project?” this morning got me thinking. See, I participated in National Novel Writing Month in 2004, 2005, and 2006, and last year I spent several evenings surfing through Alan’s (and D’arcy’s) 365 Flickr challenge. I knew nothing about this challenge and thought anyone who wanted to shoot a photo a day for a year would be crazy, but as Alan wrote, “I find these challenges very rewarding, especially the ones that you convince yourself that you can’t do before you try.” It’s true.

Today, a few hours after reading that post, it got me thinking again as I discussed Into the Wild and Chris McCandless’ foolish journey into Alaska that ultimately killed him. We challenge ourselves with those journeys we’re not sure if we can finish. Sometimes we don’t, like the young person who is not up for the challenge for a full year of AP and “drops down” to onlevel (most of whom come back later and tell me, honestly, that they’d made a bad decision). Sometimes we do, like my wife who isn’t an avid book reader and less of a writer (although I LOVE when she does because she’s hilarious!), who has just finished her own National Novel Writing Month novel.

We have experiences that make us who we are. These define us. They are rites of passage. For Chris McCandless, it was his “Great Alaskan Adventure”. For Alan, it’s currently the PF Chang’s Rock ‘n Roll Marathon here in Phoenix this winter. For others, it could be getting a driver’s license, going away to college, turning 21, or a first job. For me, it could be a blog post a day for all of December. It could be finishing my own 365 day challenge which included my own face in each photo, or it could be editing 2004 novel that I’d like to share with others to get feedback from people more successful than myself, so I can be more like them because maybe I am up for the challenge of publishing. Maybe I will succeed or maybe I will fail, but I will try and I will not give up.

Last year several of my tech geek friends kept talking about this PodCampAZ thing, and I said “well that’s not really for me since I don’t podcast that much” (Been trying to this year, but it’s a shot in the dark). I didn’t pay much attention, and I didn’t want to pay for another conference. I like the ones where I present and they don’t make me pay since I am presenting. Others cost too much. Of course, I did no research.

Suddenly it was November and I was home with my kid. It was a Saturday afternoon and the tweet feed exploded. Suddenly all my friends were talking about this phenomenal conference in Phoenix, and I was jealous. Why wasn’t I there? By dinner time I was itching to get out of the house, and people began to converge on Chino Bandido’s in Chandler. I told the wife to watch the kid, I was going out. I got there, checked in on Brightkite (as I do anytime I go anywhere) and waited for my few friends to show up. Suddenly my phone began to beep. Other people were checking in. People came into the restaurant in droves. They looked like me. Acted like me. I didn’t know them.

Suddenly what I thought was a small geek community in Phoenix was much much larger. I also realized that this PodCampAZ thing was for real, and I was missing it.

By Sunday morning I was at PodCampAZ, in my new, cool t-shirt and ready to rock ‘n roll. I spent a great day with all of these people, and quickly registered for PodCampAZ 2009. Next up was the call for presenters. What did I want to say? I had to say something? Why just sit there and not share? Something. Anything.
I found new ways this year to contact parents and communicate through the high school community as a teacher who is obsessed with technology, but as a parent I knew too few teachers thought like I did. Therefore, my market was both. Here’s Devon the teacher. Here’s Devon the parent. Which are you? Come find out. My proposal was accepted and I even get to present on my birthday! Woohoo! I am ok with that, since I’ve done it before in a former life.

So here are the basics for the conference, and I hope you can join us. It’s free. The only pre-req is to have fun, and if you have something to say, well then say it. I will see you there. Come say hello.

PodCampAZ is at the University of Advancing Technology on Baseline Road (just past Fry’s Electronics for all of us geeks out there). It’s next week November 14 & 15 (wow, I will be 35. Odd.) Some of the people will include YOU (yeah, you). … and New media innovators, enthusiasts, participants, and newbies who are interested the role of the internet in interactive communication. It really is two crazy cool days of learning, sharing, and people meeting. And Phoenix metro is gorgeous in November. An the coolest part is, it’s free!!! Totally free. But you could buy a t-shirt and support @podcampaz for years to come.

So here’s the skinny from my buddies around the valley who wrote the media kit for this event:

It’s that time of year again – PodCamp AZ is coming to the University of Advancing Technology November 14th and 15th! PodCampAZ is a FREE networking media unconference, dedicated to blogging, video blogging, podcasting, social networking, and all other relevant media. At the heart of the unconference is the opportunity to have a conversation at large with those innovators which have created a successful blend of relevant media and put it to work for them. Speakers will address emerging trends and best practices on everything from print and radio to mobile, interactive web, and in real life information exchange. During PodCamp sessions, attendees are free to drop in, listen and learn about what is relevant to their needs, and if they choose to, move on to other sessions. You can also become an interactive part of the experience by sharing your knowledge as a speaker or stimulating ideas and asking questions as an active attendee.

If you are an established or aspiring blogger, podcaster, video blogger, or social media advocote and want to meet hundreds of people with the same interests, head over to podcampaz.org to get more information about this exciting event. And above all else, register to attend PodCamp AZ!

Other Links and Topics
If you want to go beyond the basic information, there are several areas that we currently focused on developing. We’d love you forever if you picked one or two to highlight in your article/cast to help us spread the word.

• Sponsorship – We are actively seeking sponsors for everything from rooms to metals to after-parties. Find information about sponsor levels and contact Paul Valach sponsors@podcampaz.org.
• Speakers – We have an awesome speaker lineup already, and are still taking submissions, but only through Saturday. The schedule gets published Monday! If you have questions, contact Sheila Dee and Lawrence Riddick at greenroom@podcampaz.org.
• PodCast AZ – Every year we have live podcasting throughout the entire session. Contact Dani Cutler and Dan and CJ Feierabend at onair@podcampaz.org to get on the airwaves.
• Volunteers – We’ll need a small army of people to help on event days. We might even have some cool swag for you, like a t-shirt and other unidentified stuff. If you want to march in our army, contact Crystal O’Hara at volunteer@podcampaz.org.
• Tees – We have 600 t-shirts to give to registered attendees, and over 500 people are already registered. If you want in on the goodness, get registered.
• This year, there will also be a monitored Help Desk area to handle your issues as they arise.

Registration
Registration is open. Please make sure you link to the registration page. The event is free to attend, but not free to put together, so we have a pre-registration and donation option.

Graphics
For all your official PCAZ 2009 graphics desires, see our digital swag.

And one two last things…

1. We’ve created an awesome overlay for your Twitter avatar. Add it, or we’ll sic Chuck’s Chihuahua on you!
2. We’ve got Facebook flair to flair your profile and send to friends. (Include images on blog post.)

   http://apps.facebook.com/getflair/viewflair.php?id=11386354&ts=profmain
   http://apps.facebook.com/getflair/viewflair.php?id=11385790&ts=profmain

   http://apps.facebook.com/getflair/viewflair.php?id=11386354&ts=profmain

So will I see you there????

Recently I was speaking with a colleague at Arizona State University who was eager to buy her first Kindle. I asked why she’d not considered an iTouch. She just shrugged, and I shared some researched I’d done last summer. Simply put you could buy a Kindle and read books, and that’s cool, but if you buy an iTouch you can use the same Kindle software plus do much much more.

The Kindle’s form factor is thing and larger than the iTouch, and all it does is allow you to read, download text, and and annotate. Plus it is damn expensive and for the price, foughetaboutit! Not too mention it’s easier to break because of the fragility of the factor. For me, I enjoy several different sorts of applications for my iTouch. I use educational mobile apps, games, travel apps internet utility apps, obviously my eReaders, games and some other random things.

My daughter, Claire, spending an evening out with dad at an event, playing games on my iTouch.

I’ve installed Evernote, which my friend Alan discusses at length HERE, as well as Shmoop LINK which is a mobile study guide system for history and English. Many of the games I have installed are for my daughter, but her favorite is Word Magic which allows her to learn to spell by giving her an image and a word with letters missing. She fills it in and wins virtual medals and ribbons. She can play this for hours. My travel apps were a huge deal last summer when I toured Europe, and these include Skype (which you can use easily with a miced ear piece), translators for the languages of the countries I visited, Google Maps, language dictionaries, and currency converters. Some of the coolest internet utilities I have include, obviously, Google Apps, Google Voice (before it’s ben embargoed by who knows whom), Tweetdeck, Yelp, Twitterific, Facebook, Remember the Milk, and Tumblr. My eReaders include Sony eReader Pro, which is absolute favorite because I can bookmark a page by “dog-earing” it, Stanza, which has a powerful file converter application for the computer side, and, of course, Kindle, which I actually find myself using infrequently.

I am a self-proclaimed bibliophile and was apprehensive to begin reading books electronically, but you know what? After reading a chapter, I was hooked. I could take as many books with me anywhere in the world, read in the dark (think LCD screen), and I completely forgot it wasn’t paper in front of me. No issue. I have now read about a dozen books in three months on my iTouch and haven’t look back.

Did I mention free wireless anywhere there’s a signal in the world? It’s like a mini-computer in my pocket!

After I finished talking to my colleague about that, her response was “Looks like I have a lot more research to do before settling for a Kindle.”

Common Craft Twitter Video. Watch this for a great Twitter overview.

Hi, My name is Devon and I have a problem… No seriously though, I’ve been on Twitter for almost two years now, and yes, when I explain it to others, they look at me like I need a padded room and some Cialis. In part, Twitter began as a simple micro blog that answers “What are you doing right now?” but as simple as that sounds, it’s not anymore.

My timeline (that’s Twitter timeline for you noobs) has been popping off about the new Time article on Twitter: “How Twitter will change the way we live” from June 5, 2009, and as someone who is obsessed as most and about to begin to work on a workshop on Twitter, I have some responses.

As a Composition instructor, I find it interesting to be forced to maintain a response as brief as 140 characters. For high school students whose mentality is that instructors are interested in length (remember when we were in high school and padded pages with 12.5 font and/or 1.1″ margins? I do.), Twitter forces the practice on fighting verbosity in today’s composition. Moreover, Twitter also forces the author to be keenly aware of his or her audience.

Socially, yes, we can simply answer Twitter’s ubiquitous question that we’ve asked each other for decades anyway (how many of you have met up with someone or called and first asked “how’s it going?” before getting down to business?), but there are so many powerful ways to move beyond that “ambience awareness” of one’s day. How often have you been able to see photos (posted on TwitPicNeil Gaiman rolling around in the snow with his husky? Or read about Dave Navarro and his concert going experiences in Jane’s Addiction? Maybe you want to know what Lance Armstrong did today, or what Shaq’s been up to (figuratively).

Neil Gaiman enjoying time outside his home with his dog.

In April 2009, Oprah sent her first tweet from her show, and I ironically was wearing my Eat. Sleep. Tweet. shirt. People looked at me like I’d jumped on some bandwagon and I spent my day tweeting about my Twitter experiences over 18 months. Her publicity coupled with Ashton Kutcher’s race with CNN.com caused an interesting situation to occur for me in the Twittersphere. Before April, I had probably two current high school students want to follow me on Twitter. Both were “cool kids” who I “trusted” with my Tweets, but after that Oprah show, more and more current students began to want to follow me. This really freaked me out because at that time my Twitter audience was not my high school students. (In contrast I made my Facebook profile FOR my students to follow me.) I haven’t really come to a conclusion on the whole student following me on Twitter situation, some I allow and some I don’t, and I ever blocked all updates for a few weeks until things simmered down, but as more and more people jump into Twitter, the more diffused the whole “teacher freak who Twitters with his students” thing becomes.

Posted as part of a Twitter presentation by Chad Richards.

With that said, let’s discuss some of the positives education wise that have emerged from this tool. As I mentioned above, there are “experts” in any field who you can find on Twitter every day. You can follow them (and occasionally they even follow you back!), and sometimes communication emerges that would not necessarily from an email inquiry. In my field, I consider people like Intellagirl and Michael Wesch experts (albeit both are specialized within my field), and I follow both and have actually spent time with both in real life, too. Without Twitter that relationship (virtually) would not have occurred.

People tend to gravitate around certain topics of interest. Mine are “social media” and “instructional technology”. I also teach high school English and tweet about teaching Freshman Comp. I sometimes pick up followers just because of my work, or, other times, I join a new NING and people start following me on Twitter because they stumble over my profile there. A (virtual friend) and colleague Liz B Davis, who I’ve never actually met, aggregated a list of “Educators on Twitter” and as of today (June 6, 2009) there are 765 members. No, I don’t follow them all and they do not all follow me, but the contact data I have at my fingertips is powerful in it’s own right. Another person who I know better but I still consider him an “expert” to be mentioned here (although he is too humble to believe this) is Alan Levine from the New Media Consortium. Here’s a post of his on Twitter, and below is the life cycle of a Twitter addict that he adapted from Kathy Sierra. Very fun stuff.

Alan Levine's twitter life cycle.

What I would define as a collective intelligence that emerges from these “Twitter trees of experts” is what the Time article called “accumulation of authority”. No matter what we call it, our expert groups moved from the saloons of Dorothy Parker, to the list serves, and now to Twitter groups. Want information on anything at all? Ask on Twitter. Sometimes you get several responses within minutes. It’s like the silly old movies when someone asks for a pen or pencil and everyone in the scene shoves one at the simultaneously.

We are not all experts on all topics, but we have experiences and we have ways of collecting information. Sometimes that information includes links. Maybe we see something we want to share, so we post a link. Perhaps someone we follow on Twitter made a profound statement on the world of politics, a new musical, or a must read book. We “reTweet” these, which is a direct attribution and verbatim quote to the original poster (sometimes 2-3 people deep). Other times we don’t want to tell everyone what we have to say, so we send a Direct Message (d twitterid msg). (Sometimes people need to do this more often!) I’d like to point out what Steve Johnson already said about this in the Time article through his metaphor of the toaster oven and microwave. Neither Biz Stone nor Evan Williams, the founders of Twitter, (did you know they are friends with Will Wheaton?) came up with retweets, direct messages, or @ replies? As Johson said in the article, Ev & Biz gave the community the toaster and we made it into a microwave.

I’d like to talk at the idea of the @ sign for a moment here. In my tech circles, the @ID becomes users identity more and more. People don’t know who Sarah Robbins is as much as they know @intellagirl. Cropping up across the USA and into the UK are “Tweetups” where people gather corporeally outside of their meeting on Twitter. No longer do people introduce themselves as, for example, “hi, I am Heather Herr.” But now, when I met her, it clicked faster when she corrected herself, “On Twitter I am @msherr.” THAT person I KNEW! Her real name meant nothing, as for me, some people have no idea who Devon Adams is, but they have seen @nooccar on Twitter. A colleague, Shelley Rodrigo, (@rrodrigo for those of you playing at home), and I have signed entire presentations as devoncadams@gmail and shelleyrodrigo@gmail.com, rather than writing our names more traditionally. Guess what goes on our presentation IDS? You guessed it, just our @IDs. Companies like Tweetup Badges, will even make your group badges for when meeting in public and in person.

We all know the power of Google searches that has continued to gain momentum over the last decade, but have you searched Twitter? Johnson points out that the value of searching within your extended networks may “start to rival Google’s approach to the search”. Now, we will see if Twitter search can ever truly do that, and I am of the opinion that Google will eat Twitter before that happens, but two strong search examples Johnson points out is his article are worth mentioning. “If you’re looking for information on Benjamin Franklin, an essay shared by one of your favorite historians might well be more valuable than the top result on Google; if you’re looking for advice on sibling rivalry, an article recommended by a friend of a friend might well be the best place to start.”

The power of Twitter is that it’s real time. It’s the here and now. I heard about David Carradine’s and Heath Ledger’s death on Twitter within minutes of them being found. I remember when the plane went down in the Hudson River, TwitPic’s were posted of the ferry going to rescue people within minutes (can you even imagine what it would have been like if we had Twitter on April 20, 1999 or September 11, 2001?) According to Johnson, in May 2009 an “anticommunist uprising in Moldova was organized via Twitter. Twitter has become so widely used among political activists in China that the government recently blocked access to it, in an attempt to censor discussion of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.” Also, Twitter is used by CDC like organizations to track flu and health epidemics in urban cities.

As end users, some of us build the better mouse trap by making Twitter more power. We find extraordinary uses for Twitter and many times those uses are by our ME Generation. The innovative ways in which user play and work with Twitter will continually change. The value of the tool mutates, and it’s less about this tool BEING TWITTER than about the key elements of the platform–follower structure (including the @ symbol which has bled out of Twitter into other social media sites), link-sharing and real-time searching. It is like Marc Prensky said at the National Council for Teachers of English keynote in November 2008 in San Antonio, it’s less the noun that matters than the verb. What are the concepts where, rather than the content. Beyond Twitter for the fun of tweeting and calling our followers and friends tweeple or, more courageously, twits, what is the true purpose? Yes, some times it’s cool to see who is doing what, other times you spend more time tweeting than checking your gmail. Even other times, you run across fun tools like “Historic tweets,” which essentially sends out fake tweets from famous situations.

Lincoln asks followers for speechwriting help

But other times, this matters. We, as users, are the, as MIT prof Eric von Hippel puts it, “end-user innovation” where we, as consumers, modify these social networking tools for our own needs. Twitter and the like mutate and change as we find ways to engage the tool to make meaning in our own lives, through our own needs, and within our education

In Feb 2009 I wrote a post answer the question in the title above. For some reason, I posted it to my personal blog. Ooops. Here’s the link.

My friend Alan Levine posted on Yahoo Pipes and a clever little bit of code that gives you a map of your Twitter followers. The code requires plain text Twitter password entry, so neither Alan nor I posted the actual map, but here’s a screen shot of mine!

Created @ http://pipes.yahoo.com/mmmeeja/twitterfollowers

My daughter got some sort of V-tech handheld Dora the Explorer video game from my parents for Christmas. That evening she wouldn’t put it down, to the point where she played down the sidewalk and stairs to the truck, all the way home to Papa’s house and inside. She was totally sucked in. Claire visited her cousins who just got a Wii for Christmas; the kids sat there playing (in part) while we were there. Their mother is also a school teacher, and we got a little into the discussion of video games and their affects on kids. She said one her colleague’s tween plays Call of Duty online through his Xbox with adults who use profanity. She thought this wasn’t acceptable, but agreed that certain games are ok.

My wife and I disagree on the affect of video games and what we want in OUR house. My back ground with video games includes playing Texas Instruments & Commodore 64 with my cousin’s (these were mostly role playing games), Nintendo (old skool) with the neighbor kids and Jaime, and then playing Heroes of Might and Magic on the PC with my wife when we were dating. Donna was not permitted to have video games in her house, although she played some games on her dad’s Amiga (look it up, dinosaurs used them!)

I’ve been known to stay awake all night long playing Heroes or Nintendo, so to have my own console in the house for my family scares me a little bit. I barely have time for television, so how can I play video games? In November I met Marc Prensky whose son is Claire’s age. This kid has a Nintendo DS. I mentioned getting Claire one, and Donna said “Hell No!”.

When working on my doctorate, I did study how video games are used to better develop certain higher level thinking skills & eye hand coordination. I agree with the benefits of video games within reason. Even Bill Gates limits his children’s time online each day. The two things I think are important are 1) limiting time the kid (or adult) uses the system & 2) educate yourself on the types of games you allow you kid to play (or see you pay) inside your house and at friends’ houses.

Brian, my cousin with the Wii, and I agree with the important of using video games to educate our kids, but we also know that we need to be smart about it. Think about all the ways games are already used to educate, and maybe you will realize too that this just an extension of what you already permit your kids to do.