St Kilda Garden, Spring 2008

Another Spring is with us...

Voxopop: Your dream of e-learning?

Discussion Topic:

Your dream of e-learning?

VOXOPOP encourages discussions

around topics of your choice.

Shared via AddThis

Image:

Clker.com

public domain royalty free clipart

Quench-fires

This illuminating article by Gillian Bouras
comes from today's online magazine 'Eureka Street':
Lessons from Greek and Australian 'quench-fires' - Eureka Street

Shared via AddThis

Ramadan 2009

A link to 39 superb photos of Ramadan

from around the world

on The Boston Globe's online site.

Ramadan 2009 - The Big Picture - Boston.com

Charter for Compassion

Charter For Compassion from ben kaufman on Vimeo.

Recently Karen Armstrong has moved beyond her role as acedemic observer of religion to become an advocate for inter-religious dialogue.

Sunflowers 2009

Especially on a wintry Melbourne day,

sunflowers make me smile...

I love TinyURL

Enter a long URL to make tiny:

Suesy Circosta

My friend Suesy Circosta has an exquisite website at http://www.suesycircosta.com.
Above is a sample of her work as a community artist.

Stages of my icon

From Collages

This collage was made in Picasa.

WE LEARN

WE LEARN (Women Expanding Literacy Education Action Resource Network) is a community promoting women's literacy as a tool that fosters empowerment and equity for women.

Academic Earth

Today, after reading about it in 'The Age' Education section, I visited Academic Earth, 'a peek into the classrooms of leading American universities'. This video shows Christine Hayes from Yale giving her first lecture of three on 'An Introduction to the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible)'.

Other online courseware sites mentioned were ITunes U, OpenCourseWare Consortium, ResearchChannel and You Tube EDU.

Windows Live Writer Test

The table set for the Betrothal Party...

I posted this from Live Writer.

Bottle brush in August

My first Ning site

Visit CLASSY CRONIES

iGoogle - Sacred Sites

Thresholds

Find more videos like this on ACE e-learning network

I made this video some years ago to evoke some of the adventure and wonder of exploring e-learning or any new world.

The power of 'e'

The power of 'e'

View more presentations from deliab.

This is the slideshow for my presentation at the 'E-learning showcase' this coming Friday morning, the 20th March, in Melbourne.

A 'Wordle' composition

House parties for Obama

Ning member badge

View my page on ACE e-learning network

Cover It Live

For live coverage of an event...

Susan Greenfield: The Quest for Identity

Yesterday, I went to hear Susan Greenfield speak at the State Library of Victoria. Her latest book is ID: The Quest for Identity in the 21st Century. She posed the question: Is individual identity in crisis? In other words, instead of being SOMEONE or ANYONE, could we be heading towards being NO-ONE? In exploring these questions, she differentiated between 'People of the Book' and the 'People of the Screen'. To explain the latter, she listed the effects of screen culture on thinking, identity and risk-taking. She believes that an emphasis on sensory stimulation and sensational fragments leaves little room for a continuous narrative, a characteristic of book culture where cognitive meaning-making develops a conceptual framewok for navigating the world. She sees a focus on creativity as vital for the future...

Two of many reviews of her book and ideas can be found at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/may/31/scienceandnature.society

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article3901315.ece

Delia's family

Here is Delia's family, photographed in 1907.

My father is the youngest child,

sitting on his father's knee.

Homage to Delia Bannon

I am back writing letters to Delia Bannon,

my Irish Grandmother.

This fuzzy photo was taken in 1912.

I love it.

The fountain is flowing again

First sign of Spring 2008

I took this photo yesterday,

at the entrance to my upstairs studio.

It is the first leaf on the vine.

Thirst

This is an educational Slideshare presentation made by Jeff Brenman exploring humanity's water use.

THIRST

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: design crisis)

Organ Pipes National Park

Mildura sculpture

Russian icon

Many scholars consider Rublev's Trinity

the most perfect of all Russian icons

and perhaps the most perfect of all the icons ever painted.

I prefer to call it 'The Three Graces'.

clipped from http://www.rollins.edu/Foreign_Lang/Russian/trinity.html

The Anthroplogy of YouTube

This was presented by Michael Wesch at the Library of Congress, June 23rd 2008. It is 55 minutes long and WELL worth a look.

Society hard-wired for a fall?

Peter Wilson, Europe correspondent
The Australian
June 14, 2008

Here is a sample of an article on Susan Greenfield, ‘a passionate advocate for taking science to the masses’. It can be read as a companion article to my previous post:

People who spend many hours a day in front of computer screens and televisions, she warns, are going through an unprecedented process in which the brain is churning out and consuming excessive amounts of a natural chemical called dopamine. Other brain scientists agree that heightened levels of dopamine could produce important changes in the fine wiring and functions of the brain, suppressing certain types of more sophisticated thinking.

The hard scientific evidence is limited but Greenfield believes the result of all that screen time and addictive dopamine will be the biggest physical changes to the human brain since the Neanderthals 100,000 years ago, producing changes in behaviour and thought patterns that amount to nothing less than a different type of person.

Older generations - she describes them as "the people of the book" - have developed powers of imagination, empathy, context and meaning which she fears will be much reduced in "the people of the screen".

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23858718-28737,00.html
previous

Is Google making us stupid?

Nicholas Carr
Atlantic Monthly
July/August 2008

Here is a sample of this extremely important article subtitled 'What the Internet is doing to our brains':

Thanks to the ubiquity of text on the Internet, not to mention the popularity of text-messaging on cell phones, we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was our medium of choice. But it’s a different kind of reading, and behind it lies a different kind of thinking—perhaps even a new sense of the self. “We are not only what we read,” says Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University and the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. “We are how we read.” Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose commonplace. When we read online, she says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.

Reading, explains Wolf, is not an instinctive skill for human beings. It’s not etched into our genes the way speech is. We have to teach our minds how to translate the symbolic characters we see into the language we understand. And the media or other technologies we use in learning and practicing the craft of reading play an important part in shaping the neural circuits inside our brains. Experiments demonstrate that readers of ideograms, such as the Chinese, develop a mental circuitry for reading that is very different from the circuitry found in those of us whose written language employs an alphabet. The variations extend across many regions of the brain, including those that govern such essential cognitive functions as memory and the interpretation of visual and auditory stimuli. We can expect as well that the circuits woven by our use of the Net will be different from those woven by our reading of books and other printed works.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

HOPE

Hope is a film that documents the fate of the people-smuggling vessel SIEV-X and the 353 people who died when it sank en route to Australia. Here is the link to the official website: http://www.hopedocumentary.com.au/hope/index.htm

For the past three years Steve Biddulph has been working to build a suitable memorial in Canberra for victims and survivors of the SIEV X sinking. The photo above that shows a few of the 353 memorial poles is taken from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIEV-X#SIEV_X_Memorial

The Medieval Imagination

There has been a a marvellous series of free lectures at the State Library of Victoria around the event, 'The Medieval Imagination', an exhibition of medieval manuscripts. The above video reminds us of the disruptive nature of the new technology of 'the book' and this link gives a taste of the exhibition, including a gallery and audio tour,
http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/programs/exhibitions/kmg/2008/medieval_imagination

Aramaic

This is the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke. It illustrates so well the distinctive sound and flavour of Eastern Christianity, much of which has been forgotten and lost in the West. When I listen to this being chanted, it reminds me of the whirling dervishes, both their music and movement. I read once that prostrations were a common practice in early Christianity, something associated with Islam today.

The tree is blooming

These purple flowers symbolise the growth so far

and the promise of growth to come.

From little things...

A Tree of Knowledge

This 'Tree of Knowledge' was made

by the 2008 BALD students.

Season of mellow fruitfulness

Right now, the deck still looks much like this but soon...

It will look like this, a photo taken on our deck last autumn...

My third Jing/screencast.com combination

I took this photo in Janey's kitchen last week.

My second, this time still, Jing

My first Jing screencast, a video

New Year's Breakfast 2008

THE INVITATION

NEW YEAR’S BREAKFAST 2008

Journeys: Past and Future

Journeys change us - emotionally, intellectually, politically, aesthetically and spiritually - so that we are never the same as before.

Australia is now embarking on a new journey.

From our experience of journeys, what message do we have for our fellow Australian citizens for 2008?

As a starting point, we suggest you bring A PIECE OF WRITING OR IMAGE related to travel – to any destination, for any reason. This might be a postcard (sent or received), a photo, a letter, a journal extract or aerogram.

WHEN: 11am, Tuesday, 1st January 2008

THE BREAKFAST TABLE -

before and after

Different seasons in my garden

In our water-deprived garden, this lush mosiac made in the middle of last year feels especially precious...

A library mosaic

Zorba the Greek Yolngu style

Frank Djirrimbilpilwuy from Milingimbi has been in the Indigenous Media Industry for many years and has been a long-standing member and supporter of the Top End Aboriginal Bush Broadcasting Association, TEABBA Radio. As the man behind the camera and release of the video, Frank is also representing the dance group who call themselves "The Chooky Dancers". Frank has said that he filmed the footage at this years Ramingining Festival on the 30th September 2007 and knew it would be "something special" as soon as he saw the boys rehearsing.

The Chooky Dancers are a group of 10 energetic young men who had healthy living in mind when they choreographed the performance. Frank's son Lionel is the lead dancer in the video footage at front and center. "They (the Chooky Dancers) begun working on this just after this years Garma Festival in Gukula and worked very hard on it, they also do a Bollywood style performance which is also fantastic" Frank said.

A vision of students today

This is a short YouTube video summarizing some of the most important characteristics of students today - how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime.
Created by Michael Wesch in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University.

Crossing Thresholds from 20th to 21st Century

I made this slide show quite a while ago but still love what it says.

The music is courtesy of www.freeplaymusic.com

In honour of the Garden Gals

I made this digital story after our latest gathering yesterday.
We have been meeting every six weeks for over ten tears.

The music, 'Arriving Abroad', is courtesy of www.freeplaymusic.com

Maria's roses

BubbleShare: Share photos - Here comes Halloween!

These are an enduring memory of our day in Euroa.

The Classy Cronies assemble again

I made this story in honour of our group
that has been meeting for fifteen years or more...

The music, 'Tea for Two', is provided by www.freeplaymusic.com.

FANCY FOOTWORK arrives!

This post featuring 'Women of Spirit', with photos taken a few months later, complements the earlier one.

Circulating ACE Wisdom

I prepared this slide show for the first 'Circulating ACE Wisdom' project workshop early in August.

Women of Spirit

During the course of planning our book, Fancy Footwork, Helena Spyrou took these photos, in case we wanted portraits in the book. Later, we decided not.

For information about Fancy Footwork, visit the VALBEC site, http://www.valbec.org.au.

The music, 'Lotus Blossom', is provided by www.freeplaymusic.com.

The angel on our deck

I used fd's Flickr Toys, http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/captioner.php, to create this caption.

Doorways and openings

A colleague and I took these photos around St Kilda just before 2000, in preparation for a conference presentation called 'Crossing Thresholds'.

A 'Google Docs' experiment

^{Who knows if there's another book coming?
Only Brigid can tell...
She will let me know.}

Would you like to add yourself to this Frappr map?

Apollo Bay 2006

This is my first attempt with a digital video camera.

Bollards 2

Today, I have been playing with YouTube and
hence this embedding of an early digital story.

St Brigid's cathedral, Kildare

Now, I'm clipmarking an image.

clipped from kildare.ie Early Christian motif piece possibly dating from the 10th. century

My first clipmark

This is my latest discovery.

clipped from kildare.ie <H1>Saint Brigid </H1><B>St Brigid - Mary of the Gael - is second only to St Patrick in the esteem of the Irish people. She is, of course, specially associated with Kildare and the whole area of Magh Life (The Liffey Plain). </B><BR>

Meet my talking avatar

Get a Voki now!



She was created in Voki.

del.icio.us link

Quick Topic

QuickTopic is a free message board hosting service that provides an instant online discussion space. You can try it here.




Discuss reflective learning

Finding a map of Australia

Live Search Maps

http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=-31.278551~124.760742&style=h&lvl=4&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&encType=1

Here is the angel

As I could not upload this image via Windows Online Writer (without FTP),

I did it inside Blogger.

I want to bring the peace and goodwill that she represents into this blog.

Windows Live Writer

This is the first time I have tried Live Writer.

I chose the angel on our deck

to announce this change

but am having trouble uploading images.

My first photo mosaic, now enlarged

Today, I learnt how to make a photo mosaic in Flickr.

I called it, 'Seasons in My Garden'.

Purple a-plenty magnified

This is the second photo mosaic I tried,
a different arrangement this time.

Voice Thread

This is Voice Thread that allows multiple contributors.

WalkieTalkie

AFLF E-trends June 2007 online event

Here are the slides I prepared for the Australian Flexible Learning Framework (AFLF) June 2007 E-trends one-hour panel conversation called 'The Realities of E-learning in the 21st Century'.

The panel members were:
Leigh Blackall – Educational Technologist, NZ
Wendy Zammit – E-learning practitioner, Sydney
Tony Carr - Co-ordinator: Staff Development,South Africa
Delia Bradshaw - Nomadic Adult Educator, Melbourne.

It was chaired by Michael Coghlan.

AccessACE Workshop, June 20 2007

I created a Slide Show!

Another irresistible plaything, slide.com...
snapshots from my 60th birthday at Bud's.

Slideshare: good for PPTs

Slideshare allows me to upload Power Point files

such as this one that I made

for the Converge 2006 conference in Melbourne.

Birthday orchids

It is nearly six weeks

since Di gave me these

for my 60th birthday.

Each day, I revel in

their beauty and longevity.