Alright, well here’s the story

Alright, well, here’s the story.

Brad, a friend of mine, was visiting his folks in Montreal.

Charged him an arm and a leg for the flights.

Damn huge country this is.

Eleven hundred bucks to get across it!

Fine whatever, Brad thought.

Get this visit over with.

Haven’t seen them in a while.

It’ll get them off his back.

Just for a little while at least.

Kills him to spend time with them though.

Little jabs left and right all day long.

Mom’s the worst.

Never stops going over his life.

On and on.

Pisses him off.

Quiet time is not in the cards this weekend.

Regretting this already.

Sucks.

This is the last time.

Until next time.

Vicious cycle.

When will it end.

X words mess everything up.

You know what I mean?

Zoops!

 

 

Strange Mini-Golf, Hole 4 Par 87

I can’t show you a picture of this hole, as you have to do it blindfolded. Words will have to suffice. Picture this… Wait I forgot, you’ll be blindfolded, so don’t picture this… feel this:

Blindfold on, you will begin by hitting a very small golf club with a very big golf ball. The mini club will not go very far as it does not roll very well at all.

At this point you will need to get down on your knees and feel around for your mini-club. This will probably happen after every stroke. Did I mention that you are not standing on astro-turf? You are actually up in a Giant Sequoia.

Now you can decide whether or not to keep hitting your club with the giant ball or if you just want to flick the club with the ring finger on your non-dominant hand. But this choice is now or never. Most people switch to flicking.

Once you find your mini club and you flick it again, the club will likely fall out of the tree. So now you need to try to climb out of the tree blindfolded. Don’t worry, the tree is surrounded by mattresses.

Now that you are lying in a pile of mattresses, again, search for your mini club by feeling around with your hands. Found it? Great! Flick it again, away from the tree if you remember where it is. Keep flicking it until you get it onto a local bus. This may take a while.

Once on the bus with your mini club, wait until the driver announces the name of a stop that reminds you of your childhood. This is where you need to switch from flicking to kicking. Oh yeah and you can switch out your mini-club to a beach ball. I put a deflated one in your pocket. Inflate it! Quickly now! And then kick it out the door and chase it!

Now that you are wherever you are, continue to kick your ball until someone asks you if you if they can play with your ball as well. This person is Hole 4 of our golf course! Tell them nicely that they are welcome to play with the ball, but you have to get back to your mini-golf game! The run back to the course and begin Hole 5.

Good luck!

flickr photo shared by Orin Zebest under a Creative Commons ( BY ) license
ds106 Daily Create #1685

Drone, Please Come Home

Daily Create 1679

Here is how this video came to be. You will probably note that my process is fraught with inefficiencies and could be done in approximately a lot less steps.

  • Copy the youtube link for the original Kin Lane Drone Recovery video
  • Paste it into keepvid.com and download the mp4
  • Make that there mp4 go into Movie Maker
  • Splice out the part where Kin is just about to grab it
  • Think about how it’d be funny if it took off again and just kept looping that way
  • Google: how to reverse a video
  • Find http://www.videoreverser.com/
  • Put my spliced video into that
  • Download the reversed version
  • Add that to Movie Maker project, copy and paste a few times
  • Realize I need some old timey rag time music to add to this
  • Go to freemusicarchive.org, Old-Time/Historic Genre
  • Listen to a few songs, settle on ‘Percy Wenrich: The Smiler’
  • Put that song into Movie Maker, add title and credits, watch the finished product, lightly chuckle, publish to mp4
  • Then put that there video into youtube

 

 

 

Every 3 Pictures Tell a Story

Daily Create 1654 is to create a story from three public domain images found on Pravatar.

The theme of my story is one I don’t think has ever been done in any story ever before ever: Good vs. Bad. Let’s see how this plays out!

battle

The ending is deliberately vague because I wanted you to be left on the edge of your seat. Maybe the good guy won. Maybe the bad guy won. Maybe they joined forces to defeat the Mastermind. Maybe this is all a dream. Why is the mean guy covered in smoke? Is he from The Upside Down? What’s the good guy looking at? Is it a Pokemon? What’s with the Mastermind’s hat? Is he wearing it ironically? Find out next time if we can secure funding for a sequel!

We’re Going Into The Grid

Daily Create 1647

Commodore 64ing yourself feels exactly like what I think it might feel exactly like to go into the grid. I’m going to take Alice with me. 2016 - 766

So, the first and possibly only tool you need to use is the c64 yourself page provided in the Daily Create directions for the day. But when you watch yourself enter the grid, the process looks like entering the future and the past at the same time which is awesome so I wanted to capture that as well, not just the final product.

Enter another tool: Gyazo. This one allows you to record screencast GIFs . I’ve used it before to record little bits of how to do things in our learning containment system. You only have five seconds, so it’s a fun exercise in what you can do with strict limitations.

TerryandAlice.gif

Look, Katie and Lucy came into the grid too! We all live here now.

katie and lucy!.gif

 

Excitement/Abandonment

This post was originally published here, but I am cross-posting it here for maximum blowhardiness.

I am currently reading, as a little bit of professional learning, The Monsters of Educational Technology, by Audrey Watters. I’m convinced you couldn’t find a better person to have a critical eye on your field than her.

Her analysis of the history, present and future of Ed-Tech in this book and on her blog  reveals cycles of excitement and abandonment of ideas for using technology in education. Over and over. History repeating itself. Over and over. It’s very easy to get excited about new technology. It’s harder to figure out how to use it to the best of its potential for helping us teach and learn.

What’s better? Someone using PowerPoint 2007 to create a beautiful visual complement of slides for a passionate talk, or using brand new Virtual Reality goggles to ‘explore’ a scene that you could reasonably go and actually explore in real life? I’m not saying VR does not have exciting potential, but it should be used for what it could be best for: immersion into scenarios in which you could not actually be immersed IRL. Like say the past, or the inside of a circulatory system, or floating above a city. Not some environment to which you can actually go. Just like PowerPoint should be used what it is best for: creating slides that are a visualcomplement to an exciting talk, not as the whole lecture itself. Cutting-edge is not better than trailing-edge unless you are using it meaningfully.

Does anybody remember trying to move the little turtle around the screen in elementary school? This was the The LOGO programming language for children

logo_turtle
Image Source

Forty years ago, researchers developed a programming language that would become a brilliant educational tool.

Maybe it was a brilliant educational tool. I wouldn’t know because the way it was used in my school, as far as I can recall, was a few times over a couple of months. I got mildly excited when I first made the turtle create a square. But really I didn’t know why we needed to make it make a square. It just disappeared from our computer activities when the shine wore off. Perhaps if they stuck to it a little longer, I could have experienced the real brilliance of it. They were excited to get us coding… for a little while and then it went away. Ultimately it’s my own fault to not yet have the skills I wish I had. I just wish now that they went a little further with it.

I’m guessing you can recall hearing reports or seeing articles in your recent past about the need to teach our children coding and programming. Ads for coding bootcamps for kids maybe? History Image result for symbol for repeat. I do think it’s a great idea. I hope we can stick to it a little longer this time.

I don’t want to say that I think it would have been better if they never gave us the LOGO opportunity at all. I think of that little turtle fondly. I just wish I had the chance to get to know it better. What I’m trying to say is this: take the time to think about how you can meaningfully use the new technology that you are excited about before you begin working with it. And if you decide to use it, keep pushing through a little more once the excitement fades. Revise and re-implement and only abandon when you truly have found something else that works better, not just another new shiny thing.

Terry

Today is Today Day

If you have a look at https://www.daysoftheyear.com, you’ll see that every day has 3 or 4 themes to it which is absolutely ridiculous, so I am reclaiming today as just a day.

Today is henceforth Today Day. Locally, provincially, nationally, internationally, globally, universally.

Do your own thing. Enjoy doing what you do.anigif_enhanced-buzz-11138-1338648854-10

Wherever you go, you are your own Today Day Parade so throw a little swagger in your step.

Have a great Today Day today!

Featured image created using canva.com

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