Getting perspective with some graphs

ThoughtWorks

ThoughtWorks is a global IT consultancy

We deliver custom applications and provide consulting grounded in reality; we help organizations become efficient through Agile and Lean practices and principles. By hiring exceptional people, we can solve our clients' biggest and most pressing problems. All of our services are offered both on and offshore, and are delivered with pride and passion.

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Could they need me?

Paid to blog?

Today I chose a path and place for my future.
Today I chose to do 'this' full time. An expert in Cyberbullying? An expert on The Internet and teenagers?
I can take the facebook seminar/presentation to International MS conference, Middle Years conference, New teachers conference for the Union for a start. SASPA? Artists Week, Writers Week
I can help the Caregroup teacher for 8.4 to get some documents that discuss privacy settings for social networking sites like I promised.
I'm thinking a phd through research masters degree - maybe a video blog rather than a written report?
Booklets for teacher. Booklets for staff. Update twice year..
I can offer the cyber bullying for staff presentation that I ran for HSC. Create own video's?
Seminar for counsellors? MSN & Facebook:Management of reports of bullying on the net.

IPP Digital Media - Industry consultation forum

How can you tell who the most employable geek is? He's the one looking at your shoes - not his own!
This and much much more came from our gathering today at ABC studio's.
A REALLY useful event both for me as a Multimedia teacher and someone interested in entering the Multimedia industry.
I was fortunate to sit on the Gaming stream that attracted the best professionals;
Steven Ready from Digital Lamb
Shane Bevan from Monkeystack
Richard Taylor from Holopoint
Peta Pash from Mega
Hamish Park from DTED (Government)
Their collective suggestions included;
Good Gamers are

• aware of the components that go into making a game and which bits they do best
• able to traverse diverse visual platforms ie Flash, 3D, Multiplayer modalities etc
  
• are generalists that specialise
• able to show a product and explain how they got it
• demonstrate diverse processes for achieving creative goals
• are explicit about the differing visual platforms and able to name the similarities and differences
• have purposeful exercises in their folio and can explain (why does your avatar look that way?)
• have consulted widely and sought extensive feedback on their products
• have considered differing user types
• can show where they started and where they finished and how that happened (folio)
• are willing to work on someone else's design concept as passionately as their own
• have artistic flair, technical merit and present polished products
• are able to crossover the artistic and technical bridge
• are good business managers and have some entrepreneurial traits
• are excellent problem solvers and troubleshooters
  
• are able to network

phew......

Peta referred to Digital Industry Education Forum findings from investigating the pathway for 20 000 graduates that the most essential things are the 'soft' skills;

• communication
• understanding of how the company works and your place in it
• are able to articulate design concepts
• and are problem solvers

Shane said a good test for your game is that you can test the interface with a peer without hovering over their shoulder.
Richard talked about game mechanics theory. Where's the game play? This could be with an iphone app or a multiplayer roleplay game.
Both spoke about 'What happens after you push the start button'. What sort of 'experience' is it for your user?

Get started on your folio!

www.digitallamb.com.au
www.holopoint.com.au
www.monkeystack.com.au
www.southaustralia.biz
www.mega.org.au

The Cat Piano

Monkeystack Incubator for Digital Artists

Incubator Showreel from Monkeystack on Vimeo.

A LITTLE MORE ABOUT ‘THE STACK’

At MONKEYSTACK, they provide high quality cross media solutions such as 2D and 3D animation, visual fx, motion graphics, product visualization, architectural walkthroughs and games. Their expertise covers a broad range of Digital Media including television, film and web. Their high profile clients include the likes of DefenceSA, Schneider Electric, SAAB, Hills Industries and Nike amongst many others.

They are proud to say we’ve won several awards for developing high quality Children’s animation and game content including AIMIA, ATOM awards as well as working closely with local broadcasters including ABC,SBS and Nickelodeon developing several children’s entertainment properties.

With strong new media, commercial and animation production experience, MONKEYSTACK is well placed to develop and produce quality digital content across multiple platforms and delivery models.

CONTACT

Level 1/84 Hindley Street
Adelaide, South Australia 5000
p: +61 8 8212 6216
monkeys@monkeystack.com.au
www.monkeystack.com.au

Adelaide Digital Media Showcase

Adelaide Digital Media Showcase from Monkeystack on Vimeo.

SIMSA from Monkeystack on Vimeo.

Adelaide Call for Entries | MEGA 2010 Program

The IT Crowd - Hello IT Machine

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

IT Crowd: truest moment ever!

Heeding the advice of those who go before us.

This text has some excellent research into EFFECTIVE use of ICT's in the classroom. Interestingly it suggests my current T&D into using electronic whiteboards is useless. Why, you ask? They only provide one focal point and the most effective classroom has multiple focal points to address multiple levels.

The power of the internet to change (record) history

AOTUS: Collector in Chief

The Archivist’s Take on Transparency, Collaboration, and Participation at the National Archives.

UK Writer about the internet - Paul Carr

Bringing Nothing To The Party: True Confessions of a New Media Whore is the painfully true story of how Paul Carr attempted to become a dot com billionaire and in doing so lost his reputation, the love of his life and very nearly his freedom.

I've just finished this 'novel' and really enjoyed the 'insight' into this world I teach about. Scary actually - how volitile it is. It was relieving to see Carr has given up 'drinking rum' as his alcoholism was tedious. I will be following his blog. I had some good laughs. I'll also be using the 'story' of facebook and the million dollar webpage in my classes for a long time. Thanks Paul.

Hole in the wall

Very cool project that brings access to kids without computers.
Hole in the Wall

Tag clouds

Verrry cool tag clouds.
A tag cloud or word cloud (or weighted list in visual design) is a visual depiction of user-generated tags, or simply the word content of a site, typically used to describe the content of web sites. Tags are usually single words and are normally listed alphabetically, and the importance of a tag is shown with font size or color. Thus, both finding a tag by alphabet and by popularity are possible. The tags are usually hyperlinks that lead to a collection of items that are associated with a tag.

In principle, the font size of a tag in a tag cloud is determined by its incidence. For a word cloud of categories like weblogs, the frequency of use for example, corresponds to the number of weblog entries that are assigned to a category. For small frequencies it's sufficient to indicate directly for any number from one to a maximum font size. For larger values, a scaling should be made. In a linear normalization, the weight t_i of a descriptor is mapped to a size scale of 1 through f, where t_min and t_max are specifying the range of available weights.

for t_i > t_min; else s_i = 1

• s_i: display fontsize
• f_max: max. fontsize
• t_i: count
• t_min: min. count
• t_max: max. count

Cyberbullying in its place

Some info sheets for teens experiencing bullying via facebook.

Coming soon..

Literacy of Literacies!

From Howard Reinhold Essay 'Participative Pedagogy for a Literacy of Literacies'
"we must develop a participative pedagogy, assisted by digital media and networked publics, that focuses on catalyzing, inspiring, nourishing, facilitating, and guiding literacies essential to individual and collective life in the 21st century. Literacies are where the human brain, human sociality and communication technologies meet. We're accustomed to thinking about the tangible parts of communication media−the devices and networks−but the less visible social practices and social affordances, from the alphabet to TCP/IP, are where human social genius can meet the augmenting power of technological networks. Literacy is the most important method Homo sapiens has used to introduce systems and tools to other humans, to train each other to partake of and contribute to culture, and to humanize the use of instruments that might otherwise enable commodification, mechanization and dehumanization. By literacy, I mean, following on Neil Postman and others, the set of skills that enable individuals to encode and decode knowledge and power via speech, writing, printing and collective action, and which, when learned, introduce the individual to a community. Literacy links technology and sociality. The alphabet did not cause the Roman Empire, but made it possible. Printing did not cause democracy or science, but literate populations, enabled by the printing press, devised systems for citizen governance and collective knowledge creation. The Internet did not cause open source production, Wikipedia or emergent collective responses to natural disasters, but it made it possible for people to act together in new ways, with people they weren't able to organize action with before, in places and at paces for which collective action had never been possible. Literacies are the prerequisite for the human agency that used alphabets, presses and digital networks to create wealth, alleviate suffering and invent new institutions. If the humans currently alive are to take advantage of digital technologies to address the most severe problems that face our species and the biosphere, computers, telephones and digital networks are not enough. We need new literacies around participatory media, the dynamics of cooperation and collective action, the effective deployment of attention and the relatively rational and critical discourse necessary for a healthy public sphere."
I'm trying to put something together for us. Stay tuned..

News in the Age of Participation by Gerrit Visser

How to Recognize The Future When It Lands On You
Technologies of Cooperation
March 1st, 2010

News is changing. How we get news, where we get news, how we react to news, what we do with news when we get it and on and on.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project published today a report that takes a look at this rapidly changing area of our lives and the impact it has.

Full Pew Survey report via Frank Reed Marketing Pilgrim via smartmobs.com blog

In the digital era, news has become omnipresent. Americans access it in multiple formats on multiple platforms on myriad devices. The days of loyalty to a particular news organization on a particular piece of technology in a particular form are gone. The overwhelming majority of Americans (92%) use multiple platforms to get news on a typical day, including national TV, local TV, the internet, local newspapers, radio, and national newspapers. Some 46% of Americans say they get news from four to six media platforms on a typical day. Just 7% get their news from a single media platform on a typical day.

Here are a few pieces of data to consider about news:

Portable : 33% of cell phone owners now access news on their cell phones.

Personalized : 28% of internet users have customized their home page to include news from sources and on topics that particularly interest them.

Participatory : 37% of internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or disseminated it via postings on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter.

Award winning website

Winner of the Weird section of the Webby Awards!
Very quirky games etc!

www.secrettechnology.com

Digital Media SA email list

Join our email list on Yahoo.
We are SA Educators bringing school and work together to form an Industry pathway. Currently looking at assigning components from Industry Training Packages into four categories Print, Screen, Web & Sound Curriculum. If you are an educator tell me how Digital media looks in your school.

On the You Tube bus

In her works Michelle Teran (Canada) explores the interplay between social and media networks within urban environments.

Her project Buscando al Sr. Goodbar (2009) is a threefold tour through the Spanish town Murcia simultaneously taking place by bus as well as on Google Earth and YouTube.
Seated on a bus an audience debarks on a physical search for the locations and authors of various YouTube videos produced in the city. Whenever any such YouTube video discloses the geographical coordinates of where it was shot, the video becomes tagged onto Google Earth via a special software mapping system. The bus can be followed virtually on Google Earth while YouTube videos are screened on the bus itself. By entering the spaces where videos were produced, an intimate encounter occurs between video makers and audience.

The tour audience was introduced to everyday performances and actions happening in the city that often go unnoticed. Somebody solves a Rubik's Cube in under 2 minutes, a young man plays a piano, a group of friends drunkenly sing together, a 14 year old boy headbangs in his bedroom, somebody is choked, a man teaches himself Arabic and two people fall in love. At certain points the audience left the bus and met some of the video authors who presented them with re-enactments of their performances.

Buscando al Sr. Goodbar (Looking for Mr. Goodbar) from Michelle Teran on Vimeo.

Artist's Week 2010

Adelaide Festival Artist Week Day three 'Participatory Cultures'
Geert Lovink 'transform these things into tools in which we control the settings'.Geert is founder of the Institute of Network Cultures'and like all good art and thinking is from Amsterdam!
QLD's ARC Dr Jean Burgess's research on You Tube was cool too.
Interesting to see the most viewed youtube vid 'Charlie bit my finger'! Silliness is universal and that sense of mischief seems to be culturally generative. I liked the work about musicians sharing. This is a good example of participatory culture?
All the art was brilliant too.
I loved Dr Melinda Rackham's Web 2.0 Suicide. It was useful too.

I'll be installing Prof Ana Munsters's Track me not too.
Pss Don't tell the kids!

“Private Information has extreme value”

I was fortunate enough to be sponsored by the AEU to attend a conference called “Losing my identity: Privacy, Identity and E-Crime”. It was run by the Privacy Committee of South Australia.
Although I left rattled by the continuous conclusion that education (schools) need to change the world I found some really valuable resources. Including the booklet ‘private i’ which I consequently ordered for every student and teacher at my school. 
I know you are as exacerbated as I am at the flippancy employed by most teens to their privacy so some of the following facts could help them change their privacy settings in facebook?
Identity Crime can underpin and facilitate a range of crime including drug trafficking, vehicle theft and re-identification, money laundering, terrorism and people smuggling.
Electronic Crime includes cyber stalking, spam & phishing used to spread malicious software and the possession of child pornography.
I also considered the presented Crime Prevention suggestions;
Preventing crime is more effective than investigating crime
Users need to learn about the technology they are using
Trust is not an option on the internet.
Let’s not get all freaked out and fear mongering about this.. That would widen the generation gap that needs paving up for the best interests of our kids!
Probably the best received information has been ‘Be as anonymous as possible’. Avoid postings that could enable a stranger to profile you.
For example;
Names - Surname, mother’s maiden name
History - Education, sports teams, where you live
Interests - Pets, hobbies
The best place to take care is when choosing prompter passwords for account settings. I encourage young people to create a fictitious person. Of course facebook profile owners will be aware that the privacy commission has ruled changes to the social networking site used by 7 million Aussie’s. If you can still be ‘found’ on facebook you can get help to ‘change your privacy settings’ on the site.
Probably the most useful presenter was Barry Blundell from SA Police. You can access his slides in a post here.
Thanks to my Union I am now informed!