Thank You for the "Audio"

Just wanted to send everyone a Thank you for all the good work you did, good stories you told, and great feedback for the class. If you haven't had a chance to listen to each other I encourage you to do so. It's so interesting (to me at least) to hear a voice that goes with the writing...some of you I could almost hear before I heard you, some of your voices were more surprising.

I'm not through grading everything yet, but I should be done by the end of tonight.

Thank you again, Steve

Learn to let go :-)

Many of you have mentioned in your podcasts that you don't like your voice...

After recording a couple thousand audio/video files I can finally accept my voice, it took awhile, but one thing I realized pretty early on is that my voice and way of speaking is my voice and way of speaking.

I'm not a broadcast journalist, I'm a Librarian/Teacher who wants to share information. Sometimes that information is best shared with text, sometimes the human voice is the best, sometimes voice and screen video is best. The important thing isn't necessarily my voice but what I have to say and how clearly I present it.

Learn to love your voice...it's yours. You can always improve it, but ask yourself if that's the most important point :-)

pbwiki (possible) confusion

Ok...so if you use a pbwiki 1.0 account you can have something called an invite key (password) that anyone can use to edit the wiki. The person wouldn't need a pbwiki.com account, they would only need the invite key (password) to be able to edit anything.

Looks like pbwiki decided to eliminate this for their pbwiki 2.0 accounts and now you have to have a pbwiki account to edit.

Now, here's where things will get sticky...when I originally invited you all to join russl, I let you tell me which email account you wanted to use to make an account, some of you used the email accounts that you've had for years and some of you used your newly created _ _ scils598x08 accounts. It didn't matter to me as either way you would have access to edit russl. The problem now is that if the person who originally set up your pbwiki wiki for this project used something different from what you sent me (very likely), you'll be making a second account to access pbwiki to then be able to edit the group project wiki ... hence, confusion.

SO...besides the fact that I now get to redo a few pbwiki.com videos (and register my "love" of their new approach with them), you all have a few options... I know some of you will take this in stride and figure out (or have figured out) what was up...you don't have to really do anything, for those of you who are thoroughly confused you'll have to remember which email account you sent me to access/edit russl AND also know which account your received your group project invite on (with 1.0 there would be no need for an email invite/2.0 requires it)...this you'll have to find out from the person in your group who sent out the 2.0 invite emails. Once you know which account is for which you can log-in to the right one OR you can just have a new invite sent to the original account you provided to me...there are other possible options, but they can get even more confusing so I won't go there.

If anyone has questions, please let me know...my weekend is crazy, but I'll do my best to get back to you shortly.

My apologies for the confusion, but as I said at the beginning of class...expect things to change...Steve

Since I've got a crazy wknd...

Since I've got a crazy weekend coming up, I've posted the Images/Photo sharing and Audio/Podcasting content early.

No obligation to start anything early, I just know that I'll be running around a lot this weekend and might have had a hard time posting the content.

Final Page Updated

I updated the content and the Final Overview video on:
http://russl.pbwiki.com/FinalSummer

If/when you have questions just let me know.

There may be a little delay...

Usually I like to grade this class on Monday/Tuesday. As I'm doing multiple workshops tomorrow (Tuesday), then teaching my other summer class (Web Design), you may not see your grades for last week's homework projects till later in the day on Wednesday.

Just want you to all know b4 folks "freak out" when they don't see their grades :-) (you know who you are)

Listen while you work v.2

Last class I posted this message and all seemed to enjoy, hence, I'm posting it again

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As I sit here working on class I just thought I'd share three sites that I really enjoy listening to while I'm working.

1. last.fm - enter an artist (or tag for a genre) in their search box and they'll play you artists related to what you entered

2. pandora.com - here you can also enter an artist/songs etc. pandora's methodology is even more "cool" as they tend to go a bit deeper into analyzing the song

3. musicovery.com - a student last semester introduced me to this...very cool

If you like to create (or just listen) to "mixtapes" you might want to check out muxtape.com. If you're interested here's one of mine: librarysteve.muxtape.com (note this is my "Heavy Bag" mix, so the tunes are loud and angry)

I bring up these sites not only because they're entertaining, but also because of the "socialness" of music...if you have other sites or comments...feel free to, well, comment...

Following on Twitter

Just a reminder to everyone...that everyone in the class should be following everyone else.

I want all of us to see the tweets of others...for help, for resource sharing, for casual chatter, twitter will be one of the informal, but EXTREMELY helpful areas of class...if you don't follow everyone (and vice versa) then stuff will slip through the cracks.

There are a few of you not following me...trust me, you want to follow me...

Waiting till the last minute (day)...

is always a bad idea.

Others depend on you. Services will go down.

Plan accordingly.

Nice 1st Week...

Ok...looks like all 27 of you are staying in the class :-)

Make sure to double check your student page on russl to ensure that you have your email, im (meebo and at least one other), twitter and blog accounts/addresses listed. This is the main place that other students will be looking for your contact info.

At this point you should all be on twitter and we should all be following each other..expect twitter to be a great place to get help when you need it...it's not a "live"/synchronous system, but with 27 of us watching it, help should always be available.

Hope you all enjoyed IM and blogging. I hope IM wasn't too painful...synchronous communication can be a annoying to arrange, but no better way to learn that than to be exposed to it. Remember that your blogs will be the primary way that you'll be dealing with all "writing" assignments. Feel free to have some fun with them, but also remember that I and all your classmates will be able to read all your posts.

Welcome to RSS (well at about 9am 6.2)