Uncategorized

Labryinth Tales Radio Show Premiere

by


Labyrinth Tales promo poster, by Rockylou Productions, licensed CC BY-NC 2.0

The summer sessions of OPEN #ds106 Burgeron106 Fairy Tale Festival and #Prisoner106 groups collaborated on a radio show that premieres on http://ds106rad.io/listen on September 6th, 2015 at 2pm CST.

Read the write up by Christina Hendricks that includes credits and creation details.

Give a listen – some crazy awesome stuff!

Here is the show, which was premiered on ds106radio on Sunday, Sept. 6, 8pm UK time, during the ds106 Good Spell show. It is licensed CC BY-NC 4.0. Please credit “DS106 open players” as the creators.

the Goodspell Radio show archive with John and Mariana and some of the group via Skype – http://www.edutalk.info/the-ds106-good-spell-episode-38/

and the content without the  info around it.

Labyrinth_Tales_Poster_animatedPoster Created by Ronald Leunissen

 

Fail of Webbing Fairy Tale News

by

puffintransblogWeb Assignments – Week 1 Summer 2015

Nanalou has a newsletter…….and she wanted it embedded into the family story blog. She used an email service that gave her a good choice of templates and ease, but still very basic. NanaLou went through a lot of hoops to present her information to the rest of the family at the level she is known for – but way too much work on detail things when she could be spending the time on sharing her other talents.

This prompted me to identify this as my web assignment. While it is not telling a story of Holland Fairy Tales – it is a #ds106 tangent of which to pursue. More on the Holland fairy tales later – I did dive into them and enjoyed the tales!

Vertical Response – great free tool, but limited in features – doesn’t print to PDF, doesn’t archive. The work around is to use the View Online link and post it as a text link where ever you want others to access it. Not a bad solution -but I also found that NanaLou did that and the page that comes up is a registration page. This might explain the 50% open rate (which in marketing circles is pretty darn good – usually success is marked at 30%). Vertical Response support tickets had a similar request in its logs and this was the answer:

Jaime (VerticalResponse) 

Hi there Laura,

While we do not generate a link so that you can archive older newsletters on your website, we do have a workaround. In order to generate the link,  you will have to insert the “View Online” link into your email. It is normally added by default. If it is not there, you can add it to a text box by using the “Insert” drop down menu on the right hand side and selecting “Hosted Version Link”. Once you’ve launched the email to your recipients, click on the View Online link and copy the URL in your browser’s address bar. This is the link that you can put onto your website. Please ensure that you are only doing this with launched emails as it will not work with test emails. Feel free to let me know if there is anything else I can do for you!

Regards,

Jaime W.

Verticalresponse Support

The first thing I did was try and find a URL that would go back to the newsletter without having to login. I found one, but also wanted to make sure it did work and just was not accessing because of cache or other things on my machine. I found it was working by using another computer in the house and someone elses profile. I then created a shorter url for the link because it was way too long!! I am not sure if Vertical response stays consistent with its URLs – we will see. Nanalou – I did update the links in your post so that others did not hit dead ends.

The Burgeron site is also using WordPress.org and not a self hosted version so plugins are at the mercy of WP. This made finding solutions more difficult as the subscription is set up to help maintain security and is not as open to plugins.

Tried iFrames – but WP.org scrubs those out and makes it irrelevant. I searched the available widgets and no luck – nothing that would allow embedding another site or html. Suggestions were to create a new page. I tried that and came up with nothing usable.

PDF conversion didn’t work either and is not supported by VerticalResponse.

I have been working around with my Google account for this site so thought I would try for the Burgerons. Using Google Drive and docs is coming along nicely and was worth a shot.

Trying to get the newsletter as formatted with active links proved difficult. I could import and put things in a Google Doc but Copy and paste loses formatting from the template for the newsletter. It also smashed columns together. If it was a little different that would have beennewsembed2en okay – but it was more like a cut and paste that was like spaghetti on a barn – some stuck and some didn’t. It didn’t meet quality criteria.

Even though it didn’t look quite right – I wanted to find out if it would embed and actually work if it was a GDoc. I titled it and then went to File>Publish to Web and chose embed. I copied the code and pasted it into WP – it worked! Great scroll bar and you can also resize the window of the embed in the code for different purposes. Filing that one for sure!

 

It still did not solve Nanalou’s issue. I tried Google slides, and draw – neither accepted the template features where they looked good enough to consider a solution.

I also tried taking the source code from the newsletter and pasting it in as text to see if it would replicate. It added a whole load of text and the newsletter. Might work – but to putzy for a solution.

newsembed  Copying and pasting the newsletter itself added extra lines and table features that would be a bear to go through and delete.

So at this point – I have spent a good amount of screen time and futzing. I have come up with a better handle on using Google for embed into WP and if info is created in Google first to look good, that will be a solution.

Also did come up with the ability to use the links for accessing the Vertical Response newsletter. Creating a standard Newsletter header or graphic to hold the newest link and another going back to an archive of links might be a good solution and still add some visual.

 

Nanalou created a Pinterest page to give a visual for the newsletter. On that path I found this in the support logs. I don’t think it would have saved anytime or hoops – but it is what is available by the tool support.

Hi there Mel.

To better assist you, may I ask what format your poster is in? i.e JPG, GIF, PNG. If you do not know, you can right click on the image and select properties. A window should pop up displaying the file type. As long as it is in one of the image formats I listed above, you should be able to use our Social tool to create a social post. Here are step by step instructions, along with a video tutorial, to walk you through the process: http://helpcenter.verticalresponse.com/articles/VR2/Create-a-Social-Post/

I don’t have a product that came out of this web assignment, but it was time to spend on solution finding and trying new things out within tools and systems so that I can apply.

Holland Week:

Thanks to NanaLou, Cousin Ron, and Sappho with work on Holland fairy tale history and creating. I am at this point on the consumable end of fairy tales over creating them. The resource links of stories has been great to use. I find I read and enjoy them and then remember I was supposed to be looking at how they are constructed, the style and flow etc. Instead – I have been purely enjoying them as a good story.

Reading the stories and seeing what others are creating is also helping in my support work on the Bovine PR Department team. Sappho had mentioned in a post that if Prisoner106 had a badge shouldn’t the Burgeron’s and the Fairy Tale Festival. This took me on the path of creating an animated GIF badge and with the support of the family a usable outcome came out of the efforts. It is great to have others give that gentle push to reach a little farther. Thanks Family!

And while not directly a Holland fairy tale – I did work on walking out of my comfort zone and recording audio for Mama Boo and Christina Hendricks for a remix of the 3 Bears and Goldilocks. It was actually fun and may make the next audio of self be a little easier to add in a product. I also spent some time looking for first sound effects for consideration by the group.

A few daily creates thrown in for some exercising some creative muscles.
TDC1271

One week into the festival summer and it seems everyone is giving one and gaining many. Totally cool!

 

Who said summer was downtime for learning? – ds106 #4Life

by

Ds106 touches individuals differently depending upon where in their life path they may be traveling. It has pulses and energy for all paths and directions and the beauty is that no one way is right. Even for an individual, it will change and morph and circle, or tangent over time and projects.

I found the midwest winter, the first year of retirement from daily job responsibilities, and the kizmet of starting ds106 at the same time a UMW class was in session brought a high level of activity for me. I loved it! As the UMW session finished up it was almost like going cold turkey. The twitter feed was almost non-existent and interactions dropped dramatically. The individuals I had seen grow over 14 weeks were now off to their other life needs. A few are still around and it is good to see them in a non-traditional student role as a community member.

every post deserves a random GIF! inserted. 🙂

One of the safety nets I had put in place for myself was joining the Google+ Community of open course participants. One of the first open/headless courses seemed to bond and gather some #4life folks who are still active almost daily. Their energy and passion seems to keep others afloat and offer reality checks of how to make a lifestyle vs overwhelming expectations. There are some true ambassadors and shepherds of ds106 in this community who are totally giving. A random comment or post every now and again keep the ds106 life breathing. In the community, I can see the acceptance of diversity and how the culture has embraced the Heckyl and Jeckyl tendencies of people who find a passion and go full speed ahead for a while, but then may also drop back and out of sight for a time. And why shouldn’t that be all right? It is life isn’t it? When re-entering it is almost as if one never left. And creativity and ideas are always embraced.

So summer brings a time for those with otherwise professional responsibilities and those who do ds106 to stay human, whole and creative, and maybe have made some extra time to create together in creative strands.

Traditional education institutions still see summer as down time. Funny how education systems still need to be reminded that learning is 24×7 and 365 and most learning doesn’t happen in a classroom. I can only imagine how K12 students and even post secondary might be different if we didn’t have the systems we have – but I digress – that is another deep topic for another conversation!

Summer means PLAYTIME in ds106! It really knows no calendar.
It is THE example of 24x7x365 anytime, anywhere learning in which the learner is responsible for learning and creating their customized path.

A summer 2015 focus is Prisoner106 – a TV show as the topic for creating. This storyline has organized more as a group and is creating in the ds106 format and is listed as Summer 2015 Open DS106. It has brought together #4life and new to #ds106 artists. A great opportunity to stretch your own skills and creativity.

Another open group is the working on the next in the series of the Bugeron Family and the Summer Trailer. This year the family is producing the bi-annual story telling festival with the theme of Fairy Tales. Anyone who lives ds106 is invited to join the family and create. There is family history to catch up on with lots of open paths for creating your own character. It is a complex web of characters, storylines, and real people with many layers. At first it can be intimidating – but as you look closer you realize it is just full of opportunities for creations. After following #noir106 and it’s case files (see the archive created by Maggie Stough), agencies and characters, I see a similarity in approach. More on this in a future post.

Then of course the option of following the headless course in your own context or taking on the suggested learning assignments. Always a good choice that seems to stand the test of time (so far) in filling the learning passion for the many who embark on the journey.

But yet then more!!! UMW has a few sections running thru the summer in which one can follow along with traditional students. These sections are fun for some of us more travelled people. The different look at life from a different station is a real boost for creativity and an opportunity to learn and to give.

And – yet more – a graduate course in CU Denver Learning with Digital Stories is using ds106 as their learning for this summer and have jumped in the deep end right off the mark. So another burst of creative minds inspired and challenged by for one’s own learning.

And – ds106radio!!! #ds106spell, RockyLou Radio, @cogdog vinyl spins, @dkernohan sessions – TUNE IN! It will get your juices flowing!

http://ds106ra.dio/listen
http://ds106ra.dio/listen

and of course we have @cogdog and @jimgroom, @mdvfunes, @johnjohnston, @rockylou, @talkytina – and so many others (no offense – so many I can’t list!) who continue to keep the ds106 life running.

And this is only what I have stumbled upon – as you watch the Twitter tags – so many more flavors of ds106 to sample. Share what you find.

It is summer recess for education – but recess means PLAY TIME and CREATING. Go forth and make art! ds106 #4life

 

Paper Sculpting Video Trailer

by

Daily Create tdc1118

css.php