It was tougher than I thought to make this summary and I ran into a lot of technical difficulties, however I decided to re-do my entire video, here is the result:
I learned so much in EC & I 831 that it was actually hard to narrow it down to a 5-7 minute video.
Enjoy!
photo credit:href=”https://www.flickr.com/photos/124294922@N05/23298203933/”>bypapah</a> via <a href=”http://compfight.com”>Compfight</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>cc</a>
I am a “Slacktivist” I and didn’t even know it!
Yesterday I signed the Project of Heart petition for the RIIS cemetery that was tweeted and shared by the UR STARS Regina student group. It is a petition asking Mayor Michael Fougere to protect the cemetery at the Regina Indian Industrial School (a residential school.)
A couple days before that I signed a petition from Amnesty International against the murder of Berta Caceres in Honduras, I must admit that I did not know much about this case before I signed the petition.
To be fair though, I do think that in some cases simply signing an online petition can be activism, or at least lend support to those with their feet on the ground. I also am quite shy and not the type of person to attend an actual rally so signing an online petition is more than I would have done in the past.
I found this YouTube video that kind of jives with how I feel:
Until we read the articles this week, I wasn’t really that aware of Meerkat. I had just kind of become aware of Periscope because some of the people that I follow on Twitter use it to live stream what they are doing. I think the first time I was aware of the app. was when I saw Cmdr. Chris Hadfield using it. He was using it to do a live Q and A session and was reaching a very large audience that night. These tools also have the power to live broadcast current events and to the audience that is the World Wide Web.
My slacktivism is starting to become more strong though, I am tweeting more and more about social justice issues. I am finding a lot of articles about reconciliation and Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women #mmiw. My Personal Learning Network seems to include a lot of students who are interested in similar topics to me like Heather, Amy, Sarah and Elizabeth, who were in the Anti-Oppressive Summer Institute last summer with me. One of the required readings this week was on the subject of how we can use livestreaming apps to promote justice. Another one was about how slacktivism is having a positive impact.
I now argue that I may be starting as a mere “slacktivist,” but gradually my slacktivism is turning into activism.
What are your thoughts?
As I am starting to wrap up my photography project, one thing that I had not done yet was to find a site to add a watermark. I had found a few sites in previous weeks, but they had given me error messages. A few of my classmates including Genna had suggested that I add watermarks to my photos if I was worried about putting my children on my blog.
I also found quite a few apps on my iPhone so downloaded a couple to try. I tried the watermark app as well as the PhotoMarkr app. Here is a site describing those watermarking apps as well as some others.
As you can see, I still have to figure out the Watermark app more. The PhotoMarkr was slightly easier to use.
I also figured out that I could add text in my flickr account. You can click to see one of my snowy pictures from last week’s adventure.
I also learned how to watermark for free on-line on the watermark-images.com site :
If I was taking photos professionally I would experiment a lot more with the watermark to make it look better.
Last, but not least here are some (non-watermarked!) photos that I took this week:
I am starting to think about how I want to display my photos for the final couple of weeks of this learning project. I know that there are a million photo album sites that I could probably link to or I could just link to my flickr account or make a gallery here. That is what I am going to focus on along with creativity and composition (i.e. the rule of thirds) now.
Do you think that watermarks take away from the look of great photos?
Update: I just found this video about how to add a watermark in Microsoft Paint:
photo credit Doug Wildman on Creative Commons on Flickr
This week’s course readings are on Internet trolls. I must live in a bubble because I have never thought about the negative comments and trolling that women go through. Though I am female, I guess I live in a white privileged matriarchal family so have not had to think about it too much. I, of course, sadly see racist comments on Facebook though.
That being said, I get upset at the littlest thing on Facebook. If I post something about teaching and I get a negative or anti-teaching comment back from a relative I get upset. If I post something on Facebook venting about how hard parenting is and then someone tries to give advice then I get upset.
If I read something about the upcoming Saskatchewan election then I get upset.
If I make the mistake of reading the comments after a news article then I get upset. (Like I said I live in a bubble so I thought this was the worst it got…)
I can’t even imagine what my reaction would be to some of the hateful comments that others have received.
The John Oliver video that we viewed for class this week does a good job of explaining Online Harassment:
Our instructor Katia wrote a blog post about provoking trolls.
I found this article about not reading the comments: “Don’t read the comments”: The trolls, racists and abusers won — reasonable online feedback is a thing of the distant past where the author talks about the abuse that female on line writers suffer. I must admit that I was barely aware of the word misogynist before this class. I also had to look up what doxing meant.
I would argue, though, that if we don’t read the comments that it actually defeats the purpose of having an online community or professional learning network.
How are we going to protect our students from these sorts of comments?
This week I continue to learn from my online Craftsy class. Of course it was on sale this week for $19.99 and I paid $41.20 last week! It was good to watch the other modules of it because I had been focusing on ISO, aperture and shutter speed. However, I learned about white balance and exposure compensation this week. I needed to learn some so many of my images have been either too dark or too light. One of the modules also talks about composition and creativity which I need to start thinking about too.
1. Get to Know Your Camera
2. Light & Exposure
3. Shutter Speed
4. Aperture
5. ISO
6. Shooting Modes
7. Lenses
8. Composition and Creativity
9. Putting It All Together
Here is a video about white balance:
I am also continuing to use my Canon app. to learn:
Last, but not least, here are some recent pictures I took:
I need to keep working on the Rule of Thirds. I also need to keep learning about how the exposure triangle all goes together, but slowly but surely my pictures are getting better.
“It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU the caption beneath it ran…”
The quote above is from George Orwell’s book “1984” where Big Brother watches society and is in charge.
The articles and videos for this week’s EC & I 831 class are about encryption and net neutrality.
Here is a video from John Oliver Tonight about encryption:
In the debate about encryption one side feels like it could become big brother watching all of us, the other side is about security. It is a very slippery slope. Whatever I post on the Internet I assume is open for all to see. I do try to control my privacy settings. My priority is protecting my children. However, I do post their images. As they get older I will have to consider my children’s social media rights more. I always assume that law enforcement could access my phone. I actually equate it to the old white pages. Didn’t everyone look up their teachers and friends in the phone book to find out where they lived?
Here is a video from John Oliver Tonight about net neutrality:
In essence the point of the video is that it is important that the internet stays neutral and not become more of a “sponsored” space. In reality, my Facebook feed is already an eerily accurate sponsored space. And I would argue that schools are already biased to some degree as well. There are really only textbooks from a couple of publishers in most schools. When I have to make one accessible on the computer for a student who needs the book read out loud it is not an easy process. After we convert it to audio we need to pull a print version out of the classroom to make up for the audio one. And if you walk on campus, you will see Coke (or is it Pepsi?) machines everywhere. That being said, it is important for students of all socioeconomic classes to have equal access to the internet which is why net neutrality is important.
I took some pictures this week, but lots of them failed. And by failed, I mean that they were either completely black or completely white. On the plus side, I can google to find out what went wrong and find sites like 99 Common Photography Problems and How to Solve Them.
However, I decided to venture out and pay for a class. I am sure that I could find all of the same information for free on the Internet, however in last week’s EC & I class, our prof Dr. Alec Couros, mentioned that people are more invested if they pay a little bit.
I ended up paying a bit more than I wanted to for a Craftsy class: Basics of Digital Photography. The reason that I went with a Craftsy class is that I originally saw it on my Facebook feed and one of my friends had liked it and when I looked into their classes I saw that you could start anytime and that you had access to the videos from wherever whenever. I also read the reviews and though they might not be accurate, they seemed to be positive overall. I was a little annoyed because the cost of the class kept changing, I ended up paying $41.20, but I also saw it for $47 or $55 on the mobile app. I have watched the first three lessons so far out of nine.
One thing that I did accomplish this week was sharing my photos. Last week, I said that my goal was to share my photos to the Saskatchewan Scenery Facebook page and I did.
I also shared one of the same pictures to Twitter:
Another thing that I realized is that I learn best when I have to teach so here are a couple of short videos on ISO, aperture and shutter speed:
ISO video:
aperture:
Shutter Speed:
Have a great week!
I googled myself again today. My digital footprint actually looks quite different than it did before I started taking EC & I 831. Before this, it never actually occurred to me that I could have some control over my digital identity.
That’s a picture of me when I was 8.5 months pregnant to the left. Sadly, the picture in the bikini is most definitely not me, but I am glad that there seem to be other better looking versions of myself!
In the past when I googled myself, I would find my Facebook & LinkedIn profiles depending on my privacy settings, but what I would always find is the ratemyteachers.com site. Of course, I made the mistake of reading the reviews and though there were many positive reviews there were also some very nasty ones. I was a young high school math teacher and I focused much more on the negative reviews- almost to the point of obsession and self-doubt. I certainly made mistakes when I was first starting out, but seeing a few harsh reviews was not helpful. It occurs to me that for the most part only students who either love you or hate you would take the time to review you, but I take criticism quite badly. Thankfully, now that I have been teaching longer I do actually receive occasional messages of thanks through Facebook or virtually. I am actually happy that there are no ratings of me on ratemyteacher in my current position and that the nasty ones are under my maiden name I think.
Apparently I am not alone googling myself. We read several articles for our EC & I 831 class this week. They were on the subject of digital identity. Reputation Management and Social Media by Mary Madden and Aaron Smith was the article that I enjoyed the most. It pointed out that: “57% of adult internet users now use search engines to find information about themselves online.” Another article was about landing your Dream Job Using Google AdWords and it describes how Alec Brownstein paid to use the names of creative directors so his name would come up in searches.
I actually googled “googling myself” and found out that a couple of years ago there was a trend of people googling themselves and putting the results on YouTube for the world to see.
I even found this little snippet from a show I didn’t watch, but it’s pretty funny:
The videos I found of people googling themselves were either of people I did not recognize (they might be famous, but they are way younger than me) and had a lot of inappropriate words so I will not post them here!
The same article that I referenced above: Reputation Management and Social Media, also mentioned people googling their friends and people from their past. In addition, according to the same article 18-29 year olds are much more careful with the content that they post on-line than those of us that are older.
Another interesting thing that came out of my “googling myself” google search is the following page about managing your online reputation:
Who knew? I had no idea that there was even an option to go through the steps that Google suggests. I knew you could un-tag yourself in photos, but that was about the extent of my knowledge.
In today’s world, it will be imperative that our students have a positive digital footprint because the hiring world is much different than back when I was trying to land a job. It is very easy to search on-line these days and it can have a very positive impact or a negative one.
How does Facebook relate to my photography learning project?
Well, it does in a lot of ways.
The first way is that one of the groups that I am a member of, Saskatchewan Scenery, inspires me to admire other photographers’ work. I mostly sit back as an observer, but have uploaded two photos off of my iPhone to the site:
Though I have not officially made a rubric for how I will evaluate my learning in this project, I would be happy if I felt that one of my DSLR pictures was good enough to upload to the Saskatchewan Scenery Facebook group.
Despite having read websites and watched videos on photography, I had quite a few failed shots again this week. I tried to take pictures again at my children’s gymnastics classes. They turned out dark and blurry. I did not want to use the flash because I did not want to flash the athletes as they were practicing (I accidentally did a couple of times before realizing it!) On the plus side, when I took a flash photography class fourteen years ago I remember the instructor telling us that only one shot for every seven would be a good one. I think my ratio is actually better than that with my DSLR already. I do get some completely black shots though.
I posted some of my failures on Facebook for my friends to comment on. Many of them take pictures on the side or are quite proficient with their DSLR’s. I got feedback right away. My friend Carlie lives in England and she posted numerous on-line sites to my feed. I then FaceTimed her and she gave me some pointers and suggestions. It turns out that I was mixing up a couple of the functions of the camera (P and M).
Here is Carlie’s photography Facebook page.
I also posted some of my shots that I thought were good to my Facebook page to see if I get any feedback. I am starting small with my Facebook circle of friends, family, former colleagues and former students (well there are 417 of them so maybe it’s not that small), but I am sure that there are many sites that I could seek out if I need to post my pictures for more feedback.
My friend Carlie who I FaceTimed with sent me lots of links and also suggested a couple of on line photography classes. I am going to check them out. Two on-line class websites that I have now looked into a bit are craftsy and Carlie recommended the Flying Photo School.
One of my close friends Jen (aka Nabi 21 on flickr)is quite good with her DSLR and takes lots of pictures of my family for me when she is visiting. Here is one of her shots of her dog nephew Theo:
photocredit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/84899019@N00/25510958901/in/dateposted/ (I do have permission to use this photo)
I love how Jen was able to focus on the dog and get such a cute expression on his face. It is not easy to focus on children or pets since they move so much so I will have to learn how to work with my shutter speed. I also love the clarity of this picture.
Another friend Nanc Price is a scientist by day, but takes pictures professionally by night. She works with the Edmonton opera. I am in awe of her talent. Here is a picture of her and one of her photos:
(photo credit Damien Coroller, photo provided by Nanc)
Photocredit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mad_me/23702546130/in/album-72157662322475271/
I love this still by Nanc. I love the focus on the teacup and the blurred background. She tells me that she took this picture at a candlelight event. I do not know how to focus that sharply on an object and blur the background yet so it will be a goal.
And finally here are some of my pictures that I am happy with this week:
I think I am going to write another post with more of my favourite photos, but for now I will sign off! Thanks for reading and let me know if you have any great tips for learning photography on-line!
andreachalifour 