Sandy McAuley - 04:39am Apr 2, 1997 (#3 of 15)
A theme for a possible collaboration that occurs to me is based on a quote from T.S. Eliot, "April is the cruelest month."
Anybody interested? Sandy
Claudia Abramson - 04:04pm Apr 4, 1997 (#4 of 15)
I have a number of idea possibilities, but a time problem that I thought I should share. I will be going on vacation April 11 for a week and therefore need to complete the collaboration by next Thursday. Is there anyone that might be interested in exploring any of the following possibilities and able to work within this time frame? In the hope that someone reads this and is interested before the end of the weekend, here is my home email account: nagog@ultranet.com
1) Title? - Ordinary Things [share photo images of ordinary things; select portions of them so that a viewer would have to guess what they are; create a set of montages for use with students in practicing observation skills. Work could be independent other than sharing of images and/or themes and establishing a format - size, colors, etc.?]
2) Theme and Variations [build a montage or collection of photos from visual images connected to a core word like "hands" - images might then extend to handcuffs, handsome, handcrafts, handy, handshake . . .the image could be built by daily exchanges of the original, each person adding an element to what they received]
3) Seasonal Changes [a single image that like those of Escher transforms itself from one reality to another - in this case moving through the seasons]
4) Links [a series of small images illustrating a particular track - the opposite of Frost's "the road not taken" that might be a photographic analogy of internet travels]
Sandy McAuley - 03:53pm Apr 8, 1997 (#5 of 15)
Hi, Claudia and Karelle:
I got your messages regarding possible collaborations. My computer went down just afterwards and I will be swamped until Thursday. What about we pool our ideas and see if we can work out a possible 3-way collaboration?
Claudia's idea is for a diptych... and it's a great one:
"What about "The Two Faces of April" as a title for a diptych - one based on TS ELiot's "April is the cruelest month" and the other on Chaucer's vision - "What that April with his showres soote/The droughte of March hath perced to the roote, /And bathed every veine in swich licour,/Of which vertu engendred is the flowr;"
Karelle's idea is as follows:
"I have had an image in my mind for a long time, called Psychic Wind. Instead of leaves and road debris blowing around, the psychic debris is what you see blowing through the air. Sort of Wizard of Ozzish."
Is there any way we can make these fit. Karelle's idea would fit very nicely under the April is the cruellest month part. We could take the diptych idea, each contribute a few shots and exchange a couple more ideas to see how they might fit together and go from there? Karelle and I could do our best with the PhotoShop magic, (though I know I could never measure up to your standards)!
Think it might work?
I'll post this to the ACOT BBS under the topic I started (ooops! Can't do that. Reinhold, in future variations of this course collaborators should be able to start public sub-discussions of their own, which could be read by others if they wished, but would otherwise isolate the particulars of a specific collaboration from the mainstream), so we can keep track of our discussion there. I'll post this to the collaborative topic instead.
Sorry about the delay in responding.
Sandy
PS. I've got some shots of the area here after the blizzard as well as a couple of a daffodil. I'll try to prepare them for 'lectronic exchange by Thursday, though I know I'll never get to it before then. A concept that occurs to me is "April is the cruellest month" in some stark typeface over something of Karelle's concept with the daffodil acting as a link to Claudia's contribution, perhaps with a gradient from b&w to full colour over the daffodil. Make sense?
Sandy McAuley - 03:55pm Apr 8, 1997 (#6 of 15)
BTW, I think Claudia's idea of "Themes and Variations" is brilliant! Sandy
Claudia Abramson - 10:22am Apr 9, 1997 (#7 of 15)
This is a general comment about the collaboration lesson. It seems to provide an experience which is different thanthe other lessons. Lessons 1-5 involved the production of individual photo work and experimentation with camerasand photoshop. Of course, they also involved chats and discussions, but their completion did not so thoroughlydepend on our interactions. The lessons gave us personal challenges and insights into developing and implementingonline curricula.
Lesson #6, however, is truly about internet collaboration - creating a single product as a cooperative adventure. An entire course couldbe developed to explore the variety of collaborative formats and their real-time functioning, and provide participants with a valuable setof learning experiences. I've discovered in this past week that collaboration depends on personal schedules and geographicallocations. It requires much communication to setup formats, define content and concept challenges, and produce products that can beshared with multiple groups. Two weeks for this lesson only opened the door of collaboration possibilities.
Reinhold Steinbeck - 11:40am Apr 9, 1997 (#10 of 15)
In response to Sandy's comments about being able to create your own discussion areas, you can do so in the 'Workfolder for Assignment Six'.
Reinhold Steinbeck - 03:21pm Apr 9, 1997 (#11 of 15)
Claudia -- thank you for your comment and suggestions about the challenges of engaging in collbarative projects over the Internet. That's exactly one of the areas we want to explore: what kinds of environments - both technical and organizational/social - would one need in order to make such collaboration easier.
One of the tools that might bring us one step closer - especially if you keep the difficulties of time and distance in mind - to providing such an environment would be a bulletin board that would also include a shared work space (shared white board or canvas), where collaborators can bring their contributions to and work with them. People can log on/off as they please, but they would always find the same work space maybe with new comments and new pieces. This idea is very similar to the 'Roundtable' chat I mentioned to you earlier, but rather than being synchronous (same time) it would be asynchronous.
Sandy McAuley - 04:35pm Apr 10, 1997 (#12 of 15)
With respect to Reinhold's comment #11, I think that the asynchronous aspects of this type of work are sometimes underrated... it is the capability of collaboration without having to get online at the same moment that really opens up opportunities to people in widely different locations. Also, asynchronicity also means that people may take the time to consider contributions a bit more deeply.
Susan Komnandosky - 07:54am Apr 16, 1997 (#13 of 15)
I have thoroughly enjoyed the collaboration assignment, despite computer problems which kept me out of circulation over this past weekend. Sharing ideas, concepts and photos helped to expand my vision of how this type of assignment could be used in a classroom environment.
Trish Lynch - 09:23am Apr 16, 1997 (#14 of 15)
Thank you for your comments regarding the Collaboration project. I see it as only the "tip to the iceberg"! What an incredible opportunity for educators to network curriculum Can you imagine the terrific ideas with collaboration! A book could be written! Being able to communicate with discussion BB and whiteboard capabilities would be a great way to expand units in all areas.
Steve Welsh - 06:36pm Apr 16, 1997 (#15 of 15)
This Collaboration Project was the best of the bunch! The other assignments were just what this course should be, yet this final one truly used more of the technology (and some of its shortcomings, of course, as almost all of us discovered at some point) and offered the benefits of small-group intimacy/brainstorming. Who can complain when you make new friends?! I agree with Trish's comment... "it's only the tip of the iceberg." Below is my reflection (pretty much cut-and-pasted from the comment area under my project version... just wanted to offer it here, too, in case the original posting was pushed too far up the "previous messages" list:
Bobbie, Susan and I began our project by deciding upon a theme of "nature" in the Darkroom area where we normally hold our weekly chats. We used this chat room at various times throughout the process to quickly discuss progress or changes. We also used e-mail between the 3 of us. At Reinhold's notice, we downloaded ForeFront's "RoundTable" software (3.5 meg. file, ugh!) and tested it at ForeFront's site. The software not only lets you chat, but uses voices and allows you to use Draw-mode tools on a white board above your chat text. Despite a few lockups, or disconnections at times, that software allowed another dimension of sharing our images quickly while we talked. A very cool collaborative teaching tool (now they just need to make a server version for the Mac!).
We decided we would share photos of nature from the 3 of us, which reflected 2 states, Texas and Oregon. We transfered photos to each other as attachments to email (stuffed). However, instead of working for ONE final image, we chose to let the visions of each of us produce 3 variations on the theme. I thought it was cool to see Bobbie's version immediately in RoundTable (she finished first), but later thought... "Oh, rats, now the rest of my creation would be influenced by hers (which I liked)." But it didn't that much. I chose to use her "shadow" of the person signing the word "Tree" as the central image of my version --- and emphasized it by lowering and fading into the rest of the collage and letting the person literally stand out.
What a great effort and enjoyable project it was. Sometimes the communication process was smooth, others times not (more technical)... yet we felt we had developed a good system by the end. Yahooo! ":-)