Reflecting on my 2015 #365Photo Project

BradBradBradAs the month of January quickly slips into the rear view mirror, I realize it is now or never to reflect on my 2015 #365photo project. I had been watching Alan Levine and others do this practice for a few years and decided it was time to try it.

It was nearly a year ago when I made my only reflective post on the project last year, one month in.   While I can’t come close to the analysis of my fellow #365-er,  Eugene Eric Kim  and all his reflections on his 365 Project, it is worth putting on the reflective glasses and taking a moment. Even my sister prompted me to do this on Facebook. Go Cesca!

My Process

The picture taking process was almost always opportunistic. The value of knowing I wanted to capture and share ONE photo a day really upped my “noticing” while on walks, but if I did not get outside of the house (ah, Seattle’s winter) I found I had to stretch and sometimes even set up a picture. There certainly were stretches where nature was a key inspiration. Spring, Spring, SPRING! Flowers. Patterns of leaves and other natural elements (often juxtaposed with my feet, for some reason – at least a dozen) show up a lot, particularly fallen camellias! There are many of my family, particularly my granddaughters who are irresistible, but I also worry about putting too many pictures of them online.

Taken as a whole, they do tell the story of my year. You can see the travel, the work, the family, the seasons, the food!

The camahogada-tUdGera was somewhat of an issue early on, as I was using a fairly basic, lower resolution phone camera. I got frustrated but people said, CROP and use filters, to use the limitations of the camera as a feature, not a bug. That helped me over the hump, but in the end I’ve used cropping and filters only a handful of times. Lazy? Busy? Probably both. And I got a better phone with a better camera late last year and that FELT more fun. Especially for macros, which I enjoy.

I did NOT have a practical and consistent workflow for my project. I mostly posted from either my phone or one of my tablets to Facebook, MOSTLY got those into an album, and then at the end of the year downloaded the lot and imported them into the more easily sharable Flickr. I think some got lost and mis-categorized and I have totally changed my 2016 workflow for #366photo (yes, leap year!).

This year, every photo gets posted to Flickr using the phone app which also allows me to cross post on Facebook and Twitter. I always cross-post on FB, and sometimes on Twitter if the image is either pleasing to me or has some timely relevance to a wider audience as now only my friends can see my FB posts. I restricted them late last year instead of posting them publicly, mostly to protect my family. I should have done that earlier. When I post to Flickr I can put the image right into an album. Later I can go back and tag, but that is not a top priority.

Reflections

The process itself was wonderful. It was, in a sense, a meditation in paying attention to what is around me. Looking back, I smile at the pworkinprogressictures of friends, my family, of nature and of the many places I visited and food I ate. It is a celebration of the full and rich life I get to live. Here and there it hints at the bumps in the road. I think that is because I don’t really have too many and I don’t really want to make a big deal out of them. If there was one visual theme on bumps, it was fatigue!

The sharing part turned out to be a much bigger surprise. How many people on FB had a little “line of sight” into my life surprised me. The number of “likes” surprised me – people actually PAY ATTENTION to this stuff? The reflections shared with Eugene and Alan Levine were wonderful moments of learning.

As 2016 dawned I had just about decided NOT to do this again. Then the urge crept in. The three things I gained from the project were worth continuing:  a) the practice of noticing,  b) sharing, and c) learning, because life is always a work in progress! (And my workflow for it is already better. The pictures are here.)

My Pictures

I decided it would be fun to select some of my favorite pictures from 2015. As I noted, I was unhappy with the quality of many of my shots, but looking back, some are really pleasing to my eye.

CameliaShoes crappycroppy selfieatwork shadowflowers iliveinabeautifulplace horsechestnutshoes mylarry sandplay melbourne quotidian playginwithpapa




bugsplayjoy shoefrost noticingnature windowdawn furry oldbarge fiddlestilllifeinmontrealbeauty shoestilllife hanginout octasketti friends3 greenlake2 friends2 friends1 fallfeet skyfeet Greenlake squashedcameliapoetry frostyshoe wilddave

Web Accessibility Resource for Technology Stewards

I received an email today from a kind woman named Lilly Ward who pointed out that one of the resources I often promote, http://www.timeanddate.com for planning multi timezone meetings was not so friendly for people with different kinds of access issues.

I am Lily Ward, I noticed that you link to timezoneconverter.com (http://fullcirc.com/wp/2009/05/29/technology-stewardship-at-libraries-free-online-event/) Unfortunately, it isn’t very accessible for sight impaired individuals. Would you consider adding a link to a more accessible site like thetimenow.com which is WCAG 2.0 compliant? (Edit, 9/21/16 – thetimenow.com has asked us to remove all links so you just see the name, not the link. This is interesting because Lily keeps emailing me to ADD this link, and now I have to remove it. NW)

Also, if you ever want to see how accessible a page is, I recommend http://wave.webaim.org. It is really helpful.

First, thanks, Lilly, I appreciate that you took the time to share your knowledge. Second, the web accessibility tool I used to use disappeared, so I’m happy to see http://wave.webaim.org . The only downside is realizing how many challenges my own site offers people with accessibility differences. Uh oh…

webaccessibility

 

Relate and Liberate: Techniques for Online Learner Engagment

threelegsOne of the events from Novembers ISS Fellowship in Victoria State, Australia, was at Melbourne Polytechnic. We had a handful of people interested in participating virtually, but I really wanted to give them my FULL attention, not split between the F2F and the online group. So earlier this month we did an hour together online. You can watch the recording here – please note, there is a LOT going on in the chat, so read it if you decide to look at the recording.

The slides and notes artifact is here: RelateandliberateOnlineVersionFinal

So You Want to Host a Web Meeting? A Resource

webconferencingA long time ago in a planet far far away, a group of people asked if I could share some of my web meeting tips. I have a lot of tips, most of them learned from many many colleagues from all over, both from watching the masters work and from resources they have created. Finally, I got around to starting the project. It was supposed to be a “tip sheet” of 1 page, both sides. hahahahahaha…

Because I love my smart friends like Pete Cranston (the instigator, I might add) http://uk.linkedin.com/in/petercranston, Susan Stewart http://guidedmeetings.com/ and Bonnie Koenig http://www.goinginternational.com/about/, I started a google doc. They added ideas, and I started writing.  You can see the genesis here.

Many pages later we have  So Yo Want to Host a Web Meeting? I hope you find it useful, and as always, I welcome comments, suggestions for improvements, additional resources, and catching me if I did not attribute properly. The latter was very difficult because so much of this has been learned along the way and ingrained into my practice. The challenges of standing on so many shoulders!!

Edit: 2/17/16 A great pre-webinar activity for when people are logged on and waiting for the meeting to begin from Rachel Smith at The Grove: http://www.grove.com/pdfs/Do-Nows.pdf 

ISS Fellowship Part 6 – It’s A Wrap!

Just over a week after I returned from Australia, I’m putting the finishing touches on the blog series documenting my ISS Fellowship in Victoria State, Australia. (Part 1, Part 2,  Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5).This last post is to share a few final thoughts and the rest of the photos! (Are you a glutton for punishment? The set below is compiled from all the workshops. I estimate I was in front of over 180 people across 13 events, include a few I had not documented in previous posts. This includes meeting with some of the Better Evaluation team at RMIT, meeting with a group of my long-term edu-network-friends in Melbourne, and a planning meeting with the Chisholm team to collaborate on a project they are cooking up.

It hardly seemed like it was four years ago I was last in Australia. I have deeply benefited from my professional and personal connections made over my 4 trips “down under,” and count many educators and education innovators as inspirations and fellow travelers in this learning journey. Special thanks to Brad Beach and his family, without whom this adventure would have never happened, his team at Chisholm, especially Malcolm Jolly who had to constantly remind me where I was headed next and the topic(!!). Patricia Rogers and Arthur Shelley offered me both friendly home hosting and setting up great gatherings in Melbourne. Joyce Seitzinger set up our great social gathering in Melbourne. And of course, to the good folks at the ISS Institute for sponsoring my fellowship.

All the Workshop Photos: