A short how-to video explaining how-to use The Emergent Task Planner to be more productive.
Aeroshot: Pure Energy
So, Aeroshot might be something that would help me before yoga [as opposed to drinking coffee].
- Pull open
- Puff in
- Push closed
100 mg of caffeine. Anytime and anyplace. Sign up for your free sample code!
Cloth Book of the Month
Now here’s a real twist and spin to a Book of the Month Club. Victoria van derLaan is looking for money to fund her start-up project via KickStarter. She creates a book of the month project and folks will be able to purchase books individually or subscribe for 3, 6, 9, or 12 months. Brilliant!
Victoria creates an original book in each of 6 designs, scans each page to create a digital file to be printed by Spoonflower on 100% organic cotton sateen fabric and creates cloth books from this fabric. What a wonderful gift this would be…
Have a peek at the video.
Superhero: Ms. X
With a few colors, some simple bits of cardboard and a red Mao star, we were able to come up with a last-minute Superhero costume for Spirit Week.
Starting with the turquoise blue bustier, we contrasted that with the red star, belt and tights. The black skirt and boots [not shown] matched Ms. X’s hair and the silver cuffs, crown and emblem sparkled against the whole outfit. Perfect!
Trip Print Press
Way back, I learned to hand-set type, run an offset press and even a Heidelberg press. I loved working with my hands, getting ink so deeply embedded into my fingernails, it took weeks to get off and the sound…ah, the clinking of wood and metal as row upon row of type was set.
Matt at Trip Print Press does this every day and he’s a work of art in motion. Watch here.
Trip Print Press & The Making Of FreshSox from Brought To You By … on Vimeo.
Getz and Gilberto Perform ‘The Girl from Impanema’
The arrangement is from the classic album, Getz/Gilberto, which launched the bossa nova craze of the early 60′s. The album was primarily a collaboration between Getz and Astrud’s husband, the guitarist and vocalist João Gilberto, but when someone got the idea of including an English translation of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “The Girl from Ipanema,” Astrud was recruited. She had never sung professionally before. The recordings launched her as an international sensation.
Bike Shelf
Someday, I’ll have the perfect wall for this type of bike shelf.
Toon App
Playing with a new iPhone app
Ai Weiwei: Sunflower Seeds
In 2010 Ai Weiwei launched a show called Sunflower Seeds at the Tate Modern in London. His work is brilliant on so many levels. Using sunflowers carried a blunt symbolism: Mai Zedong was the sun and the Chinese people were the sunflowers, all facing one direct to receive the nourishing ways.
Being as outspoken as Ai Weiwei is his symbolism of the sunflower is a bit more subversive. He spread more than a hundred million of them, all hand-painted– across the floor of a large hall at the Tate Modern in London. Ai wanted visitors to move freely across the installation, picking the seeds up, moving them around, doing whatever they wanted. I love how he uses common elements of everyday Chinese life and incorporates them into his art. It is also amazing how these porcelain seeds “sound” like the real thing.
Another interesting point is how Ai Weiwei set up the production of the thousands of sunflower seeds. It is done in group style with each person painstakingly painting the sunflower seed stripes. I saw this style of working in many factories I visited back in the late 1980’s.
I did something similar, in 2004, distributing 100 blank journals across Beijing, asking only that people add to them and send them onto others. I was looking for everyday-types of whatever to fill the pages and I got some really interesting returns and had an exhibition at the Academy of Music in 2009.
Sadly, Ai Weiwei who has been a champion of freedom and an outspoken critic of China’s human rights record, has had his Shanghai studio demolished and he was also arrested and detained. Now he is forbidden from giving interviews or using the Internet. Before his arrest Ai was able to send a videotaped speech to the TED conference. You can watch that below. I hope someday, Ai Weiwei will have more of his work shown around the world.
Open Conversations
When working with faculty [or others] who already have an online course/classroom, one of the first questions might be to ask, “How can I help you?”
Starting the conversation this way leads no where. The client I am working with can just say, “I think everything is OK” or “I just don’t know what to do.”
Instead I try to open the conversation with something like: “This is a [insert adjective and noun] here on this page and in this area. How did you come about deciding to add this to your course?
Bam…now, I have paid attention to the professor/client and a rapport can be built. They can talk about their online classroom/situation and we can both discuss what’s working and what might need some tweaking.
When working with professors/clients/whomever, I always listen first and then ask open-ended questions to generate empathy, trust, and most of all, learning…for both sides.