Just reading this article on slow photography made me relax. In the day and age of digital photography, we burn through exposures with huge memory cards and cameras than can shoot dozens of shots per second. Instead of going that route, try slowing down, doing a long exposure, waiting for time to pass, and other tricks. The Photojojo article is a great guide.
I love slow photography. Here are a few of my personal favorite successes:
Thanks to natenatenate on Twitter for sharing this video, but a wonderful example of how creative photography can be used to visualize a phenomenon - in this case how RFID signals work. Sounds nerdy, but easy to grasp and worth a watch.
We have been looking for a simple, yet effective trouble ticketing system for our school. We want it to be simple from the user end, and powerful (albeit simple) from the administrator end. We've decided to being a pilot of ZenDesk, a web-based helpdesk solution.
TEDxNYED is looking for music to play between speakers, during the day around the hall, and well, whenever we need it. Embracing free culture, and being sure not to violate copyright, we're looking for musicians or bands that would love to have their music played during our future-thinking conference. Mostly we'll use the music between speakers, but some of it may pipe out over our live stream and may make it into our videos which will be featured on TEDx's YouTube channel, and might even make it to the big show at TED.com.
Do you want to freely license us your music? Do you know someone who does? However it might work, put them in touch with me, leave a comment here, Twitter me, e-mail me at: arvind AT tedxnyed.com - just reach out.
Looking forward to seeing what the network comes back with.
p.s. we're an independently organized TED event.
Today I needed to have a meeting with Barbara Swanson from NYSAIS and she suggested Oovoo. NYSAIS has been using Oovoo a lot for video conference calls, and we used one at our Information Technology Committee last week, with pretty good success. We went for it today and the call quality was fantastic. The audio was great and the video was shockingly good, especially with Barbara and I both being on wireless networks while chatting. Their service seems to be improving with time, although the ads they show at the bottom of calls are quite obtrusive.
Lovely fruits and veggies at the market today: leeks, redskin potatoes, onion, shallot, garlic, thyme, yellow cauliflower, gala apples, brussel sprouts, shitake mushrooms, baby portabella mushrooms, and hen of the wood mushrooms.
Mushroom stew and roasted vegetables for dinner tonight!
Joshua Lott for The New York TimesJerod Reyes, left, and Dylan Powell use their bus's Wi-Fi to do homework on their way to school.
The New York Times did a piece on the "Internet Bus" in Arizona that allows students wi-fi access while commuting to school or going on school trips. Seems like a great way to keep students connected at times when they normally aren't.
The article however, seems lacking in all of the non-academic things kids would be using an Internet connection for. An entire bus full of kids with laptops and Internet connections and Facebook/social networking doesn't even come up once? Where are the kids who are gaming? Where are the kids downloading pirated music/TV shows? Where are the kids posting photos on Facebook? The article seems to be a looking at the bus through rose-colored glasses, but I get the gist of it.
It's a neat idea, but it's yet another space where the kids used to be somewhat offline, now turning online. I suppose that they already had their phones on the bus, so it wasn't all that offline. I just wonder if there will be any offline spaces left for them? The athletics field, perhaps? The NFL had to ban Twitter from sidelines recently.
update: I missed the line in the article that talked about the students playing games. I still think it leans way to heavy on the academic use. Unless these are kids who only do homework and nothing else, it's just not a reasonable expectation that it will become a study hall bus. It will be just like the Internet in their homes - often homework, but more often media consumption.
This might be the cutest thing I've seen in quite some time. Enjoy!
I, along with some of my distinguished peers, will be speaking on a panel at the Creative Commons Salon NYC on March 3, 2010. The theme is "Opening Education" and there will be folks from Flat World Knowledge, Peer 2 Peer University, and finally the educators panel (including me!). It will be in lower Manhattan, from 7-10pm. RSVP info is here.
Hope you can join!
A supercool video from TEDxNYED speaker Dan Meyer showing the statistics of his 2009 (hours slept, gallons of beer drank, minutes on cell phone, movies watched, etc).
Worth watching!