Remix culture as a creative and professional habit

Posted on August 17, 2012 by Judy O'Connell

Yesterday the Charles Sturt University ICT Community of Practice had one of it’s regular afternoon forums, campus-wide, in meeting spaces, and via online conferencing. It’s a great way to bring people together from various faculties and disciplines. The focus in on sharing – not quite a PechaKucha, but close to it with just 10 minutes to share a few nuggets of gold!

As one of the invited presenters, my focus was on creativity and the use of images. This is based on the fact that I want teachers to understand remix culture (when it comes to images); use of creative commons and various sources of free images; image attribution; and visual presentation for blogging and creating presentations. With the 10-minute presentation I also included one of the regular updates that I provided my teacher/students in the Digital Citizenship in Schools subject to help springboard ideas.

The trick of course is to engage teachers from all ends of the spectrum of ICT prowess. So for the newbies, an introduction to flickr and other CC image sources is a must. For the geeks an introduction to tools like Alan Levines wonderful FlickrCC Image Attribution Helper is a must!

A lovely lecturer in Veterinary Science contacted me later to let me know she was excited by the ideas and would be weaving what she has leaned into her work. How cool is that? To be able to share across disciplines in this way is future learning methinks!

Understanding remix culture as a creative and professional habit IS about understanding creativity and copyright!

Image: cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by A. Diez Herrero

How Remix Culture Fuels Creativity & Invention: Kirby Ferguson at TED (brainpickings.org)

Flickr Attribution Helper update!

Posted on April 18, 2012 by Judy O'Connell

Around about this time last year I shared a post about Greasemonkey and Flickr for the adventurous. In this I’m elaborating on the wonderful tool, created by my friend Alan Levine aka @cogdog, which is a core essential part of my digital toolkit.

As it was this time last year, I have a group of students working with me on visual elements of online presentations as part of their exploration of Digital Citizenship in Schools, and of course I introduce them to the FlickrCC Attribution Helper for Greasemonkey. The reason for this is related to ethical use of online images, and the value of working with Creative Commons as an effective source of visual imagery.

Alan Levine has written a Flickr Attribution Helper – a browser script that embeds easy to copy attribution text to creative commons licensed flickr images. Greasemonkey is an add-on for Firefox browser. Once Greasemonkey is installed, you have the ability to add all sorts of magical things to the functionality of your browser. The Attribution Helper also installs into other browsers without the help of Greasemonkey.

Do take time to revisit the post to discover why this tool is fabulous ~ if you are not already using it. If you are using it – keep reading for an update!

Here’s the twist! A student asked me to clarify the attribution code found on some of my images. For example, if you look at the image in my last post, you will see that if as follows:

Image: cc licensed ( BY SD ) flickr photo shared by heyjudegallery

What is SD? the student asked? Upon checking the CC licensing options I could find no SD!

A quick tweet to Alan, and a quick response has resulted in an updated version of FlickrCC Attribution Helper for Greasemonkey.

Lovely! Now the same code being generated for that image reads as follows:

cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by heyjudegallery

In other words, we have SD replaced by SA for ‘share alike’. Did I ever mention that Alan is awesome?

Top Image: cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by Sebastián-Dario

Greasemonkey and Flickr for the adventurous

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Judy O'Connell

Some of my students are busy creating slideshare presentations, that we will be able to mill around, listen to their thoughts, and discuss ideas via Slideshare zipcast. The exciting thing about this is also the opportunity to help them develop new ways of managing online tools -AND images for work like this.

A tweet this morning from friend Darcy Moore asking Dean Groom (yes, he’s a friend too!) about image attribution in his recent blog post reminded me that I should crosspost my tip to my students about my favourite image attribution tool right here too!

Here it is:

I promised a while back that I would share some more interesting ways to manage your image work online. Tips and tricks abound, but this one from Alan Levine is the niftiest around, so I’ve decided to share it first.

cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by Sebastián-Dario

So what am I talking about? Well of course, as you prepare your presentation (or indeed work on other image-related tasks in your professional work) one of the things you are doing is noting where the image comes from and providing a hyperlinked attribution. If, like me, you are backed into a corner for time, then you will most certainly end up at Flickr. (Even if not in a rush I still prefer to use FlickrCC, and think laterally in my search terms! I also love the new things it throws up for me.)

There are a few reasons for this:
1. You can store your own images at Flickr and build your own collections
2. You can ‘favourite’ other peoples CC. images (something I regularly do as I collect images for my various bits of work)
3. Now you can also install a nice GreaseMonkey script to make the image attribute even easier.

Here’s what it’s about – read on, only if you are keen for an adventure!

To be honest, the only one I have ever added is Alan’s Flickr Attribtion Helper – but its insanely useful! See the image above – that red tee-shirt and the attribution were simply copied from the HTML box and pasted here in the blog! Done in one go!

Stephen Ridgeway, from New South Wales Australia, created a video that explains how to use the Flickr CC Attribution helper (thank goodness – a blog post by itself would never do it!). Download and install the Flickr Attribution helper (after you have installed Greasmonkey). Then watch the magic happen every time you go to a Flickr image!

Find Free Images Online (heyjude.wordpress.com)
20+ Great Greasemonkey Scripts for Improving Your Twitter Experience (chicagosocial.wordpress.com)
Flickr Still Beats Facebook for Photographers (blogs.photopreneur.com)

Fast Forward

Posted on January 3, 2009 by Judy O'Connell

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more about “Fast Forward“, posted with vodpod

So lets see…my standard toolkit includes: Wordpess, Gmail, Google calendar, Google chat, and a host of other Google doc tools, Delicious, Nings galore, facebook, twitter, flickr, flickrCC, SnipThis, TwitThat, Feedly, Clip to Evernote, Tumblr, Kwout, Wikispaces, Wetpaint, Youtube and other video sites, and of course Vodpod to store my most important video finds, skype, Elluminate as well as WizIQ and Flashmeeting. Of course, there are raft of tools that are associated with virtual learning environments – a Second Life for me! That is not all, but that is already making my mind exhausted when I think of the shift in my ‘way of being’ – exhausted not for my self, but for the communication barrier that exists between me and so many of those that I work with.

More rumination….while I make a small movie from text!

What I am actually a bit worried about is that the pace of change has been so great, that the gap between the digitally adept and the digitally challenged is getting wider and wider, and perhaps will become too big a gap to bridge. I think I should settle for rumination, rather than worry, and let 2009 take care of itself 🙂