Where was JFK when I got shot?

OR: 'Placing the 1872 Completion of the Australian Overland Telegraph Line in historical context.

Please use the comments area to add YOUR recollection of histori

cal events either side of the 1872 date, for example;

1908 Henry Ford's first Model T motor car rolls of the production line in Dearborn Michigan ushering in another epoch of mass production [remember the Colt 45?].

1746 Wired Monks

1844 May 24, Morse sends a telegram from Washington to Baltimore, the 1st message...'What hath God wrought! [He died July 1872, 7 weeks before Charles Todd connected the final piece of line, Aug 26 1872]

1857 16th August completion of the first transatlantic cable, Queen Victoria sends a telegram to president Buchanan.
1859 The solar superstorm of 1859 was the fiercest ever recorded. A

uroras filled the sky as far South as the Caribbean, magnetic compasses went haywire and telegraph systems failed....

1861 US East West overland telegraph line completed

1872 Brigham Young is arrested for polygamy (28 wives).
1872 July 2, Samuel Morse [the father of open source software?] dies about 7 weeks before Charles Todd completes link for the Aussie overland telegraph line Aug 26 1872.

1873 Eadweard Muybridge, yep the spelling is correct, settled a bet on whether the hoofs of a horse galloping are ever all in the air at once. Wagers aside, collaborating with John D. Isaacs, the resultant photographic apparatus ushered in the very start of that Leviathan we've all come to love, motion pictures. [Here's a great link to his work from a really good online Gallery; Artsy. Well worth a look]

1873 Jesse James and James Younger gang's 1st train robbery (Adair Iowa) 

Mike Smith Archaeologist-environmental historian on Central Australia around 1870 [www.abc.net.au/rn] 

If you can add  to this article [Use Comments please] by suggesting important events that happened in this general milieu it will be appreciated.

Panculturale-e

Thank you Mr Learnscope!
One of the really nice things about Learnscope is the access to PD it wisely promotes. At the start of the project Georgina suggested we engage a suitable person to upskill we 3; Georgina, Li Ting and myself, and that Georgina would workshop with Li Ting and I for a day or so either side of the training. Collaboratively we decided on Macromedia related tuition for Dreamweaver, Flash and Fireworks and Adobe Illustrator. Both Li Ting and Georgina knew of a woman in Alice Springs referred to as Net Grrl, AKA Jane Clark.
Jane Clarks' a bit like Superwoman, in the daytime she's an Alice Springs Alderwoman [who offers info exchange with her constituents via her avatar on 2nd Life Janey Marsala, at night she morphs into Jane Clark- Mother, and at other times runs a successful web training enterprise: http://www.netgrrl.com.au/
Serendipity and raw luck allowed us to engage a busy Jane for 2.5 days training in late August [Tue, Wed and .5 Thu] and it was great.
Prior to the training on the Monday Georgina, Li Ting and I met in the IAD library and practiced that ancient art of face to face collaboration. There are so many 'strands' to Pancultural-e project [design, content, media, culturally sanctioned information etc], that we needed as a team, to tease out the tangles and lay them out straight. In her inimitable fashion [known in the trade as FULL THROTTLE] Georgina helped us tease out the tangles and start tossing ideas around. I really enjoyed this part, mainly because everyone was so open to 'ideas' per se. Of course we all had our individual notions but nothing was set in stone and gradually it all come together into a united multilateral way forward. For me, a really beneficial aspect of this type of work is this process of collaboration, whether it be digital or F2F. Its a right brain activity.
For many years computing has been a real male-ish left brain number, linear and logical.
Social networking, online collaboration, mutual reality [like 2nd life] etc has marked what I see as a turning point. In regard to business models its a bit like the difference between right-brain QANTAS and left-brain Virgin, QUANTAS is a lock step model with Virgin more open to new feeds and practice. Whatever, the 'grid' is now weighted towards interaction and this project was hurting my right brain!
A good example of this was my notions of a lock stepped mp3 podcast and Map moving from point A to B and so on. [my model being that of the ABC's podcast tour of Melbourne] In reality, trying to model this around Alice Springs' Geography, Topography, Climate and the users mode of transport [Bicycle, walking and or driving], made for a horribly complicated conundrum that I'd been wrestling with for weeks [that is until the session when Georgina come up with the idea of ditching the ABC model and making it just a series of 'chapters' and allowing the user to choose] It was that simple, and oh what a joy.
An almost complimentary spin-ff was the fact that Marcus Ragus [Learnscope M-Learning] and Daniel Dacey, are collaborating in the production of application software "Virtual Guide" to run on an ASUS PDA with GPS. It turns out that content files stored on a PDA/GPS can be 'triggered' by moving into a specific location, perfect for what we want happening as users move around Alice taking in the sacred Sites Tour. So Georgina's idea of de-linerising Vodcast content will work beautifully with this software. Daniel and Marcus have kindly agreed to allow us in on their project to act as beta testers, thanks guys. Gotta love this right-brain, womenomics collaborative stuff eh?
So, either side of the organised 'NetGrrl' training we had working sessions that were hard work but worth the effort.
NetGrrl

Training was conducted in the IAD board room, close to the executive Tim Tam biscuit barrel and Jane hit the ground running, dragging us screaming into maw of Macromedia. The schedule was heavy duty, hard work and rewarding. We covered all sorts of digital magic from 'tweening' in Flash to 'rollovers' in Dreamweaver.
Of real value to IAD is the way that our web presence is metamorphosing, guided by the deft hands of Li Ting Lee, our erstwhile and versatile IT administrator . As well as a major overhaul regarding the graphics, the site is now steadily gearing up to be able to add value in a wonderful variety of ways; online education, multilingual capacity, pay-per-view commerce, an IAD Press who are now seriously looking into their own capacity to digitally delight and deftly distribute. The list goes on. There is real value in that old TAFE exercise of sending folk back to 'industry' to get back in the swim of things. Albeit we had 'Industry' come to us, but it was reassuring to know that Jane had her finger on the pulse. Also, being an Alderwoman, Jane was well placed to offer quality advice on our product. A real Gem suggestion for instance was that we should take our proof of concept product to the NT Tourism Commission and sound them out on a variety of issues; funding, visibility, assistance etc. So, its nice to have some take off points at the end of this years gratefully received funding and support from Melanie's [SITAC] crew and Learnscope.
And Finally, the "Work Song" Jane had us chant mantra style as we engaged our tuition. Its really hard to sing and multi task collabourataenously.....

Pancultural-

Babel revisited with a corporate software lock-in twist. Learnscoping for August

This is the third time I've posted with no avail, and as yet I've 'only' lost my entire blog text twice. Wow, it DID NOT like 'quicktime' movies....Doh!
Anyway I now need to rant and vent, though not necessarily in that order. I'm grateful I can work with the intellectual property of Bill gates and Steve Jobs respectively, but I get sooo frustrated trying to get them to talk with each other. It's like trying to mix oil and water or get Itchy and Scratchy to lay down their arms [without using chainsaws].
Jhonno and Jason,[above] a couple of likely lads if ever there was two, and Raylene and I [centre and right below] set up a couple of "Audacity" Learnscope workshops to delve into the mystics of Audio manipulation. To my genuine surprise they took to it like frozen chooks in a cannon.
Some of our multimedia workshops have been difficult for the Learnscopers to grasp and have thus met with limited success. Even PowerPoint can get tricky. On the other hand it was very much easier for the students to conceptalise a mixed audio scenario and then just drill down and start producing. [Noise pollution can be beneficial after all] After 40 mins of Audacity tuition the 'brief' went something like: "read/record this paragraph using this mike and Audacity, then lay a background track on it using this selection of mp3 music files. So, with a $10 mike each and some freeware we managed a couple of great workshops.
One of the most rewarding things about teaching is when one hears students Oh and Ah-ing as they flex newly created muscle. [note; find out who's the patron saint of student engagement and proffer a prayer].

Overriding this rewarding engagement however is the Babel revisited scenario. First it was Linguistic nuances across Warlpiri, Chinese and English, and now, as were getting ever closer to product, its what will play on what.
One of our Learnscope Project 'deliverables' is audio/visual content playing on MP4 players, 3G phones and hand-held PDA's. I can feel a vent-rant coming on, got the taste for it, just can't waste for it...
PDA's runing Mobile 5 Windows OS wont play mpg4, Flash video .flv or Shockwave .swf files, On the other hand however, PSP's and MP4 players will do mp3 and mp4 but not WMV's.
iTunes spits out audio in an esoteric file suffixed .m4p that won't play on anything but Itunes, 3g phones are decidedly undecided and definately maybe about moving pictures, and my veritable Blogger interface keels over if I try to load quicktime movies.
Sometimes I think we should have a Learnscope competition to see who can design the Ultimate Learnscope Medicine toolkit, Bach rescue remedies shelved with Prozac and St Johns Wort etc.

There again some times I like to daydream....
A long time ago
In a river bed far far away......

Pancultural

What shall we do for a Classrom then Raylene?
Jason Bell, one of our learnscope team members, left last week after contributing significantly to our project. Up to the plate steps Raylene Ferguson our new staff member in Student Services. Raylene was born and raised in Central Australia and comes with a wealth of local knowledge,. So, I'd organised a one-on-one 3 hr slot to 'induct' Ray into the learnscope hall of fame. But, after an hour attempting to dictate/record Audio Podcast Bush Tucker segments we were getting nowhere fast. People wanting her attention in Student Services, phones ringing in my demountable, unwanted light aircraft and truck noises ruining recordings on the campus lawn. I used to think Alice was a quiet sorta location for a city... We just couldn't settle, me wanting to throttle people and things and ray fluffing her lines.
Anyway I was whinging to Ray about the noise and she suggests we go to the back of the house where she grew up, I was ready to try anything. Apparently Ray and her 2 sisters used to horse ride into school and leave the horses parked at the causeway. Anyway,about 5 Km out of town on the Ross River Highway we ease round the back of a tumble-down shack [an old Commonwealth Linesmans House]and into/onto the Todd River.
Well then, things just got a whole lot simpler. Ray lit a small fire as I set up the laptop and mikes and things just kinda flowed very straightforwards and simply. Ray parking herself on a convenient log [as I burnt my fingers on the billy] Ray's off and running. No more stutters or flutters, no more misreading, and a Natural voice.
And so it was that I was privileged enough to 'hang about in the creek' with a local on a blissfully cold Alice Springs winter morning, get a shitload of work done, and drum up some passable billy tea. I wouldn't swap it for quids.

Pancultur

BabelAsia and AUSLAN
As part of our multicultural project we will be translating a sample selection of our mp3 audio podcasts into Chinese and Japanese. This will demonstrate the process of promoting Cultural Awareness information into the Asian region. Li Ting has made real progress into preparing a customized website that we will use as the 'vehicle' to deliver our IAD Cultural Awareness program, ACAP. As such the site has to be capable of multilingual text and audio display, mp3, mp4, Flash and photos. We've decided on using a website rather than a PowerPoint presentation to deliver the F2F component of our Cultural Awareness program. This will give us greater flexibility to include a broader range of multimedia, and also to apply more effects to in-site media.
Not only but also....
Onto this broad canvas walks our very own AUSLAN professional Carmel Batson. I'm helping Carmel with the IT/multimedia construction of her keynote address in Spain, July 07 at the Bi-annual CODA meet[Children of Deaf Adults]. Carmel complained, and rightly so, that we are utter cads for not including sign language translations in our Learnscope project.
So after a quick phone call from Betty Pearce [our director] to the Imparja Television studios Carmel, Li Ting, Gina and I are in front of a blue screen capturing 'signed' [if thats the right word] descriptions of sacred caterpillars gouging out hills and valleys across the Central Australian dreamscape. The studio technicians were calling this technique 'chromo' something or other. We just know at this stage we'll have to shoot the video this way to peel it off at a later stage and stick it against some suitable panoramic back-drop.
Our new Business apprentice Gina, pictured in the blue top, narrated the piece. We got it right on the 3rd pass and contrary to rumors Carmel did not dislocate her wrists trying to keep up with Gina!
On Monday 28th May 07 we are set to nominate the 15 or so particular sites around Alice Springs that we'll be using to construct our MP3 and MP4 podcasts. I put up another post shortly after. All I can say at this stage is that the project seems to be almost driving itself now, like a caterpillar on a mission!

Pancultu

Drilling Down.
The project is running along nicely now. Learners are busy researching their chosen topics and the ITC training is producing positive results. The Moodle/Elluminate sessions have been well received and having 'show and tell' sessions with Georgina in Adelaide has added a rich overlay onto the learning experience. Learners are more comfortable and confident manipulating media objects into PowerPoint [it's amazing how this has gone so quickly from cool to passe.]
The emerging educational issue now relates to the team condensing blocks of information into 'bite sized' chunks. Google is great but it gives one so much!. Getting learners to condense their information overloads into coherent chunks is an interesting and demanding exercise for me. As the data is Indigenously oriented I haven't the cred to make the call. But I must admit it's great to see students collaborating and debating what is important to the overall flow of the message.
Regarding Information Overload: we're starting to amass a small but growing pool of raw multimedia objects. [mp3, avi, mp4, gif, swf etc] What I could really use right now is a purpose built data base housing multimedia objects. I've a feeling that down the line as we move from our PowerPoint 'source-pool' into pod and vod-cast construction, we might have to use something like SQL to call these objects up. As, ultimately , we also want to have these multimedia objects 'on-call' as scorm compliant online learning 'chunks' the need for a database is growing. Anyone out there know of any applications that does this?

Pancult

Podcast Blues
I can download my uploaded mp3 files from the wiki space, and I had to, as a test, to see if they were up there. But the buggers won't play.
Went to
http://www.wikispaces.com/wikitext+media
and was convinced I had to embed my audio into the wiki after uploading it to a suitable blog site. Followed a link to Odeo and after wiki whacking around it transpires new users [and apparently old users who don't know how to upload] can upload as Odeo won't let ya. Straight forward enough eh?
Followed another link to google calendars and buggered if I could find a way to upload audio into here.
Went back to NTLS wiki clicked on my second mp3 and darn it the file played.
Is this a syntax connundrum.... the playable mp3 is called Fred Richardson Story 2.MP3
The curly one was called It lead me to IT.mp3 but on trying to play it, it morphs into a file named It+lead+me+to+IT.mp3 and plays just 3 seconds or so of my dulcet tones.
Well dash my buttons! Its 12.36am, time to punch some zzzzzz
I shall return

Pancul

Latency
Had a fun and valuable intro today. Surprisingly Pat was quite relaxed working within the elluminate space. The only concept that was hard to convey was the notion of latency among and between users during an online elluminate session.
So, throwing caution to the wind, Li Ting hooked up not one but two PC's in the elluminate session, the steam powered training server rose to the occasion.[ We're so looking forward to getting our new 'Internode' service] Georgina was able to allow simultaneous moderator privileges for Adelaide and Alice Springs and our second laptop had normal student/learner permissions. [it's good to see elluminate consistently enhancing their product] So with this set up we were able to demonstrate, in real and latent time, what happens when moderators and learners use the tools in the session room. As it turned out it was an engaging and valuable learning experience for old and new learners alike. You gotta love whoever invented serendipity eh?
Research Topics.
Pat led by example and brought in a selection of archival footage stored on VHS tapes. We worked out how to use the on-screen counter and Pat has started mapping out the segments she wants to include.

The Ara Irititja Demo was also a success and garnered a lot of keen interest. It also helped demonstrate how multimedia can be packaged to become easy to navigate and control whilst at the same time being multiculturally user friendly. Definitely one of my longer sentences there, apologies!
So now we are on the road to farming the data we have and the truth thats out there somewhere Mulder. Here's a screen shot from the Ara Irititja Demo put ou by the South Australian Government I think. I was given the demo by some of the researchers involved in the project when I was working with them and the Anmattjerre mob in Ti Tree about 5 years ago.

Thats all I got for now, be happy! Fred for the NTLS07 team.




To learn more about this and other NT Learnscope 2007 projects please visit http://ntlearnscope2007.wikispaces.com/IAD

Pancu

Preparation for the inaugural NTLS07 workshop. Our IAD network connection is way too slow to have our team all logged in merrily interacting with Georgina tomorrow. So what Li Ting and I have decided is to have just one connected laptop projected onto the wall so we can at least get the flavour of the platform. And Li Ting has sent off the request for a faster connection through Internode, that'll be up in about 10 days so we'll be humming from there. And in time for the next scheduled workshop.
I've just burnt several CD's for the team to take away tomorrow from the workshop.
I'm calling them 'kits', "NTLS07 kit 1" has rolled off the press and we'll see how it goes.
[1] 'ABC'; mp3 and pdf files to demo how mp3 'podtours' are done by Aunty.
[2] ACAP; I've OCR'd the ACAP handout into text and dumped it into a website, members can thus quickly move about in it as they start building up their chosen ACAP research topics.
[3] Ara_Irititja; Great Flash driven Indigenous resource. Google it for more info.
[4] ARED: Great easy to use tool to build up scorm compliant Flash files. Will run an intro on it at workshop #2.
[5]Audio Visual; Eye, ear and text candy; gif, mp4, mp3, pdf etc
[6] Irfanview; Image editor team tool of choice, freeware [even for edu orgs], small, clean and mean. Ripper program.
[7] PPT; Demo on how to use 'pack and go'; so team members can bring back research material embedded into their presentations that plays once it's away from their personal computers.
note; If you use Irfanview over your student network; Run each install once to alter an image and set it to output .jpg files, then lock the network down. Otherwise the default settings spit out bitmaps by default, forever, frustrating when you're working mainly with jpg's, and mind numbing if you aint got the permissions to change it!
To learn more about this and other NT Learnscope 2007 projects please visit http://ntlearnscope2007.wikispaces.com/IAD

Panc

Pancultural-e diary of events.

Arrived back in Alice tired and inspired last week [8/4]. Great to visit Darwin in 'the wet' again and feel the rain! and meet the other Learnscope Staff and Team members. Also it was a great open atmosphere to air views, like that pun?, ask questions and generally make connections

Okay, so now the work begins. The line's been running hot between Georgina, Li Ting and Moi as we pull the threads together from Darwin, float ideas and get re-acquainted with the software platforms we'll be collaborating on/with; Moodle, elluminate, Blogspots, Wiki's, Instant Messaging a nifty 'ARED' tool and etc, etc.

Sat in at IAD for an Aboriginal Cultural Awareness Program [ACAP] last week [12/4]delivered by Pat Dodds. A great session with a stimulating audience mix: Indigenous Australians, Muslim and Europeans. It was good to attend to:
[1] get re-acquainted with the source material we'll be using to help construct the projects.
[2] enjoy the delivery and the banter that Pat always draws from participants
[3] get some mp4 video, photos and mp3 audio files for file. We'll be using these as test material when we start running the Pancultural-e workshops for the staff at IAD Fri 20/4.
Met with IAD Board Fri 13/4 and am pleased to say we have their full support. And given their 'demographic' [thanks Surya Silva] it's great that they understand the Pancultural-e concept and it's potential.

Short meet with all the team members this week and we are ready for our first online session with Georgina this Friday 20/4. We'll have a round table talk before going online just to get the neurons firing, foster input generally and to float the idea of breaking the ACAP program into manageable chunks. This will be less daunting when we can each go off and do our individual research.

The ACAP program has about 12 separate sections so on our first meeting we'll get team members to select an area they're interested [e.g. Family, Kinship, Language etc]. From there we treat it as a research topic and members populate powerpoint presentations with material they are able to find. The idea is to use this as source as we commence construction of the mp3 and mp4 podcasts and look at how we may use it towards online delivery of ACAP.

We've also scheduled in a brainstorming session aimed at adding a bit of spice to Pat's delivery. So we'll be looking for ACAP related activities, puzzles, quizzes and the like that Pat can use during delivery to engage participants. Delivery is f2f and includes a bus tour of selected Indigenous sites around Alice.
To learn more about this and other NT Learnscope 2007 projects please visit http://ntlearnscope2007.wikispaces.com/IAD