…the plan is to add more services you can choose from in the next weeks and months…*

Sue Waters and Richard Byrne recently posted about alternatives to the much-loved Google Reader for RSS feeds.  I am slowly exploring options but do, realistically, have limited time to evaluate all that is on offer. I have been sitting back, not paying that much attention, waiting for answers to emerge. Finding the best solution is very important for my daily routines and time is running out. 

Workflow and RSS

Reeder has been my preferred option for reading RSS feeds on my Macbook, iPad and iPhone for some years now. I would like to continue using this tool, if the developers manage to get it right in a post-Google Reader world. Reeder is just a beautiful app. I have a system that allows my to use my iPhone, whenever I have a few minutes somewhere waiting or am in transit on a train, that really allows me to read a great deal of the latest and greatest information online. I am able to post at app.net, email, tweet or send to Facebook with great ease.

Reeder’s plans are not completely evident yet other than the service will continue. I do really want to continue with Reeder but will change to one of the other services if they do not sort it out quickly. They have announced Feedbin support for iPhone but I baulk at paying the small monthly subscription fee for a previously free service and am unlikely to pursue this option.

NB Reeder for Mac and Reeder for iPad is ‘free’ until the update (I guess) and is worth downloading now, even though the future of the app is unclear. Follow @reederapp on Twitter for updates.

Reeder has plans for a post-Google Reader world

Alternative RSS Readers

It seems that many will move to the popular (and long-running) Feedly service and this, if I am unable to continue with Reeder, seems the most likely option for me too for the simple reason that I can use easily across my devices, as I currently do. There is a nice extension for Chrome and an Australian developer is working on a Macbook solution.

I have started exploring The Old Reader (imported 694 feeds) but notice a few issues, especially that ‘showing unread’ does not seem to work properly, as more often than not all posts are revealed. This is very annoying and, when compared to the efficient beauty of Reeder, just not acceptable. I already use Pulse on my iPad only with specific feeds about Apple, photography, technology mags and science. I much prefer it to Flipboard but do enjoy flicking through its magazine like layout. I would not use either for my main reader.

Here’s a post with quite a few other Google Reader alternatives.

*A quote from Reeder opens this post. I truly hope the plan comes together quite quickly.

What are your plans for managing RSS feeds?

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by HiMY SYeD / photopia

Featured image: cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo by jsiarto: http://flickr.com/photos/jsiarto/2979796747/

The Red Room Company’s national poetry education program transforms the way poetry is taught in Australian schools and learning institutions by bringing young and emerging poets into classrooms across the country to run practical writing workshops. During the workshops, poets inspire students to develop read, listen, compose and perform their own poetry, which simultaneously enriches curriculum outcomes.

I really appreciated Dr Tamryn Bennett contacting me recently regarding opportunities for the students at our school and my postgraduate pre-service teachers to have fun learning more about poetry with The Red Room Company. Here’s a brand new video where Tamryn explains how students and schools are supported to gain a contemporary appreciation of poetry.

Red Room Education focuses on regional, remote, culturally diverse and disadvantaged communities. Here are some of the hundreds of poets who have been involved and their poems. More information about the flexible program structures and costs can be found here with examples of school projects from Marrickville, Riverside, Concord and St George Girls High Schools.

A program for 40 students from Years 7-10 at our school is currently emerging that will link some excellent pre-service teachers, including Rhiannon Hall, a young poet who keenly supports the South Coast Writers Centre (more about this in a future post).

You will enjoy exploring the resources produced by the company including teaching resource cards and at their Red Room YouTube Channel. Read articles from the Guardian Teaching and Learning Hub to learn more or maybe check out the Flickrstream.

Later in the year I will post some of the poems and videos of performance poetry our students produce in partnership with the poets who generously share their time and The Red Room Company.

Anyone have some good news stories about students discovering poetry?

Featured images courtesy of Prue Upton and The Red Room Company.

And it has become a kind of a truism in the study of creativity that you can’t be creating anything with less than 10 years of technical knowledge immersion in a particular field.    Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

It’s best to have your tools with you. If you don’t, you’re apt to find something you didn’t expect and get discouraged.     Stephen King

…enjoyable activities are not natural; they demand an effort that initially one is reluctant to make. But once the interaction starts to provide feedback to the person’s skills, it usually begins to be intrinsically rewarding.           Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Workflow for a whole range of professional needs and personal pleasures is constantly being disrupted lately as tools and processes morph daily or my understanding deepens of what is possible. Mostly, this has been with photography but also, with the demise of Google Reader on July 1st, other long-running workflow habits, that I was very happy with, are in need of a rethink. There are areas where I was never really satisfied, constantly experimenting with new online and cloud services, especially for backing up documents and images. Managing writing projects has proven to be the most unresolved workflow.

Like you, I am always (obsessively) exploring these online tools, software, storage and the plethora of apps that appear in Reeder or via Twitter. I could make an embarrassingly long list of tools that are on my devices which, after my initial explorations, are no longer in regular use. Increasingly, I want to make processes simple and have my stuff synched. It would be good to be less reliant on big (or little) corporations that store my data but the reality is that one has limited choice. One just has to hope their policies are truly ethical and that security is a priority.

At the moment, I am close to being comfortable with the tools assembled for photography, music, writing, sharing, storage and being totally in synch, across devices, especially when travelling. I am close to updated workflows being (mentally and practically) in place having spent quite a deal of time experimenting in recent months.

Now I want to spend more time creating and sharing rather than fooling around with tools.

Ideas and Writing

I like walking and often do my best thinking while out and about with my camera, wandering to the next destination or on public transport. Ideas for family stuff, journal articles, blog posts, lessons, school, university sessions, lines of poetry, descriptions and books come to mind while in full stride but I rarely stop and record anything. Usually, as soon as possible, I try to digitally jot ideas down or just start on the project. My work is spread across a range of Microsoft, Google and Apple products. This self-hosted WordPress blog often stores numerous drafts that may see light or moulder. Often the work I send off to editors is not really organised or stored too logically but I do try to use Diigo to tag my pieces wherever feasible. I have lots of folders, spread across many drives, dating back to 1997.

I never use a pen and paper any more. Ever. There is an old battered suitcase under the house filled with what I once though of as my ’juvenilia’ (chuckling slightly with the hubris of the word)  and my writing from the 80s. I mostly use Word for Mac or TextEdit for longer pieces; often making lists with Notes on my iPad or iPhone. I have tried many, many tools and apps but always seem to return to these few. I once thought (2008) that Evernote was brilliant but now, I feel an answer has emerged that suits my needs.

A New Workflow

In short, my need is to draft and store research ideas and references together, in some logically ordered way that allows me to build on what has already been produced, wherever I am, prior to formal publication. Projects, of all sorts, need to be managed. I also need to work on all kinds of lists and miscellany.

Exploring Scrivener 2 has led me to the conclusion that this tool have some longer term value and is worth pursuing, cementing a workflow that is effortless and likely to last, especially when synched with Simplenote on my iPhone or iPad*.

Scrivener is a word-processing program designed for authors. Scrivener provides a management system for documents, notes and metadata. This allows the user to organize notes, concepts, research and whole documents for easy access and reference (documents including text, images, PDF, audio, video, web pages, etc.). After writing a piece of text the user may export it to a standard word processor for formatting. SOURCE

Basically, I can arrange all my ideas and notes easily while still be able to add the thoughts jotted down on my iPhone via Simplenote to Scrivener. Fleeting impressions, descriptions and philosophical moments of clarity can be saved and logically ordered into a larger whole. The whole shebang is backed up effortlessly to Dropbox.

Below is a useful video introduction to Scrivener 2 so you can see what I am excited about.

Scrivener has been a popular for several years and these reviews may be of interest if you want to know more about the software. I recommend watching how to synch with Simplenote and also an external folder, like Dropbox. There are many excellent video tutorials for when you have more advanced uses for the software.

Creator, Keith Blount, has a great attitude – his site links to most of Scrivener’s competitors - which reveals a very sound philosophy IMHO. I am yet to explore his new brainstorming app Scapple but am sure some readers of this post will find it potentially useful. Both Scrivener (here) and Scapple (here) are free for a month while you try them out.

Here’s the links for Scrivener on Twitter and Facebook.

What are your thoughts about workflow and Scrivener or Simplenote? Have you any advice or other thoughts about writing workflow?

*NB I am concerned that the iPad app keeps crashing.

Workflow ideas

Firstly, I have everything working now but need to learn more about a range of technical issues to do with RAF/RAW files, iPads and editing. Maybe you can help?

It was not completely straight foward to get the 16GB Eye-fi Pro X2 talking with my iPad but as soon as I ‘protected’ photos on my X100s it all just worked magically in direct mode. I had set the Eye-Fi iPad app in such a way that it was uploading to my iPhone, Macbook Pro and also to their online site. This was overkill. I deactivated that app and now upload directly to ShutterSnitch, which allows more flexibility, especially in the creation of collections. I can set my camera to shoot RAW and JPEG but have set this app to only upload the latter to my iPad for a number of reasons. Not least, that I am uncertain about how my iPad reads RAW images. Is it just reading the JPEG data contained within? It is also a very slow process to upload large .RAF RAW files.

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by Darcy Moore

If it turns out I really need to edit an image the RAW file can be uploaded to my Macbook Pro at some later stage. Either way, I have the RAW image, if needed, for editing in Lightroom. Originally I planned to use the Adobe Revel iPad app for saving my RAW files but alas, the file type is not supported (more on this later).

When the JPEGs are safely uploaded (NB in direct mode I do not need to be online) one can send from ShutterSnitch, unedited, to the usual suspects – Flickr, Facebook, etc. – or send to an app like Snapseed or PS Touch for editing. Saving the edited image to the iPad camera roll, of course, will then save to Photo Stream. I prefer the edited photos are backed-up here rather than having the (now turned-off) native Eye-Fi app save everything everywhere, which was too much backing-up for anyone imo.

One advantage of ShutterSnitch is that it preserves the EXIF data. Check out this image’s EXIF data, or rather lack of it, when uploaded to the Eye-Fi app as (what appeared to be) a RAW file (still struggling with the technical side of this?) and then Flickr. I am at the limit of my understanding here and would love if some more knowledgeable person could explain how ShutterSnitch is able to save this data where the Eye-Fi app does not? More information about the iPad and RAW would be greatly appreciated.

NB EXIF data for JPEGs is displayed by Eye-Fi.

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by Darcy Moore

So, in brief, I upload JPEGs from my FujiFilm X100s, using an Eye-Fi card, to ShutterSnitch, edit in SnapSeed (or any other app) and save to my Photo Stream and potentially Adobe Revel. Flickr, Eyeem and Facebook are my favourite places to share my shots.

I do wonder how Pressgram may change my workflow.

RAW

It is quite irritating that that RAW files are not supported by Adobe Revel. RAW files do upload very slowly but it would be very useful, especially as this is all about travelling light with iPad options for storage, editing and sharing. The Lightroom plugin for REVEL is one I intend to use more, when RAW files (DNG and RAF) are supported. Agitate here (join first) to have this rectified. ShutterSnitch does work well uploading JPEGs to the Adobe Revel iPad app though.

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by Darcy Moore

Some final thoughts

The image above was shot using the advanced filter mode in my X100s. Some of these effects are really fun. Wandering around, looking at scenes to shoot in B&W, I keep an eye out for any interesting yellows, reds, greens, oranges, purples or blues that can be isolated, for good effect. For example, the ‘partial colour’ used above is obviously blue and it makes for a nice effect. My daughter knows about this setting and suggested it for the above shot.  It is great that I can easily save a shot from my compact to iPhone or iPad and, as I did with this photo, send it to Eyeem.

The public beta of Lightroom 5 makes me wish that Adobe made an Lightroom iPad app. That would really excite me. Anyone have news?

“Your filtered photos on your WordPress blog, right from your mobile device. Simple. Smart. No privacy or licensing issues to get in your way.”

As an educator, WordPress blogger, photographer, iPhoneographer and social media enthusiast the recent funding of Pressgram via Kickstarter truly fascinated. It is why the World Wide Web is still so often an inspiring daily part of our lives with the potential for each individual to realise great, and small, projects. The philosophy and values espoused by John Saddington for his development of this “Image Sharing App Built for an Independent Web” resounded so much I supported his project, my first ever with the crowd funding platform Kickstarter.  

The following videos explain John’s rationale for building his app.

Educators take note

I really like John’s ideas about transparency, writing and education. The video below talks about how people can travel with him on that journey and help others use Kickstarter. I LIKE it and John is certainly leaving a trail. He may be unnecessarily critical of his own writing skills but communication of ideas is definitely his forte. Educators really should watch this video, he really has the right idea about learning, creative control and sharing.

Do you agree this would make a great case study for students in secondary school?

I remember watching a video about how teenagers set up a t-shirt business when I was at high school and found it quite inspiring. How many of our students could realise great or small projects if they understood how to go about it. I really look forward to following the rest of John’s journey with Pressgram.

There’s lots more information at John’s Pressgram Youtube Channel and you can follow John Saddington and Pressgram on Twitter. I am really looking forward to the app (and my t-shirt).

Featured images: screenshots from Kickstarter.

Now the extra base funding necessary to get us to this school resourcing standard over six years is $14.5 billion. It’s a lot of money, but I believe it is a wise investment in our children’s future and in our nation’s future. J. Gillard

The Gonski Review has led to our Prime Minister announcing ”the biggest changes to school education in our nation for 40 years” as an integral part of the government’s “national plan for school improvement” (and re-election).

What does ‘biggest changes’ mean exactly?

Before exploring that question here is what needs to happen before this plan becomes reality and Public Schools are funded more equitable than is currently the case:

1. The state education ministers at COAG (19th April) need to agree with the Gillard government’s ‘offer’ (before June 30).

2. The Gonski legislation (The Australian Education Act) needs to be reintroduced into Parliament so that it can be amended with all the funding detail and passed before June 27 (when Parliament rises for the winter break).

3. If there is a new federal government elected on the 14th September an Abbott led government will be unlikely to repeal legislation that has been agreed to by all state ministers.

The Australian Education Union has run a fantastically effective campaign using social media and catchy sloganeering. The funding is desperately needed in Public Education (here are my previous ‘Gonski posts’). Here is more of the detail about how the Schooling Resource Standard would work.

‘the biggest changes to school education in our nation for 40 years’

What will change?

There will be more equity and greater opportunity to provide quality education for all Australian children, regardless of their backgrounds. This is good. The current government has maintained an inequitable funding arrangement that they inherited in 2007 and one wonders why it has taken 6 years (and at the eleventh hour) for funding reform to eventuate? The politics of schooling in Australia would have everything to do with it.

As important as money is for equity, democracy and educational reform one wonders how schooling will change? All agree that educational outcomes need to improve and how that is measured, and the appropriateness of constantly weighing the calf, is vexed. An even more managerial model is currently being further refined in most states and the fundamental nature of exams, traditional classrooms and instruction continues. When the Prime Minister talks about ”the biggest changes to school education in our nation for 40 years” one would hope that more than just a formula for funding that is involved.

The per student amount for 2014 is to be $9,271 for primary school students and $12,193 for secondary school students (if the state education ministers reach agreement in the next 10 weeks). What can we do with this in our systems and schools that really improves learning and democracy? It cannot just be about maintaining our funding based on the results of standardised testing or the inappropriate, creepingly managerial, measurement regimes that are stifling learning in systems around the world. We need genuine, not faux reform.

We need some BIG THINKERS.

What now? What needs to change? Who will lead the reform of schooling with a focus on the future of learning? 

Featured image: cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by CanadianAEh: http://flickr.com/photos/canadianaeh/4765650580/

A digital photography workflow is an end-to-end system of working with digital images, from capture to delivery. It is comprised of a series of inter-connected steps developed by photographers to simplify and standardise their work.     SOURCE

I purchased a FujiFilm X100s compact camera for a range of reasons and am now grappling with some practical issues of workflow. My current workflows, with a phone or DSLR, have been honed and I am very comfortable with these processes. However, I need to rethink what I do with this new camera when I wish to travel light and cannot edit quickly with my regular tools.

To explain in more detail, if shooting with my iPhone 4S I upload to Snapseed, then send to various other apps before uploading to Eyeem which simultaneously sends the photo to Flickr and Facebook (if I desire). When using my Nikon D700 I always shoot RAW, uploading them with a Moshi Cardette Ultra Reader to Adobe Lightroom 4 as DNG files on my Macbook Pro. I edit and save to the appropriate collection before uploading, from within Lightroom, to Adobe Revel, Flickr and/or Facebook. I could easily, although rarely do, use a Topaz or Nik plugin within Lightroom, or send it to Photoshop, before reimporting to Lightroom if needed. It is a really cool workflow compared to what I used to do several years ago, before finding Adobe Lightroom. I can still do this, of course, shooting RAW with my X100s.

Mostly I bought the X100s for travelling light or street photography and did not really think too hard about post-production, especially as I did not realise it would shoot such beautiful JPEGs. The quality certainly tempts me to dispense with shooting RAW all the time. Since buying my new FujiFilm compact I purchased a 16GB Eye-Fi Pro X card for the wifi capacity and am happy with how it uploads to my iPad or iPhone and syncs online or with my Macbook Pro. An outrageously large 128GB Sandisk SDXC card also found its way into my basket as I imagined it would be great for shooting HD video, on the road, editing when returning home (not having to worry about storage). I do need to update my card reader to be compatible though, which was unexpected.

There are several issues for a travelling light workflow that I need to resolve:

1. How light? Do I just go with an iPhone 4S and my X100s? Should I add an iPad too for the extra real estate while editing? Should I leave my Macbook Pro at home? When do I take my DSLR?
2. How do I store images? Of course I can make good use of Photostream but maybe it makes more sense to use the Eye-Fi online service or DropBox? As I learn Photoshop Touch it seems that the app only really integrates with Adobe Creative Cloud (or Facebook and Google images)
3. What is best for editing apps? Snapseed probably. PS Touch? Something else?
4. How does it all integrate with my existing workflow ideas on an iPhone (or iPad)? What will be the best process? What should change?

Conclusions

I am not certain of the answers to my new workflow questions at the moment. I like the idea of wandering the streets of a new town and being able to sit at a cafe, or in some salubrious locale (with wifi) and do some editing as the world winds by (as I currently do with my iPhone shots). My iPhone is great but the X100s just gives one more chance of capturing high quality images, with more flexibility. It is also very silent compared to my D700.

It is important that my workflow system works well when shooting JPEGs and allows me to share easily but how could I edit RAW files effectively on a mobile device? There’s only so much space on my iPhone or iPad so there needs to be careful consideration given and sensible solution. Is it worth it or just wait until having Lightroom at home? Maybe there will be a Lightroom app at some stage?

Trial and error works well but I’d really like to hear what others are doing to integrate their X100s with an Eye-Fi card and mobile device.

What’s your workflow? What have you discarded through trial and error?

BTW Here’s a brief article I wrote with some tips for online storage of photos.

*UPDATE: Hyperdrive, an iPad storage option may be worth investigating.

Featured image: cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by Darcy Moore: http://flickr.com/photos/darcymoore/8645320410/

“I want to do something I am interested in. I want to pursue my passions and live happily.” Quiia Cheng (17)

“China is getting rich now. But if you look at the picture more closely, you’ll see that China is very unequal. So – how do we make society more equal? How do we divide the cake? It’s up to my generation to think about these things. Minghao He (19)

Students often have a way of expressing simple yet profound truths about what we all want from our lives – and what is fair. Education has to connect more closely to students’ aspirations and what communities need to flourish. In some communities that is happening in an innovative and uplifting manner.

Learning a Living: Radical Innovation in Education For Work is a wonderful book showcasing what communities are doing successfully to improve ‘the relationship between education, innovation, work and the workforce.’ The chapter headings illustrate the thinking demonstrated by those innovators leading these projects. For example, waking up to a new world; the bigger picture; the next frontier; the whole picture; and, the title, learning a living are good examples of this optimism. 

Fifteen case studies, from countries as diverse as India and Finland or Bangladesh and Germany, highlight how learning can be successfully re-imagined to suit the context of the individual within the community they live. It is not the case that one can read a case study and think, yes, that’s what we should do here! What works for a community in rural Brazil is unlikely to translate to the urban context you work and live in. However, it certainly is food for thought to see how some are re-imagining learning and promoting positive values.

I learnt many interesting facts from the data in the book that demonstrate how sustaining and creating opportunity for all, especially in regards to life long learning and nurturing our youngest citizens, ensures the potential health of the whole community. It also is more likely to lead to every community having the skill sets needed to prosper. For example:

• 84% of apprentices in Finland are over 25 years of age and it is not uncommon for someone to commence an apprenticeship in their 50s.
• Africa’s one billion people use only 4% of the world’s electricity and cannot afford to charge a computer, even if supplied with it free. However, half the population own a mobile phone. This is leading to a realisation that learning delivered to a mobile device is more likely to be both accessible and sustainable.
• 34% of employers worldwide say they are having problems recruiting skilled workers but paradoxically, graduation from traditional schools and universities has never been higher.

Unfortunately, from my POV, there is only one disappointment to be experienced by reading the book. There are no case studies from Australia. Does anyone know of an Australian case study that could be included?

I was lucky enough to be lent a copy of this great book. You can pre-order it here.

BTW I particularly enjoyed the images photographed by Reza, a photojournalist. I’d recommend the book for that reason alone!

Featured image source

The group is comprised of boys who volunteered to be in my class this year (knowing they would have more opportunities to use technology than in other English classes). Their first unit of work has been Connected? and without going into detail,  the students have been exploring the impact of technology on communication, work, learning and relationships. However, we also want to really connect with people that we can learn from during the course of the year, not just talk about it in class.

I have recently blogged about the boys’ enthusiasm for coding and shared the post with Sarah, who I met at the Microsoft #OMGtips lunch earlier this month. She kindly agreed to have a skype session which you can view below.

The boys asked many good questions. They learnt what Microsoft looks for in employees and how they recruit. Sarah offered the class a tour of Microsoft in Sydney and also left the door open for the boys to do work experience later in the year. The class was, as you can imagine, very excited at the prospect of getting their hands on the new Xbox courtesy of Sarah. You will likely enjoy the interview as much as we did.

The students were genuinely excited at connecting with Sarah and listening to what she had to say about technology and what it is like to work for Microsoft.  Her enthusiasm for the next generation of gadgets and the Xbox resounded with them. They found it interesting that she had served in the military, graduating from Duntroon after university.

It is very important for students to have opportunities to connect with successful people and to learn about their journeys. Sarah attended nearby Moss Vale High School but commenced kindergarten at the same school down the road, Dapto Primary, that many of the boys attended. They certainly appreciated Sarah’s kind words about their town as well as her generosity towards them.

So did their teacher…

Featured image: cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by kmakice: http://flickr.com/photos/kmakice/4305998856/

I snapped my first shots with this new camera (purchased yesterday) of students for the school website and tried to upload the .RAF RAW files to Lightroom with no success. The file type appeared not to be supported even though the earlier FujiFilm X100 has been available for years. Adobe Lightroom 4.3 is an essential part of my post-shooting workflow but unfortunately, does not handle the FujiFilm .RAF RAW file. This would have been a deal-breaker if I had known before I purchased the camera. I usually convert the Nikon proprietary .NEF file type to DNG on import and naively assumed this would continue to be my workflow with the new FujiFilm camera.

Feeling like a fool I did some research and discovered plenty of frustrated FujiFilm and Lightroom users posting at forums about this issue. I learnt plenty about the X-Trans sensor in my new camera and possible RAW processing options like Capture One.  

Luckily enough the Lightroom 4.4 Release Candidate supports the X100s and the crisis was averted (even though the algorithm is being criticised). I am able to continue with my usual workflow.

UPDATE: ADOBE LIGHTROOM 4.4 (DOWNLOAD HERE) HAS BEEN RELEASED WITH IMPROVED ALGORITHMS FOR FUJIFILM RAW FILES. (3RD April 2013).

I do need some quality time with my new camera and hopefully, in the next few days, I can give it a workout. I did read the manual last night and set the camera to aperture priority for a few shots today. Here is my first snap with the aperture wide open at f/2. The bokeh is pleasing.

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by Darcy Moore

I look forward to experimenting in coming weeks with my new camera. Anyone else using their new X100s yet? Shots to share?

Featured image: cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by Darcy Moore: http://flickr.com/photos/darcymoore/8567028463/