Warning: (info)Graphic Content

actual map at https://cmapscloud.ihmc.us/viewer/cmap/20Q2SFP9C-QZRGFG-1VY

This week’s topics gave me the opportunity to read Rachel Ivy Clarke’s library-focused book on Design Thinking. Her book does not look at design thinking specifically as instructional design, but rather as a core trait of librarianship. As such, she identifies it as both a process and a mindset. The process itself as explained in the Stanford guide could be read as a re-wording of ADDIE. The mindset makes the difference.

What are the possibilities of applying ID to the library instruction program as a whole? The major problem is we only reach classes where an instructor wants to bring the library in, and so only under the classroom instructor’s terms. But we have IL outcomes as defined by SUNY, and a framework from the ACRL. We could map out connections between one-shots and SUNY’s GE outcomes to get some sense of the breadth and depth of coverage currently. We could also map out where IL shows up in course LOs, either tacitly or explicitly, to see where else it is addressed.

If we look specifically from a Design Thinking perspective at the instruction program, we can draw connections with the stages.

Empathize

  • observe – engage – watch & listen
  • with students
  • with instructors
  • values – goals – motivations
  • emphasis on the Why?

While students are our primary concern, we can only reach them through their instructors, so we need to empathize with both and consider their values, goals and motivations, and the reasons for them. We also need to articulate why info lit is relevant to their reasons.

Define

  • problem formulation
  • from user perspective
  • for user needs

The core message that we are embracing in the library is that info lit skills are learning skills, which help students learn more effectively, efficiently and independently. This in turn should help instructors meet their goals more easily.

Ideate

  • brainstorming – divergent thinking
  • could involve prototyping

I’ve been in a process of slow brainstorming ideas to advance the instruction program for a long time. I’m challenged by both the complexities of the subject matter and the institutional bureaucracy.

Prototype

  • Build to think communicate test variables
  • fast & cheap – don’t get invested

One thing we’ve done to prototype is adapt an info lit toolkit, which collects lesson ideas and learning activities that address various aspects of info lit. Instructors who may not have room in their curriculum to work with the library may use these tools to take a DIY approach, although our stealth hope is that it will give them ideas on how and why they should work with us.

Test

  • feedback on prototype
  • increase empathy
  • focus perspective

It’s early for feedback on the toolkit, but we hope to use it to start new conversations, where we might get a better shared understanding of each other’s perspectives and values.

Infographic

I used a concept map to visualize ideas related to Clarke’s book, the Stanford guide, and our library instruction program. That functions as a kind of infographic, but it’s a bit busy on one hand and in need of more detail and explanation on the other. Plus it was built without concern for aesthetics. So I decided to focus on the mindset/process duality that Clarke identified. My initial iterations of that were getting wordy, so I focused further on the process stages and considered how I might visualize them. I went to The Noun Project site to look for representative icons and found things I could work with. The entire process is iterative and recursive so I used a clockwise circular motion to represent the forward flow and internal arrows to indicate how stages can circle back for further development.

There is a trend over the past several years to apply the term infographic to elongated, text-heavy poster-like documents. I think the world could learn a thing or two from Tufte, while noting that I might include myself in that category. However, I have visualized the Design Thinking stages in a way that can be used to foster internal discussions among our librarians on how we may advance our instruction program.

 

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Of maps and models

I started a concept map to break down some of this week’s readings. I may add Learning Engineering to the mix at some point and see what connections I can draw, but this will do for now. Let me see if I can make some sense of my random thoughts.

Somewhere in the distant past I heard George Box’s famous quote, “All the models are wrong. Some of them are useful.” What that means to me is that models, frameworks, theories are all to some extent generalizations, so they won’t hold up to close inspection or work in every case, given the complexity and variability of the world. But they do prove to be useful tools in certain situations. So we see a progression or evolution among the various approaches to designing instruction as the field iterates and adapts to changes in populations and technologies. The different concepts expand to incorporate learning from other fields like HCI and graphic design.

Human-computer interaction, while part of daily life, hasn’t been my field of study, but graphic design has. In my OER advocacy work, I often see cases where a designer’s input could greatly improve legibility and comprehension, like books that run text across the width of a 9×12 page.

I found that if you google the principles of these approaches, you will find an interesting lack of consistency in what they are and how many there are, eg:

  • “10 Principles of Learning Experience Design”
  • “What Is Learning Experience Design? 5 Key Principles to …”
  • “Learning Experience Design: 8 Principles You Should Adopt”

Perhaps that implies that the field could use some more rigor. Or, since it’s education, maybe it shows that some people have more opinions than expertise. When the big names in tech (Kahn, Gates, Zuckerberg) wade into education, they tend to be dismissive of theory and research, perhaps because they’re less interested in education as a process than as a market.

The four stages of experiential learning resemble what my students do in Digital Storytelling ds106, a course I sometimes lead. They experiment with digital media, and they blog about their creative decisions and processes. I wouldn’t say I have practiced ID or LXD in the course though. I just work with the template I inherited and tweak it when necessary, or as the mood strikes me. Due to the creative nature of the course, the outcomes are a bit fuzzy: Students will make stuff, and they will reflect on their creative processes. And learn through that process.

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“Together we learn, And bridges we burn”

One of the recommended readings this week for Foundations of Instructional Design was What are Modern Learners Looking for in 2024? which is an impressive collection of buzzwords and unsupported assertions. As I wondered how they came to their conclusions, it occurred to me that they may have hallucinated the entire thing. So I though it was only appropriate to set it to music:

How do they know what modern learners want? Is it reasonable to generalize about them like this? And did ChatGPT write this?

The company behind SimpliAssess is Mundrisoft, an IT company with a penchant for jargon and buzzwords. SimpliAssess is a product they are promoting to corporate and educational markets. Their analysis of modern learners comes not from research, as far as we can tell, but from an effort to create a sense of need for products like SimpliAssess, I suppose. If we look at the titles of their other blog posts we see phrases like “Buy vs Build” and “Why Migrating Makes Financial Sense” which add to the marketing-pitch theme. They tell us modern learners are “Tech-Savvy and Digitally Empowered,” but like any other demographic, they are also tech-averse and on the wrong side of digital divides. Some may “crave dynamic, interactive digital experiences that transcend the boundaries of time and space,” but right now our library printers have been running nonstop for the past 3 hours or so because many modern learners refer to read paper rather than screens.

 

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How to ds106radio

Some people expressed interest in joining the ds106radio DJ roster, so we can maintain our status as the only station with more DJs than listeners. One common question that comes up is When to broadcast? The only regular broadcast that I know of currently is on Friday evenings from 7 to 8 or so, so almost anytime is free. If you go to https://listen.ds106rad.io/ and see that it’s broadcasting WFMU, that means the stream is free. It’s a good idea to check the #ds106radio hashtag on Mastodon to see if someone is planning to broadcast, and a good protocol to announce your set there as well.

listen.ds106rad.io screen shows WFMU broadcast. This means the stream is free.

I’ve used a few different setups for ds106radio over the years. I started with
Ladiocast, a free Mac program. I believe I used Soundflower in conjunction. Soundflower functions as a virtual audio device, so in my system settings I would make Soundflower the output device and in Ladiocast I would set it as the input. Ladiocast has a section where you can put in metadata. ds106radio automatically pushes that out to Mastodon with the hashtag and URL.

Soundflower settings for ds106radio broadcast

Ladiocast settings. When the Main button is on, the Soundflower 64 input goes to the Soundflower 2 output which goes to ds106radio. The Aux 1 button sends the sound to my headphones. I can use the Main button under Input 2 to speak on air.

Ladiocast Streamer settings. This shows the info needed to connect to the radio. If you don’t know the password, just ask and someone will give it to you. The Connect button will start streaming. You can input song info under the Metadata tab.

There is a free cross-platform program called Mixxx that I also use sometimes. It has more of a learning curve, and a ton of options that I’ve yet to explore, but once you get the settings right it’s easy. It eliminates the need for a virtual device like Soundflower as well.

Mixxx output settings

Mixxx input settings

Mixxx connection settings

Mixxx screen. Turn up the Head Mix to send sound to headphones. Click the satellite icon to broadcast. You have to start playing track 1 before you can cue up track 2.

All the cool kids use Audio Hijack these days. It’s also a Mac program, and it’s not free, but it makes a lot of things easier. There’s a slight learning curve with setting up blocks and connecting them, but you only have to set it up once.

Audio Hijack screens. This shows the settings. The Run button starts broadcast. It also records the broadcast.

Audio Hijack metadata window. You can set it to pull metadata from sources like iTunes or Spotify

There is also an iPhone app called PocketStreamer that can be set up to broadcast using the same settings as above.

Those are the bare basics of streaming to ds106radio. With Ladiocast and Audio Hijack you can set up multiple input sources so you can do a call-in show while playing audio.

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Live from Stellar Records

image of a vinyl record eclipsing the sun

I mentioned Stellar Records earlier. It’s a regular Monday Night thing we do at Stellar Human, our neighborhood vintage clothing store, where I happened to start my modeling career. Basically people are invited to bring vinyl, hang out and spin sides in a communal listening experience. I think the vintage vibe aligns with the Reclaim ethos, so when the ds106radio Summer Camp call for proposals came out, I thought I’d bring them together. My session ended up getting scheduled on Wednesday though, so we couldn’t do it live. Maybe that’s a good thing. It gave me the opportunity to edit out some dead air, and some but not all technical glitches. I tried to balance the levels between music and conversation, so I may have added glitches as well, but we don’t mind the rough edges on ds106radio.

What we will hear is a somewhat eclectic mix of music, since everybody brings their own thing. We will be talking over and under the music, and perhaps customers making deals. And since it is a retail establishment on a main thoroughfare, we will hear rain and traffic as well. LaRue, the mastermind behind Stellar Human, has a vision of culture and community that I tried to bring out in conversation. So I hope people are able to tune in, and even enjoy. Wednesday at 6 pm Eastern.

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“…a story, a tale we missed”

I was intrigued by Bryan Alexander’s book club proposal to read the Project 2025 document. Unfortunately I have too many summer projects competing for time and attention to participate meaningfully. But in the spirit of AI106 I have taken passages from the document and fed them to AI song generator Udio to make death metal tracks.

Restoring Limits

[Verse]
Ruling class, they slash and tear, they take away our rights
Centralize their power, far from American sights
Supra-national treaties bind us, never let us be
In the grip of bureaucrats, we lose our sovereignty

[Chorus]
Restoring limits, bring back the fight
Accountability, let’s make it right

Reclaiming Our Rights

[Verse]
Rulers climbing high, they can’t hear our cries
Treaties bind our hands, as the Constitution dies
Career pawns, unseen, they tighten the chains
Power games they play, and we’re the ones who pay

[Chorus]
Slash through the lies, expose their deceit
Tear down the walls, take back our streets
No backing down, we’ll stand and we’ll fight
United we’ll rise, reclaiming our rights

The prompt for these was:
Properly considered, restoring fiscal limits and constitutional accountability to the federal government is a continuation of restoring national sovereignty to the American people. In foreign affairs, global strategy, federal budgeting and policymaking, the same pattern emerges again and again. Ruling elites slash and tear at restrictions and accountability placed on them. They centralize power up and away from the American people: to supra-national treaties and organizations, to left-wing “experts,” to sight-unseen all-or-nothing legislating, to the unelected career bureaucrats of the Administrative State, heavy metal, death metal,

I’m not actually a death metal aficionado so I can’t give it a proper musical or lyrical critique. My guess is the site is mapping words and phrases to a statistical model of death metal lyrics to come up with the song, so I’m not surprised that “slash and tear” made it through. I think the songs get at a sense of the passage, while perhaps giving it more extreme coloration.

Challenge the Power

[Verse]
Restore our thinking to thrive
Establish truth, let it revive
No more interests’ clash, we’ll drive
Strength in analysis, we’ll arrive

[Chorus]
Challenge the power, break the flood
Independent minds, through the blood
Challenge the power, stand and fight
Free the thought, into the night

Revive the Mind

[Verse]
Restore the mind, eradicate the lie
Build a fortress, let the truth arise
Break the chains that bind, dismantle the guise
Return to the essence, intelligence revived

[Chorus]
Through the fire, through the night
Restore the truth, the guiding light
Break through walls, shatter might
In this battle, wisdom’s flight

This prompt was:
Restore DIE critical thinking. Establish mechanisms to restore analytic integrity and return to true intelligence-driven operations. The next Administration should eliminate the conflict of interest in the current customer-based model (in which the customer is always right) by enforcing time-tested procedures that guarantee independent analysis, even if it means challenging policymakers’ assumptions. The Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security’s leadership role should be expanded to include providing analytic top-line views and improve DIE transparency by highlighting diverging views., heavy metal, death metal,

I was wondering how it would interpret DIE – as an acronym or the word die? But given the context maybe it didn’t know what to do with the word. Or maybe the whole passage just doesn’t compute. It looks like Udio picked up some words and ran off in its own direction.

Torch of Integrity

[Verse]
The USAGM’s a story, a tale we missed,
Of faith and hope in shadows kissed.
A chance to shine, in world’s eyes wide,
Lost in the dark, where ideals hide.

[Chorus]
Burn the torch of honest days,
Journalistic light must blaze.

Shadows of Promise

[Verse]
The promise was bright as the sun
But shadows darken, and now it’s gone
Unbiased truth we failed to keep
A chance lost deep, in silence we weep

[Chorus]
Lost opportunity, our ideals are torn
In the darkness, will we ever be reborn?

The passage used here was:
The USAGM is a story of a lost opportunity both to help restore the world’s confidence in the promise and ideals of America and to set a high mark for journalistic integrity and unbiased reporting. , heavy metal, gothic metal,

These stayed a little more focused, probably because I only used one sentence as a prompt. So far, my intuitive feeling is that it is molding the inputs on a metal model. How would the character change if I made it dream pop or big band jazz? But I don’t think I want to go for an ironic tone here. A cut-up poetry approach might yield some interesting results. I could extract evocative or provocative phrases and put them together as prompts or use them as lyrics and see what the system does with them.

None of this gives any insight into Project 2025 or its relevance to education, but it is something of a pseudo-creative outlet.

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Ceci n’est pas une donut

a diagram of a torus with a caption in French saying This is not a donut.I signed up for a SUNY Learning Engineering Fellowship Program a while back, because it looked interesting and potentially useful, and I found the term intriguing. It’s a nine week summer program, when I also have to take three or four weeks of vacation, so maybe I should have thought that through a little better. Maybe i can negotiate some comp time for working on my weeks off.

The program is built in OLI’s Torus platform, and part of it is learning how to use the platform on both the learner and author ends. It’s a bit challenging to try to learn both learning engineering concepts and the ins and outs of a new software platform at the same time, but I understand why we’re doing it this way. I can’t complain, given what I put ds106 students through.

For my project, I plan to work with the scholarly, popular, trade concept. One of the SUNY Gen Ed outcomes for info lit is to be able to evaluate information with an awareness of authority, validity, and bias. The concept fits well with the outcome. I think it’s also important for community college students to learn, since half of our population transfers to 4 year schools and half goes into the workforce. The concept is also in need of an update. Instructional materials on scholarly, popular and trade publications pretty much all focus on aspects of print publications, which made sense in the 80s but not so much now.

I want to update terminology as well, to name the categories academic, professional and consumer. I think I’ve only ever encountered one student who knew what a trade journal was. “Popular” is misleading as a term. “Scholarly” still works, but many library catalogs and databases connect the term with peer review, which is a subset, so I’d suggest changing the category to academic.

So far, I’m thinking the lessons that need to be learned are

  • categorization is a means of evaluation, and recognizing authority, validity, and bias
  • the categories are distinguished by their intended audiences
  • the categories can be blurry, as interest in some content may cross boundaries among academic, professional and consumer audiences

For the purposes of Torus, these lessons need to be expressed in terms of learning outcomes, and outcomes may have sub-outcomes. Assessments and activities within the system are tied to outcomes and sub-outcomes, and then instructional materials need to be developed to meet those assessments and outcomes. The engineering aspect comes into play when we analyze assessment data with an eye towards improving the course.

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Rustproofing

Yesterday’s Daily Create involved using one of the Photofunia effects to put text in rust. As usual, I did the most obvious thing and made a GIF from a verse of My My, Hey Hey. Maybe that’s only obvious to people of a certain demographic though. But since nothing exceeds like excess, I decided to do the whole song. I’m not sure if it was worth the effort. I like the idea in concept, but in practice it’s probably as tedious to watch as it was to make. A kinetic typography approach might have worked better, but definitely would have been a lot more work.

Photofunia has many interesting effects, some of which have shown up in Daily Creates before. What interests me is not so much the effects in themselves, but how they can be used as building blocks, and contribute to a bigger story. Not unlike our experiments in AI106 – we played with generative applications to make stuff, but where the course really succeeded was in what we made out of that stuff. They give you this but you make it that, to paraphrase a song of the past.

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… we made them what they are.

Here’s a brief video I put together based on the week 15 prompts. It references the AI rap battle video from a few weeks back, Dr. Oblivion off his meds, and our visit from our friends at Aggressive Technologies. There’s also some minor reflection on lessons learned from the course.

 

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Scenes from the whale rapture

The other week one AI said that the internet was like “diving into a vast digital ocean where you can swim with majestic whales of knowledge or get caught in the undertow of clickbait and cat memes” and I asked another to visualize that metaphor. One of my colleagues was so enamored of the image that she asked it for a few more. This was the first of the collection that I saw:

It looks like there should be a story to go with the image. That might even be a good idea for a daily create. You could probably do that with any of them. Take this one:

I see a whale rapture while the planet bursts at its seams. It’s like an alternate version of Star Trek 4

And then there’s the cat riding the steampunk whale:

I wonder if he’s related to Dr. Ravioli? He looks like he might know everything too.

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