Alan Levine aka CogDog

Kean University 2017, The Network

The #netnarr Twist on Guest Speaker Videos and Annotation Thereof

Alan Levine aka CogDog on February 3, 2017February 3, 2017

I will make a grossly sweeping and unfairly generalized stereotype, but in my mind alot of time courses use two way video to bring in guest experts, comes across as central casting “Confident professor. Confident grey hair senior man in formalwear keeping arms crossed and looking at camera while leaning at the table and with bookshelf in the background.” Screen shot of copyrighted Shutterstock image, reuse here highly questionable, but done in name of parody / commentary. Always talking in […]

Book of Stuff, Kean University 2017, The Network

OPML Is the Alchemy of Following Blogs in an Open Networked Course

Alan Levine aka CogDog on January 30, 2017January 30, 2017

This post is meant primarily for participants in the Networked Narratives course I am co-teaching with Mia Zamora, where everyone is publishing in their own blog space. Everything here applies as well for the Open Learning ’17 course led by Gardner Campbell; I’m working on both sites at the same time, so things I do on one cross over. In terms of staying tuned into news and current interesting information, many people these days rely on social media. For me, […]

Kean University 2017, The Network

Four Elements Inscribing Four Elements

Alan Levine aka CogDog on January 28, 2017January 28, 2017

In the second week of Networked Narratives I introduced a small visual assignment. My intent was to ask students to use their cameras not their google, and also to do so a bit more deliberately than snapshots (the assignment links to resources under On Becoming Better Photographers). With the alchemy theme in mind, I asked them to take photos of the four classic elements (you know the, right?) — fire, air, water, earth. The first four are literal, like a […]

Kean University 2017, The Network

Loosed to Imagine Worlds

Alan Levine aka CogDog on January 27, 2017January 27, 2017

Unexpectedly (which is nearly always the best way) the forward of a science fiction anthology jumped out at me as almost the underlying theme of the Networked Narratives course I am co-teaching with Mia Zamora. A friend Sarah gave me a copy of Loosed Upon The World when I was visiting last August (she has a story in the book too). This was because we were discussing Paolo Bacigalupi who’s work I got hooked into because of Bryan Alexander’s “near […]

Kean University 2017, The Network

The Evolving #netnarr Twitter Shape

Alan Levine aka CogDog on January 26, 2017January 26, 2017

As that guy Neo profoundly said… woa. Today was our Networked Narratives twitter chat on What is Alchemy?. I admit I’ve never even been fully on in a twitter chat, sometimes it looks like a lot of Hey the sky is really blue #obviouschat. That’s likely an unfair characterization. We had our 19 or so Kean University students in the classroom with Mia Zamora. We had done a first activity of doing a Daily Alchemy right there in the moment […]

Kean University 2017, The Network

The #netnarr Labyrinthus, Intercepted Videos, and oh yes, Students

Alan Levine aka CogDog on January 20, 2017January 20, 2017

It’s open and out of the gate. That is, the open, connected Networked Narratives course I am co-teaching with Mia Zamora. My paranoid self thinks all the colleagues I have talked to about this, and badgered into a slack Slack, are secretly shaking their heads at me. But with some early openings of a Daily Digital Alchemy, and rabid participating by folks like Kevin Hodgson, Terry Elliot, Laura Gibbs, Sandy Jensen Brown, we have a flow in the twitter waters […]

Kean University 2017, The Network

Who Wants to Walk Through the Strange #NetNarr Doorway?

Alan Levine aka CogDog on January 11, 2017

We must be off our medicine. Or on some new one. Or breathing strange vapors. Mia Zamora and I are ploughing ahead with an open connected course we call Networked Narratives with a door that opens January 16. We do have a full class of undergraduate and graduate students at Kean University who are even more strange, because they are taking this course for credit (there it is identified as “digital storytelling”). We’ve been talking to people about it since […]

Kean University 2017, The Network

Hacking a WordPress Theme from HTML5up Template with some API goodies

Alan Levine aka CogDog on January 10, 2017

This is a hastily written description of a little mystery site I put together at http://arganee.world. The sliding images in the background are done by an HTML5up template called Eventually, but the dynamic text in the middle is done via some calls to the WordPress API via jQuery. The whole thing started when building out a WordPress multisite where the main site I was working on at the time was one of the subsites- This is for the NetWorked Narratives […]

Kean University 2017, The Network

When You Stay in Neutral You Never Go Anywhere

Alan Levine aka CogDog on December 19, 2016December 20, 2016

You get inside your car, turn the ignition switch, hopefully put on the safety belt, maybe turn on the radio or some kind of music player. The engine warms up. When you want to do, which gear to you put it in? A tad obvious, right? Within a few pages of Chapter 3 (“Ideas”) We Make the Road By Walking, I am highlighting the sections I bet almost everyone reading now is doing (the person who owned the book before […]

Kean University 2017, The Network

Networked Narratives Open Course? Nurse Ratched Sez “CogDog, Time for Your Medicine”

Alan Levine aka CogDog on December 5, 2016December 5, 2016

Did you ever have an idea you were so excited about that you feel like your head my burst? When you try to share it with your friends, colleagues, it comes out sounding like a random burst of mashed up radio transmissions? Maybe you are a resident of the Cuckoos Nest. In a break from form, I am skipping my long winding, meandering openings and get to the ask. In Spring 2017 Mia Zamora and I are running an open […]

Kean University 2017, The Network

All I Got is a Stupid Grating Bot

Alan Levine aka CogDog on November 13, 2016December 5, 2016

I never wanted to live in the plot of a dystopian present, but as those stones sang (a song swiped by the Orange Chupacabra), I’m not getting what I want. For weeks Jon Becker pined for the day Is it November 8 yet? — Jon Becker (@jonbecker) September 12, 2016 The day looked, sounded like the previous, but we’ve learned finally to question all the data. The world looks and sounds the same as yesterday. But it's not. pic.twitter.com/iccIpgzUBf — […]

Kean University 2017, The Network

Spiraling Down Minuscule DS106 History Details

Alan Levine aka CogDog on October 14, 2016December 5, 2016

I have increasing respect for historians who try to decipher events from hundreds of years ago. They have shreds to work with. What I am writing about is from only five years ago. I was part of it. I have my story of what happened. But still, it’s not always so clear. Nor might it really matter. I have a lot of interest in how ideas happen, where they come from, how the evolve. I find that insanely interesting. But […]

Kean University 2017, The Network

“Are you still wearing that 4 year old #DS106 t-shirt?” (what part of #4life do you not understand?)

Alan Levine aka CogDog on September 18, 2016December 5, 2016

As I am writing this I am also listening to an episode of the DS106 Good Spell, a radio show only available on DS106 Radio hosted by John Johnston and Mariana Funes. The series has been running for 3 years, where they discuss 106 “bullet points” about DS106 based on a post Mariana published December 14, 2013. This followed their experience in the “headless ds106” that was a version of the open digital storytelling course, where… there was no teacher, […]

Kean University 2017, The Network

A Bot That… I can love for recursively tweeting

Alan Levine aka CogDog on June 5, 2016December 5, 2016

This post provides no insight to new technology, forces that might “fix” education, nor anything that addresses injustice in the world. Instead, I celebrate the pure, unanticipated reach of what remains for now an open internet, one that each time you think you’ve seen an edge, infinity yawns open. It’s about twitter, and those is told in tweets. It begins with a silly sign I saw on my morning walk, that made for a fine, though 2 day late, contribution […]

Kean University 2017, The Network

Always On, Never Ending– the Open ds106 Experience

Alan Levine aka CogDog on January 14, 2014December 5, 2016

Of Course We’re Open, from a shop in Toronto The Headless ds106 experiment we set up August-December 2013 had many successful points. Most was in the new influx of active participants, but the ending group project (not planned) was in terms of rich collaboration one of my peak ds106 experiences. But it was an experience that was still bound by time. It started and ended. And in discussion with Rochelle Lockridge about her wildly successful efforts in running a parallel […]