This little PhotoWall project is an effort to understand more about the Flickr API and also see what is possible with Javascript and CSS3. The page works on Safari really well because it uses the cutting edge WebKit technology. Unfortunately the page works poorly on Firefox right now.

I began by reading through the documentation and some examples of how to use it. Then I put together a simple HTML example that pulls my public Flickr photos into a Javascript/CSS3 enabled page. Here it is at http://www.haigarmen.com/photos.

The functionality of the page replicates the popular browser plugin Cooliris and relies on your use of the arrow keys to quickly browse the hundreds of images. I really like the instant updated aspect of this type of interface and a sense of the macro level of the larger photo archive.

Recently there’s been a fair bit of chatter about Flash being unnecessary because HTML5 and CSS3 will surpass it in functionality. I’m not quite convinced of this yet but I think with WebKit some amazing rich interactions are becoming possible.

The lecture has ample quotes from Robert Bringhurst from the definitive manual on Typography, The Elements of Typographic Style.

More brilliance from one of my all time favourite illustrators

The first method is by using MAMP, which a lot of people do but most of the code ninjas I know all insist on running the versions of Apache and PHP that come with Os X and installing MySQL by hand. Here’s how to do it:

1. Apache
Start Apache

Check to see if it’s working: http://localhost/

2. PHP

In /etc/apache2/httpd.conf, uncomment this line:

Restart Apache

Fix a warning appearing in phpinfo()
Create /etc/php.ini and make it writable

In php.ini, find this line:

Uncomment it and insert your time zone (http://php.net/manual/en/timezones.php)

Restart Apache

3. MySQL

Download the MySQL package for Mac OS X.5 (32 or 64 bits depending on your machine)

Install everything in the package in this order: mysql, the startup item, the preference pane.

Test it’s working:

Fix mysql.sock location in php.ini
In /etc/php.ini, replace the three occurences of /var/mysql/mysql.sock by /tmp/mysql.sock

Restart Apache

Activate PHP short tags

In /etc/php.ini, under Language Options, change

Restart Apache

Thanks to funding from the MacArthur Foundation, The MIT Press has published a series on digital media and learning (with open access electronic versions), which they describe this way:

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning examines the effect of digital media tools on how people learn, network, communicate, and play, and how growing up with these tools may affect peoples sense of self, how they express themselves, and their ability to learn, exercise judgment, and think systematically.

In their report, The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age, Cathy N. Davidson and David Theo Goldberg investigate how technology and the internet are transforming shared and interactive learning. They suggest the following 10 principles as “fundamental to the future of learning institutions”.

1. Self Learning
Self-learning has bloomed; discovering online possibilities is a skill now developed from early childhood through advanced adult life.

2. Horizontal Structures
Given the range and volume of information available and the ubiquity of access to information sources and resources, learning strategy shifts from a focus on information as such to judgment concerning reliable information, from memorizing information to how to find reliable sources. In short, from learning that to learning how, from content to process.

3. From Presumed Authority to Collective Credibility
Learning is shifting from issues of authoritativeness to issues of credibility. A major part of the future of learning is in developing methods, often communal, for distinguishing good knowledge sources from those that are questionable . . . We find ourselves increasingly being moved to interdisciplinary and collaborative knowledge-creating and learning environments in order to address objects of analysis and research problems that are multidimensional and complex, and the resolution of which cannot be fashioned by any single discipline.

4. A De-Centered Pedagogy
In secondary schools and higher education, many administrators and individual teachers have been moved to limit use of collectively and collaboratively crafted knowledge sources, most notably Wikipedia, for course assignments or to issue quite stringent guidelines for their consultation and reference.26 This is a catastrophically anti-intellectual reaction to a knowledge-making, global phenomenon of epic proportions.

Instead, leaders at learning institutions need to adopt a more inductive, collective pedagogy that takes advantage of our era.

5. Networked Learning
The power of ten working interactively will almost invariably outstrip the of one looking to beat out the other nine.

6. Open Source Education
Networked learning is predicated on and deeply interwoven into the fabric of open source culture. Open source culture seeks to share openly and freely in the creation of culture, in its production processes, and in its product, its content. It looks to have its processes and products improved through the contributions of others by being made freely available to all.

If individualized learning is largely tethered to a social regime of copyright-protected intellectual property and privatized ownership, networked learning is committed in the end to an open source and open content social regime. Individualized learning tends overwhelmingly to be hierarchical: one learns from the teacher or expert, on the basis overwhelmingly of copyright-protected publications bearing the current status of knowledge. Networked learning is at least peer-to-peer and more robustly many-to-many.

7. Learning as Connectivity and Interactivity
The connectivities and interactivities made possible by digitally enabled social networking in its best outcomes produce learning ensembles in which the members both support and sustain, elicit from and expand on each other’s learning inputs, contributions, and products. Challenges are not simply individually faced frustrations, Promethean mountains to climb alone, but mutually shared, to be redefined, solved, resolved, or worked around—together.

8. Lifelong Learning
It has become obvious that from the point of view of participatory learning there is no finality. Learning is lifelong.

9. Learning Institutions as Mobilizing Networks
Network culture and associated learning practices and arrangements suggest that we think of institutions, especially those promoting learning, as mobilizing networks. The networks enable a mobilizing that stresses flexibility, interactivity, and outcome.

10. Flexible Scalability and Simulation
Networked learning both facilitates and must remain open to various scales of learning possibility, from the small and local to the widest and most far-reaching constituencies capable of productively contributing to a domain, subject matter, knowledge formation and creation. New technologies allow for small groups whose members are at physical distance to each other to learn collaboratively together and from each other; but they also enable larger, more anonymous yet equally productive interactions.

What do you think about the future of learning? Is there a business model in the future of learning and will it sustain itself?

The Course Outline
This introductory studio course addresses the design, composition, and construction of computer interactivity in authoring environments, focusing on the Web. Emphasis is on increasing visual and sensory-based literacy through the application of digital skills. Students also learn to apply the principles and processes of interaction design for the use of animation, still imagery, video and sound for diverse applications, including those for educational, commercial, and communicative purposes.

This course will include:

• Usability
• User Experience
• Graphical User Interface Design

The course syllabus can be found here:
http://www.ecuad.ca/~harmen/classsyllabus.html

If you have any suggestions on what you’d like to see on this blog, comment below.

1. Hoop Dreams (1994), directed by Steve James, Peter Gilbert and Frederick Marx
2. The Thin Blue Line (1988),directed by Errol Morris
3. Bowling for Columbine (2002), directed by Michael Moore
4. Spellbound (2002), directed by Jeffery Blitz
5. Harlan County U.S.A. (1976), directed by Barbara Kopple
6. An Inconvenient Truth (2006), directed by Davis Guggenheim
7. Crumb (1994), directed by Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb
8. Gimme Shelter (1970),directed by Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin
9. The Fog of War (2003), directed by Errol Morris
10. Roger and Me (1989), directed by Michael Moore
11. Super Size Me (2004), directed by Morgan Spurlock
12. Don’t Look Back (1967), directed by DA Pennebaker
13. Salesman (1968), directed by Albert and David Maysles
14. Koyaanisqatsi (1982), directed by Godfrey Reggio
15. Sherman’s March (1986), directed by Ross McElwee
16. Grey Gardens (1975), directed by Albert and David Maysles, Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer
17. Capturing the Friedmans (2003), directed by Andrew Jarecki
18. Born into Brothels (2004), directed by Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski
19. Titticut Follies (1967), directed by Frederick Wiseman
20. Buena Vista Social Club (1999), directed by Wim Wenders
21. Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), directed by Michael Moore
22. Winged Migration (2001), directed by Jacques Perrin
23. Grizzly Man (2005), directed by Werner Herzog
24. Night and Fog (1955), directed by Alain Resnais
25. Woodstock (1970), directed by Michael Wadleigh

I’ve seen 20 of the films from this list. But my favourite doc wasn’t mentioned and that is Fast, Cheap & Out of Control by Errol Morris.