My personal learning network

For centuries, people have created groups of interest to expand and share their knowledge. Today, interest related groups are more diverse and numerous. From twitter to blogs, the web is a magnificent mine of knowledge and information. However, to properly exploit this vast mine, you must know where to dig and find rich veins of minerals.

Today, I’m sharing some of the veins I have found thorough my own network. This is my personal learning network, which I can access whether at work or school, and most importantly others have access to my mine of information.

These are the sites I visit regularly and the people that I follow online.

CSS Tricks is curated by Chris Coyier.  From CSS to PHP, this site is extremely informative and well organized. Chris Coyier is truly helpful and has kindly answered some of my questions via email. His forums are also mines of information, where professionals answer questions and sometimes refute answers by offering more accurate explanations and insightful tips.

Codrops is a site, curated by Mary Lou. This is another site worth visiting. From design to development, their tutorials tend to be for stylish plug-ins without forgetting function. They also have inspirational sites that make you sigh and motivate you to continue striving for how-to-knowledge.

All right, the sites above are my favourites, but Nettuts also offers fantastic premium tutorials on interface design and graphic design for the web. Check them out!

HTML5 Doctor is an excellent hub to learn more about HTML5 and its elements. I am really looking forward to some of the new HTML5 video players. I am particularly excited about Jillion’s Sublime HTML 5 player. Currently, they are releasing the beta version for trial.

You can find the above bookmarked links on my delicious account. www.delicious.com/fiercefeathers. I am also using Diigo. Diigo helps you build personal learning networks for discovering and sharing. They have very useful tools. For example, you can highlight paragraphs in blogs and archive them with sticky notes. The tools help you archive and remember the information that you found important. Their tools allow you to be more specific. You can actually identify the information that you found relevant and direct your comments to the pertinent paragraph.

The above resources are remarkably precious. They are boundless mines of information; however, a couple of weeks ago, I decided to find a PHP mentor. One of my colleagues, Karin Schmidlin graciously introduced me to Ken Pratt. He has a great deal of experience when it comes to web development and PHP implementation. The interesting aspect of this mentorship is that we haven’t met in person; we have only communicated via email. He has answered some of my questions and his generosity inspires me.

In a couple of weeks, we are planning a meeting to discuss in person some of the intricacies of PHP. I look forward to meeting and continue learning from him. I am also hoping to add more people like Ken to my network and continue sharing knowledge online.

Software as a service

Software as a service

From Customer Relations manager (CRM), to project manager tools, Software as a Service is widely used alternative. Software as a service is software that is deployed over the internet. With Software as a service a provider licenses an application to customers as a service on demand, through a subscription or a “pay-as-you-go” model.

Most commonly used Software as a service includes tools such as Hansoft. Hansoft is an integrated solution for agile. It allows collaborative scheduling, real-time reporting, bug tracking, workload coordination, portfolio and document management. It is used by the most demanding software developers in Asia, Australia, Europe and North America. Companies such as Electronic Arts use the tool because it is fast and it helps them build on their principles of team empowerment, increase communication, transparency, and collaboration.

Other variations of Software as a service are growing in different fields. From graphic design to audio editing, Aviary provides inviting options and tools for image creators, artist, and aficionados.

Aviary

The Aviary team defines their product as a robust suite of creative applications that you can use right in your web browser. The Aviary team is on a mission to make creation accessible to artists of all genres. So how does it work? You can sign up, create an account, and start producing, sharing, and collaborating with their community of artists. They also provide extremely easy-to-follow tutorials and concise documentation.

Peacock

Staying with-in their Aviary concept, their tools are named after different birds. Their site is as user-friendly as their applications. Their tools are incredibly easy to use and you see the results in real time promptly. Personally, I love their effects editor, named Peacock.

The Aviary team defines Peacock as a “Visual Laboratory”. It is a place where you can experiment with pixel-based images in new ways. Their introductory video is excellent. It simply shows you how easy it is to use. You can also check out the new user-created wiki for in-depth documentation if you want to know more.

The interface design of Peacock is very fun. If you see the picture below, you will see why they called a “Visual laboratory”. When you drag a filter or an effect, you actually connect it to the canvas and you see all the cables connected to the image you are working on. The screenshot below illustrates the example more clearly.

Advantages

Aviary is user friendly, free, and fast. Images can be saved an uploaded to the Aviary servers and hyperlinked from there to your site. You can also edit them and save them to your desktop. You can also share your creations without ever taxing your computer space. No doubt – Aviary offers some awesome advantages.

mixed-nutz debuts on 28 PBS Stations In North America

PRESS RELEASE

The Kids from Dyvercity are on!

March 5, 2010 – This week, the creators of Mixed Nutz announced the show is launching March 6th, 2010 across more than 28 PBS stations in North America. Broadcasts cover major cities such as Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington DC. This comes after successful debuts on LA’s KOCE PBS station and Shaw TV in British Columbia.

Read more….

Air times…

Celebrating Lhasa

Feather Brush

Anything can be made into a brush in Photoshop. Let’s take a feather, for example. Transforming a feather into a brush is a simple trick.

First, you must find or take a photograph of a feather. Make sure the background is white.

Select the feather with any selection tool. Do not worry about the background. White will simply become transparent.

Then, go to edit > Define Brush Preset >

Name and save your brush.

You can adjust the opacity and the blending mode if you wish.

The brush will always be saved as black and white. Once your feather is a brush, you can change its colors. Make sure you space the brush in the brush box.

Lastly, draw and play to your heart’s delight!

Masdar City

Have you heard about Masdar City?

Masdar is set to be the first carbon free city in the Abu Dhabi desert. Powered entirely by renewable energy, it will house 1,500 clean-tech companies and 40,000 residents.

Creativity and technology are the words that come to mind when reading about Masdar. The city’s streets and buildings will be built to channel hot desert air upward, helping to drive desalinization systems, and helping to create cooling breezes.

My Photoshop midterm assignment is on Masdar City. The concept I developed for the city is:

Behold the future through green eyes.

I designed two different versions of the same concept:

Masdar City by Claudia Molina_1

Below is the second version.
I focused on a more futuristic style.

Masdar City by Claudia Molina_2

Thank you for your previous feedback. I will be posting my final Photoshop assignment next week. Yes, the term is coming to an end…

Scent of New Pages

I’m holding a new book, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace by Janet Murray.

 

The scent of new pages is soothing. The book’s weight makes me feel rich. This is a small luxury. A treat that brings me peace and makes me feel at home in the company of my thoughts.

 

For the last six weeks, I have been reading soft copy. My brain has been completely immersed in cyberspace, reading blogs, tweets, examining websites, — learning…

 

So, today, I’m taking a break from the screen and reading about how the computer and the web are transforming storytelling. Yes, ironically from a printed book.

 

In her book, Janet Murray argues that the computer can provide the basis for an expressive narrative form. This is based on the idea that print technology supported the development of the novel and film technology encouraged the development of movies.

 

Murray provides an insightful analysis and I do like her idea of ‘the computer’ as a medium of representation with a distinctive set of properties. For her, the computer is procedural, participatory, encyclopedic, and spatial, which provides immersion, agency, and transformation.

 

Her analysis helps me understand why exploring the web is so satisfying. Her words make me understand why the computer feels like an extension of my brain, an extension of my reality. My computer used to be a portal, but now it is more than that.

 

She defines interactivity as the combination of the procedural and the participatory, which together give agency. And she believes that the computer as a medium generates new possibilities of expression for storytelling.  An entirely new way of telling stories, perhaps? Very inspiring, indeed.

 

The worldwide connected computer is its own medium and agency the core word of its universe.

Wired Woman Event

Children filled with Art

For the last five weeks, we have been working on creating a poster and a web banner for KidZone in our Graphics and Color class (Alex Hass). This is one of our seven classes.

KidZone Art Museum is a virtual art museum and gallery showcasing children’s art from around the world. The museum offers historic and contemporary art galleries online. It is a place for children to get inspired, learn, and share their creativity. Doesn’t it sound like a place that should exist? Well, for now, it is a fictional client…

Thinking about concept and corporate identity design has been very insightful. The concept I developed for Kidzone is:

Children are filled with Art at KidZone

This is the poster I created for the museum, using both Photoshop and Illustrator:

In the poster, you can see a big M. The M is a creature. The M also works as two children connecting! Can you see it? The M is filled with children’s art as children are filled with ART at KidZone.

These are the three frames for the web banner:

In the banner, I’m keeping the secondary colors for the paintings that “are filling” the children and primary colors for the font. Regarding animation, the children float in delight and move strategically as the words appear.

These are my first steps in New Media Design. My next assignment is to create a CD sleeve / package for a KidZone Art Museum Teacher’s Resource… Let me know your thoughts… As usual, your precious feedback will be incorporated.

Penguins and Trees

This entry is for week three and four. Let’s see, — forty-eight weeks to go! We’r­­e already creating portfolio pieces, meaning — we’re already swamped…

Today, I’m sharing the thoughts percolating in the back of my mind and I would love to hear yours.

Four weeks ago, my objective was to focus on interactive storytelling and work for a company like Club Penguin. I have heard that Club Penguin is a fantastic place to work and I also have this romantic vision of an orchard near Kelowna. Our patio is a bit small to house my passion for growing trees…

New Media Designers and Web Developers could work in any industry. I could be part of a team in the health industry. I could be part of a company that focuses on sustainability. The opportunities seem to be growing in those areas and I’m open to all possibilities. ­­

So, I’m curious to hear what you are thinking. Yes, YOU…. What do you think? What skills will be in demand? What industries are growing? What industries are you moving towards?

As usual, I’m sharing a link for inspiration…

The Vook!