Week 6: Digital Story Critique

Digital Story Critique: Story Corps "What was it like to be pregnant with me in jail?"

This week I’m critiquing the podcast Story Corps ”What was it like to be pregnant with me in jail?" about a young mother who was pregnant while in jail for taking drugs. The piece starts with Savannah Phelan, 8 asking and a sad child’s voice “Why did you go the jail?” that just pulls in the listener immediately. The voice the questions, perfect entry to the story. I will have been a fan of Story Corps for over ten years, I remember driving home on the 10 freeway crying so hard after listening to a piece on two 80 years old recounting how they met and fell in love. There is something so raw and real about the format. It’s just two people talking and there is power and beauty to that simplicity, no sound effects or fancy editing not even music just two people talking with a mic.

This particular story is one of tragedy and then redemption. The mother you can just tell in her gravely voice and working class accent that she did not have an easy life juxtaposed to the innocence of the her daughters voice made for such an interesting and powerful interaction. The daughter must have just found out that she was in jail while in the womb and was surprised and saddened why the revelation. The mother was honest and compassionate with her answers. And in the end said the most beautiful thing, “You are my angel you saved my life, I will forever be grateful to you. Not many people can say they saved their mothers life.”

Becoming a new father myself this story hit very close to home. It made me feel thankful that I have a normal life and can afford to house my child, and that is not the case for so many people who are struggling with drug addiction or just poverty. Life is not fair and I acknowledge that I did not earn all this in my life but it was gifted to me by the lottery of life. This story really helped me appreciate what I have right in front of me.  

Week 6: Daily Create "Letter to Unborn Child"

Dear Wolf,

This is my first letter to you and it is part of an assignment for my graduate program at University of Colorado. By the time you read this letter I hope that I’ll be completed with my Masters. You are still a fetus inside my lovely wife Julie. I think about you all the time, I even thought about you before you were conceived. You were abstraction, someone who I wanted to meet but not yet a real person. Right now in my life I’m 36, I’ve been living a pretty normal life for a while now, working, smoking weed, drinking beers, hanging out with your mom, watching baseball games, seeing friends, running and hiking.

This is what I want to say to you as my unborn child, first off for some reason I already love you. It’s hard to explain but do, I worry about you and think of you all the time. I think about what kind of man you will become and I think of all my mistakes and wish I could guide you through life to avoid pain but that is not the way life is. When we bring you up in conversation I always say: we cannot make rules or even think about how we should raise you until we meet you because every person is so different and there no single right way to raise a man, that said I have a few shards of wisdom that I would like to pass on to you.

If you can only learn one thing from me it is this, I want you to be happy, and that is no small task. People talk about happiness all the time but very few people achieve it. It is a life long practice in compassion, confidence and self-understanding. This is something that no man can teach you, that no religion will give you, that no woman will fulfill. To me if there is a single life thesis it is that happiness is not selfish, it is selfless. If you work your whole life at achieving happiness that is a life well spent. So there you go, there’s happiness and that’s something that you’ll have to find or deal with on your own. I hope that I will be happy too throughout your life so I can help show you that door. But for some stupid reason, I see so many parents and they are so uncool and miserable, I don’t know why that happens Wolf, but just know at this moment in time as I sit here at the UCLA library just days before I meet you, I was a happy and cool guy. By the time you read this I might just be another asshole dad inflexible and angry, if I’m that, I’m sorry.

I also wanted to talk to you about confidence. You are growing up and different world than I had. When I grew up it was not easy being an Asian dude. For some reason Americans (American media) decided that we are ugly and effeminate. I have been fighting that stereotype my entire life, but I also fell into it. There were times I had no confidence, I did not believe I was worthy or cool enough to have friends, to deserve respect, to talk to girls, to have a well-paid job. Wolf, you have to listen to me when I say that what you think of yourself is 99% of the time what other people think of you. I was so happy when I found out you were going to be a boy, I always wanted to raise a boy but I was also scared for you. It’s not easy being an Asian dude if you were born an Asian girl all men would desire you, you could navigate the world as an object or desire, but instead you will as an Asian man, often the object of rejection and ridicule do not let that define you. Walk with your head high knowing that you are The Mutha F*ckin Wolf.

Another thing I want to touch on is fear. Fear is part of being human. We were designed on the plains of Africa to be a skittish upright monkey. There will always be fear, fear of the unknown, fear of rejection, fear of dark places, fear of getting lost, fear of being killed, fear of failure. Almost all of the time those fears are unfounded; the world is not a scary place. Let me get that into your head, you have nothing to be afraid of. Fear is the base mind telling the body that there is danger, when we were hunted by lions that might have made sense but now it’s petrifies the modern man from achieving his true calling and that is to overcome the base mind and reach a higher level of thinking and self awareness. I named you Wolf because you have nothing to fear, it is you that people fear when they hear a bump in the night.

Life is not an easy journey, I hope that I can be there for you through most of it but there will come a day that I will not be around. Or you’ve just moved on past me. And that it totally fine, I don’t want some clingy fearful boy in my life forever. I want to someday be with your mother again just the two of us, in love like the days before you came into being. So Wolf if you take away just a few things from this writing exercise it’s that I love you and always will, seek happiness at all costs, be confident in yourself and fear nothing for there is nothing to be afraid of.

Love Your Father,

Travis Lee

INTE 4340: Self Reflection

Hi Lori,

The biggest take away from this course is that I am a better writer when I’m writing in high volumes. When I signed up for this course I assumed it would follow a more traditional graduate school format where there is a high volume of reader and then a couple of major writing assignments due at the midterm and final. What I have learned is that writing improves more through volume and consistent practice then is does from attempting to perfect a single essay. We as aspiring writers and storytellers should recognize the value of high volume writing.

As my life get more and more busy every day as my wife is approaching delivering our fist child I find my mind consumed by the tasks of everyday, making dinners, going to work, preparing the nursery and going to the doctors. I find this class a respite from the realities of life. I enjoy the readings on the future of story telling, I truly love taking a break from going though the motions and focusing on the ideas behind them. The theory of why we do what we do is much more interesting than merely doing and not thinking. That I what I love about school, it allow a break to think about things that matter, when I feel like all the things that matter in the drudgery of life seem to take over all aspects of my life.

I also really like thinking about story telling and narrative in the digital context. I rarely read books anymore. I cannot say that is a good thing but it’s the reality that we are living in. I consume most of the story telling in the audio and digital formats. Think about how story telling has changed. And one of my biggest take away is that we are living in an age of online collaboration. We are no longer hermit writers like Emily Dickinson most writers now are only writing to be consumed while on the move in bite size pieces.

I look forward to learning more about the future of storytelling and improving my writing for this course.

Best Wishes,

Travis Le

Week 5: Audio Podcast on Southern California

This week I created a podcast from the DS106 assignment bank. This podcast tells the story of how I fell in love with the wild spaces in Southern California. Los Angeles has been my home for over 10 years now and when I arrived I did not think it was a beautiful place, it took a long time for me to discover its austere beauty. I have since fell in love with hiking in the deserts and scrubland outside of the city.

I cannot wait till my son is old enough to join me on the trails, i just hope that he's not like me when I was a kid preferring to stay inside and play video games. I hope that you enjoy this podcast as much I did producing it.

Week 5: Digital Story Critique Revisionist History by Malcolm Gladwell

I have been a fan of Malcolm Gladwell for over ten years since reading his book “The Tipping Point”. Although he is often seen a smug and an intellectual for the masses I enjoy is ability to communicate difficult and controversial topics into a form that is both entertaining and digestible. His New podcast “Revisionist History” confronts topics that are often glossed over in the news and takes a much deeper analytical investigation into the story. His ability to voice over, mix music and add sound effects creates a deep sense of immersion in his story telling.

In this particular episode Gladwell tell the story of two elite colleges Bowdoin College in Maine and Vassar College in upstate New York. Both are roughly the same size and have approximately the same operating budget. But Bowdoin has invested heavily in amenities of the student including and top ranked chef who specializes in organic gourmet food at the cafeteria and Vassar has invested instead into financial aid programs for minorities and economically disadvantaged youths. Gladwell attacks Bowdoin College viscously explaining that all universities receive federal funds so in some ways we the tax payer are paying for these privileged students gourmet meals while Vassar is going what should be done with tax payer money and that is give a top notch education to any student who is academically gifted enough to be admitted to Vassar regardless of income.

I enjoyed this story not just because it was brave of Gladwell to take on a University and their practices with financial aid but also his ability to tell this story using interview, sound effects, music and data. I read later that he was under fire from Bowdoin University for defamation but that does not negate the real thesis and that is what is the ethos of higher education. He believes that a University education is not a privilege but should be a right of every high school student who has the ability to go to college and that the universities should be doing everything in their power to make this happen and that includes cutting back on superfluous spending on things like gourmet meals and world class chefs.

I hope that audio only formats for story telling will continue in the future. Audio mixing software now comes with all PC and Mac operating systems this will allow more amateurs access to not on the tools to build but also the platforms to disseminate their stories.

Week 5 Response: Audio in the Classroom Chp. 2 & 3 (Erik Jacobson & Christopher Shamburg)

This week we delve into the value of audio only formats specifically examining remixing and Podcasting. Erik Jacobson’s article “Music remix in the classroom” delves into the history of music remixing and expounds upon the originality and value of the musicians who create this dynamic genre of music. Many people do not see remixing as “real” music because the tracks are often sampled from others and view the genre as unoriginal. Jacobson counters by auguring that all music has historically sampled from previous music including classical, folk and jazz. The beauty of remix genres such as hiphop is that they are not even attempting to mask the sample rather they embrace the sampling as a feature of the music instead of the something that should be hidden.

This postmodern view of music recognizes the power of recreation from existing material. We live in the cut and paste generation, instead of trying to pretend that we have original thought why not embrace the collaborative power of creation. This got me thinking of education and how teachers do not need to be original rather they must be proficient in “remixing” existing content into a coherent and effective learning exepeirience.

Many of my faculty I work with have attempted to video all original lectures and write original articles for their students. I commend their efforts but I also have faculty who have embraced the open educational recourses and in a way have remixed their courseware by leveraging the power of other people’s thoughts and ideas that have likely more specialization in those specific topics. Those courses mix in podcasts from NPR, guest lecturers, youtube videos and reading from people all around the world researching and investigating their particular passion. Those courses that lean heavily on the remix model are not hampered by unoriginality but rather are vastly more engaging and dynamic than their more “original” counterparts, just like the remix hip hop artist that Jacobson outlined in his article.

I also wanted to touch briefly on the Podcasting article written by Christopher Shamburg. I also agree that the medium of audio only format for story telling have experienced a resurgence due mainly to podcasts available online. As an avid podcast listener I believe that there is potential for podcast to have a greater impact on education than it is currently being used. There are many students who are audio learners, myself included. I find myself draw to audio format because of the on the go nature of my life, I usually only have time to really focus on a story when I’m commuting, running errands or at the gym. We have a mini computer with us at all time but we often are using are eyes and hand for something else, this is when for practical reasons audio only formats are the best option for story telling. I find that many students are experiencing the same thing time constraints. I plan on producing a podcasts for this week’s audio assignment to practice the skills shown in the article.

Paper Puppet Theater - Cirque du Homophone

This is a puppet show my wife Julie and I put together over the summer to teach children about homophones. It tells the story of a young heroine named Rose and her adventures at sea with her pet deer. It was shot on the iPhone 6S using only paper props. The lighting was done with a sunlight desk lamp.

Week 4: Response to a piece of selected scholarship: Storytelling In The Digital Media Age?

This Tech Trunch Article written by Dr. Carl Marci (Harvard neuropsychiatrist) discusses the changing landscape of storytelling specifically how advertisers can effectively impact viewers in the digital age. She starts by discussing the decreased attention span of millennials (younger people who have come of age with the internet). According to studies Millennials have a 60% shorter attention span than every generation that has come before. This is because they have gown up in the world of on demand entertainment. Television is a passive experience but online you are the producer and director of your entertainment experience.

She discuss how young people are more comfortable interacting with technology than with live people and having conversation is possibly a thing of the past. There is a fragmented nature to social media and the way young people communicate now. She discuss the multitude of option we have to satisfy our needs for emotional engagement. She found the people regulate their emotions though the use of social media not allowing them to become too high or too low. People are searching for the same feelings of empathy and connection that we would seek out in more traditional avenues in the past.

With the competition for attention online digital stories have abandoned the traditional linear story arc for a more fragmented approach over many different devices or timelines. An example of this Taylor Swifts launch of a new album that linked twitter, youtube and an American Express virtual tour backstage pass to allow the audience to have a more immersive experience of her new album.

This story got me thinking about how digital story telling has truly transformed narrative. It’s no longer from a single source but rather we gather fragments of many stories to create a complete narrative in our minds produced not by a director at the news agency but by us, we have taken a more active role in the crafting of stories.

It dismays me a little that my child will grow in a world where patience is no longer needed. Where all he ever needs is at his finger tips from movies, to meeting people, pornography and his social network. What has we lost in the age of the digital story? Have we locked ourselves in our own echo chambers hearing our own voice over and over unable to empathize with people who are different than us.

Week 4: Digital Story Critique: The School of Life (The Perfectionist Trap)

This week I’m writing about a youtube channel called the School of life and in particular a 4 minute animated video entitle The Perfectionist Trap. The Scool of life is a “he School of Life is a global organization devoted to emotional education.” I have been watching their videos for about 2 years now, they have over 1.4 million subscribers and generally follow a simple format.

Their stories focus on mental health and the philosophies around the human condition. They have a wonderful artist who paints animated scenes for each of the videos. In this particular video they discuss the problems with perfectionism.

The thesis on this story is that setting an unrealistic standard of quality based on other peoples work leads to disappointment and discourages us from engaging in the process of incremental improvement. The trap is that we are inspired by the masters but we ourselves are only capable of mediocrity. This is because the media edits out the millions of versions that were just average and we only see the final version of the most accomplished masters.

This story was a reminder to me the we should focus on the process and not the outcomes of our work. Similar to this class, I was a little overwhelmed by the amount of writing that was needed for the course but over time I understood that not every piece needs to be perfect; rather I must practice my writing on a daily basis to get better. We should acknowledge the effort all people take in achieving something great the amount of time and the revisions piece of work must undergo to it to be perfect or near perfect.

The “School of Life” is and wonderful place to hear the stories of many people who have found wisdom in the everyday aspects of our lives. It’s a reminder that happiness is more important than money or accolades. The digital story telling on this YouTube channel speaks to a generation of people stuck behind desks who contemplate the meaning of life in the age of post modernism.

Week 4: Daily Create: A Letter To You As A Child

This is a letter that I wish I could write to my 16 year old self who was suffering from low self-esteem and teenage depression.

Dear Travis,

I know that life seems really hard and confusing now but this is truly a temporary condition. You have seen so little of the world and have experienced so little of you life. You should not define your life by the failures that you have experienced rather have hope that you will soon leave embarrassment of High School and gloom of South SanFrancisco. I know you stay up a night wondering why people don’t like you why you are so unappealing to girls, it’s not you seriously, you’re not ugly. You are a fine person you are doing exactly what you should be doing getting all the shit and pain out of the way, better days are ahead trust me, I am you.

Forget about popularity, those people don’t matter to you. Forget about the girls, they don’t want you now but they will. Just because you are Asian does not make you a nerd or unattractive, you will see, in college you will do fine in all of that. Continue to read and do your art, keep running. You know one day you will qualify for Boston and you will run faster at 30 than you did at 16.

You doing great, mom and dad are doing their best they can. They want what’s best for you but they are just people, you have to see that. At 36 you will become a father and you will see that life gets better every year. Understand that this, all this shit that you are feeling is fleeting that it will go away with time, If I could just change one thing about my teenage years it would be that I want you to feel just a little happier about your life. You’re going to be alright, try not to dwell on the past and worry too much about the future, do your best to just experience the now, you’ll be a lot happier for it.

Love,

M

Week 3: Assignment Bank: Visual Game of Thrones Sigil

Week 3: Read and Respond to Ch 4 - Visual Networks

Visual networks: Learning and photosharing by Guy Merchant expounds upon the value of a visual social networks. His article focuses on the photo sharing network Flickr and how people have used this site to communicate idea and communities in far more interactive ways than we had in the past using just printed photos. His article opens with a story about a graffiti event that took place in his hometown and how this community of street illegal artists lead him into the world I flickr and a lager social network of like-minded individuals.

I feel that if this article were written today it would have focused on Instagram the largest social network of photos and videos. Instagram has taken this the idea of Flickr and photosharing as a social network to the mobile platform. Cell phone cameras have also improved to the point where average photographers can take beautiful in focus pictures with high resolution. Instragram has taken it even further by allowing average users access to photo editing software that was only available to the most skilled Photoshop users. The social aspect of visual content has transformed photos and video forever. We hashtag photos and build communities around like-minded people based solely on the images that were take with their cell phones.

One of my dreams is to walk the entire length of the Pacific Crest Trail and I’m just not able to do that given my time constraints but through Instagram I was able to follow 5 hikers this summer as they made their way north in the though hike of the PCT. There as a community of people encouraging each other, and I even left water on the trail where I thought they might be helping in their 2000 mile trek and I only knew them though this photo sharing site.

I believe that visual media and networks will over take more traditional networks such as Facebook because it is far less offensive. Images can be interpreted in many ways. When I see post on Facebook supporting Trump and calling for Mexican immigrants to be kicked out of America I automatically recoil. Do we really need to know the political beliefs of our friends, I’m just there for the pictures for they tell a much happier story than the written words of our friends.

Week 3: Digital Story Critique Slowing Down

Guy Raz from NPR who hosts a weekly podcast called the TED radio hour crafted a beautiful podcast about slowing down. In our busy lives where success and achievement often comes hand in hand with business and lack of free time, Raz cafts a compelling argument for slowing down using many stories from different industries to illustrate the value of a quiet and slow life.

I’m about to be a father and I’m working a demanding full time job, I’m a part time student and also an avid runner. I find it harder and harder to find time to just be alone and breathe and reflect on everything that is happening to me. I think so many adults feel the way I do. That time is moving so fast and the our main accomplishment on any given day is putting out small fires and we are filled with anxiety about what is coming on the horizon. Work deadline, school deadline, family issues, and maintaining relationships fill our days with little time to appreciate the small and important things in life.

Guy Raz starts his story by interviewing a filmmaker who has created a new genre of film called Norwegian slow TV. It is merely the world unfolding in real time such as a video camera filming out of a train window for 7 hours or a fire burning for hours. The filmmakers were not sure how it would be received but over 1.3 million Norwegians watched the movie; that is over one quarter of the entire population of Norway. There means there is an appetite for slow thoughtful entertainment in a world of click bait and twitter.

Raz continues his story with an artist who creates installation art pieces that film people in very slow motion, so a 2 second interaction takes 30 seconds to unfold. In order to see the piece in its entirety you must be there for 20 minutes. The artist incentive was to slow down the audience and really make them think. He was concerned that far too many people go to art museums snap a selfie with a piece of art and move on. His art was intended to make people pause and really reflect on existence.

Guy Raz’s digital story spoke to me on many levels, most importantly his story reminded me to slow down and realize that the world around me is always going to hectic full of chaos and things out of my control, and it is up to all of us to make a choice on how we receive this world around us because we only have control over attitudes.

Story Critique of Lance Weiler Article

Howard Terpning - The Storyteller

For this week’s Digital Story Critique I chose to review an article written by Columbia University Faculty, Lance Weiler. His article entitled “How storytelling has changed in the digital age” investigates the relationships between story telling the medium of delivery. His main insight is that the new story telling is less linear and profit driven then the previous models such and TV and feature length films. He uses youtube and a prime example of the new digital story telling where people not only watch streaming video but people as young as six are authoring their own videos.

I really appreciated his example of why feature length movies are roughly 2 hours. He explained that in the past audiences interpreted length as a measure of quality and theater owners recognized this influenced Hollywood to produce longer movies to capitalize on the this opportunity. However movies got so long that they required an intermission leading directors such as Alfred Hitchcock to claim, “The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.” In this example money drove the story telling medium (film) and the length of the story, which is about 1.5-2 hours in length.

Today with the affordability of editing software and the ubiquity of video camera the audience is now the storyteller.  He discussed the digital storyteller Joseph Garrett who has a YouTube channel where he builds a 3D digital environment in software called “Minecraft” and tells stories using the video game characters like actors. He makes over sic figures based advertising to his over 3.8 Million subscribers. This is an example of how people on very low budgets can tell their own stories to millions using nothing but a laptop.

According Weiler storytelling today is undergoing its most profound change in the last 100 years. As the audience is able to not only participate in the content by providing feedback directly to the author but they themselves can now participate in the storytelling process.

After reading this article I found myself wondering about what the future of storytelling will be. I plan to cancel my cable next year and only watch online video content for entertainment. It made me wonder is TV dead? Are movies and American tradition of a Friday night date movie also a thing of the past? Living in Hollywood many of my friends are in the industry and they too are grappling with how to adapt in the world of on demand entertainment. I watch a lot of YouTube and even I have a YouTube channel of my own, the quality of most Youtube video is rather poor in comparison with what Hollywood can do, but the voices and variety more than make up for the lack of production funds. I am hopeful that as technology improves and the accessibility of Hollywood production quality equipment comes to the masses storytelling itself will become more engaging than it’s ever been because everyone with a vision will be able to tell their story and it will no longer to cloistered to the Hollywood elites with a narrow vision driven by profit.

The New Literacy - Scholarship Review

Chapter 1of “Sampling ‘The New’ in New Literacies” by Lankshear & Knobel main thesis is defining the ‘New Literacy’ in the digital age from basic reading and writing to a more fluid and dynamic model writing and reading. The authors argue that in the modern age reading out of a book written by a specialist is changing to a more participatory model though the use of online technology. One clear example of this is the transition from the Encyclopedia Britannica that all older people can remember to the modern Wikipedia written not by specialist but by crowd sourcing, The quality was not diminished but rather improved by the intelligence of the masses.

My main take away from this reading was the idea that writing itself is undergoing and transformation because of the new “Technical Stuff” mainly the rise of the internet. But what really hit home was the new “Ethos Suff” that values user engagement with the content just as much as the content. I never really though about that before, I’ve always looked at writing as a one to many medium not an on going conversation that is rich and dynamic. I also thought about the tool Hypothsis and how the tool itself was so inline with what the authors were discussing as new literacy.

The authors introduced the ideas of primary and secondary discourse. Primary being the fist discourse that you learn as a child in the privacy of your home and the secondary discourse is the discourse that experience as you get older and experience the world of school, work and peer groups. This made me think about how minorities in this country must reach further from their primary discourse to their secondary discourse when engaging with school and work environments. We call it “code switching” when we attempt to communicate with people of the outside group. The better you are as a minority at code switching into the dominant White American discourse the more successful financially you will become. I starting thinking about this a lot as I have been interviewing people for a job and noticed that the minority candidates do not connect with my entirely white department as well. I could tell they were doing their very best to fit into the discourse of our workplace.

This reading is highly academic and sited a lot of works. It was dense and at times I found myself rereading the passages. This writing to me was intended for an academic audience, ironically written in the traditional frame of the sage on the stage tell us, the reader what the new literacy was all about while not being in a format of the new literacy. What I did like was the new Hypothesis tool, because I was the fist to annotate it was unable to see the other students comments. But I will go back on Sunday and see what they have said about my annotations. I wish there was an up vote button in the annotations so we can have a way to see who was agreeing with me. I feel that this reading was not in the vane of the new literacy because it was not delivered on a platform that would allow for sharing and feedback. It was a static PDF that was not screen reader accessible. What made this part of the new literacy was the wrapper of Hypothesis.

I’m very curious to see what Lankshear & Knobel would make of the web 9 years after writing this paper. Since then at lot has changed, Twitter has taken over blogs, Snap Chat and Instagram are taking over the photography scene and mobile technology now out numbers desktop computers. Everything is served in bite sized packets designed to be digested while walking or waiting for he bus. How to the condensing of written content change the way we think can 140 characters tell a story? It can change a country in what we discovered with the Trump run from presidency.

I’ve watched a youtube video recently for a CS class I was building at University of California Riverside where they talk about computer code as “The New Literacy”. I wonder how that would fit into Lankshear & Knobel model of the new ethos. Is code something totally separate from the discourse that we are discussing or is code an extension of the open ethos that they expounded upon. When every student in China is learning code as a language that means one in 5 people on this earth will be writing in common language.

How To Go Backpacking for Less Than 200 Dollars

Intro

Napali Coast Hike March 2016

Many people have asked me how do I start backpacking? What do I need? This learning module is all about getting you started backpacking for less than 200 dollars. Backpacking can be a very expensive endeavor; I’ve probably spent over $2000 dollars on backpacking gear over the years. When I started I was not sure if this was a hobby that I would continue after my first trip into the woods I brought cheap and inappropriate gear and learned many lessons along the way. I still recommend that you start with a budget set up and buy more expensive gear as you discover what is working for you and what is not.

By the end of the this learning module you should be able to:

• Safely plan a trip into the woods according to your skill level
• Find a trail near your house
• Understand the importance of the Big 4
• Recognize the importance of weight while backpacking
• Know where to purchase backpacking gear
• Hit the trail with the appropriate amount of gear

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Planning your Trip

The first step in your backpacking adventure is planning your trip. A good place to start is asking your friends or a local gear outfitter where a nice beginner trail is located in your area. Depending on your fitness I would recommend anywhere between 3-10 miles per day on your first trip.

Things to consider:

• Are you going alone or with friends
• What are the expected temperatures/weather on the trip
• Is there water available along the trail
• How long are you going to be out
• What is the elevation gains and losses
• What is your fitness leve

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Buying Gear

This is something that far too many people get hung up on. The price of gear should not be a barrier to experiencing the outdoors. I realize that 200 dollars is a lot of money to spend on gear so you can also consider renting the gear from a local outfitter or borrowing gear from a friend. The gear that I’ve reviewed here is not the best quality to be sure but it will hold up for many trips.

Google Sheet with breakdown

Things to consider:

• What is your budget
• Weight, weight and weight that is the most important
• How many times do you think you will use the gear before replacing
• What time of the year do you like to go hiking
• What is the climate in your area
• You're not out there too look cool
• How much research have you done on your own

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Conclusion

Little Sur Campground Los Padres National Forest 2015

There is no better way to experience nature than backpacking, you walk into the woods and you sleep in the woods far from anyone and far from the roads. It can be a simple as an overnighter just a few miles from your house or it can take you 2000 miles along the Appalachian Trail or Pacific Crest Trail. My hope is that after this learning module you will go out and try backpacking for yourself. Good luck out there! And remember "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."-Lao Tzu

You should now be able to:

• Safely go into the woods on a backpacking trip
• Buy budget friendly backpacking gear
• Understand the importance of each piece of gear

Vlog on Open Educational Resources

Poor Teenagers of the FB Generation

Photo by http://sickfacebook.com/

If you choose to go online and be a normal person not some lame Facebook lurker or luddite you are choosing to end your private life. I’m just so glad that I was born 15 years too early to have my entire life publicly displayed online. I cringe when I think of all the stupid, ignorant, hateful things that I said when I was a high school student. All of the wild hormone fueled thoughts I had as a teenager as safely kept in a paper bound journal never to be seen or read by anyone not even myself.

My little cousin was not as fortunate, she was born in the age of FB and we happened to be friends. I shutter when I think of her posts fighting with her boyfriend, her sexualized images posted as just a 15 years old. I cannot help but feel sorry for her online archive of her adolescent blunders in love and life.  There is an entire generation of young folks learning this difficult lesson; it is unfair that they must be the test subjects for this public spectacle experiment.

Young women just blossoming into their sexuality are exposed to non-stop pressure by peers to expose their bodies online or through snap chat. Just as Danah Boyd stated in her Youtube talk The Future of Privacy in Social Media, “What scales and gains popularity is vulgar, sexual, humiliating grotesque or sexual”. The average teenager in America spends 9 hours a day online. The pressure for virtual popularity and being in the know though social media has never been so fierce. When young women see that the easiest way to get Internet points and up votes is by exposing their bodies it is no wonder that they do so. Social Media superstars like the Kardashians have made millions off the internet by manipulating the public into looking at them and whether in disgust or lust we generate clicks. This is the world we live in.

The problem is as Eric Schmitt said in his NPR interview with All Things Considered, “There is no Delete button on the internet.” Once it is out there people can take screen shots and once it is viral it will live forever online.

We as parents and educators must be cognizant of these issues around online privacy and protect and educate the young people on the consequences of posting online. We must find the balance between being and engaged net citizen contributing positively to on going dialog of virtual humanity and the gray area that can lead into the vulgar and hurtful. One of the greatest tests of this young generation will be how to groom a responsible online image.

I’m Addicted to the Internet and It Feels OK

I remember when internet went down at work, suddenly all my coworkers heads went up from their machines and we stared at each other for a moment. I let out a sigh. A few minutes passed and the network guy came over and said that it would be down for a while. The workday was over and we all went home. In the profession of building online courseware without the internet we cannot work, it’s that simple. How did people live and work with filing cabinets and phone calls? 

Let's not miss these moments looking at an iPhone (ironically taken on iPhone 5S)

That is just the professional part of my life, the other part of my life is also online, I watch streaming movies and when I’m not in front of my computer I’m usually found looking down at my iPhone, checking my Facebook and emails. I can say that a majority of my waking hours I’m on the internet, I might be able to say that a majority of my waking life has been spent on the internet.

This is even truer for young people, all they know is the internet. Their consciousness is the internet or rather entwined with the internet and internet points and the identities that they carefully groom for the world to see online. I recently read that the average teenager spends 9 hours a day using the internet in this country. That is more time than they spend in school. 

Now I have to ask myself is this a problem? I’m just not sure, I can say that I’m not bored most of the time, I remember before he internet there was a lot of boredom, even when I’m at a restaurant and my wife goes to the bathroom I try really hard not to look down at my phone and after 30 seconds I start feeling antsy or bored, I’m not sure what I’m trying to prove, am I trying to show the rest of the world that I don't have to look down at my phone, or maybe prove to myself that I don’t need to, but as soon as I do it feel normal and good.

This is a complicated subject that I can spend hours and pages contemplating. I just know that once in a while we need to unplug. It’s that simple, for me it’s my hour and a half running and hitting the gym and days spent backpacking in the woods. The world of the internet is real, those are real people and feel feelings flowing though the screen. I’m not going out on a limb for saying this, but there is real value in knowing when to unplug. It does not have to happen for a year like Paul Miller had done but it needs to happen on a regular basis to find that balance that all humans desire.

I Found My Tribe and So Can You

Me with my backpacking Tribe in the Sierra Pelona

Human are tribal animals. We are designed to live in small communities about of about 150 individuals according to anthropologist Robin Dunbar and his research. We seek out like-minded individuals that share a common belief system. Technology has made finding people with specific interests easier than ever.

I recently found a tribe for myself. People who like to make their own ultra light backpacking gear. It’s a rather small community of bloggers, Youtubers and forum folks. With out the internet I never would have found them, and they changed my life. At least my backpacking life, I went from a 45-pound pack to a 25-pound pack by reading and communicating with these backpacking nerds.

The most important aspect of tribes is not defining what we believe but rather people being interested in what other people have to say. I can scream from the mountaintops about the importance of using a Tyvek ground sheet purchased at Home Depot but no one will care and no one will listen. But when I get on a forum or message board with other backpackers they want to hear about the newest DIY ground sheet. That is the amazing part of tribes, it's about people listening to you, and actually enjoying it.

In a educational context this means that researchers can collaborate a much more easily though the creation of a tribe of individuals who are enthusiastic and passionate about a particular topic. I belong to a couple tribes of people from around the country who are actively looking at ways to improve online education for student with disabilities.  With out the internet I would just meeting with my one other colleague at UCLA getting nowhere fast.

Phot by Charles Rex Arbogast

This is not to say that tribes are all looking to make the world a more tolerant place with lightweight hiking gear. Think about the tribe that has brought Donald Trump to power. Trump did not create the disenfranchised white working class who are fearful of immigration, he merely brought this tribe together and gave them a voice. The internet has allowed for people to self segregate by the sites they visit and the media they consume creating an echo chamber of your own thoughts and ideals. Tribal thinking can bring out some of the best in people but also some of the worst.  We as educators can use our tribes to help advance our ideas and build spaces where people can feel safe to share concepts.