Winter Art

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Snow Laden Tree

Waiting for footprints

Morning by the street

Sun begins its work

Snow sculptures, icicles dripping from rooftops, branches laden with snow—winter art’s appeal stems from its fleeting nature.  

The trees stood as a blank canvas as the snow began to quietly fall last night.  Through the darkness, each snowflake fell upon the landscape, some balancing carefully on slender branches, others covering rocks and roots. 

The installation lasted no more than several hours after dawn. A brief early morning viewing until the sun's rays dissolved the snow’s delicate grip and the showing closed, captured only in photos and in memory.

Pressing Replay

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Not surprisingly someone at Wired Magazine had the same question I did in wondering why so many cars in Russia are driving around with dashboard cams. Equally not surprisingly, they haven’t yet investigated the origin of the Sharpies on the crippled February Carnival Cruise.

Yet even in this story I was drawn to the story behind the phenomena. I realize that by offering you the link to the Wired story I might be an accessory to your wasting time watching horrific car crash videos. Why are these on-line and why did I follow the link and watch two of them?

I selected two from YouTube, which polices its content to some extent, as I didn’t want to view the most horrific crashes. Yet there are sites that don’t police content. There viewers are drawn to watch supposedly much more violent videos which I presume include fatal crashes.

What draws us to watch? Do we like being on the edge of our seats knowing a horrific incident is impending? Is watching an evolutionary instinct? Though for what benefit? As replaying the past is barely a blip in the timescale of human evolution it’s hard to see the role this fascination could possibly have played in human evolution. Or then again is it? Human brains clearly have the capacity to replay the past as happens tragically in those suffering from PTSD. I suppose there exists volumes of research on the Internet on the why and wherefore of the human brain replaying horrific events—maybe that’s a search for another day.

Sharpies and Dashboard Cameras

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Where did the Carnival Cruise passengers get Sharpies to write on their sheets?  Does everyone in Russia drive around with a camera on their car dashboards? 

These are the questions that bubble up as I try to focus on the news of the day.  Inevitably I completely miss the reporter announcing when and where the cruise ship will dock as I watch the video footage of the ship with large handmade signs hanging from cabin balconies.  Large white sheets I quickly realize are easy to come by as a blank canvas.  But what did they write with?  I doubt I could make large dark bubble letters with the pens and pencils that fall to the depths of my travel bag.  Did Carnival hand out Sharpies just for this purpose?

Similarly, as I watch amazed at the meteor.  It was a meteor until it hit the ground right? What an abrupt way to get a name change!   In any case, as I watched the amazing footage of the meteor glowing across the sky, I quickly wondered, who are all these people driving around with cameras on in their cars?  Are these all police officers?  Or do citizens commonly run video cameras on their dashboards in Russia? 

So let me know—did you hand out all those Sharpies?

MOOC Indulgence

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Week 11 of my MOOCs indulgence—yes it is now an indulgence, I am addicted to education.  The other night, my family entered the darkened kitchen where I sat focused on a talking head on the computer screen in front of me while I simultaneously typed in trial bits of code. 

“Are we having dinner tonight mom?”

Really?  Was it time for dinner already?  But I had just sat down after lunch to watch a quick lecture and get caught up on one class.  I felt transported back to college days when I stayed up all night coding for the thrill of getting a program to compile and if I were lucky to actually spit out the correct answers, all formatted correctly before dawn broke.  Had I really returned to that lifestyle?  Clearly my focus on Coursera (my MOOC of choice at the moment) had gone too far. 

After throwing together dinner of some sort, I returned to my on-line class.  I went to the home page and looked at the big green button beckoning “Go to class”.  In small type, nearly hidden below it, I read ‘Un-enroll’.  I hovered my cursor over “Go to class”, then with a sigh, moved to “Un-enroll” and clicked.  A big red button filled my vision as if shouting at me, no don’t un-enroll, you’ll lose everything!  I calmly confirmed my exit, my retreat, my departure; with a sigh I un-enrolled.

I returned to my course listing and smiled—4 big green “Go to class” buttons remained—still plenty of learning to do, quizzes to take, discussion forums to participate in.  My on-line learning appetite is not quite curbed, I’ll just focus on less consuming courses.  

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MOOCs. Screen-side chat. Discussion forums.

These new vocabulary words are starting to roll off my tongue almost as fluently as “gag me with a spoon”, mixer, diag and Rocky Horror Picture Show did when I attended a brick and mortar school several decades back. Somehow though, the focus on studying isn’t coming quite as quickly.

Graduate degree in hand, several careers and several kids along, I have returned to college—well at least to college classes—in the new world of MOOC: Massive Open Online Courses. Returning to class in this new medium I am finding it hard to decipher between what’s different due to the medium (being on-line) and what’s just different about higher education in general from the 1980s.

For one, I am stumped by the term ‘virtual’ that so many people seem to apply to MOOCs. There is very little virtual about the classes I am taking. Real professors using actual videos teach real content to me and other physical classmates. Many of the discussion threads are high caliber, adding new insight and perspectives from around the world along plenty of humor and support when the coursework gets hard. We may not all be sharing the same dining experience or trudging through the same snow drifts or city traffic to school, but we definitely are learning from one another and our professor in a shared experience.

My online courses have come with unexpected perks. I immediately found the benefit of being able to speed up lectures— watching a professor speak at 2x the standard rate was so much more energetic that when I start watching again at a normal rate I feel like the prof was talking through Jell-O. Additionally, there’s no drop/add deadline. Thinking the course work wouldn’t really be all that time-consuming (Ha, was I ever wrong about that!) I signed up for far more courses than I could possibly manage without becoming a full time student again. No problem—I easily and painlessly unenrolled from several. And while the professors don’t have office hours and they kindly request that students refrain from sending them emails, one course I’m taking offers weekly screen-side chats. This week students from Mexico, Canada, China, Peru and the United States all posed questions directly to the profs who, within the constraints of band-width, more or less answered all queries thoroughly.

I have a feeling that the biggest downside will be the limitless menu of class options. So far I’ve started four courses with four very disparate goals. I doubt I’ll be able to complete all four and still maintain a reasonable life balance. I look forward to seeing how my experiment works out. How are your on-line courses working for you or how well you are working in them? And if you haven’t tried one yet, there are many options. I’m taking my courses all from Coursera as I find it easier to get to know and work within a common interface. Scroll through the options today. The courses are a lot like potato chips—bet you can’t select just one.