As you may know Shao Ping and I have recently been traveling through China, visiting friends in the main. We traveled to Xiamen, Fuzou, Shanghai and the surrounding areas. We were also able to visit the incredible Tulou [土樓] of Fujian Province. They are protected UNESCO heritage sites. The word tulou means earthen building or earth building.

The first three photographs in this post feature interior shots of a Fujian Tulou. They were built by the Hakka people as a defensive, fortified structure. My wife in Shao Ping is Hakka. The tulou are usually inhabited by a related clan group. The families live out their lives within the circular tulou. Some of these tulou are rectangular in shape, others are oval.

The photograph below shows an exterior shot of the same tulou as well as an adjacent building. Life reverberates in and around these interesting buildings. There are people washing clothes, having a smoke, playing with children and cooking lunch.

Pictured below is the Tianluokeng tulou cluster [田螺坑土楼群]. This remarkable grouping of buildings is located in Fujian province, Zhangzhou City, Nanjing County, Shuyang Township in southern China. This cluster consists of a square earth building at the center of a quincunx, surrounded by four round earth buildings. Actually one of the round buildings is oval. You can explore its location here. Unfortunately tourism has overwhelmed this particular cluster has been overwhelmed by the impact of tourism. There are many stalls selling souvenirs and other trinkets.

The photograph below gives an indication of the earthen characteristics of the structures. They are quite beautiful. If you ever visit the tulou of Fujian province see if you can visit one or more of the structures that are not on the main tourist beat. Luckily we were able to do so.

Pictured below is one of the oldest tulou in China. It is the Yuchanglou tulou [裕昌樓 ]. It was construted in 1308 during the Yuan dynasty by the Liu family clan. It is one of the oldest tulou in China. The outer ring of this tulou is 36 metres in diameter and it consists of five stories. There are 50 rooms on each floor.

As the Wikipedia entry for this tulou indicates, “each of the 25 kitchens on the ground floor at the back half of the circle has a private water well beside its stove. This is the only tulou in all Fujian with such convenient water supply”.

There is an interesting web site, based in Taiwan across the straits, that graphically sets out the tulou of Fujian province. The site is titled 福建省旅遊局 : 世界文化遺產_福建永定土樓、南靖土樓、華安土樓.

Shao Ping and I took the MRT to Danshui [淡水] in Taiwan today to check out the local sights and to take a few photographs. As we walked along the shoreline we came across a collection of photographers capturing the sunset and also members of the public looking at the sun using special solar filters.

There was a partial eclipse of the sun taking place! It was actually an annular eclipse in other countries of the region. I was elated to discover this and thought why not try to capture the event myself.

We were located on the eastern shore of the Tam Shui River (aka Danshui River) at Danshui looking west across towards an area known as Bali (not the Indonesian island of course). You can explore a Google map to gain an idea of the region and its geography.

We had no idea that the eclipse was to take place and it was a fluke that we were at Danshui on that day and at that time. As sunset approached I set up to capture the event with my Canon camera. I was not that well equipped. I rested the camera on a brick fence, used manual focus, the “Sunset” preset and the timer so as not to disturb the camera as it captured the image. You can observe details of the moon’s track across the sun and an animation of the partial eclipse courtesy of http://www.eclipse.org.uk/.

As sunset approached the sun seemingly accelerated towards the horizon. There was a scurry of shutters opening and closing plus a bevy of photographers changing lenses, adding filters and adjusting their position.

It was a memorable moment for both Shao Ping and I and the event really made the day rather special. Hope you like the photographs.

During our stay in Shanghai our friend Crystal and her Mum took Shao Ping and I to Thames Town. This is a new housing development not that far from the centre of Shanghai. It is a recreation of England as you would imagine given the name. I took quite a few photographs as the recreation of the buildings and minor details such as fence posts, signage and the like were quite remarkable. Click on a photograph to see a larger image.

The church above is not real. Well, it is real, however it is not actually used as a church. It is primarily used for wedding photography and tourist shots on the weekends. It seems to be a facade. I could not believe it.

That is myself in the telephone box. It is real. Note the variety of architecture in the rear of the photograph as well as the lamp post.

This sign was on the outside of an English pub. It was not in use as yet although it will eventually be a bar and possibly provide accommodation. You will surely receive a “warm welcom”

Crystal and Shao Ping walking alongside one of the canals in Thames Town, Shanghai, China. The pub is on the left. The church is visible in the background.

Not too sure about the coffee in this cafe. We moved on and ended up having a vegetarian meal in a temple.

I guess this is Tudor style. The Incomplete Coffee Shop houses one of the spaces in this building.

Not too sure of the architectural style yet the name of the shop and the colourful bears out front are mystifying. Not too sure if England ever had large bears. What is the name of the shop on the left?

Yet another delightful building in Thames Town, Shanghai. Is this Georgian style?

A typical suburban street in Thames Town. People live and work here and house prices are quite reasonable. Strangely enough I would not mind living there. Once the bus and MRT reach the area it will be quite a good position. Shanghai is an amazing place with plenty of events and things to do. Opportunities abound there. Great public transport and facilities for bike riders are excellent.

I have left the best to last. This is for all my English readers. How would you like to live in Berk Street?! Amazing, eh? I wonder which English consultant slyly suggested this as a name for a street in Thames Town?

Shao Ping and I have been traveling through China, visiting friends in the main. We have been to Xiamen, Fuzou and Shanghai. Our travels have taken us from the cities into the hinterland. We have covered about 1600 km by road so far. The photographs below have been taken at various points. Let’s see what I can share about each place.

We took a drive with our good friend Shu Lung up into the mountains beyond Fuzhou and Ningde to explore some interesting geological formations and historic towns.

The photograph above shows Tai Mu Mountains. They are located in Fujian Province. They are quite precipitous. We climbed for several hours to reach the summit. The actual highest point was a rock without any safety barriers. They left that to the more hardy souls to explore while I took photographs. The nearest large city is Pingnan.

The next day we took a rather dangerous and precipitous drive up into the mountains to Yuan Yang Xi to check out some old Lang Qiao bridges. Yuan Yang Xi is interesting. The river bed is almost perfectly flat and just a few centimetres deep in most parts. One can walk across it with the right footwear. It is shown above together with a Lang Qiao bridge.

We passed a number of villages and small towns with old homes built from mud brick. They are known as Tu Lou homes. We ventured into some of these villages to meet the locals. Tu Lou translates into “earth buildings”. The houses above were taken on the way to Yuan Yang Xi.

Later that day we went to an area that has only just been recently opened up to the general public. Roads were still being constructed or repaired due to landslides and in fact at a couple of points we had to wait for graders and excavators to shift their position. It was a worry for me. The roads were built into the sides of these precipitous mountains with drops to the valley floor exceeding several hundred metres in most places. There were no guard rails in many parts and the fresh landslides always managed to spook me.

Add those factors to the general craziness of the local drivers and one can understand why I found myself going around the bend in more ways than one. Sign posts and other markers were still being constructed. We were the only visitors that morning and the person in charge of the new national reserve informed that I was the first “wai gau ren” (foreigner) to visit the park. The photogarph above is taken at Yuan Yang Xi. The average altitude of the region was 800 metres plus.

Near Ningde we stopped to check out the Lang Qiao bridge shown above. They are constructed of wood and no nails are used to fix the wood together. These bridges are a dream for carpenters and architects to observe. It is a heaven of tongue, groove, dowel and the like I guess.

We have been up to Shanghai as well. It snowed there just a couple of days before we arrived. It has been quite cold. Shanghai is an amazing city. We stayed with friends in Songjiang, not far from the city centre. It is an amazing place. Songjiang has been recently developed. It is well planned and a nice play to stay. We went into the city and whiled away the time taking photographs, eating, drinking and chatting. More detailed missives to follow as we go across to Taiwan, back to China and then down to Singapore.

Never underestimate Wordpress. For years I basically created web sites using Claris Home Page and later, Macromedia Dreamweaver. I used another tool there for a bit but it’s name escapes me. My skill extends to nested tables, copy and paste JavaScript, a little XML and that is it. I can hack code after I have “read” it carefully. I can also tell the difference between acceptable and unacceptable design. I think.

My web site has looked like old brown web pages for two and half years now. It is actually based on a template called Gazette in iWeb. I liked the look and feel of “Gazette” and I reproduced it to some extent using Dreamweaver. It had an “old” look that was in keeping with my teaching of history. Well that look is cluttered I feel. I now wish to simplify site and page construction.

It is time to move on and I am going for something that is cleaner and a lot easier to navigate. A little more professional for want of a better word. I still hope there is something of me in the new site. We will just have to wait and see.

So, I have been rebuilding my web site from the ground up. Not the “antique looking” site you may be looking at right now but a site that is presently gestating within the confines of another sub-domain on my host as at the date of this post. I am using Wordpress.

The thing about Wordpress that I admire the most is it’s capacity to generate static web pages. That is simply excellent. You can have your blog and you can augment your ramblings and news with a variety of supporting content via the static pages.

One can be so empowered. One has the ability to produce a rather professional and elegant web site using Wordpress and it is free. That contrasts so remarkably with some entities that charge you $500-00 for a web site with 5 static pages and an upkeep fee to match.

My new web site, which I hope I can launch before Christmas, will be built entirely using Wordpress. Since the template employs drop-down nested menus I am free to incorporate quite a number of pages and navigation will not be such an interface hassle.

Some Wordpress templates place the page based navigation in a horizontal bar across the top. That may limit you to say 7 pages. As well, other templates place the page navigation down a sidebar. That can be messy if you build an extensive site.

I have incorporated one code hack. I have taken the code generated by a flash album gallery generator and pasted it into the static page and blog post pages so I can easily display a bunch of images.

It is a little clunky but if I create a number of draft posts and pages in advance with the code added and simply leave them unpublished I can drop in a folder of say 32 aptly numbered images and the gallery will be created. All I need do then is finish writing the blog post or page content and publish. Not bad.

Some of the existing Wordpress gallery plug-ins are nice but they are buggy or require you to host the images on their servers.

Getting the galleries right is important for me. My current galleries have poor navigation. I use a Photoshop macro to create the galleries at the moment.

I enjoy taking photographs. Good stress relief. So with this new Wordpress based site hopefully users will find the galleries easier to navigate. I will also begin posting images up to Flickr more frequently so people can access the jpeg file if they so desire.

Wordpress is powerful. Create pages with or without comments. Nested pages. Password protected pages. Publication dates predetermined. Embed flash. Podcasting enclosures. Rich widget capabilities. Mobile blogging is a snap. Self hosted Wordprsss users can tap into plug-ins and an extensive range of themes as well. A creative and devoted user/developer community.

I do hope Wordpress will always maintain it’s logical ease of use and elegant ethos. I hope feature creep does not weigh Wordpress down in the future. I would despair if I witnessed Wordpress evolve into a bloated baggy monster.

I have just arrived in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It has been a few years since I was last here. I caught up with my brother Frank one day back in 2002 and before that I did a presentation at an Apple sponsored education technology conference.

I will be conducting a series of “Web 2.0″* workshops for academics from 23 universities from across the region on behalf of the Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia (MoHE). I will be in KL for 8 days. I am working with Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, on this project.

Both the MoHE and NTU are taking excellent care of me. They have put me up in an excellent resort in Putrajaya, Selangor state, and they flew me to KL business class which is a first for me personally.

I had no idea I was flying via business class. I was emailed the eTicket. I checked in at the economy counters. Boarded via the economy gate. No-one said anything. I discovered my good fortune when I was directed to my seat. Rather luxurious. I am not used to this. Well, I made the most of it. The seat next to me was empty as well. Bonus.

Since I started my long service leave from school, and let a few people know of that fact, things have started to fall in my lap. Good things. Hard work and passion has its rewards.

*I know the term “Web 2.0″ is a little cliche, dated and so on but it will serve the purpose in this case as it provides a common frame of reference for all involved in this project.

Comic Life is and incredible piece of software.

Every now and then a software application crosses one’s path and it immediately grabs your attention. Back in 1992 I was introduced to HyperCard by Dr John Hedberg. That application changed my career and my life. Thanks John!

Several years back I was attending an Apple Technology Day for teachers and right at the end of the day we were given a quick look at Comic Life. I was immediately captivated.

Naturally Comic Life allows you to create comics. All sorts of comics. Basic, 1940s, strips, manga and loads more. Yet, it is capable of much more than that. You can skip the templates and simply allow the creative thoughts to generate and drag the various elements such as panels, word balloons, images and titles wherever you wish. If you explore the details panel for each element you can modify the style of each element to your heart’s content.

Recently I conducted some workshops over 6 days for a number of teachers from a variety of schools devoted to children and young adults with special needs. Part of the programme incorporated a Comic Life workshop. They all loved it. We all had a ball. We also covered digital photography, connecting, web presence and other connected stuff. There were teachers from Pathlight, Metta and the Cannossian schools in Singapore. Teachers also travelled down from the Korean International School in Seoul to attend the workshops in Singapore. I shall post some images from the workshops and examples shortly. In the meantime you might like to check out this pdf. Some of my efforts are displayed in this post.

Have been reconnecting with people during the last few weeks. Good people. Some of the reconnections have been face to face and others via my personal learning network. It has been an enriching experience.

Some of you may have observed that I have been hovering within Twitter a little more lately. Thanks for the replies and retweets.

Will gradually increase the blogging frequency and consolidate some of the spokes of my social media cycle. During the coming months.

I am just beginning to rebuild my web site. I will make the shift from the old to the new during the next two weeks or so. Part of the process.

My mojo took flight this year. It had been bitten by a black dog. That dog has now bolted after a swift kick and the mojo is settling in, still a little uneasy. Keeps looking out the gate for that damn black dog.

This was out of the blue and something of a surprise. It has been a fight. I lost some of the battles but in the long run I know I will win the campaign. Maybe I did not actually lose the battles, I simply think I did. It was just a part of me that lost the battles. The experience has certainly sorted out the chaff from the grain.

It has been good just lately. I have met members of my personal learning network in person. From Clay Burell, Siva, Kevin Lim & Kenneth Pinto in Singapore through to Steve Madsen. Judy O’Connell and Dean Groom in Sydney. Amazing, simply amazing. This aspect of the personal learning network we should not take for granted.

I am so fortunate and dare I say it, blessed, to meet so many good and supportive people. You all know who you are. Here, away and at school too. Selfless, giving, forgiving, sharing, undestanding and real. Thank you.

The photograph was taken in Xi Meng Ting in Taipei. I was shopping with my lovely wife Shao Ping. When you exit the station this is the first thing you see. People. Real people. Good people. Lots if people. All sorts of people. Thank goodness for people. Thank goodness for you.

PS. Techie stuff : Sent via email from my trusty little iPhone and routed with the help of Posterous to my blog, Twitter, Flickr and Facebook. Not bad, eh?

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I like telling stories. What sort of stories do I like to tell? Stories about days at school, life in the ANZ Bank, stories my father told me, historic sagas and the like.

My father and I

Where do stories come from? Have you ever wondered about that? Stories come from passion, imagination, experience, tragedy, success, life and death. Stories come from places you have been, places you want to be. Stories come from inside you. Stories come from people you want to be.

Friends

Stories can be ignited… by loss, joy, grief, happiness, a turning point, a decision.

Where do stories go? They can travel back in time, leap forward to the future, go deep into your heart. Stories can take you to places that you know and places that you don’t. They can be a vehicle of juxtaposition and transposition as you venture into another dimension.

Mother and daughter, Kyoto.

The sad thing is that some stories never survive. They are not written down. They are not recorded. They are not remembered. They are lost… forever.

Now is the time to record those stories. The ways and means are readily available. Write a blog, record your voice on the computer, make a podcast, make a video. Not next week or next year, but now if you can. Teach your students, teach your relatives, teach your friends, teach yourself.

Do you like telling stories?

Here are some links to get you started…

Alan Levine: Wiki ~ Follow the link to 50 ways to tell a story wiki
Alan Levine: Open Discussion on 50+ ways to tell a story
Alan Levine and Bryan Alexander: Educause article on 50+ ways to tell a story ~ PDF
Alan Levine: New Media Consortium Presentation: 50 Ways to Tell a Story
Miguel Guhlin: Digital storytelling workshop wiki
Miguel Guhlin: Place based storytelling
Miguel Guhlin: Digital storytelling with web based tools ~ Wiki
Miguel Guhlin: Voicethread Tutorial
Matthew Needleman: Digital Storytelling Blog Carnival #1 and #2
Educational Origami ~ Voicethread Tutorial
Web 2.0 Storytelling Wiki
Center for Digital Storytelling
Digital Storytelling Toolkit
Instructify: Digital Storytelling
Keeping the Mood Light: Digital Storytelling
Open Thinking: Center for Future Storytelling
The Art of Storytelling
International Day of Sharing Life Stories

Well, what is this all about, eh? This Wednesday Kevin Lim and I shall be giving a talk at Nanyang Technological University on Education and the social web ~ taking learning beyond the classroom. I am up here in Singapore, on a bit of a break, hanging out with friends and taking photographs, and the opportunity arose to give a talk and I thought why not invite Kevin to be part of the process. The talk is part of the edUtorium series at NTU.

I am a big fan of Kevin’s blog & also his Delicious feed so I thought it would be neat to allow Kevin to speak in Singapore during his current homecoming visit from the University of Buffalo where he has recently completed his PhD. Congratulations Kevin!

Kevin and I at Starbucks, Holland Village, Singapore

Last Saturday morning Kevin and I met up for a drink at Starbucks in Holland Village and synthesized a number of ideas for our talk. Individually our ideas have been gestating for some years now and they have come together in a manner of speaking and this Wednesday I guess an offspring will be generated in the form of our talk. Please feel welcome to join the talk and if you can spread the word. Kevin has been doing a great job already!

What are the details? Taken from the Nanyang Technological University web site…

Date/Time
14 October 2009 (Wednesday) · 2.30 pm – 4.30 pm (2hrs)

Location
NTU Lecture Theatre 6, Level 2, Academic Complex North, Singapore (PDF map)

Overview

The democratic nature of the social web means that the ability to learn and produce meaningful work can now happen at any level – from the independent student, to the individual teacher, to the entire education institution. Now, more than ever, instructors are able to motivate active learning among students, by empowering them with relevant online tools that allow for more creative approaches to go beyond the traditional class-based education.

In this two hour session, learn how you can…

~ cultivate learning beyond the classroom
~ encourage participation in the class conversation
~ inspire student pride through greater sense of ownership of their work
~ include new literacies in research, organization, and synthesis of ideas
~ support multiple learning styles
~ create exemplars by raising the bar of student achievement
~ archive learning by creating a record for both you and the students

And much more…

In this international presentation brought to you by educators John Larkin (Australia) and Kevin Lim (United States), the first part of the session will provide a general state of education on the social web, while the second part will demonstrate tactical approaches to meeting your students’ learning objectives through the appropriate use of social web tools such as blogs, wikis, and social networks. The ultimate vision of this session would be to situate student learning in a more familiar and communal environment.

Speakers

Dr Kevin Lim studies and shares his interest in the wide-ranging cultural affordances of information communication technology, particularly on the self-organizing and pedagogical quality of the social web. With his academic background in communication, his research has ranged from Internet censorship and civil sovereignty in China, to social capital among online non-profit organizations. He also conducts social web-related workshops and produces instructional guides at the Teaching & Learning Center, located in the University at Buffalo (SUNY). Kevin has been fortunate to be featured on the Buffalo News (New York), CBC News (Canada), Zaobao Weekly (Singapore), Channel News Asia (Singapore), commandN.tv (Canada), as well as several prominent blogs.

Mr John Larkin is an educator and instructional designer presently living in Australia. He has vast experience in the development and application of educational technologies in primary, secondary, tertiary and corporate educational fields. John is constantly researching the latest trends in educational technologies and as a result he has established linkages with like-minded educators across the globe. He is constantly seeking new tools and technologies that will allow educators of all backgrounds to converge teaching and technology in a manner that is both practical and productive. He has worked on a significant number of web-based and CD-ROM projects. John has led the design on corporate, tertiary and school based web-learning projects. His skill set is enriched with a keen eye for design and a practical approach towards instructional technologies.

Course Fee
Thanks to NTU the presentation is now free to attend.

Registration Link
http://edutorium.ntu.edu.sg/courses_detail.php?course_id=138

Kevin strikes a pose near Sultan Gate

This week I experienced something for the first time in my life. During last Wednesday morning the Illawarra region, as well as most of New South Wales, experienced an amazing dust storm.

The dust storm had its origins in South Australia and reached the coastline of New South Wales not long after sunrise. The dust had traveled more than 1400 kilometres (about 880 miles). It was an eerie experience. The orange and red glow streamed through the curtains and I immediately grabbed my camera and went outside to diocument the experience.

The Sydney Morning Herald has created a site dedicated to the event and there is also a Flickr group ~ The Red Sydney Project The Dust Storm Days. I took the first nine photographs on the morning of the 23rd September 2009, from my home, of the suburb in which I live. The final five photographs were taken three days later on the 26th September when a less substantial dust storm also crossed the region early in the morning. The sun was nicely filtered by the dust. A display of fourteen images can also be viewed over at my online gallery.

This blog and my main web site has been shifted to a new server by my host ICDSoft. The migration and the upgrade to 10gbyte of server space was free. Excellent service and brilliant support.

As a result of the migration some image links and similar may appear ‘broken’ as the site propagates across the net and dns caches are updated.

If you do spot a persistent broken link please drop me a line or even a direct message via Twitter.

During the night the Illawarra coast of NSW experienced gale force winds as a low pressure system and a high pressure system battled to the south and east of the continent. I awoke during the night and literally cleared the decks just to ensure that some of the outdoor furniture decided it suddenly preferred life in the kitchen via the rear windows.

There were some very strong gusts early in the morning, well before sunset, so I climbed out of bed, got dressed, brewed some coffee and sat out by the back deck to observe the impact of the wind. I felt it was a good idea to keep an eye on our home and those of our neighbours just in case any decided that they wished to shift their location to one east of their current position.

As I sat and waited for the coffee to finish brewing I observed that some of the higher altitude clouds were beginning to show hints of red as they captured the rays of the sun which was still well below the horizon from my perspective on the ground. I grabbed my camera and took a number of photographs of the clouds to the west, south and east. Those shown are not in any chronological order. It i simply the order in which I resized them.

Winter approaches. It is an incredible Autumn morning here on the Illawarra coast.  See the little photo below.
 
Digital storytelling has crossed my mind of late. Recently conducted a workshop on the topic. It was most enjoyable. I had a creative and highly participative group of teachers and academic staff based in Singapore.
 
Digital storytelling is fine in itself. The term ‘digital’ does not rest well with myself. I tire of prefixing teaching and learning strategies with terms such as ‘digital’, ‘web 2.0′ and the like. At times I have no choice as such terms are required to market my workshops.
 
Storytelling is simply that. It is irrelevant which tool you apply to tell the story. Paper, paint, voice, keyboards. As long as the story is shared.
 
If the story can be shared via traditional approaches then why bother with ‘digital’ methods? The key to that question is to ensure that the digital strategy provides an avenue of expression and interaction not possible with the traditional approach. The technology has to make a difference.
 
Technology affords many possibilities in this regard. Where to begin?
 
Take good old Audacity, for example. You know, the free open source audio recording and editing software. A single storyteller can create a multitude of characters with some careful editing, selecting and filtering.
 
I would recommend storyboarding beforehand. Generate characters, a plot and the script, even just in general terms. Once the story is mapped out then the recording can begin.
 
Audacity allows multiple tracks to be recorded so a variety of characters can be recorded by an individual. Tracks can be named according to character and dialogue.
 
How to differentiate between the various characters if a single student has recorded the story? Select the track for a particular character and alter the pitch using the appropriate effects filter. Raise the pitch, lower the pitch. A single student can be a burly bouncer, an anxious astronaut, or a vexed vixen.
 
Plug in more than one student and you could have a virtulal panoply of characters.
 
You could even have an extraterrestrial in the mix. Record any dialogue. Filter the dialogue using ‘pitch’ and ‘backwards’. There you have it, one alien. Allow the remainder of the dialogue to generate an understanding of the conversation with the alien. Could be an exercise in itself: Codebreaking first contact with an alien species.
 
Audacity also allows for tracks to be easily shifted backwards and forwards in the timeline affording opportunities for flashbacks, stories to be told backwards, and the juxtaposition of contrasting dialogue.
 
You can also make use of both channels with some mixing. Play two pieces of dialogue simultaneously and simply ensure one is mixed to the left channel and the other to the right channel. A single student could generate an argument between two different characters.
 
The characters could come from different times, dimensions, places, planets, universes and states of being. Why interview a person when you could interview a ‘rock’, a ‘leaf’ or an ‘atom’? Give it a voice and let it explain the meaning of life. Personification is a great teaching and learning strategy when peppered with a little dose of Audacity.
 
Then there is the tool adored by many. Voicethread. It is a pity, dare I say it, that it is web based. Would love to see a software client for the tool that allowed offline storytelling creation that could then uploaded to the web.
 
Voicethread is nevertheless a useful tool. Take an old photograph. Upload it and invite others to recollect or tell their story. “I was there too…”
 
Upload a fake photograph to Voicethread courtesy of a little photoshopped magic. Invite analysis and feedback.
 
Invite your students to generate a storyboard. Paint the story, scan the artwork, upload to Voicethead and have others tell the story. More artwork, more ideas. A Voicethread soap, saga or serial.
 
Need to go. Lunch and an impending flat battery. More later.

Sent via iPhone through a Posterous wormhole to alternative universes in Twitter, Facebook and the Watershed.

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Just on two years back I wrote a post about a particularly interesting album by David Bowie entitled Station To Station. That blog post attracts more comments than most on this blog.

The album was released in 1976. The album is excellent in its own right and marks Bowie’s transition from his US influenced ‘plastic soul’ period of Young Americans through to the experimentation of the Berlin influenced trilogy of Low, “Heroes” and Lodger. Bowie collaborated with Brian Eno on those albums.

My original post sets out the variations in the artwork that were planned for and finally graced the Station To Station album sleeve. The original artwork incorporated a full colour photograph of Bowie taken on the set of the film, The Man Who Fell To Earth. This artwork, apparently, was not favoured by Bowie and a cropped black and white incarnation of the photograph was utilised instead. That album sleeve is shown below. Some of you may own a copy.

Many fans were oblivious to the existence of the full colour artwork until a copy was published in David Bowie: An Illustrated Record by Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray. The full colour artwork was an impressive revelation at the time and many wondered why the decision was made to go with the cropped black and white photograph.

Full colour printer proofs were produced by RCA in the USA in 1975. Michael Olsen, who was working for Bowie’s record company in 1975 obtained copies of the printer proofs amongst a collection of materials that the company felt was no longer needed. Michael himself commented about this on my earlier post. In addition to the RCA full colour proofs printed in the USA a number of 24″ X 12″ full colour flat mock-ups of the sleeve were produced by RCA in the UK and these were used by sales representatives to market the forthcoming album. One of these RCA UK mock-ups is illustrated below. Promotional posters printed at the time featured the full colour artwork as well.

During the late 1980s one of the full colour RCA proofs was sold or passed to a collector in the UK and it was utilised to produce a counterfeit of the full colour artwork. One could pick up a copy of the counterfeit sleeve for £10.00. As I commented on my original blog post the counterfeits were excellent and nicely reproduce the RCA USA colour proof. They were folded and glued and they were ubiquitous amongst Bowie fans from that time. Some collectors bought half a dozen or more. It was a genuine bargain. One of these counterfeits is illustrated below. I bought two.

Most fans thought that they would never ever get to see a copy of the authentic artwork for the full colour Station To Station sleeve and when the counterfeit turned up it it was a real god-send. We all knew it was a counterfeit but we did not care. It was simply neat to have a copy and thus get an idea of what the full colour RCA sleeve would have looked like if it had actually been officially released.

The counterfeit is a little flawed however. When one looks closely at the artwork it is blurred. The colours do not blend well and appear to be ‘bleeding’. This is illustrated below. The counterfeit is on the left. The official RCA product is on the right.

Well today, Jeff Gold, a famous record collector and dealer commented on that blog post as well. Jeff confirmed Michael’s account of the original colour proofs in the USA and shed light on yet another version of the Station To Station artwork that featured white lettering across the top of the album sleeve. A copy of that proof was placed on eBay today. I illustrate that proof below.

This new revelation adds another chapter to the history of this album sleeve. It will surprise many fans.

Finally, in order to confuse all of you further, when the Station To Station album was reissued with bonus tracks by both Ryko and also EMI during the 1990s they utilised the full colour artwork. A Japanese CD reissue in 2007 featured the black and white artwork.

Addendum. This is a photograph of the two late 1908s reproductions and the RCA UK flat mock-up, in the foreground, that I possess. The test pressing of the album is on the right.