Barb’s blog post about her yellow walk on Wear the Cape Tuesday takes me back to a week or so ago when I first heard of something called streetview that seems to be some version of something we are tagging in the Connected Learning MOOC as a #learning walk.  The streetview/learning walk is not really something new, it involves that ever important skill of noticing that I wrote about the other day and adds another intentional element: documenting the noticing.  The documenting described in the sreetview make was photography—convenient for me!

I tried my own version of a learning walk last week focused on the parking garage at UCSD.  I took some pictures, found an app that would let me put them in a collage (many collage apps seem to have a six photo limit—but I needed more), and then thought about what that composition said to me about my experience.

I love that this composition takes away a lot of the cold, institutional feel of the garage and highlights the icons, textures, and angularity.  It would be interesting to capture the smells and sounds of the garage as well as the things to see–capturing more layers of the garage experience.  Mostly what occurs to me by doing this exercise is that I was more aware of interesting details, noticing things I hadn’t noticed before.  (I hadn’t been aware of the electric cart parking space–is that for the all the golf cart-like vehicles?  I’ve never seen one parked in the parking garage!)

In addition to my streetview and Barb’s yellow walk, on Wednesday Linda @hirshmiller, who is also participating in SDAWP Photo Voices photo-a-day, read a piece of writing about her increased noticing as a result of her search for yellow this week.  We were all incredulous as she described her amazement at noticing that her cat, Flounder, had yellow eyes.  And how that discovery sent her on a mission to wake the sleeping pets and peer into their eyes to see what color they are.  (For me, that would have been a small job…for her with her husband’s animal rescue mission and her kids’ aspirations toward animal-focused careers, that meant checking the eyes of 55 animals!)

These experiences are reminding me how important it is to be intentional as we move through our lives, to be open to noticing new details, and to uncovering interesting connections.  Writing does that too…when I write regularly (like I am doing now with this new blogging adventure) I pay close attention to the world around me and make connections in unexpected ways.  What have you noticed lately?