Category Archives: CLMOOC

Back to #CLMOOC

It’s pretty obvious I haven’t been writing in this blog for so, so long and I guess it doesn’t matter because you go where you need to go, and I’ve been dipping into different communities and conversations online, mainly in groups on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. I’ve learned not to feel guilty when I can’t settle on one thing – hence the lack of focus for writing in this blog.

So #CLMOOC is happening, and I’m happy to get involved – because I feel the need to ‘do stuff’ that’s devised for me in the company of others, because the people I love doing stuff with are there (some of them), and because it’s time to get to know new people, and the best way to do that is to make stuff with them. For me, it’s much more satisfying than just people on Twitter with no unifying agenda (apart from learning, of course). Conversations happen, ideas and creative things are exchanged, and my network is widened again, including people I wouldn’t otherwise meet, people from all walks of life. Nice.

I’m about to look seriously at Make Cycle #2 because up until now I’ve been the rebellious child, refusing to sit still, not willing to follow the rules (not that there are any actually, just guidelines), coming in to join conversations here and there, admiring the creativity and ideas of others. Still sharing, but randomly, things I find inspirational  – like the Gertrude Street Light Projection Festival which is magical.

Susan Watson put me onto the monsters in the PicsArt app (which I had been using in a limited way). I hid some amongst the birds in my rug. How many can you see?

I found an old high school sketch (and I mean OLD) and added a few.

All the while, saving things shared by people in Diigo and Pinterest.

What I love about CLMOOC is the philosophy and attitude of the group. For example, in the make cycle for week 2 you will read :

If you have just arrived … welcome. You are not late. You are right on time.

And also:

Finding ways to reciprocate generosity in our community is a key way for all of us to grow together even as we learn together.

This is a community I feel comfortable in, at home in, safe to play in.

And now, to get stuck into Make Cycle #2:

For Make Cycle 2, consider this idea of reaching out into conversation, of moving behind the “+1” or “like” or heart button into something deeper and richer, to be the very heartbeat of CLMOOC.

And this fantastic example of how powerful this idea can be:

In a recent blog post, Aaron Davis (whose blog ReadWriteRespond is a must-read) dives into the concept of his own writing life. Entitled “A Village Takes Many Things,” Aaron celebrated his own 300th blog post by reaching out to all of the people who have left comments at his blog site. He invited them through personal communication to write on the theme of the Village in a single blog post. And they did. Aaron’s project shows the ways in which connections ebb and flow, and he honored his readers as a reciprocal act of trust and connection.

I’m grateful that my options for this make cycle can be either to dip in,  swim in or dive in. I’ve been dipping here and there, and know better than to permit the guilt monster to make me feel bad about not diving in if I don’t have the time or ideas.  Reciprocating and connecting is something I think we learn to do over time, and keep learning. Reminding myself about the connected learning principles. I dwell on:

What would it mean to think of education as a responsibility of a distributed network of people and institutions, including schools, libraries, museums and online communities?

I fantasize about the school campus extending into other learning places – the museums, the art galleries, libraries, sustainable gardens, and the virtual spaces. (Hmm… but so much disruption to school routine). Virtual spaces are possible but how to go about this? In small ways, I think. Offering, modelling, enticing, leaping in when they’re ready to jump in.

 

Meditation on public space. Or space. #clmooc #week5

When I was born I inhabited space. At first it was mine, Soon it became populated. It was surreal. It was strange. I wondered.

 

László Moholy-Nagy / Sil I / 1933 / oil and incised lines on silbert (a type of aluminum)

In the first few years I watched. I watched and watched. No words, just pictures that I stored in my brain for later. The spaces I lived in with people were strange still.

Mayur Bhola’s photo

In which spaces did I feel at home? The spaces others had imagined. Many people watched the same spaces. So they were public right? Or were they in my head? We shared the spaces but I felt they were mine.

I learned about spaces that had existed in a different age.

It was difficult to imagine people there. In the art books there were never people. I imagined these like Plato’s theory of forms. Do they exist in a public space?

How do you feel in public spaces? See, this one

Image source

is in the same city as this one

Image source

I know which one I feel at home in. And you?

In my mind I mix up the public spaces by pulling in images from dreams, photographs, memories, stories.

Are they still public?

What people do with space. I mean, what people do with space. How do they do that? Are they changing the space? I mean, I don’t understand the science of it but I think they do.

Photo source

Do you ever wish our public spaces, as we perceive them as adults, were as wondrous as they were when we were children?

Photo source

Am I resisting public space? What kind of energy is that? Here I’m pretending the digital space is a private space and ignoring the public that may or may not come in. Fly away Peter, fly away Paul. Come back Peter, come back Paul.

Shake, rattle and remix, then repeat. The outpouring of creativity in #clmooc when people play

As Terry posted in his blog, one thing led to another and it happened very quickly. Click on the larger image to see how it started. Terry explains it all.

 

This is Terry Elliott‘s annotation of the interaction between a few of us on Twitter. Yes, an annotation, that’s what I said.

I’ve written it out in linear fashion in case it’s difficult to read from this image.

And very soon Kevin Hodgson was in:

and then Terry played his hand

and back to Kevin

and Terry

Kevin again

Sometimes the comments section of a blog is vital to further annotation. In this case definitely. So following this series of remixes in Kevin’s post, Terry said the following:

What you have documented is connected learning and what Nick Sousanis refers to as unflattening. The messification of the world by increasing “parallax”. My whole argument in the original comic (and I do think of it as a comic) was that reciprocation was one of the requisite initial conditions for any of the connected learning principles and values. What happened yesterday was proof in practice. What I especially liked was that the rising complexity came from the initial conditions of reciprocity just like chaos theory tells us it does. Our web pages are flat but world they live in is multidimensional across time. Or as Sousanis says, upward and downwards not just north,south,east,and west. We’re not in Flatland anymore, Kevin.

Kevin answered with a summary of what he was trying to do, some reflection and a question:

In the post, I tried to purposefully leave out context and let the visual happen. I imagine some will say, “Say, Huh?” when they see it and wonder about the ping-pong effect. I had hoped others might join in but maybe the pace of the shuttling back and forth between media intimidated others. Or maybe it was Sunday and the folks were offline, unplugged. Or maybe they did not have the context for engaging in a media practice that surfaces connected learning. Surely, it was messification.
I’d like to squabble a bit about whether your initial image is a comic or not. It seems more flowcharty to me. But your push to have it viewed as a comic is what had me do the first iteration, in the comic maker. Looking at your first piece, it seems more of a flowchart, pushing things along. But when you called it a “comic,” I looked for panels … and gutters (see later joke) … and shout-out balloons … and characters … but I wonder if we need all that? How defined must our definitions of comics be?
Why did you call it a comic?
Curiouser and curiouser …

Terry again:

Panels, page, comic grammar (albeit spiral with numbers and arrows to help show movement), tweets as dialogue callouts, and a narrative with lots of characters. I think we can call a tweet an identity with a speech bubble without much of a stretch. And the rhetoric is visual not paragraphs although it gets paragraphy at the end. And the idea is, like Sousanis often shows an overall visual metaphor that supports the ideas in the panel–in this case a spiral.

and Kevin

Ok … I get your thinking …. working in a spiral … strike!

I wanted to play but didn’t know how. Terry and Kevin told me they used Snagit but I discovered that it cost quite a bit, and told them so in the following comment:

You two are brilliant. And this is great – the comic battle which happened so fast and now the articulation in the comments section. The reason I didn’t join in is because I’m not as adept at the technical side. Lots of ideas but need time to learn new making skills. Wasn’t prepared to pay $68 for Snagit. I think if my technical/making skills were improved I’d be able to capture the concepts that fly around in my head. Thank you for being brilliant!

In the next couple of comments Terry and Kevin expressed their commitment to inclusiveness in online courses:

This is where danger can creep in … leaving people out who want an entry way in but can’t find the door … Terry and I were building on past experiences via CLMOOC, Rhizowhatever, and more … and could riff … but were others feeling invited in? I know his initial invite was inclusive .. but once I responded, did the world tilt in only one direction?
No need for real answers to those questions … but this is what sits at the back of my mind (it’s a crowded place some days)
Thanks for taking the time to join the conversation here
Kevin

The only way is to help Tania play the game. The repertoire is not that extensive to get in the game. I think the attitude of play is the one that gets folks hung up. I felt very bad to exclude anyone. No like. Want more messiness in the mix. Want more mix. Gotta get Tania into the game.

And my reply

Ha ha! I will not be defeated by lack of technology. I have 2 and a half offerings. One is a sauce (reduction).

 

I did a poor version of blackout poetry using a printed copy of one of the remixes. Considering it was late on a school night and the lights interfered with the ipad photo of the printout, it’s surprising anyone can make out anything. Still, I thought, if technology isn’t working for me, I’ll just move across to another possibility.

Then I had a crazy idea: I asked my son (music student) to take a look at the remixed content and, based on the feeling he got from the look of it all, compose something quickly. He (Maxim) said:

What – now?

And I’m like: Oh yes, just something quick, whatever inspires you after looking at these comics. A kind of musical paragraph. And he did. Within 20 minutes I could share his Soundcloud link to a midi version (which he said might suit the comic style more) and the version with Sibelius sounds.  If you look at that one you can see the comments Terry and Kevin have made which are visible in the music itself – very cool.

At this point I went to bed. It was late but I had to force myself to sleep because the creative exchange was so invigorating. In the morning I saw Terry’s remix of Maxim’s audio file.

Terry tweeted it out, saying: Wanted more pinbally busy-ness so I layered maxim soundtracks n2 Popcornmaker–remix?

 

Well, guess who couldn’t resist the remix? Here’s Kevin’s version, rich with imagery: For Maxim it was a new experience because he assumed music he whipped up would be of no value, and there it was, being listened to and commented on. But wait, there’s more! I also shared the score which was remixed immediately!

The river does not run dry for some people! This could go on and on. In fact, when I tried to explain the whole thing to friends I kept starting somewhere and then saying – no, I’ve got to go back a bit – and then kept going back and back through the rabbit hole. Backwards through the rabbit hole like pressing rewind. Exhilarating. I hope that this documentation is not too confusing, and that it has captured some of that outpouring of creative makes and remixes, that joy which comes from adding another layer, playfully hacking and not knowing when to stop.

 

 

 

Hacking the school system softly #clmooc #systemhack

#accidentalalliteration  Make Cycle #4 for Making Learning Connected Course.

Susan Watson cracked me up with her comic, The Systems of Comics. She is very clever and funny.

susanwatsoncomic

 

That’s too small to read but you can see the original here. Terry must have made hundreds of these. Here’s one. I decided to try and make my own. It is the first in a series of Personal Conversations at Melbourne High School.

I’m sure that’s illegible so take a look at the original.

I have a plan for this series and also for another to give our students voice. I’ve already asked some of our students for help. This should be fun.

And the Bigger (AlmostEvil) Plan is to infiltrate learning spaces in my school like a stealthy villain.  One of my recent posts expressed frustration about the school system which resists reform and may have to be levelled first in order to be rebuilt. After reading Terry’s comment

I think I am done with reform as a way of re-thinking. I put a lot more faith in kind subversion, asking forgiveness and not permission, under the radar, subrosa, authentic learning.

I decided to act on an unformed idea I’d had nagging me for a while.

Taking the library out to the school is not a new idea but I think I need to up the ante with it. My new, as yet embryonic, idea is to hack the staffroom in a surprising way. Something along the lines of setting up a small and changeable pop-up shop/library when nobody’s looking. For example, mark the space somehow with a few artifacts, then leave things that beg to be played with and change these regularly. Some ideas so far: puzzles, gorgeous design pages for colouring in, quirky articles – and comics! Like this one. So I envisage leaving one comic per series and updating regularly. Series like ‘Professional conversations at MHS’ and ‘Student conversations at MHS’, and so on.

I’m trying a soft approach to hacking the school system. If, as I’ve said in a previous post, teacher librarians find it challenging to collaborate with teachers because teachers are driven to keep up with the curriculum, then we can entice them, seduce them in a way, with curriculum-irrelevant playful things that help them slow down, make things, laugh, and take a break from the system.  Why not? My aim is to distract teachers, disrupt their single focus so that they might be more open to joining me in collaborative play in class.

And if that’s too ambitious, at least their (mis-)perception of teacher librarians (another blog post) might be popped like a giant bubble containing nothing but air. And that created space is something I will try to inhabit.

All ideas for a soft hack of learning spaces will be taken seriously and collected in a special container.

Oh, and true to villains who leave calling cards, here’s  one I made with Notegraphy for my library.

Of course, it could just as easily look like this.

I’m looking forward to sharing this idea with my colleagues in the school library.

 

I remember my teachers #celebrateteachers #clmooc

I’m later than everyone else in responding to Kevin Hodgson’s invitation to #celebrateteachers which “Laura pitched as a game of tag” and so appropriate for #CLMOOC (the Making Learning Connected MOOC). (Thanks, Wendy, for blogging about this).That was a week ago. But the idea of remembering or celebrating teachers appealed to me so I thought better late than never.

I can remember some of the names of my teachers in primary school. Let’s see… nothing before grade 2 when I had Mrs Robinson. I remember odd bits and pieces about her. Her husband must have been called Neil because she often told us about what she did on the weekend with Neil. It took me a while to figure this out because I had been too busy wondering why she spent the weekend going places with the boy who sat in the front row (also Neil). I also remember that she sat next to me when we went to the movies to see Born Free (1966) and asked for half of my peanut butter sandwich (which I resentfully gave her). I don’t remember my grade 3 teacher’s name but I do remember that the first thing she did on our first day was write the word ‘honesty’ in big letters on the blackboard, and talk about how highly she valued honesty above everything else. Grade 4 – Mr Quilty. I don’t want to write what I remember about him so we’ll skip that.

In secondary school I remember quite a few teachers, especially my French teacher whose classes were so much fun through songs, poetry, film, discussions and conversations about everything French.

The teacher I want to celebrate is not someone who was all sweetness and smiles. In fact she gave me a lot of grief throughout the time she taught me – from early primary to late secondary. She was my Russian teacher both privately and at the Saturday school for Russian language and culture. Until I was 9 my cousin and I had private Russian lessons at her house, and she favoured him and criticised me. I was a scapegoat. My narrow handwriting was a sign of a mean character, I had no taste, my Russian was inferior, and so on. Returning from a trip to Russia, she brought presents, and I was to choose from two things. The one I chose clearly indicated my lack of good taste, and when I changed my mind and chose the other one, I had chosen the one she had wanted for herself. At about the age of 9 I’d had enough and had a meltdown, telling her that I hated her guts. When my mother came to pick me up both of us were crying, and my teacher was asking my mother what she could have possibly done to be on the receiving end of such an outburst. It was decided I would return to the Saturday school and be part of her class. I was relieved to take refuge in a group of students and no longer be the subject of so much attention.

People are complex. We all have good and bad in us. I also remember my Russian teacher speaking passionately about literature she loved with her whole being. She didn’t care about keeping to class time limits when she was trying to inspire us about literature, art, Russian culture. She spent countless hours preparing us for Russian concerts and plays, working with us privately to perfect pronunciation and tone, gesture and facial expression. She designed costumes, making sure they were historically correct, she painted sets, she drew large portraits of writers, poets, musicians to accompany her speeches at our annual days of Russian culture. She lived and breathed her work and her passion, her work and her identity were one.

As difficult as it was to forgive and try to forget the ways she treated me when I was younger, it was also difficult not to be impressed by her and be in awe of her during my secondary school years. She left a permanent impression on me. She was someone whose passion for literature and art played out her entire life.

In her later years I grew to love her, and she was fond of me. I visited her on and off when she had moved out of Melbourne and she asked to see me. She was still extremely passionate, relentless in her expectations of people, but had mellowed over the years. In her early 90s she was diagnosed with cancer and I visited her a couple of times. It was understood that I wasn’t to feel sorry for her and that life was just taking its course. I remember she made sure she kept up with world events, mapping them out on a hand drawn map of the world she pinned to her wall. She passed on to me books she treasured, art prints she had collected in a folder and other bits and pieces. Finally, with little time left to live, she asked to see me for the last time and said goodbye with a fairly steady voice. I remembered the times in my adolescence when she had read out aloud from literature, tears streaming down her face, and yet now she was almost completely composed.

People are complex. She taught me many things including an appreciation for the Russian language and its culture, but perhaps the most important thing was that none of us can really be easily or completely understood, and that we are not perfect.  As much as we might prefer to stick to the idea of people being nice and predictable, easily understood, most of us aren’t. By the time I had forgiven her, by the time I grew to love her and her eccentricities, her all-consuming passions, I had come a little closer to accepting the darker side of people in general, including myself.

Teachers can make a difference in our lives beyond what they try to teach us.

 

Reflecting on games and on complex systems #clmooc #make3

For this Make Cycle, we invite you to use game design to analyze, remediate, and reflect on complex systems. Last week, we noticed “the affordances and constraints that each medium offers (for and against) our purposes”. This week, let’s discuss what systems we see – and what happens when we change up the rules a bit.

Life is a complex system.

That’s why I wrote about life being a game – or not – in a previous post. I wanted to engage with people in different spaces so I shared the post on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter. And the additional space – the Google Doc. I was tempted to add a Hackpad but was interrupted by a couple of tugs on the line. How to play in different spaces almost simultaneously? And then Terry Elliott created the Hackpad for me – a response to my piece using James Carse quotes. That was an interesting approach – playing the JamesCarseGamesBot. I’m still getting my head around Hackpad and its rabbit holes. And although people didn’t end up finding it, I appreciated Terry’s time taken and the flashlight he shone on isolated sections. I wonder what it would look like if others had come in. Terry knows that potential will not always be pursued, and he opens up possibilities often despite this.

You must leave this space to see my thread of the answer. For some this will be too much to ask. So be it:

I am the Carse Infinite GameBot and will be answering these questions in random order over the next 24 hours. Some questions I will not answer. Perhaps there will be a hidden message, perhaps it will be unintelligible. Ready player one?

So I guess I’m player one.

We invite you to use game design to analyze, remediate, and reflect on complex systems. So I’m not a gamer – that is, I usually avoid games like chess (can’t play it) or any strategic games which make my brain hurt; sports games; game shows; Scrabble, Monopoly, etc. Why? I don’t know. But I LOVE word games, language games, open-ended games, creative games. If I were to analyse the complex system of life in a playful way – in a gameful way – I would make sure that there were no rules that could not continue to be written. (Was that a double negative? So then I mean that the rules should evolve and be written and rewritten by any and all players). First of all, I really do think life is a game. There is no single correct way to play but many rhizomatic possibilities. You need players, so you play with others. And playing means practice, that is, you play one way, and then you play another way. Like drawing, and drawing another version. It’s complex; you can’t do it in one drawing. You need people. It’s the game of life.

While I was thinking I didn’t want Terry’s Hackpad version of my Life is a Game rant left unplayed. Threw a few things in. If you like, take a look here. I’d love you to play.

The Google Doc is play too. Thanks to you if you came in and played a while. It’s all generosity as far as I’m concerned. People adding creative responses to your work – it’s a gift. Thank you.

pack a suitcase

take a card

yes

swiss cheese

swiss cheese note

tania

tension

See what comes of play? I do like games after all. Thanks for playing.

 

 

 

Collecting makes at Gertrude Street Projection Festival #clmooc #make

I took this photo of Skunk Control’s Secluded Evolution last night at Gertrude St. Fitzroy’s Projection Festival which will be on for the next week weeks in Fitzroy, Melbourne. This is a fantastic union of art and science/engineering – read about it on the website if you are interested in more information.

Skunk Control is a group of engineers and scientists from the college of Engineering and Science at Victoria University.The group collective run diverse community outreach programs and community based general science units and are part of the team that run the university’s Foundation Studies program.

So Week 3 of #CLMOOC nearly drove me crazy. So much blank. So much brick wall. So many people doing creative things with me not able to catch up. Calm down.

And so this post is collecting things people have created which I have collected and played with – things potentially useful for another game design of some sort in response to week 3’s task.

I started playing around with the videos I took of the Gertrude Street Projection Festival (#GSPF). First I uploaded them to YouTube and then used the editor to add free music. Here are 2 examples: 

What next?

Okay, so I played around in the app Phototoaster, selecting different filters for my photos of the GSPF, experimenting with colour, tone, making things stand out or disappear. Some of my photos:

And I saved all the versions of my photos in a Flickr album.

Not having any idea of concept, direction or purpose, I decided to make gifs from some of my videos.

I thought it would be cool to add audio to one of my gifs, and I tried, believe me, I spent valuable time, but I wasn’t able to figure it out. The best I could do was to have my chosen audio file merge with one of my gifs here but I wasn’t able to combine them. If you click here you’ll be able to see what I was trying to do.

So, now what? I’m still blank in terms of how I can use these things for game design. Creative process – you elude me.

 

Is life a game? #CLMOOC Week 3

Will you play?

Photo source

Here is the thing. Below you will see the link to a Google Doc. This is your invitation to reMEDIAte this thing. I can do it myself but then I would be playing on my own. Please put on your safety belt. Put on your hard hat. Press play. There is no time limit. Thank you for playing.

Is life a game?

Take a card.

Are you playing the game?

Who are you?

Take another card.

How long have you been playing?

Did you ever win?

How many times did you win?

Can I start playing now?

Are the rules difficult?

Will it take me long to understand the rules?

Who else is playing?

How many people?

Answer the question.

What was the question?

Answer the question in the box provided in less than 25 words.

Shouldn’t that be fewer than 25 words?

Just answer the question. Then sign on the dotted line.

What’s your favourite colour?

Is this a game?

What is your favourite colour?

Is that an open ended question? Weren’t we supposed to have multiple choice?

What if I get the answer wrong?

Can I draw my answer?

Take another card.

Are you happy?

Is that an open-ended question?

Who else is playing?

What did they say?

Are they happy?

Just answer the question.

Can I dance the answer?

Are you alive?

Are you asking me if I’m living?

Just answer the question.

Can I take another card?

My favourite colour is blue.

Are you alive?

My favourite colour is green.

Take another card.

Is life a game?

Is that another open-ended question?

My favourite colour is red.

Is that your final answer?

I am living.

Are you alive?

What did the others say?

Are they happy?

Are they alive?

Who is asking the questions around here?

My favourite colour is yellow?

What is your favourite colour?

Are you:

  1. alive
  2. yellow
  3. barely living
  4. whatever the others said

Put a cross in the correct box.

I am not able to answer within the current limitations.

Please answer the question.

Can I speak to a lawyer?

Your favourite colour is red.

You are living.

Nobody you know is playing.

Life is a game.

Take another card.
Here is the link to the Google Doc. Please play with me. My favourite colour is white. Is this really a game or is it a load of

Source: Wikimedia Commons

 

Identity shattering. A six word poem for #clmooc

 

Photo by Sarah Wynne

Challenge: A #clmooc identity shattering in six words

As we consider who we are, our identities in the spaces and places of the neighborhoods in our lives — what essence is there in all of them?

What six concepts shape you as you shape them?

Challenge: Consider your beliefs. Using six words, arrange them as phrases read horizontally and vertically to express an essence of your identity.

Okay. I looked at examples. I fiddled with some words. I rearranged words and phrases. I deleted. I remain unsatisfied. I settled.

Understand solitude

Create together

Colour transforms

I know, it’s contradictory and it’s supposed to be.

Alternatively:

Understand and create colour.

Solitude together transforms.

That works for me. What about you? Is it too confusing? Now I feel shattered. And synthesized.