CLMOOC

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

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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.

 

 

 

CLMOOC, Uncategorized

Hacking the school system softly #clmooc #systemhack

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#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.

 

CLMOOC

I remember my teachers #celebrateteachers #clmooc

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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.

 

Uncategorized

Re-imagine secondary schooling while still in the system. What if…?

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Photo by Duncan Rawlinson on Flickr

So if we are dissatisfied with the secondary school system in Victoria, the VCE, and we are teachers of sorts in a government school, are we trapped in the push through the congested pipe to the endpoint, the VCE, especially at my school, which is even more focused as a 9-12 school, and with a reputation of ‘getting’ the students the highest possible ATARs – which are the holy grail because (and now I’m a slave to sarcasm) the all-important goal in your life as a secondary student who wants a good career, a good life, is the final placement within the VCE system. And after that it’s smooth sailing, everything has been determined, you’re either a winner or a loser, and you’d better suck it up.

So if we are dissatisfied as teachers, as parents maybe, then are we trapped in a system that leaves us no choice? Bearing in mind that I’m now talking about my own school and its high-ATAR reputation…Do we have no choice at all? We are doomed to cram kids’ craniums with all the information they need, the right way to write, while they focus on the right way to take the UMAT, etc.?

What is the worst that could happen if we started to think for ourselves about what was important and essential to learning? What if we questioned the relevance of subject content to life? What if we decided to forgo some of the content in favour of skills? What if we realised that practising making mistakes was even more important than achieving high marks, that we would be doing our students a favour if we didn’t give them all the answers?

Would the sky fall?

[16:25] fallen

Photo by Frank on Flickr

Would the students fall behind? Would they score lower on the ATAR scale? Would it matter?

What if we really believed we had a choice. No, stop – really, really believed? What if the leadership team really believed and supported changes that would be more important to our students’ overall success in life after school, and instead of reviewing how well our students did retrospectively on the first day back of the new year, they chose to promote a different agenda? Would the reputation of that school plummet as the students’ marks plummeted?

Or would the school develop, over time, a new reputation, as a place of learning, of respect for thinkers and researchers, of a love for discourse, of a desire for dialogue across subject areas, of creativity, innovation and making. What if the spirit of student-led interest groups became that of the academic life of students? What if students could decide which aspect of set topics they wanted to do, and had choices about how to do it, with a maker bank of contemporary options to explore and play around with?

What if the principal decided that teachers were over-worked and exhausted, with no time to nurture themselves, cynical about change because they had no voice, disappointed about superficial requests for the use of technology without the time to play together and really understand its potential?

What if the principal changed the relentless cycle of weeks, terms, semesters, and created spaces for relaxation, communication, activity and creativity. What if teachers remembered their love of their subjects, and rediscovered their passions in other areas? And what if the whole school community saw this, and students would see another side of their teachers, and the relationship between them would change?

What if these things were possible? Why are they not possible?

CLMOOC

Reflecting on games and on complex systems #clmooc #make3

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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.

 

 

 

CLMOOC, Uncategorized

Collecting makes at Gertrude Street Projection Festival #clmooc #make

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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.

 

CLMOOC

Is life a game? #CLMOOC Week 3

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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

 

CLMOOC

Identity shattering. A six word poem for #clmooc

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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.

 

 

Interesting

What does colour sound like? Neil Harbisson – cyborg

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The life of Neil Harbisson is like something out of a sci-fi novel. Neil was born with achromatopsia, a rare condition that leaves 1 in 30,000 people completely colorblind. But Neil isn’t colorblind, far from it. After convincing his doctors to implant an antenna onto him,  Neil now possesses a new sense – the ability to hear colors. Neil takes you through a day in his life and you into  an entirely new world.
I had never heard of Neil Harbisson, and his condition. In particular, the antenna sounded so bizarre to me that I started researching online to see if it was a hoax, while thinking ‘please be true’ because it was so fascinating.
My younger son has a kind of synaesthesia and has always been able (or at least from the time he could articulate this) to hear colours. But he can also see colours. I remember being fascinated when I first found out and quizzed him to check whether he was consistent. I also discovered that some musical notes had a food association for him which just sounded silly to me. For example, when a note sounded like chicken or mango I started to think he was just making it up. But he wasn’t.
It’s so interesting to think about Neil Harbisson’s very different perception of things. I pulled out some of what he said in the video:
“I don’t feel that I’m using technology, I don’t feel that I’m wearing technology –  I feel that I am technology. The software is a part of my mind, and the antenna is part of my body.
“I have conversations with people about their perceptions of reality.
I scan their face and tell them how they sound. Now that I can hear colour I have connections – the horn of a taxi is related to lime because it sounds just like a lime.
“I used to think humans were black and white.
People are not black or white; they are a light orange or dark orange.
If you look closely you’ll find there is no grey; it’s just unsaturated colour.

The Human Colour Wheel

A color wheel based on the hue and light that Harbisson detected on human skins from 2004 to 2009.[44] Harbisson states that humans are not black or white, humans are orange. Human skins range from very light to very dark shades of orange-red to orange-yellow.[86] (Source: Wikipedia)

I’ve also pulled some of what Neil talks about in the TED talk video):

(This is paraphrased, not word for word:)

At first I had to memorise the names you give each colour, had to memorise the notes, but after some time this became a perception and then a feeling, and I started to have favourite colours and to dream in colour. I felt that the software and my brain had united then. In my dreams it was my brain creating the electronic sounds. I started to feel like a cyborg. I felt that the cybernetic device became a part of my body, an extension of my senses and finally part of my official image.

Life has changed dramatically since I have been able to hear colour. I can listen to a Picasso. Going to a supermarket is like going to a nightclub, full of different melodies especially the aisle of cleaning colours.

I used to dress the way that looked good, now I dress so it sounds good. Today I’m dressed in C major.

The way I look at food has changed. Now I can display my food on my plate so I can hear my favourite song.

The way I perceive beauty has changed. When I look at someone I hear their face. They  might look beautiful but sound terrible. I create sound portraits.

I started having a secondary effect. Normal sound started to have colour. I started to paint music and paint people’s voices.

There are many colours around us that we cannot perceive. Now I can hear colours that the human eye cannot perceive, eg infra red and ultra violet.

Knowledge comes from our senses so if we extend our senses we will extend our knowledge. We should start creating applications for our own body. Which senses would you like to extend? Become a cyborg.

What does this say about our perception? Are we programmed to perceive one way which is actually not the only way?

If there are no black or white people, just shades of orange, then what is our perception of race based on? What about our perception of privilege?

Harbisson mixes up our perception of perception. He tells people how they sound by looking at them. He can listen to a Picasso. He can paint speeches in colour.

 Which senses would you like to extend? Become a cyborg.

No thanks, Neil. But thanks for the perceptual mashup.

 

 

 

 

Uncategorized

Let me untroduce myself #clmooc OR can we use the word ‘love’ in teaching?

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So I realise that I’m still happily in the rabbit hole and have now moved on to #CLMOOC.

Looking around to survey the space, I realise the #CLMOOC is a really rich space, an art room for making, a concert hall, a sandbox, a basketball court, a community hall.

See how many places there are to share:

PLACES TO SHARE

  • In Google Plus, you should join our CLMOOC Community;
  • On Twitter, we encourage you to follow and use the #clmooc hashtag this summer;
  • You can submit your blog to the CLMOOC Blog Hub, which will collect and showcase blog posts from participants;
  • And/or post to the CLMOOC Facebook group.
  • We also encourage you to share your makes in the CLMOOC Make Bank .. you can share a prompt for making, things you made and/or tutorials on how for others.

See how many making ideas have been gifted to us:

  • Photo Cutting (like with scissors) Grab scissors, cut pictures up, move pieces around, see what happens, take a new picture (or video) of your cut up picture.
  • Photo Cutting with stop motion: Add a cool stop motion app to the play described above. We like iMotion for IOS and PicPac for Android.
  • Mad-Libs: Yes! Make your own mad libs. Maybe use an existing text and take out words to be replaced!?
  • Image Write Overs: See what happens when you layer writing over your image. You might try an app/website like ThingLink or Pic Collage.
  • Image Manipulation: Try Pixlr or Kaleidolens or another app to change your images.
  • Corrupted Image Files: Distort and corrupt your images. Oh yeah! Here are two webapps we tried: Glitch Images or gifmelter
  • Mosaic: Smash or take apart stuff (stuff that is yours :0) and reconfigure it, mosaic-like, into something new. Go Gallagher with a watermelon. Take apart an old clock. Use broken dishes to make a traditional mosaic.
  • Mozilla Webmaker Tools: Try X-ray Goggles for disrupting current web content or Popcornfor interrupting video content.

And best of all, the invitation is to get busy and cause trouble.

Today may be the end of your [school year], but it should also be the first day of your new [summer pd] disobedience.” We want you to mess around with ideas around making by questioning who gets to make here, who gets access to this space, who benefits from the ways we name ourselves here?  “It’s time to get busy. It’s your turn to cause trouble.

I’ve been busy offline lately but I’ve seen a lot of creativity shared and responded to already. I’m happy to see familiar faces from previous MOOCs (many much more experienced than I am – a newbie) and lots of new people I’m excited to know.

Making – it makes me a little nervous because I usually express myself in words but I’ve enjoyed using photos and creating visual stories so I’m going to give it a go. At school we’re about to start a baby makerspace in the library and I’m thinking the #CLMOOC might help me contribute in a way that is different from robotics and hands-on making.

Our first task:

So, what’s the first thing you usually do when you enter a room of folks with some familiar and unfamiliar faces—you introduce yourself, right? So let’s unravel “the introduction” to dive into the Connected Learning principle of equity. The theme this week is Unmaking Introductions. Let’s consider the ways we name, present, and represent ourselves and the boundaries or memberships those introductions create. How do we name ourselves in different contexts—personally? professionally? online? What happens when those contexts converge? How might we take apart our introductions to answer some of these questions? What will happen when we put them back together again to share them in CLMOOC?

I’m not even halfway through the wonderful, varied responses – poems, drawings, other art work, word clouds, cartoons, videos, music and so much more – and I’m getting a foretaste of what this mooc is about.

I put together a slide presentation using photos and images as writing and reflection prompts.

After I shared my untro in the Facebook group I was overwhelmed with the warmth of people’s responses. Especially when Terry Elliott took what I had and added music.

Thank you, Terry, for your generosity – taking the time to re-interpret my untro. I agree, your translation takes it to a new level. Thank you, also, to everyone for your warm responses.

Connected learning really is about people connecting to people and learning together in a holistic way, not just trading content or skills but relating on a personal level. You’ll understand what I mean when you read the responses from people in the Facebook group.  People are not afraid to use language you would not normally see in a teacher/student context, eg. Susan Watson said “I have a feel for who you are, a sense of your humanity”; Teresha Freckleton Petite said: I can tell you a vibrant soul”; Terry Elliott said ” You are worth that slow consideration as I see layers and layers and layers of beautiful introspection and vulnerable sharing. We are all lucky to know you”; Sarah Honeychurch said “Love you even more after this”; Anna Smith said she had an affinity with me after she had seen my presentation.

I am not relating all these things go boost my ego – although I was very touched by all the generous responses – but to highlight how differently a connected learning MOOC works to a traditional course.  Not only are our untros very personal, the community feedback is also personal. I’m interested in getting a sense of how this kind of learning – connected, open, creative – might work in schools to address the issue of intrinsic/extrinsic motivation. I wouldn’t say this is intrinsic but contributing to #CLMOOC is contributing to the community, and the community’s response is a powerful motivation.

Could this kind of learning work in secondary school? How could it work?

Is there room for a different kind of assessment in which the language involves words like ‘love’ in relation to the person, not just the work? Is this too weird or does this start to touch upon a real way of engaging learners? Is this a true social context for learning?

 

Button up, we’re out in the open

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