Hacking Our Own Website

Today, in our Digital Literacies/Game Design workshop for high school English Language Learners, we are moving into the world of remixing and hacking, with a bent on hacking for good and hacking for change, while also acknowledging both sides of the coin. Yesterday, we started this discussion a bit around privacy issues, and how they can begin to protect their privacy online. It was a deep conversation and it became clear early on that they had not ever really been asked to think about issues of privacy, data mining, Snowdebn/NSA, and more. They were intrigued and involved. I shared with them a few strategies:

Today, we begin to make the shift into hacking and remixing, and I am going to have them use the tool from Mozilla — XRay Goggles — to remix our workshop website. Honestly, I am not sure how it will go. These are not kids who can code, but part of the reason for using the tool is to show the underlying structure of websites — to make the world more visible — and to give them tools to mess around with the world, and learn from that experience.

Here is a screenshot of our homepage:
summpowerweb

Here is my “mentor text” after I hacked the site:
summerpowerpagehack

Peace (in the hack),
Kevin

 

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