Category Archives: TeachtheWeb

Making/Hacking/Playing with WMWP

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Make Hack Play LEDs
This morning, I have a small group of folks from our Western Massachusetts Writing Project Tech Team (which I lead as as the co-director of technology for WMWP) coming over to my house to do a Make/Hack/Play session. We’re connecting together over coffee to play around with paper circuitry first — we will be making “maps” (metaphorical or literal) that we will light up “nodes” of interest.

Then, we will shift over to Webmaker’s Popcorn Maker for remixing of video and media. My hope is that we will use MLK’s I Have a Dream speech as the center and then layer in media on top of or inside of the video. My friends have not ever used Popcorn, so I am curious to see how best to guide them into it.

webmaker popcorn overview

This is what I created this morning:

This small group work will also help me and a WMWP technology team colleague think about an upcoming presentation at a WMWP Spring Symposium, where we are facilitating a session around student agency with media and technology. She teaches a college course on using media and I am leading the hands-on portion, where folks in the session will be using Popcorn for remix.

WMWP Invite to Spring Symposium

 

(If you are in Western Mass, please consider coming to the Symposium. The registration signup is here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Eh4oRNvYRbK46VBBV14fcSLv6zShiTWcJPVNcQFR-RE/viewform )

Peace (in the make),

Kevin

RIP: A Remix Manifesto

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(Here is an old post in my draft bin …)

Thanks to Laura for her blog post that sent me to the site for this documentary, RIP: A Remix Manifesto. I need to check out how I can watch this (since YouTube, ironically, blocks the content in the documentary because of proprietary issues), as it dive into the things I have been trying to wrestle with when it comes to remixing content, making something new from something that already exists, and the way technology puts more tools in our hands to do that.

Anybody seen RIP: A Remix Manifesto? The reviews seem mixed (remixed?).

Peace (in the remix),
Kevin

 

 

Further Poetic Remix: Identity

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Yesterday, I shared out how I remixed Identity by Julio Noboa Polanco and made a new poem from Polanco’s words. Today, I take a step forward into remix, by using my poem and a video version of Identity, weaving them together via Mozilla’s Popcorn Maker. The result is a mix of words and images and sound.

Feel free to remix it yourself. Just hit the remix button on the Popcorn video.

Peace (in the remix of the remix),
Kevin

A Peace Poster/Elvis Costello Remix

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(Note: This post got lost in the ‘draft bin’ but here it is ..)

After writing  about my students art project — the Peace Posters — and remembering the classic Elvis Costello song — What’s So Funny (About Peace, Love and Understanding) — I realized that I could merge and remix the two with Mozilla Webmaker’s Popcorn Maker.

And so I did ..

Peace (in the peace),
Kevin

Walking Through the World

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This is another teaser for the Walk My World project. I just had to use Marc Cohn’s song, and tapped into Mozilla’s Popcorn Video Maker to create a video with animated gifs.

Check out Walk Through the World


And I am adding some “Director’s Notes” as a sort of cross-reference to the YouShow project now underway:

I have long loved Marc Cohn as a songwriter, and this particular song from an early album has resonated with me over the years. It seems like a perfect fit for the theme of Walk My World, although he is writing more about a relationship than about media literacy. Still …. I first wanted to make a Zeega, but then could not find the song in Soundcloud. So, I went with Mozilla’s Popcorn Maker. I found the song in YouTube and layered it down, turning off the video and keeping only the audio. Then, I searched for “walking” in the Popcorn search engine, using the Giffy site as my main focus. I wanted it to be Zeega-like. I listened to the lyrics, adding in non-walking pieces where it seemed to fit (I loved the gif of the girl on her bed, reading, kicking her legs back and forth). I only used a verse and chorus (and wish Popcorn had a fade music button). I like how it came out.

Plus, here is a visual tutorial I made on using Popcorn Maker:
Using Popcorn Maker

Now, go make yer own! Or remix mine!
Peace (in the world you walk),
Kevin

Dog Counter Culture: Tinkering with Mozilla AppMaker

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doggyapp2

I’ve been meaning to try out the recent addition to the Mozilla Webmaker tools, something called AppMaker, and Melissa Techman’s recent presentation at the K12Online Conference spurred me on. The AppMaker is designed to teach both simple and complex skills around designing an app, which can be viewed online and on mobile devices that run the new Firefox IOS.

As with most Webmaker tools, there are remixable projects to start from, which I found handy. I used a Cat Counter, removed the cats, added my own dogs (current and deceased) and made the Dog Counter Culture app. I am thankful for this handy guide at Mozilla Webmaker, which had detailed instructions on how to remix the Cat Counter app. I just followed the directions, tinkered with the settings and it didn’t take me long to have an app.

DogCounterCulture App

Here is the web version of the Dog Counter Culture app. (Yep, that’s me … barking like a dog). Here is the install link if you have the Firefox IOS. I don’t. But maybe I should try it out?

I wonder, now, how I might pull this AppMaker into our Hour of Code activities in early December. What kind of apps could my students make and why would they make them? Need to get some brainstorming under way. If you have an idea, please drop me a comment. I’ll be asking my students, too.

Peace (in the app),
Kevin

Make the Web Visible, Literally

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I’ve been too swamped to go deep into the recent push into the Web by the Connected Courses folks, but that doesn’t mean I’m not thinking about it. Ever since I took part in the Teach the Web MOOC, the idea of how to use the Web and its possibilities for my own reasons, and how to teach that agency to my students, has lingered in the back of my mind. I get frustrated when I hear of students in classrooms, playing games on websites developed by others (and no doubt getting bombarded by adds and tracked by cookies and who knows what else.)

We need to do a better job of helping young people move from consumers to creators, and there is a push in that direction coming from many angles. Webmaker, from Mozilla, is fantastic. More and more game and code sites, that invite people to make, are opening up new possibilities for understanding the technology in a way that moves beyond the surface.

I am a fan of visuals, and if you use Firefox browser, there is a real nifty tool built into the browser that let’s you see the web from an entirely different angle, showing the architecture of a site from all angles. The architecture is constructed around hyperlinks, and layered pages, and more.

Here is what one view of the Connected Courses site looks like, with the Firefox 3D tool:

ccourses 3d web

It’s a book, right?

Here is another view, from the blog hub page:
ccourses blog 3d

Links are lifted up while plain text stays flat. And look at the layers behind it. Interesting, right?

Want to know how to do it for your own blog? First, of all, you will need to using Firefox. On any page, right click and choose “page element.” If you are lucky, there will be a little source icon for the 3D that looks like a box or a Rubic’s Cube or something. Click on the box and then use your mouse to zoom around the site, changing the viewpoint perspectives. If the 3D box does not appear, you need to activate it.

Here is how:

how to do 3d view

Share out. What does this view say about the website? Does this change your view of the web?

Peace (in the element),
Kevin

Working Out a Song as Media Project

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I am not sure if this works, but I took a new version of a new song that I shared out last week (which Terry, and Scott, and Simon all remixed into Zeega media productions) and went into Popcorn Maker to make my own media version. I wanted to move away from distinct, concrete images, and instead, shift into something a little more quirky and visual. You may notice (now that I am telling you) that each section of the song has a visual theme, and believe me, that took a while to sync up!

I recorded the song’s music in Garageband app, and then the vocals were layered in via Audacity, and I think it sounds best with headphones, since you can hear some funky stuff going on in the background where I added piano and some vocal layers.

Thanks for listening!

Peace (in the song),
Kevin