Slice of Life: Books

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I am going to add the media element to my Slice of Life posts this week, if I can. I am already using the six word story format on Twitter, with Soundcloud as my accompanying podcasting site. And now, I am tapping into Haiku Deck to create a simple slide, with background image. Upping the ante … not sure if I can sustain it!
This slice is about a conversation I had with my son about walking into a bookstore. He made me feel like an old man.

Peace (in the slice),
Kevin

Hacking Education Week with X-Ray Goggles

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I am going to be leading a Hackathon session with the Western Mass Writing Project in a few weeks and so I wanted to try out (again) how X-Ray Goggles (from Hackasaurus) work as a browser tool to allow you to “hack” websites (basically, you are messing around with the overlay of text and images and making a copy). I was pleased to see that you can now publish your hack right through the tool itself (that will be handy for sharing).

Here is what Education Week looked like before I got busy on it:

Kevin EdWeek Hack1

Here is how it ended up when I was done:

Kevin EdWeek Hack2

So, why hack? Why teach it? Well, it has to do with a form of literacy, right? We remake media messages, deconstruct it and revamp it, and in doing so, we understand the original source even as we are making our own message. This is all about critical thinking, and engagement, and putting creativity into the hands of users — of helping to make the shift from passive consumer of media to creator/remixer of media.

What do you think?

Peace (in the hacking),
Kevin

 

Book Review: Toothiana, Queen of the Tooth Fairy Armies

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http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51cce0UJKbL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

We waited for almost three months for our library to get a copy of the third book in The Guardians of Childhood series. This one is called Toothiana, Queen of the Tooth Fairy Armies, and like the other books in the series by William Joyce (who is developing a cross-platform franchise for The Guardian idea: books, movies, games), it has its up and downs.

The story revolves around the continuing development of the team of Guardians (which include Nicholas St. North and Bunnymund and Oombric the wizard, along with Nightlight the boy of pure energy and light, and the Man in the Moon) and their attempt to rid the world of Pitch, the king of nightmares who feeds on the bad dreams of children. A main human character, the orphan Katherine, gives the stories a childlike wonder and point of view, as she is part of the Guardians and sees more than evil in Pitch.

(Note: my son and I are reading the series together. Well, I am reading it out loud. He’s an active listener.)

Here, we meet Toothiana, and her origin story was the most interesting part of the novel, although she does not make an appearance until almost halfway through the novel. I won’t give it away but it involves a monkey king, a ruby box of magical teeth, a flying elephant, and tragedy. She also looks like no other tooth fairy you’ve seen before. Joyce depicts her as a beautiful warrior, armed to the teeth, and ready to protect children at any cost. She also has an army of mini-Toothianas that are smaller versions of herself (thus, the army).  In this depiction as a warrior, she fits in perfectly with the other stories, where Joyce has begun reworking our conceptions of idols connecting to holidays.

Even though the writing ebbs and flows (in my opinion), the plot kept us both interested (my son wasn’t all that concerned with the writing, to be honest.) And this book left off with an intriguing cliffhanger in which a mysterious and powerful figure, who may be Mother Nature, enters the fray and steals away Pitch and the human girl, Katherine.

And now, we look forward to the next installment in the saga (not due out until September): The Sandman and the War of Dreams.

Peace (in the magic),
Kevin

Slice of Life in Tweets and Sounds

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It’s day two of Slice of Life. I won’t be sharing my slicing here every day, since I am mostly going to try to use Twitter and Soundcloud as my main platforms, at least at the start. But here is what I wrote this morning, reflecting on how we used Dr. Seuss in class yesterday.


Peace (in the slice),
Kevin

Hanging out at Kirby’s Lane

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I had the good fortune to be asked by blogger Kirby Larsen to “sit” for an interview about my work around teaching video game design in the classroom. Kirby runs a regular feature at her blog in which she features teachers, so I was honored that I was asked. I didn’t realize that I was going to travel down memory lane to my childhood for the first part, but that was fun, and it got me remembering my own sixth grade teacher, Mr. Dudak, again.

Head over to Kirby’s Lane to check out the interview

And thanks to Kirby for thinking of me!

Peace (in the blogging connections),
Kevin

 

Interactive Texts in a Digital Age

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As I wrap up my exploration of interactive fiction, I remembered a presentation I did a few years ago about using mentor texts for digital writing. One element of that was how I helped my students write Make Your Own Adventure stories with a wiki. So, I edited down that presentation, added a few videos, and want to share it out here. I’m thinking there could be a lot of more I could add to it, but maybe I will do that at some later time.

Peace (in the paths),
Kevin

 

Interactive Story App Review: Infinite Canvas

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I am loving that so many visitors here at my blog are leaving comments and suggestions as I explore interactive fiction. Yesterday, Sally suggested I check out Infinite Canvas, an app for the iPad that is built around the concept of an expandable story map, which Scott McCloud has touted as one of the more interesting and creative elements of comics. I did spend some time yesterday, with Infinite Canvas, and I liked it, although I think there is a bit of a steep climb for beginners.

The app reminded me of something I had once thought of in relation to Prezi. I love the canvas element of Prezi, where you can see the whole presentation from above and build it out. But I always wanted to be able to vary the paths of users of a presentation. Unfortunately, there is only one path in Prezi (as far as I can tell). Infinite Canvas addresses that by allowing a creator to set up multiple paths for exploration of images, audio, video and text. Think of it like a massive blank wall, and you are putting post-its up there, and then creating opportunities for connecting those post-its together in a myriad of ways. That’s the idea here.

The interactive part is that you could create a project with multiple paths, and let the viewer/reader/player make decisions that brings you along various paths of a story. You could even created “squares” in which slightly different elements of the same scene reconnect back with each other, sort of like alternative realities. Infinite Canvas allows you to import images and record audio narration right in the app, as well as text layers. Once I got the hang of the app, I was fine. But even with the tutorial (which is nicely done), it took me a while to get my head around what I was doing. There are a lot of tools built into the app, and it wasn’t always intuitive on where to go to do what I wanted to do. (Which might be an issue if you were to use this app with students. Or not. They might just dive in and figure it out easily enough).

And I have not yet figured out the best way to share a story from Infinite Canvas to a general audience (such as you). The app is free and you can create basic 12-frame stories (and download stories from its library), there is an upgrade of $2.99 per story to expand the tools and how to share it (with Dropbox, it seems). With the free version, you can share it to yourself via iTunes. But I think the files are in a certain format that is not universal, so I am not sure how you share it out unless the reader has the app. I need to check this out more.

Ultimately, Infinite Canvas does an interesting job of showing a different way to create a story, and it connects nicely to my inquiry around interactive fiction and technology. I appreciate that Sally suggested it.

Peace (along the canvas),
Kevin
PS — here are the developers, talking about the app.

 

Come Join the Slice of Life Challenge

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Tomorrow, I will be beginning what seems to be my sixth year participating in the Slice of Life Challenge with my friends, Ruth and Stacey, at Two Writing Teachers. I was going to go into the history of why I participate in the Slice of Life (which is a generalized idea of looking at some moment of your day through a reflective lens and then sharing that writing out) when I remembered that I had done a podcast about that every point three years ago.


 

This year, I aim to do something a little different, moving beyond just blog posts (which work great). I am going to attempt to use Twitter and Google-Plus and other various forms of media to do my slicing this year, making a shift as a writer across various platforms. In the past, I have often added video and audio from time to time. But I am wondering how my views of the world will change.

And I invite you to join us, too. Information about Slice of Life (both the individual writing challenge — which is to try to write a slice every day in March — and the new classroom challenge — getting students involved) is available at Two Writing Teachers. But really, it’s easy. You write at your own writing space (blog, etc.). Each day, you leave the link to your post at Two Writing Teachers. (There are even prizes). And we hope you follow a few links to other folks writing, and add comments. (This year, there is even a Slice of Life support team.) It’s as much as about the writing as it is about the sense of being part of a larger community of teacher/writers. If you are on Twitter, use the hashtag #slice2013 to share out your pieces, too. (I am going to try to storify the tweets.)

So, I know March has not yet started but here is my first pre-Slice of Life tweet. I am starting off with a six-word-memoir format on Twitter.

Peace (in the writing),
Kevin

 

 

The iAnthology Prompt: A Fake Awards Ceremony

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This week, my friend Janet is host to our weekly writing prompt at our iAnthology writing space (where National Writing Project teachers hang out and write). She suggested we create fake acceptance speeches for awards. I decided to go the funny route, using Voki to accept an award for most blog posts in a single day (I do write a lot, I know).

Thanks, Janet, for the great prompt. And while I am not a big fan of Voki, it worked for what I wanted for this prompt.

Peace (in the words),
Kevin