Stories Inside the Web: If Owners Oversaw the Front Page

Over at DS106 this week, the theme is telling stories “inside the web,” using tools such as Mozilla’s XRay Goggles to remix websites and retell the news or information. I decided to take three newspapers and tilt the front page towards the owners, sprinkling in news and product names as if the newspapers are being used to promote products or personality. Of course, editors would never do this (right? right?) but I can remember when I worked at a newspaper, there would be some reporters and headlines editors who would discretely work in phrases and keywords into stories and headlines just for the fun of it.

So, here are my three front page hacks of The Washington Post (owned by Jeff Bezos, of Amazon), The Boston Globe (owned by John Henry, of the Boston Red Sox), and The Wall Street Journal (owned by Rupert Murdoch, of everything related to news in all corners of the world, apparently). I find this kind of media criticism interesting, and fun, and love that I can superimpose text right on top of the real websites (I suppose they wouldn’t agree, but hey …)

News Amazon Post

News Globe Henry

News WallStreet Murdoch

What newspaper would you hack?

Peace (in the goggles),
Kevin

On the (DS106) Radio: Hack the World

On Tuesday night, the collaborative radio show venture that I was part of — The Merry Hacksters — had a premiere on DS106 Radio. I represented our group during the chat with Alan Levine and Christina Hendricks. The collaborative experience was interesting, to say the least, as we worked almost exclusively off Google Docs, Twitter and Dropbox to gather ideas, share audio files and make suggestions for the show’s sequence. We never “talked” to one another, as some other groups did with Google Hangouts, etc. This project evolved over about four weeks of time, starting with an idea I had during the initial brainstorming of building off my summer experiences in Teach the Web and the Making Learning Connected MOOC, both of which honored the ethos of the hack.

It was an honor and a pleasure to work with Sally, Stefani and Lara on our Headless DS106 radio program, which we call Hack the World. My colleagues allowed me the privilege to edit the show together, stitching our voices and files into one program. I hope I did them all justice. Our theme was to explore the concept of hacking as a positive tool for change, and so, the segments include:

  • An interview collage with Chris Lawrence and Laura Hillinger from the Mozilla Foundation on their Webmaker tools;
  • An interview with young students on using Minecraft and perceptions of hacking and remixing;
  • A piece about toy hacking, tinkering and ways to rediscover childhood curiosity with Stephanie West-Puckett;
  • A feature on a German archivist discovering materials from the past and rethinking their importance;
  • A listen into my classroom as my sixth graders hack the game of chess to create something new;
  • Assorted radio bumpers and commercials.

merry-hacksters

The Merry Hacksters are Kevin (@dogtrax), Lara (@raccooncity), Stefanie (@StefanieJ2), and Sally (@swilson416)

Here are the audio files that Alan and Christina shared:

Pre Show Discussion
“Hack The World” (22:53)

Post Show Discussion

We will also be making most of the individual audio files available for folks, too, if you just want to hear a piece or want to remix the entire show in your own way. We hope that sharing will be in the spirit of our own work. Go forth and hack the world!

Peace (and remix),
Kevin

The Merry Hacksters Radio Show Teaser

Merry Hacksters Title DS06
I’ve been working with three other folks on creating a collaborative radio show for DS106. Our name is The Merry Hacksters and our 25 minute show is about hacking and remixing in the world, for good. We have pieces about toy and game hacking, a view of Minecraft and remixing from a kid viewpoint, how hacking tools can help social change, and hacking of historical archives. There’s a lot of great stuff in the show (if I don’t mind saying so myself), which gets its official release on Tuesday when DS106 has a release party of sorts.

But I made this short audio teaser this morning, capturing some of the sounds from the show.

 

Peace (in the listening),
Kevin

 

Animated Gif Text: Stuck on the Page

I am tinkering with an software program called, eh, LICEcap that allows you to create animated gifs for screenshots. I hosted the animated gif in Flickr, but to share the animated version from there, you have to navigate to “all sizes” and copy/share the original. A typical embed in Flickr doesn’t do the trick.

And on behalf of the National Day on Writing, I created this:

Thanks to Doug Belshaw for sharing this one out in his newsletter.

Peace (in the writing),
Kevin

Hacking Education Week: Connected Educator Month Satire

Ed Week Hack Connected Ed Month
Over at DS106, the Daily Create the other day was to create a fake news story in the vein of The Onion., with satire dripping off the page. How could I resist that? I decided to poke fun at Connected Educator Month, particularly with the idea of technology and what seems to be an overabundance of commercial/advertising tweets now in my Twitter stream for #ce13 (the hashtag for Connected Educator Month) each day.

I used Mozilla’s xRay Goggles to hack the front page of Educational Week, using the text from the Daily Create prompt for one story and then concocting a few more (including recess for teachers!).

As you can tell, I have mixed feelings about Connected Educator Month. On one hand, it is a fantastic way to create awareness about the power of networks, sharing and connecting beyond the walls of your school. There’s real power and authenticity in those experiences, in my opinion. On the other hand, it seems like commercial ventures see the Connected Educator Month as a way to target teachers for their wares. I just went through my Twitter followers and removed about 15 to 20 accounts that were pure business ventures trying to sell lesson plans, interactive boards, technology solutions, etc. That rubs me the wrong way.

Thus, the hack.

Peace (in finding balance),
Kevin

 

A MishMash of Story (featuring animated crayons)

Tapestry, which is a neat online and app tool that allows you to create “tap-able” stories, just released a new tool called HieroGlyphy yesterday that me intrigued. You can now embed animated .gifs into the story itself. I adapted a #25wordstory of mine that I posted on Twitter earlier this week and used the new tool to create this story (so, it combines Twitter, animated .gifs and Tapestry — thus, the mishmash). I’m still tinkering with the tool (and note to teachers: the .gifs in the Tapestry library may not be appropriate for kids). I don’t know if you can upload your own .gifs (I don’t think so).

And this morning, after Washington reached their 11th hour agreement, I wrote this one:

Peace (in the mishmash),
Kevin

 

Of Big Nose Bears, Colorful Nodes and Authentically Inauthentic Radio

da Bear for the Daily Create
This week, at DS106 Headless Course, I’ve been a little less active publicly and more active behind the scenes. Let me explain. I feel like I let more Daily Creates float by this week, given a hectic week at school and life. Now that the Daily Create idea is part of my daily cycle, not doing them feels odd, as if something interesting is missing from my day.

Yet, life goes on …

As you can see from above, I did have some fun with the prompt the other day around creating an existential moose or bear. I used an online drawing site called PicassoHead. I think the nose is really a head. But I loved the enlarged nose. Don’t you? I made the nose large but then everything else really small, thinking of size as a design tool. The result is still a bear but one who needs a tissue or something.

Below is yesterday’s Daily Create, in which we were asked to visualize the Internet. I rushed this one, but perhaps it is because Connected Educator Month is underway that I thought of the various nodes of people and networks that connect. Unfortunately, th threads between the nodes are invisible (use your imagination!) because I ran out of time. Still, the last minute texts say a lot about how I conceive the dispersion of our ideas across various communities and networks. I just don’t know if the Internet is as colorful as mine, nor as circular.

Internet Nodes and Us

There was a neat writing prompt, too, the other day, in which we were told to write a story with narrative gaps in it. It was a twist on the old “dark and stormy night” idea. That act of leaving space in the story was pretty interesting. You had to design flagpoles of ideas, and even I don’t know what happened in the middle of this story, but I am curious.

It began as a bright and sunny day

… to which she replied, “I’m going. Are you coming with me?” Her words made me think about the last time she had asked that question ….

Later, I wondered where everyone had gone.

.. and yet, the night came on strong, dark and stormy and full of the kinds of twists and turns you expect out of a dime store pulp novel.

Finally, the behind-the-scenes work has been around our collaborative radio show project underway. I am part of The Merry Hacksters team, creating a program about hacking, remixing and digital literacies. We’re online partners, which both makes it easy and difficult to collaborate. I finished up a piece with two friends from the Mozilla Foundation this week and then worked to create a fake commercial for the program about a device that … well, I don’t want to say yet. I had more fun with the fake commercial than I should admit.

Here is the disclosure at the end of the commercial, in which I speeded up my voice to make it sound “authentically inauthentic”:

Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin

 

 

What It Looks Like When We Hack Chess

hack chess collage 2013
My sixth graders have been working in collaborative groups to hack the game of chess, with new pieces and new rules on how to play. I’ll share more later as part of a larger collaborative DS106 radio project but this collage nicely captures some of the work they are doing to invent new board games out of traditional ideas.

Peace (in the hack),
Kevin

 

Visual and Audio Autumn Haiku

One of this week’s Daily Create assignments for DS106 was to write a haiku about Autumn. Well, Autumn has kicked into full gear here in New England, and the day I wrote this one was the blustery kind of day that even Pooh and Piglet would recognize.

Winds begin to kick –
I crouch and dart between rain
drops from the dark sky

I decided to take the haiku and add a visual element to it, as part of the exploration around design. I have an app on my iPad called Visual Poetry, which I like for short poems. It gets too busy for longer ones and may even be a bit busy for this one. You decide. But I like how the words and phrases wrap around the poem itself.
Autumn haiku for Daily Create

And of course, poetry should be heard, too.

Peace (in the poem),
Kevin

 

Life is Beautiful: A Tapestry Story

Tapestry is a lovely site for making digital stories. When we talk about the power of minimal design, what I like about Tapestry is the simplicity of the storytelling, for both the writer and for the reader. The ability to set up “taps” creates a certain rhythm of the story. The simple fonts and background options at first seem limiting but then you realize how powerful that can be not to worry about bells and whistles, and instead, focus on the story itself. I am taking part in a storytelling contest Tapestry is launching, with stories on the theme of “Life is Beautiful.”
Here is what I created:

What makes life beautiful for you?
Peace (in reflection),
Kevin

By the way, I could not find a space on Tapestry for citing where the images came from, so I will do that here. All images are part of Flickr’s Creative Commons library:

Thanks to all of them for creating such great images.