Category Archives: ds106

Spoof Documentary Intro: The Connected Country

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Connected Country Spoof
(Created with Mozilla’s XRay Goggles)
Yesterday’s Daily Create for DS106 asked us to “Write an intro for a documentary on culture and traditions of a fictional country.” Since we are kneedeep into Connected Educator Month, I thought I would amuse myself (at least) with a spoof intro for a fake documentary about The Connected Country, and the search for the Most Connected Person in the World.

Here is what I wrote:

In this geographically distant yet technologically connected land, people find themselves drawn to each other by shared interests and expertise. Perhaps it is the hyperlink tattoos that adorn their foreheads or the hashtags each inhabitant wears on their left and right cheeks, but this land is a wondrous place of connections. Here, friends lend a hand or share an idea with strangers. Neighbors offer refuge to the confused who wander in from the outlands of the greater world. Everyone is looked after. There is trust here in this Connected Country. There is a sense that all of the residents here are in this life together, learning as they go along and sharing their learning without trepidation. Notice how each inhabitant wears a sharp-looking vest with multiple pockets. Each pocket contains a different mobile device, tuned to a different interest channel. At night, when the specially-designed lights of the Connected Country are turned on, one can literally visualize the threads that connect each person to the others. The colored webs are another indication of the tapestry of their lives. It is here that we begin our journey to find the Most Connected Person in the World. Come join us as we venture into the Connected Country.

And here is the podcast I created for it:

 

Peace (in the land),
Kevin

 

Top 10 Ways to Document Learning (presented with humor)

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The other day, the Daily Create asked us to list 20 ways that we document our learning. Sure, I could have gone the serious route. But … I didn’t. So, here using Haiku Deck as a way to connect to themes of “design practice” this week at DS106, is my Top Ten Ways to Document Learning.

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad
Peace (with your dog, cat, smoke signals and talking drum … preferably all at once),
Kevin

Film Summary in Four Icons

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Cloudy with Meatballs 2

One of this week’s assignments at DS106 this week is to summarize a movie, using only four visual icons. Since I went to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 with my son, the movie was on my mind. Finding four symbols to summarize a movie is difficult. You leave a lot out, and context is everything. I suspect if I did not tell you which movie I was summarizing, you would have difficulty figuring it out (although if you saw it, the burger might give it away).

Since I “borrowed” these images online, here are the links to where I got them: the burger, the island, the inventor, the friends.

Peace (in symbolic thought),
Kevin

Early Morning Photoblitz/Learning Walk

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Photoblitz for #ds106
Some folks at DS106 were posting the results of an assignment called a “photoblitz,” but I recognized it as our “learning walk” idea from the Making Learning Connected MOOC. In either case, the idea is the same: take your camera for a walk and collect photos of what you are seeing.

I went out early yesterday morning to our front yard, and used as best a photographer’s eye as I could to capture the world in that confined space. I realized that as autumn comes to New England, there are still plenty of colors hanging around, even after the rather cold nights. That became a theme of some of the photos. Others, I was searching for another way of looking at something common and familiar.

I pulled nine photos from my photoblitz into this iPad collage app.

Peace (in the pics),
Kevin

All in for Audio at DS106

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Headless Legos
What have I been up to this past week with the Headless DS106? Other than watching my son create freeze-frame zombie scenes all around the first floor of our house with his Lego collection (Seriously, they are everywhere, and none of them have heads right now, and they all look like they are about to start marching …)

I am helping to facilitate a “DS106 Radio Show” team on the theme of hacking and disruption with technology. We are The Merry Hacksters and I am hoping we can pull it all together. The folks on the team joined in Google Docs, and we have a working document underway, and our show will eventually be about 20 minutes long.

I created this comic as a title icon, but I don’t know if the others like it.
Merry Hacksters Title DS06
And I am planning two podcast segments. The first involved my sixth grade classroom, and I worked on that for a few days this week. I had my students “hacking the game of chess” as I walked around with my voice recorder to capture a “sound story” of their creativity in bloom, and discussions underway. I then recorded a voice-over, with the kids mix as my background track, ending with a short bit of just listening to the students. Here is a little teaser of the sound story element.

Meanwhile, I am asking two folks from Mozilla Foundation (Chris Lawrence and Laura Hilliger) to answer a few questions about the push towards more tools for students to remix the Web, and why that is important. We had started to talk about hosting a Skype session, but logistics and distance got in the way, so they agreed to record their answers and send me the mp3, and I will go about mixing it together.

Speaking of audio, I am working on a few podcasts for a new blogging project I am involved in, which I will explain later in October. And I worked on a short rap for the Headless Course, just for fun.

I did a few Daily Creates, too, including writing about a quiet space (always a good prompt) and capturing a transformation in time-lapse. I admitted to breaking the rules (which is OK with DS106) but bringing back a stopmotion video my son and I had done with a piece of clay that transforms into a man, and a dog (that was his idea and it was a great idea).

Peace (in the stories),
Kevin

Gone Headless — The Rap

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http://rlv.zcache.com/headless_icon_photo_cards-r1b359cc8e9ae4b43897f360417a2a7c8_vgjpz_8byvr_324.jpg

Someone over in DS106 had created a rap for the Headless Course a few weeks ago, and I decided to give it a try, too. I’ve made the audio file of the Gone Headless song shareable and downloadable, so feel free to remix it and mess with it and do what you want with it. Can I just say that working in the phrase “tech ambidextrous” to rhyme with “go headless” was a triumphant moment for me?

🙂

Here are the lyrics:

If you wanna play the bass – you can always go fretless
If you wanna create — are you tech ambidextrous?
Something about the Make — that’s always infectious
Here on the web — Come on and go Headless

Write on the screen — the paths are endless
If you wanna get crazy — you can always feel reckless
Take a little chance — you’ll never be friendless
Here on the web — Come on and go Headless

Peace (in the muse),
Kevin

Almost a Rescue: A Story in Sound Effects

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This is another element of the work being done around audio with DS106. The suggestion is to try to tell a story with only audio effects, which is more difficult than it seems. I decided to only use the sounds in Garageband, and what I quickly realized is how limiting that can be. But I stuck with it, and did not go into the project with a story idea. Instead, I let the sounds tell me the story, which soon became a rescue story following some apocalyptic event, a night waiting for help and then … the end stinger sound (it ain’t over yet, bud).

I suspect my story was inspired by bringing my son to see The World’s End yesterday.

🙂

So be it … I’m OK with how the story — Almost a Rescue — came out, and hope your imagination gets fueled by sound.

Peace (in the sounds),
Kevin

 

Remix: Boolean and the Squares

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Boolean and the Squares

My friend, Chad Sansing, created this very neat hackable, remixable Thimble page with Mozilla Webmaker that allows you to create a page for band. Preferrably, a fake band. It’s called the Fake Band Wiki, and so I dabbled with Chad’s code to create this homage to a fake band for a fake comic character from my old comic, Boolean Squared. It’s been a few years now since I have done anything with Boolean and so it was a kick to get him back in my head and imagine that he had a band that was ripping up the music scene.

Check out Boolean and the Squares

What’s interesting to me is that Chad got inspired on this  Webmaker theme from a DS106 project, and so I feel a bit of full circle here, as my friendship with Chad precedes my diving into DS106, and yet I am working on a DS106-inspired project created by Chad. Add in the Teach the Web MOOC from the summer, where we were Thimbling all the place (not to mention the National Writing Project) and …. well … I love all of those connections come together, you know?

And, as with all Webmaker activities, we invite you to remix the web.

Head to Chad’s project, or remix mine, and make your own Fake Band Wiki. When you remix the project (upper right corner of the page, click “remix”), all of Chad’s notes and instructions will be there for you to follow and learn from. It’s fun and engaging, and you create something to share with the world. What more do you want?

🙂

Peace (in the remix),
Kevin

Sound Effects Poem: A Life in Draft

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Draft Poem: A Life in Draft
Let me begin by saying, I had a vision. I had this vision of an assignment over at DS106 around recording and using audio sound effects in which I write a poem about writing and use the sound effects of writing in the poem. At first blush, that seems perfectly do-able, right? I set about recording a pencil writing on paper, an eraser erasing on paper and my fingers dancing over the keyboards. I put my Snowball microphone right next to the paper and the keyboard, and used Audacity to record the sounds. (Note: I used the compression feature in Audacity to broaden out the sound effects)

I wrote the poem (see draft above and final below) and began to record it, interspersing the sounds of the pencil and the eraser and the keyboard into the poem. It worked but I am not happy with it. I don’t know — it seems as if the pencil and eraser are the same damn sound, which opens up an entire conversation around the act of writing and rewriting — and I should have left more gaps in the poem audio. Maybe a distant soundtrack would have helped.

Take a listen:

 

Something is lacking.

However, I also think: the poem is about writing and life always in draft stage, so maybe this audio is in draft stage, too, and I need some distance to think about on it further. I will say that working to add an audio component to an otherwise straight-ahead poetry podcast is interesting, and requires deeper planning than at first blush. Collecting sounds, making sure they sound right (I recorded and re-recorded that darn pencil nine times before I got it where I could live with it), and then seeing the entire project as package of ideas … that’s a lot of thinking going on right there.

I included the image of my draft poem because I felt like it meshed nicely with the theme of the poem itself – of writing and wrestling with ideas. Here is the final:

A Life in Draft

Lines connected by swoop connected by ideas –
Words taking shape here in the rough.
I tough it out to the point
where vague echoes of old words
form the canvas on which
I write.

Pencil marks leaves traces –

The words removed by erasers –
The keyboard; next to nothing,
just pitch-perfect thoughts
read under the illusion of flow

We writers know better, though …

Eraser marks;
Back-key strokes;
Smudged frustrations;
Highlight and replace:

We write, wrestling with the tools.

Even this poem results from the war
of my head and heart
with the inside editor who finds fault,
no matter what I write,
or where,
or with what.

Peace (in the sound of the poem),
Kevin

 

Exploring Audio: Making a Radio Bumper

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Over at DS106, this week’s theme is all about audio. One of the assignments is to create a “radio bumper” for DS106 — a short piece that a DJ would put into a break of the show. Here’s what I came up with. I used Audacity, and the music is a piece I created a few years ago in a site called JamBand.

Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin