Category Archives: CLMOOC

Musical Landscapes: Cue the Queue (Song Four)

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I am immersing myself in making music, and found myself connected to the idea of a musical landscape, a musical map of ideas expressed not in latitude and longitude, but in sound, melody and rhythm.  This project connects back to this month’s Pop-Up Make Cycle with the CLMOOC.

I have already shared out three pieces:

This fourth piece, entitled Cue the Queue, is inspired by the bird talk I heard while walking our dog, Duke. A flock of somethings were chattering up in the pine trees of the front drive. When we walked close, the entire tree went silent. As we wandered past, the chatter started up again. I imagined one lead bird, with baton, queuing them up. Meanwhile, the beat is that of the dog and I, walking away.

Listen to Cue the Queue

Thanks for taking the time to pay attention.

Peace (in the quiet),
Kevin

Musical Landscapes: Under Each Leaf (Song Three)

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I am immersing myself in making music, and found myself connected to the idea of a musical landscape, a musical map of ideas expressed not in latitude and longitude, but in sound, melody and rhythm.  This project connects back to this month’s Pop-Up Make Cycle with the CLMOOC.

I have already shared out two pieces:

This third piece, Under Each Leaf,  is inspired by what the title says. I was looking under a certain leaf in our yard as I was doing some raking, and found bugs and critters all beginning to settle in for the cold, as if the leaf were a blanket of some kind.

Take a listen to Under Each Leaf.

Thanks for taking the time to lend your ears.

Peace (under us),
Kevin

Musical Landscapes: Busy in the Trees (Song Two)

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I am immersing myself in making music, and found myself connected to the idea of a musical landscape, a musical map of ideas expressed not in latitude and longitude, but in sound, melody and rhythm.  This project connects back to this month’s Pop-Up Make Cycle with the CLMOOC.

Yesterday, I shared out the first piece, entitled Interlocking Parts.

This one, Busy in the Trees, is inspired by the way the squirrels and other small animals dance and jump and cruise through the trees of our yard. It’s a circus act of sorts. The last note of sustain is the tree branch slowly going back to static mode after the last leap of the squirrels.

Take a listen to Busy in the Trees.

Thanks for taking the time to listen.

Peace (sounds like),
Kevin

Musical Landscapes: Interlocking Parts (Song One)

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The other day, I immersed myself in making music, and found myself connected to the idea of a musical landscape, a musical map of ideas expressed not in latitude and longitude, but in sound, melody and rhythm.  This project connects back to this month’s Pop-Up Make Cycle with the CLMOOC.

Over the coming days, I am going to share out the short musical pieces that I created and then, I hope to figure out a way to map the sounds into a landscape of some sort. Most of the songs (all very short, by the way) will be inspired by something I have seen or noticed in the natural world.

The first track here is called Interlocking Parts.

It was inspired, in part, by a particular tree whose branches are folding in on itself. Many are now fused together, interlocking with the other. I thought the tree was interesting, and reminded me of how melody lines can intertwine with others.

Thanks for taking the time to listen …

Peace (on the map),
Kevin

Pinning Class Books on the Map

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Mapping Books

My sixth graders have just finished a novel in which a character is sending postcards and letters and more from her travels around the world. I want to show my students how to use Google Maps for constructing maps of information. As a sampler, I began making a map of locations related to some of the class novels we will be reading this year.

This also nicely connects to the Mapvember theme of a CLMOOC Pop-Up Make Cycle. Come join in. Make maps!

I think my students will enjoy the making of maps within their Google Accounts, once they get comfortable with how to do so and with the different visual aspects of icons, images, etc. What I would like to also do is teach them how to use the different elements of mapping (such as distance calculation, connector lines/points, and more). And also, I’d like them to learn how to move the code from Maps into Google Earth.

Take a look at my book map so far …

Or check out the embedded version:

Different layers, different complexities.

I’ll share some student maps in the coming days …

Peace (mapped and known),
Kevin

Getting Playful at the City Museum

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City Museum, St. Louis

Some museums are designed to places of playful learning. Some, teach you. No museum that I have gone to is quite like the City Museum of St. Louis (where we are attending a National Writing Project conference). The City Museum is like some Alice in Wonderland, brought into an old building and the only way you experience it is by following the unmarked paths, and getting lost for a bit.

You’ll come across dark caverns, a ten-story slide, more smaller slides than you can fathom, unlit tunnels, myriad nooks and crannies, displays of bizarre artifacts, a human hamster wheel, an airplane connected to the outside roof of the building, a tunnel of mirrors, a huge pencil for balancing upon, and so much more. Oh, there’s also a circus that performs daily. And a small train for little kids.

City Museum, St. LouisIt’s dazzling, disorientating and all designed for play and exploration. Sort makes me think of CLMOOC and its ethos of immersive learning.

City Museum, St. Louis

And what it also makes me think of how to design a physical space for play, and how to imagine a museum of sorts that pushes the boundaries of what we expect from such a space. There are museums of discovery, and then there is the City Museum. It was a fantastic way to cap our last full day here in St. Louis.

Peace (twisted and turning),
Kevin

Slice of Life: Maps in the Mailbox

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(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write on Tuesdays about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)

In the Connected Learning MOOC (CLMOOC) this month, we’re centering on the theme of maps, in all sorts of ways. Geographical maps. Game maps. Learning maps. Systems maps. Imaginary maps. It’s all connected to the idea of #Mapvember, and the way we can visualize the known and unknown worlds.

As part of our monthly CLMOOC postcard project (where about 70 of us have signed up to send postcards to each other from time to time, either one postcard a month or season or year, or more, if you are so inspired), the theme is also mapping. I found these very cool postcards called Map of the Heavens, which are elaborate celestial maps from a museum collection that are just fascinating to look at.

Map Postcards for Mapvember

Yesterday, I popped a dozen postcards into the mailbox, sending my maps (and my text on the postcard was a compass map of my writing life) to places in the United States and way beyond (Scotland, Australia, Canada, etc.)

I love this way of connecting throughout the year, beyond the traditional CLMOOC Summers.

Peace (find your way),
Kevin

On the Cartographer’s Map (A Digital Poem)

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We’re diving into maps and mapping in CLMOOC this month for a Pop-Up Make Cycle, and I was remembering a poem I had written about mapping. I had to dig around for it, and then read my own reflections that I had written the poem after taking care of my son who was sick with fever, and watching him push and pull at his blankets. The blanket was a map, I had imagined, and this poem came from there. To be honest, I now have trouble connecting the poem to that memory. But I think the poem stands on its own, particularly in this digital format, with images and text and music.

Peace (beyond the lines),
Kevin

Mapping the Internet: The Digital World Made Visual

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Internet Mapping Students

As part of our Digital Lives unit, I tapped into a project by Kevin Kelly to have my sixth graders visualize and map out their relationship and understanding of the Internet and technology. Kelly’s Internet Mapping Project, started years ago, offers an interesting glimpse into how we see the wired world around us, and where we situate ourselves. Part of the visual prompt is find your home.

This also dovetails with the theme of mapping in the #CLMOOC Mapvember Pop-Up Make Cycle theme now underway. Come make maps with us!

My students were no different. What was just as interesting was getting them to write a reflection on their Map of the Internet, digging into the ways that technology both expands and contracts their experiences as adolescents.

Kelly still invites folks to make their Maps, although I am not sure if he is adding new ones to the collection. You don’t need Kelly to do this. Use that Internet you’ll be conceptualizing and mapping to share out with us. You can download the PDF and also view the gallery of Maps.

Peace (mapped and charted),
Kevin