It’s Whitman Wednesday, in which folks share out words of the American poet, Walt Whitman. I decided to use the Visual Poetry site to paint with some of Whitman’s words.
Peace (find your place),
Kevin
Category Archives: CLMOOC
Getting Zeega-ed On It: I Am The Stamp
The other day, I shared a demo audio file of the song, I Am The Stamp. Since then, Ron has added keyboards and some vocals, and then Wendy added in some vocals, too. The song is a remix of a poem by Wendy for CLMOOC’s Postcard Project. I took our version of the song of I Am The Stamp for a little walk into Zeega and created this media version.
Peace (across the world),
Kevin
I Am The Stamp: A #CLMOOC Poem Becomes Song
One of my favorite post-CLMOOC (Connected Learning MOOC) connections is the Postcard Project. I’ve written about it before. Last week, Wendy Taleo wrote a very interesting poem, after “reading” the stamps on the postcards making their way to Australia.
I wasn’t the only one who wondered of Wendy’s poem could be remixed into a song. Ron L., one of my regular musical companions and gifted artist, also had the same idea. So I took a chance at it, and boy, it was a bit more difficult than I thought. Mainly, I had some struggles because they were Wendy’s words. I didn’t want to change what she wrote too much ( I did ask her permission to remix and she graciously gave me the go-ahead, noting too that all of her material is Creative Common licensed.) I tinkered with words and phrases.
The final paper had lots more of those scratches. The difficulty was finding rhyme and rhythm to my guitar part, while still maintaining the Wendy-vibe of the poem. The result was a chorus that I wrote, and then a sort of Dylan-like singing of the verses to make them fit into the structure. Some parts work better than others, as song, in my opinion, and I wish it all worked better than it did.
I told Wendy and Ron I would try to make a demo of whatever I came up with. Here it is:
Still, despite my own “hearing what could have been better in my recording,” I love the concept of a song for the stamps on the postcards that we send, and the personification of the object as it travels through the world, bringing words and stories and art to each of us in the mix.
Thanks, Wendy!
Peace (sing it loud),
Kevin
Ways to Stay Connected in the #CLMOOC Universe
As part of the final newsletter of CLMOOC 2016, we compiled a list of ways for folks in CLMOOC (even on the periphery) to remain connected throughout the year, and beyond the summer. I wanted to share that list here.
Throughout the Year – There are many ways to stay engaged with CLMOOC’s connected community and beyond. Here are a few options to consider to remain active and connected with the people and the spirit of CLMOOC as summer fades away:
- Remain active on social media (Twitter, G+, Facebook, Instagram).
- Curate an eportfolio or a make log of the work you completed this summer.
- Join the ongoing postcard project.
- Peruse the Make Bank. Reuse or remix an idea in your own learning environment or consider adding a make, an example, or a tutorial.
- Participate in Kim Douillard’s photo challenges and #silentsundays (when you post an image to a CLMOOC community with no context text)
- Continue the #WhitmanWednesday of sharing out quotes from Walt Whitman or the #ThoreauThursday or invent your own with some more diverse poets
- Form an interest group on G+, FB, Slack, Voxer or some other space concerning a shared purpose.
- Come back to The Daily Connect for ideas and connections (Here is a random post generator.)
- The Daily Connect is a riff off The Daily Create, a daily prompt for creativity from the fertile and collective minds of DS106. (And a further offshoot is The Daily Stillness — prompts for meditation and thinking).
- Engage in continued “Curiosity Conversations” by interviewing someone.
- Take part in the National Writing Project’s Letters to the Next President project.
- Plan your own Pop Up Make Cycle (see example by Joe and Terry) or cMOOC experience (and if you do, let us know so we can spread the word).
- Join the CLMOOC Kiva micro-lending team, and “make a difference” in the world with small donations to worthy projects.
- Be part of the Goodreads CLMOOC Reading Club. We may try to read a book together this year.
- Join the CLMOOC group on Flickr.
- Get a CLMOOC Badge for your participation and collaboration.
- The iAnthology is a writing space for NWP-affiliated educators. (If you are in the CLMOOC, you are affiliated with NWP, as far as iAnthology is concerned.) There are weekly writing (facilitated by Kevin) and photo prompts (hosted by Kim).
- Margaret Simons (a CLMOOC alumni) hosts DigiLit Sundays at her blog, where she and others offer up ideas around digital literacies and invite readers to share information.
- Host a CLMOOC Flash Mob. Or CLMOOC Dance Party. Or CLMOOC Flash Mob Dance Party.
- Scott Glass’s weekly #edjoy posting – join and post your #edjoys!
- Consider joining another connectivist MOOC, such as Rhizomatic Learning, Humanmooc, DigPed, DS106, MOOC MOOC, Learning Resilience, etc.
- Join the #literacies chat for all things contemporary composition and communication!
- Digital Writing Month often happens in November but may not take place this year. Look for a #CLMOOC Pop-Up as possible replacement
- The 4T Virtual Conference on Digital Writing is free and online and happens a few times a year. The next one is in October, and some CLMOOCers are presenters.
- Keep an eye out for a potential CLMOOC 2017. We don’t yet know what will happen with CLMOOC but we’ll be sure to get the word out when we do.
Peace (is stronger with all of us),
Kevin
Appreciate the Unexpected: Haiku Call/Response
Sunday morning. I see my friend Ray is sharing a haiku. It’s about jazz. I can’t resist. I riff off his poem, make my own and send it out. It starts there and then expands into something wonderful: a day of writing and sharing haiku.
I tried to curate the many strands as best as I could here:
Peace (words matter),
Kevin
An Embeddable Experiment: NowComment
Six Countries … 30 Postcards … Many Connections
I spent part of my day yesterday, working on completing another round of CLMOOC postcards. This one has a sort of secret gift involved, so I won’t say much about the content of my postcards. But I mailed out 30 postcards (along an old picture book theme), and noticed that I had SIX different countries as destination points. That’s pretty darn cool (if a bit expensive … but worth it!).
I keep wondering of the postmaster at our small neighborhood Post Office is finally going to break down and say all right … what’s up with all of these postcards you keep sending out? But he remains curiously impassive.
Learn more about the CLMOOC Postcard Project at the CLMOOC Make Bank.
Peace (it’s in the post),
Kevin
Getting Fused: Blending Images and Making Art
I’m enjoying a new app that my friend, Simon, shared with the CLMOOC community. It’s called Fused and it allows you to blend together images (and maybe blending videos on images? I need to explore that but I think Simon did it).
We have a postcard project going in CLMOOC, too, and this week, I received two different postcards on two different days (a total four postcards in three days!). I tried the blending technique with Fused to pull together the pair of postcards on each day, and the result is pretty lovely.
This is from postcards that arrived from Karen and Stephanie
This is from postcards that arrived Scott and Kim
Peace (in the post),
Kevin
And Then … They Danced
Sometimes, a crazy idea becomes the thing that actually gets done. A few weeks back, I had first jokingly commented on something that Wendy Taleo had written for CLMOOC that we should have a Dance Party. Then, I wondered: COULD we pull off a virtual CLMOOC Flash Mob Dance Party? How would we do THAT?
And so it came to be. First, some of us went into Soundtrap, a collaborative music platform, to create a music track. Then, we invited people to create dancing videos, of themselves or other things (or animals) and they did. We then asked them to upload the videos into a Google folder, and they did.
See? That’s the beauty of a network like CLMOOC. You try an experiment and lots of people are open to participate. Wendy and I were open about the fact that we neither knew exactly what we were doing nor how we would pull it off. Folks still danced and still participated.
Although we explored the possibility of collaborative video editing, in the end Wendy took on the task of editing the pieces together into a dance mob. I just love the video for the zaniness and happiness of it, and for the fact that we all pulled it off in time to get it at the top of the Make Cycle 3 newsletter. (Sorry if you didn’t get your video in on time … We can still revise)
Peace (put on yer dancing shoes),
Kevin
Unfolding A Musical Conversation
My friend, Karon B., and I have been playing around with different musical compositional tools. In tinkering with a site called Flat, we found we could collaborate together. So I started a “sort of” conversation (the words are mine) and invited Karon to “harmonize” with me in counterpoint. Kind of interesting to see two people collaborate on single music document, envisioning it as a thematic conversation, albeit a short one. (She had already been doing similar explorations with Twitter streams for CLMOOC).
Take a listen (and know we just used pre-set instrument voices from the site):
Peace (and harmony),
Kevin