Viewing the CLMOOC Constellation Chart

As we start to think about the last Make Cycle at the Making Learning Connected MOOC and begin to reflect on the past Make Cycle with its theme of “light,” I wanted to share out the final Constellation Map that was created with collaboration this week. I opened up the night sky for people to come in, draw constellations and share out origin stories. The result is pretty interesting. I decided to use our own friend, ThingLink, to share the CLMOOC Constellation Map because I could easily layer the stories on the map itself.

Here it is. Lean back on the dewy grass and gaze up at the night sky. Imagine your own stories. Create your own constellations. Play with light and dark, and the way they come together:

Thanks to everyone who participated by playing with the stars and writing a story. It was a blast.

Peace (in the sky),
Kevin

What Light Sounds Like (Turning Image to Audio)

CLMOOC StarChart Complete
Now this is cool … as part of my exploration of audio and light with the Making Learning Connected MOOC this week, I stumbled across the idea of taking an image and converting into an audio file … quite literally. I’ve been trying to find some easy software to do it for my Mac, to no avail, and instead, went to my PC netbook with some freeware called AudioPaint that only works on the PC.

This what it says about the process at the AudioPaint site:

A picture is actually processed as a big frequency / time grid. Each line of the picture is an oscillator, and the taller the picture is, the higher the frequency resolution is. While the vertical position of a pixel determines its frequency, its horizontal position corresponds to its time offset.

I took the collaborative Star Chart that we have been constructing in the CLMOOC and put it through AudioPaint and then moved my way into Audacity. Check out what the file looks like in wave form:

star chart audio wave

Wow, right?

Now, take a “listen” to the image of the CLMOOC Star Map.

OK. I tinkered a bit with the file and added a little narration under the file. Not quite subliminal, but getting there.

🙂

Peace (in the sound of light),
Kevin

 

 

Soundscape Story: From Sunrise to Sunset

Sunrise 2014-07-06 1
I’ve been challenging myself to do something around the theme of “light” this week at the Making Learning Connected MOOC, using only audio to tell a story. I failed at it many times. It turns out that telling a story completely with sounds is pretty difficult, even with the experience I had doing this with DS106 earlier this year. I had one story idea of someone wandering through a dark house, lighting candles. I had another one with an alien invasion. They didn’t work and those stories were abandoned.

Finally, I realized I should stay simple and soulful …. I should create a soundscape story of a day that begins with the light of sunrise and ends with fading into sunset, as told from someone reading a book. The audio becomes the story the reader is reading. I still had troubles here. I struggled with how to represent parts of the day in audio only, and then realized I could use church bells ringing out the hours as a sort of anchor point for the listener.

All the sounds come from Freesound.org, where people openly post and share out sounds they have recorded.  Just know … I didn’t record any of the sounds. I pulled them together in Audacity editing software to produce the story, so I am appreciative of the Freesound users for sharing their sounds with the world. (See list of credits at the end of this post of the audio files I used)

You will hear an odd sound near the end of the story. This was created by someone using a software program that turns a bitmap of an image into audio wave files. The image he used is of the moon. So the sound is of an audio interpretation of a picture of a moon, if that makes sense. I want to dig around for that software program, because I think it has possibilities for storytelling, right?

I can’t say I am completely happy with the results of From Sunrise to Sunset, and I am left wondering: Does the story drag on? Does it capture the splendid beauty of morning as light hits the world? The liveliness of the day as we move about under the sun? The slow settling of the night as the Earth turns away from the sun? Is light even really a theme, here? Or just an artificial storytelling construct? You know, I got questions for myself.

Sunset in Tazacorte

I am making the soundscape story downloadable for anyone to remix, as part of the ethos of the CLMOOC.

Peace (in the story of light coming and light going),
Kevin

Sound Clip Credits:

  • Pages of Book Turning 1 and 2
  • Church Bells ringing at noon and 6
  • Sound of the moon
  • Rooster in the morning
  • Dusk insect sounds
  • Daytime street sounds

Reinventing the Night: A Star Chart/Constellation Collaboration

star chart
With the theme of light this week at the Making Learning Connected MOOC, I have launched an invitation to people to help me create a new set of constellations, and origin stories, in the night sky by opening up four “star charts” that I have created in Google Drawing.

Anyone can come on in and add some star clusters and then write a short origin story. I hadn’t thought about it until Amy did it, but adding the story right into the Google Drawing as a comment makes great sense. I wrote out instructions and the four star charts (north, south, east, west) are open and editable by anyone.

Check out the instructions on how to add to the star charts

Or go to the charts:

You come, too. Add some stars. Make a constellation. Write your story. Collaborate with points of light.

Here is mine:

clmoocius spelledoutius

In the north sky, in mid July of 2014, the giant Makers of the Universe gathered together and noticed that on the small planet below, the Earthians had relied so much on consuming that they had forgotten creating. The Makers of the Universe decided to send a sign to the Earthians, something to help them remember that their hands were designed to make things and their minds were designed to invent things and solve problems, and the #CLMOOC constellation was born. The Makers of the Universe moved the stars into a cluster, confident that with the light of the CLMOOC shining down on the planet, a movement would be born and inspiration would be found. And it was so.

 

Peace (in the sky),
Kevin

Considering Light and Stories

nightsky
The theme for this Make Cycle at the Making Learning Connected MOOC is all about “light” or rather, storytelling with light. It will be interesting to see which direction people will take this idea. The group facilitating the Make Cycle share examples of using Makey Makey, and Squishy Circuits, to make literal lights with stories. It might be the week I finally open up my Squishy Circuit box and see what’s inside. Ditto for Makey Makey.

But I have to admit, what came to mind for me was the idea of the night sky and constellation myths. So I am on the trail to figure out some way to create a collaborative star/constellation map that others in the CLMOOC can contribute to, so that we might collectively create an entirely new night sky full of stars and stories. Admittedly, I don’t know how to do that yet, but I am going to explore some options, and share out. (If you have an idea on how I can pull this off, please leave me a comment.)

This Make Cycle is being planted by a group out of Philly called Maker Jawn.

Maker Jawn experiments with creating replicable, scalable spaces and programs that prioritize the creativity, cultural heritage, and interests of diverse communities, embedded directly within the fabric of the library. We cheer-lead latent enthusiasts by providing resources, tools, and an encouraging space. Programming is geared towards for interest driven projects that develop skills, build persistence, and open up new trajectories. We currently offer daily youth Maker programming in ten libraries across Philadelphia.

Peace (in the light),
Kevin

We Don’t Have the Right Words for What We Do

hackcloud
(word cloud created from G+ discussion referenced below)

I suspect that if I told some of my computer programming friends about what the Making Learning Connected MOOC was up to this past Make Cycle with the “hack your writing” theme, they would get a chuckle, and tell me, “That’s not hacking.” Remixing poetry, shaping odds and ends of writing, moving words into image …. that’s just … writing, right? My computer friends would probably be more narrow in focus, with the act of hacking being working with the code of programs or the inside workings of a computer/network.

Hacking writing?

Check out this discussion that Terry started in our Google Plus community, in which many of us grappled with the terminology of “hacking” and what it is that we were doing. First of all, this kind of rich, thoughtful discussion is exactly why the CLMOOC is so important to us as teachers. Second of all, it surfaces the confusion that many of us teachers and writers and learners are feeling as the idea of composition is in the midst of a pretty sizable shift.

We don’t have the right words yet for what we are doing, and what we are doing when we compose in the digital age, so we reach out for the somewhat familiar. The idea of hacking? While it has come to have negative connotations (black hat hackers), the original concept (white hat hackers) was to tinker and play and make the system run better for everyone. The idea was that when problems arise (with computer networks), the community can solve the problem, collectively, and move the entire technology movement forward. (And of course, there are other meanings — to hack something violently is to chop it up, or the hack worker who does a crappy job at something, or the life hack to make your day run smoother, and more variations of the word than you can shake a dictionary at.)

In some ways, we are slowly returning to this idea of the positive hack (I think/I hope). Look at the Hack for Change movement. You may even have a chapter near you, where programmers, educators, social service agencies, and local government officials spend a weekend identifying problems that need addressing, and then working together as a team to solve them. We have a group in our area, and I have had members come talk to students about what they are doing — about using programming skills and computer know-how for the good of the larger world.

“Hacking” certainly has a cool cache with kids, too. When I tell my sixth graders that we are going to “hack” some websites with Mozilla Webmaker X-Ray Googles, there is a real excitement in the room. They imagine themselves going on some covert operation, dipping into the code of websites, and being a bit nefarious. Of course, I pop their bubble a bit, explaining that we will be hacking websites only through a layer of hack (X-Ray Goggles does not change the original) as a way to understanding some basic coding and to write from a different point of view (such as, revamp the front page of the New York Times and give stories a slanted view of the world – change the lens).

What concepts bubble up when you “hack writing”?

  • Agency of the writer/composer
  • Lens of the reader
  • Word choice/Image choice/Video choice
  • Ownership of content

So, this Make Cycle, I was on the look-out for collective hacks within CLMOOC — ideas that would draw the community into the shared experience, to tap into the groupthink knowledge. I even instigated a comic remix activity that was interesting to watch unfold. I wish there had been more ways to get us to write together, to remix together, to hack together … but I know, too, that being in the midst of the change (such as that which writing/composition is undergoing right now with the digital world)  is like holding on to an umbrella in the midst of the storm — sometimes, it takes all your strength to keep the umbrella from flying away … you don’t have time to offer a dry space to your neighbor.

I write all this inquiry in a positive light, and I am thankful for the facilitators (Mia and Erica) for all that they did to get this Make Cycle in motion and how they nurtured these discussions along the way, in forums and in the Make with Me hangout, Twitter chat and more. We won’t even be able to understand the change unless we get into it and play, and reflect on it. This is the heart of Connected Learning — both the act of trying something new and the connections with colleagues to understand a difficult topic, as well as following our own passions. We may not yet have the right words for what we are doing when we “hack writing” and remix our words, but it is through the “doing” that we can come to better understand the possibilities of what’s ahead of us.

The words will follow …

Sheri created this prezi exploration of “hack” that is worth ending with:

Peace (in the meander),
Kevin

 

Community Hacking: Variations on an Empty Comic

Inspired by all the remixing of Garfield comics, and the back page Caption Contest of the New Yorker magazine, I decided yesterday to remove the dialogue from one of my own webcomics for our Make Cycle around hacking writing for the Making Learning Connected MOOC, and open it up to people to add their own. Call it community hacking.

First, I used this comic, which is part of a series I am doing for the CLMOOC:
Hacking writing

Then, I edited a version in Flickr with the Aviary tool, removing all of the dialogue except for the last line, where the father thinks, “Hack writing?” It made sense to keep this as a sort of “punchline” that everyone could build the comic around.
Hacking writing remix opportunity

I then went into Google Forms (part of Google Drive) and created a very simple form that people could fill out, and added the blank comic as the image. I sent out the links to the form through our CLMOOC network, inviting people to hack my comic, and they did. As dialogue got submitted, I used Aviary again to layer in text and publish the comics, which I then shared out during the day.

Here is what I got (if text is small, you might need to click on image to get the comic larger):
Hacking writing remix 1

Hacking writing remix2

Hacking writing remix3

Hacking writing remix4

Hacking writing remix5

Hacking writing remix6

I’d be remiss not to mention that my friend, Terry, went a step further and created this very fun Dance Party remix with the comic. Love it.

How about you? You can add your own lines to my comic, and then I will publish it.

Peace (in the hack frame),
Kevin

 

Take One Comic. Hack It.

All summer, as part of the Making Learning Connected MOOC, I’ve been dabbling with an comic maker on my app called Rosie (although she has only appeared a few times … I’ve been using other minor characters). This week’s Make Cycle is all about hacking your writing, so I created this comic:
Hacking writing

But I wanted to hack the comic, too, to do something to make it different by laying meaning on top of it. It’s a bit too difficult (although not impossible) to hack the actual comic — I could have emptied out the dialogue boxes, I suppose (which is now sparking an idea for CLMOOC … sort of like that Garfield Minus Garfield site where they remove Garfield, leaving Jon, the man, looking like he is losing his mind. And it turns out there are other variations of the Garfield remix. And then there is the random Garfield generator. And look at this — Square Root Garfield, where people send in ideas to be created. What is with the Garfield remix focus?)

Anyway, I took my original comic and moved it into another comic maker, and added some snarky commenting from another set of comic characters (well, me, as in my avatar), giving it a sort of meta-comic look.

Hacking_Hacking_Writing_Comic

Does it work as a comic? I suppose. As a writing hack? Yeah, it does. I think.

Peace (in the frames),
Kevin

 

Having Fun Hacking Notebooks

WMWP Paper Circuitry

We had a blast yesterday as our Western Massachusetts Writing Project Summer Institute took part in Hack Your Notebook Day. I was the facilitator of our WMWP session but the educators in our institute were the Makers, and Make they did. Using paper circuitry, they illuminated poems, short prose, scientific ideas and even more with LED sticker lights, conductive copper tape and a round watch battery to give their writing power.

At the end of the two hour session, I asked them to move into a reflective stage. How,  I wondered, might this kind of notebook hacking — with paper circuitry — be valuable in the classroom setting? While I had explained the concept of “taking back our notebooks” — where notebooks again become a place of invention and risk and creativity — there remains the question of, How could this translate into a learning experience connected to curriculum? (beyond the teaching of circuits)

Some of their thoughts (Note: the Summer Institute teachers represent a wide range of grades and content areas):

  • Use with English as Second Language students to engage them in the playful act of writing, as a means of self-discovery;
  • In history class, during a unit on the Industrial Revolution, add paper circuitry to traditional poster reports, perhaps even representing the shift from gas lights to electrical lights;
  • In science, use the lights to show the flow of (well, choose your topic here but we talked about) nerve pulses, and connect with poetry that explain the process;
  • Use for content-area vocabulary, where students are presented with specific words, and those words get “lit up” in the illustrated sentence that they write;
  • For advanced student writers, reflect afterwards on the ascetics of the writing when using paper circuitry, such as how does the use of circuits impact the writing itself (brevity, placement, use of specific words, etc.)
  • Many saw the possibilities of creating a timeline project, where the lights represent important elements of the timeline itself (there were questions about how to connect multiple timelines together);
  • Creating a cultural heritage map, where students’ family origins are “pinned” with light to the world map itself, giving a visual representation of cultures.

I like all those ideas, and it showed a thoughtful approach to the work we did yesterday, if you can call it work. It was more like play, and we had that moment where the very last piece lit up (after some minor repairs and reconfiguring) and knew we had achieved success on Hack Your Notebook Day.

Peace (in the hack),
Kevin