Wednesday, July 8, 2015



The third make cycle from #clmooc 2015 asks a lot of us!  After being "offline" for a few days, I'm trying to catch up with all the possibilities and am a bit distracted by the games I can play while I ponder the games I could make. In the middle of this cycle, I'm thinking about a post I wrote during last year's #clmooc about "Playing Games" in my speech/drama classroom and am considering a report from the front about my favorite game, debate!

Thursday, July 2, 2015

The Trip There is Beautiful: A "Make" for Make Cycle #2





Last summer, my husband and I took a trip through the American Southwest.  Over 17 days and 4,000 miles, we sampled some of the most beautiful, and most desolate, landscapes from El Paso to Santa Monica and back to our home here in northeast Oklahoma. There was never one destination in mind; we were on a road trip. Sure, we stopped and marveled at the snowy sand outside Alamogordo, paused to mark the end of Route 66 in Santa Monica, crossed Donner Pass in the middle of the night, found ourselves on America's loneliest road across Nevada.  But the journey itself was really what it was all about.

My make for this week was like that journey. I started out to build something, and I did...but the trip to get there was fraught with detours and notable sights.  I knew what I wanted the result to look like, but I didn't know what I wanted to say, and when I finally put it all together, I realized the process taught me something.

This week's invitation, Make Cycle #2: Re(media)te With Me, asked us to "consider how we communicate and interpret". I thought I'd take something static and turn it into video, showing the transition from the analog me to the digital me.

My planning page for this week's make.


Starting with the picture I used for my "un"troduction in Make Cycle #1, I realized the picture had already been (re)mediated.

The class picture from my kindergarten graduation many years ago had been scanned and cropped to reveal just my face. I took the resulting picture and used an online photo editing site to "Warhol"-ize it, then another to alter the exposure. So before I even started (re)mediating, I had (re)mediated.

Mind blown, I thought about how I wanted to make a video that showed a clearing focus, maybe with some television static and noise, until the final image was clear.  I used a variety of tools to try to mimic the rolling images from a TV just out of range of a decent signal (familiar from my childhood, practically unknown today).  The blog post about the cycle had some links to online video tools, and Stupeflix seemed easy to use, so I started there. The site allowed me to upload the pictures after I'd "glitched" them with the online glitch generator I'd learned about in make cycle #1.  

 








From the Image Glitch Experiment













I found some copyright-free television static footage and added that at the beginning and end.  Added music from the library on the website.  Watched. Rearranged, duplicated, watched. Watched.

I was happy with the video, but there weren't any words. Shouldn't there be words?

Detoured into an experiment with Sheri Edwards 6 word challenge, an experience I documented here

Found the words. The words I couldn't make work the way I wanted to in the challenge were the words that fit my make.

Went back, played with adding definitions, adjusting the timing, adding my words. Watched. Rearranged, deleted, watched. Watched.

Felt something.

I spend a lot of time telling the student actors I work with that the point of performing is to make someone feel something. Watching my video, I felt...something. The music was not the murmuring chorus of voices I'd first imagined, but it was unsettling in its own way.

I had to stop and reflect, so  I uploaded it to YouTube and shared it in the #clmooc Google+ community so I wouldn't mess around with it anymore.

And then I thought.  And what I thought was: I felt a deep sense of creative flow in making the video. I saw myself working on it the way I work on directing a play; I 'saw' something I wanted to create and then I set about creating it.  In the process, I learned from the missteps I took and got something better than I had. The images came before the words, but the images said something before I laid in the words.

Total communication.  I think of theater as total art. It brings together sound, movement, visual arts, and literature to communicate something we can't merely speak.  My make feels the same way to me.




Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Playing the "Oops" Card

Art Credit: Terry Elliott



One of the beautiful parts of #clmooc is the often overwhelming chances to connect with other people by creating with them. During the first make cycle, Sheri Edwards created a "make" and invited people to contribute.  In short, the challenge was to choose 6 words that could be arranged to read both horizontally and vertically.  Her challenge, and some beautiful responses to it, can be found at this link.

I am playing my "Oops!" card because while I tried to meet the challenge by coming up with six words and creating a slide to contribute, I failed, but I feel as though I'm still in the game.

Let me explain.

I started brainstorming about what matters to me as a teacher and director.  What do I want my students to achieve?  While I was thinking about it, I read Stephanie Loomis' great post about (re)mediating a photo of her hydrangeas.  Really, though, the post is about the educator and the garden of students in our classroom.  She inspired me. These are the six words I came up with:

Empower Agency
Encourage Presence
Enable Creativity

I think these six words express what I want to achieve in my classroom and in my student's performance: help them be masters of their own work and actions, help them "be here now" and focus on the task at hand, and offer them the chance to express themselves with words and performance.

Great. But in trying to make the six words read vertically, I came to a standstill.  The first three words are all verbs. That's not a sentence.  The second three are all nouns. Again, not a sentence.  I tinkered with synonyms and tenses. Not happy.  I'd looked at the work of others and was trying to make mine like theirs and, as a result, I was stymied.

I finally created a slide that read:

Encouraging Agency
Presence Enables
Empowers Creatives

Encouraging Presence Empowers
Agency Enables Creatives

Although I'm not happy with the first six words because they seem to lack the power of my original phrasing, I think the two sentences at the end express something powerful: encouraging students to be present empowers them, and giving them their own agency allows them to create.

The slide looked rather plain, so I looked around for some clip art to enhance it. I had a vision, but nothing I could find really expressed it. Finally, I saved the slide and decided to turn my attention to something else. This post.

I have not succeeded at the challenge I set out to complete.  But I did clearly express something that I had heretofore only vaguely thought. As a Lincoln-Douglas debate coach, I spend a lot of time talking with students about how the value we choose for debate case construction reflects how, in our own lives, we act on what we value, whether we speak those values aloud.  So I know that my actions in my speech/drama/debate classroom are based on those three beliefs. I just haven't put them so explicitly before.

One "oops" card played, one game still ongoing.

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

#clmooc 2015 Make Cycle 2: (Re)mediation





The new make cycle began yesterday, and I used a padlet to collect some of my first thoughts on (re)mediation.  If you visit the link here, you can add your own ideas to the digital bulletin board.







Thursday, June 25, 2015

Our Books, Our Selves

The "Do Now" project is a weekly challenge for students that encourages discourse using social media tools.  The current challenge was posted in various #clmooc spaces yesterday, inviting not only students, but participants in the mooc to post an object that could serve as a personal symbol.

I chose my bookshelf:


It's not just that I am a reader and collector of books that makes this picture appropriate.  The tattered state of some of these volumes shows that many of them have traveled a very long way with me. I have owned some of them, including the copy of Strange Wine by Harlan Ellison, over thirty years and have carried them through almost a dozen household migrations.  More than that, the books reveal my enthusiasms and escapes over several decades.

This photo reminded me of another.  When I heard a bout "bookshelfies" a couple of years ago, I created one and used thinglink to annotate it.  By visiting the pic here, you can 'touch' the pictures and read the annotations.





Just like our taste in music can make us feel expansive and defensive at the same time, our bookshelves can both honor and indict us.

Visualizing Twitter

Early in this first week's make cycle, Christina Winsor DiMicelli posted her "un"troduction on the Facebook group. She said, "..I wanted an easy interpretation." The picture, though, was much more complex than her preface suggested. Using the website Portwiture, she had used her Twitter feed to create a grid of images that reflected the content of her social media.  The mosaic was dazzling!



I had to try it out for myself.  This was the result:



I was a bit taken aback by the images of people I didn't know or recognize.  I do appreciate the purple in the upper right, since it's my favorite color.  I think the images are a pretty fair representation of my Twitter feed in the couple of days before I constructed it, but not a real representation of me.

The experience did make me wonder, though, what did other people's Twitter feeds look like?  I tried out @StephenKing and got this result:




Appropriately creepy, I think.

This was the result for one of the Shakespeare feeds (@dailyShakes):



A little brighter than I might have predicted.

And from my favorite cartoonist, Lynda BarryBarry (@nearsiteonkey):



I love the energy and color in her grid.

Once I played around with the site a bit, I started wondering, "What could I do with this in the classroom?"  I can imagine asking students to use it for an author or public figure. Create the grid and then write (or speak) about how well the result represents the subject.

Today, I repeated the exercise using my own feed. Here are my two results, side by side (thanks, PicMonkey!):



What if a student used the site a few days apart for their own feed, made a collage, and then talked about the differences and similarities between the two images?  Or maybe pick two entirely different public figures and compare/contrast the images resulting from their Twitter feed?

I don't think I'm interested in this just because it's quirky and interesting. I think that there is genuine scope for imagination here, a way in to practicing visual literacy.  To wrap up, just for practice, look at this image from the @clmooc feed. How successful do you think it is in representing what you think the mooc is all about?


Wednesday, June 24, 2015

A Bovine Metaphor









The beauty and terror of #clmooc is its lack of limits.

In looking at how people have engaged with the make cycle this week, I've been impressed by the variety of ways to introduce themselves so many have uncovered. In the process, I've tried to come up with a metaphor for the mooc for those who are wandering around a little confused. I picture people sitting at their computers with a hopeful, eager face, a face like we wear when we want to be included in a group but aren't quite sure if we get the conversation we've come upon.

Here is one way to look at the mooc.

Imagine you are a cow. In a field. And the field is filled with many things that might interest a cow, such as, oh, other cows.  Or salt licks. Or fresh hay.  Maybe a pond to stand in when the sun is at its highest.

Around the field is not a traditional fence. Instead, there is a flexible band, about four feet high, made of some rubbery material and looped around the fence posts that keep it in place.  The fabric is imprinted "#clmooc" in a repeating pattern. The material is perforated in some places, so a cow can see through the fence in some spots. A cow attempting to get through the fence might just stretch it, making the space in the pasture bigger.  Another cow might puncture the material, and make a hole big enough to step through. A third cow could eventually find an actual opening in this strange enclosure and walk out to (pardon me for saying this) greener pastures. Other cows might continue to graze contentedly in the pasture as it is demarcated by that strange, but clearly branded, material.

That is my current metaphor for the mooc.  Some people will graze the mooc, content to watch the feeds on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. Some will get curious about what others are doing and stretch the fence a little to explore a new tool or website that sounds intriguing. Some will break the fence and let the world and its issues into what seems to be, at first, an academic space. And some...well, some will leave the pasture. Maybe they will return. Maybe they won't.

My history with the whole process the last two years has been to check in at the beginning, go crazy making, connecting, discovering, and then moving on near the end of the mooc's lifespan when my summer got really busy.  Maybe that is what will happen again this summer.

In the end, though, this mooc is my mooc. Well, it's your mooc, too.  It's OUR mooc.

Monday, June 22, 2015

Becoming a Teacher

In the lead up to this years #clmooc, I've been scrolling through Twitter more than usual. Early this morning I found the latest DS106 Daily Create and was caught up in the task it posed: write an eight word memoir using the "Pixar Story Spine".

What, I thought, is the "Pixar Story Spine"?  I read the example, which looked like a prose version of a poetic form in its strictures. Exploring a little further, I found a fuller explanation of the spine in Kenn Adams post at Aerogramme Writer's Studio, as well as some examples. Playing around with the format, I wrote this:




 Once upon a time, I said I would never teach high school. 

 Every day, I would say, “They can’t pay me enough to teach. I didn’t like teenagers when I was one; why would I want to be around them all the time?” 

 But, one day, I had breakfast with a friend who had seen me work with campers at speech camp. She said, “You are really good at this. You should be a teacher.” 

 Because of that, I took the tests and filed the papers and got my certification. 

 Because of that, I put flyers in all the ballot bags at the state speech tournament to tell people I was looking for a job. 

 Because of that, I heard of an opening at a wonderful school. 

 Until finally, I interviewed and got the job, becoming a speech and drama teacher! 

 And, ever since then, I have spent my days around teenagers, doing all the stuff---reading, writing, talking, listening, and creating--- I really like to do. 




Adams says of the story spine, "It’s fun! It’s easy! You can rattle off a dozen as you’re waiting for the bus." I wrote my story in just a few minutes and started thinking about all the possibilities the spine holds for writers and teachers.

Sunday, June 21, 2015

Let the Games Begin!

#clmooc2015 has started, and the first make cycle begins on Monday!

Sunday, May 24, 2015

I'm packing up for the clmooc! Picking out the 'must-haves,' cleaning out my digital spaces, freshening up my internet hangouts, and building a new space: this blog! More to come in the next month or so.