Summer 2015 |
This site was created as a thinking and sharing space for the 2015 Connected Learning Mooc.
HOW CAN I BE A PART OF THIS MOOC, MAKING CONTRIBUTIONS AND LEARNING USEFUL IDEAS?
I'm keeping a traditional notebook to record resources, apps, ideas and questions related to this experience. Already, I am reminded of the work of Will Richardson! First of all, I got into this a bit late, as our first ever STEAM camp required a bit of my attention. I "made" the videos from camp out of shots from iPads, which campers had access to courtesy of my university's Department of Education and Special Education. Check out the "We got STEAM" song on the one video...we brainstormed about STEAM and then transformed the storms into lyrics, which groups sang to a common chorus and beat. This activity took place within the first 45 minutes of camp and not only served to front-load the content of the week but to also get campers started on creating and using their voices right away! My nine-year old kept the beat on an old five-gallon bucket.
MAKE CYCLE #1:
Takeaways:
My make contributions: Response to the challenge to remediate book titles for a shark week theme:
- Purposeful glitching
- Formalizing the inquiry process
- MadLibs for scaffolding "un-introductions"
- Are you a critical consumer? A producer? Both?
- Learning about principles by making a creation: embodiment in a product
- 5 image stories
- Teachers as hack(er)s
- Learning by lurking
- How can we put equity at the center?
- Points of access: One feature of equitable space. No matter when you arrive, you are right on time.
- Iterative cycle: Make it. Get started. Share it. Reflect.
- (Re)mediating: recast, remix, rebuild, redo, revise...media make-over. I LIKE this definition of this term!
- "The media is the message" - haha!
My make contributions: Response to the challenge to remediate book titles for a shark week theme:
MAKE CYCLE #2
HOW TO (re) mediate at home: Moving from one medium to another. Re-purposing and re-mixing.
I've found that my learning process is to look at one or more elements and blend them by pulling together similarities. Below is my make that combines the remediating task with the gamification theme:
This is what happens when a child who is curious about early video games incorporates her research into an original song, a mom helps out with tech support. We've recast Disney Fairies and given them instruments. Garage Band and iPads/iPhones were used.
It was FUN making this!
I've found that my learning process is to look at one or more elements and blend them by pulling together similarities. Below is my make that combines the remediating task with the gamification theme:
This is what happens when a child who is curious about early video games incorporates her research into an original song, a mom helps out with tech support. We've recast Disney Fairies and given them instruments. Garage Band and iPads/iPhones were used.
It was FUN making this!
Make Cycle #3
HOW TO MAKE A GAME:
What first comes to my mind: Games I have already made/been part of as a teacher:
Other Takeaways:
My Make Process: HOW TO ACTUALLY GET STARTED:
1. Search the house for items that can be used to give structure to a physical game board:
Candidate #1: A filter from a dead air conditioner. #2: A frame that held plastic bowling pins...using the pins themselves would be too easy....
What first comes to my mind: Games I have already made/been part of as a teacher:
- A PDE/SAS game along a Jeopardy format that I made by using direct screen links in Powerpoint. The thrift store provided a garish sports coat to aid with cheesy game show hosting.
- A journey-based game for college freshman where I laid out a physical path for them in our building and they advanced according to which components of their research projects they had met. If they had not met a requirement, they were sent on different scaffolding paths. Class members who had mastered a component acted as Sherpa-type guides. The projects required students to use a graphic organizer for different phases of idea generation, where they identified different problems and positives in their immediate and extended worlds.
It was a physical manifestation of the research process delineated in my article for Educational Leadership: http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/apr14/vol71/num07/Revamping-the-Classroom-Research-Project.aspx - Best game from a Writing Institute: Doug Beck's version of charades, where two people sit in a spotlight in a darkened room and are given descriptors that are drawn from a hat. Ex: You are Atticus Finch. Discuss your day in the courtroom while you swat imaginary flies. Switch your description into a rap. Participants get to hide behind prop classes and hats (thank goodness!).
Other Takeaways:
- Parody is one form of remediation. Weird Al is a guru!
- Susan Watson: OGMOJS!!!!! "Life is short. Then life is long. But not in that order." WarGames movie reference.
My Make Process: HOW TO ACTUALLY GET STARTED:
1. Search the house for items that can be used to give structure to a physical game board:
Candidate #1: A filter from a dead air conditioner. #2: A frame that held plastic bowling pins...using the pins themselves would be too easy....
What about a fishing game? A fishing pole fashioned from an old tapestry holder....a length of PVC pipe with a hole drilled in it, left over from the frame from a student-built mini-greenhouse. Or...the cleaning wand from a flute...think I might get into some trouble if I borrow that..though I could get away with borrowing the plastic fishbowl, as the nano-fish has run out of batteries.
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AFTER EXPLORING A TON OF IDEAS....
I hit the second-hand store and picked up 4-5 old board games for a total of $8. I ended up not using them for this cycle, but will use them in the fall for supplies for a Make Jam. Back at home, I came across this tin of word magnets. This tin contain at least two sets (Shakepeare and Bacon-Lovers, I think.) combined. My thoughts were to go with something I already seemed to have a lot of but don't use much.
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After looking around some more in the toyroom, I found a third set, this one in Spanish. I threw these onto our white board wall (the result of multiple layers of chalkboard paint, which make the wall magnetic, and many more layers of whiteboard paint. I think I would use individual magnet boards in class.
FOR THIS GAME....players will work in teams of two to three. They will be given random handfuls of magnetized words. The group that arranges their words in the longest coherent sentence gets a point per word. Groups get the chance to add extra points to their score if they can correctly add punctuation and capitalization to another team's work, and more points if they can sketch out what the ideas in the sentence would look like visually. They aren't allowed to punctuate or sketch their own sentences for points. Variations include using the fishing pole, which has a large magnet on the end, to gather additional tiles. Custom target words can be added easily by printing your word list on mailing labels and sticking them onto a section of magnetic tape.
In my demographic, there are not many English Language Learners. (Really...the neighboring town is rumored to have been the basis for the town of Bedford Falls from the movie It's a Wonderful Life! We are predominantly vanilla.) My thought was to mix the Spanish words in and provide dictionaries or Google access and have the participants treat the Spanish words pretty much the same as English words in terms of the game.
FOR THIS GAME....players will work in teams of two to three. They will be given random handfuls of magnetized words. The group that arranges their words in the longest coherent sentence gets a point per word. Groups get the chance to add extra points to their score if they can correctly add punctuation and capitalization to another team's work, and more points if they can sketch out what the ideas in the sentence would look like visually. They aren't allowed to punctuate or sketch their own sentences for points. Variations include using the fishing pole, which has a large magnet on the end, to gather additional tiles. Custom target words can be added easily by printing your word list on mailing labels and sticking them onto a section of magnetic tape.
In my demographic, there are not many English Language Learners. (Really...the neighboring town is rumored to have been the basis for the town of Bedford Falls from the movie It's a Wonderful Life! We are predominantly vanilla.) My thought was to mix the Spanish words in and provide dictionaries or Google access and have the participants treat the Spanish words pretty much the same as English words in terms of the game.
MAKE #4: Hacking systems
HOW TO HACK A SYSTEM: Find one first. I am spoofing on Monopoly. Hydo-fracturing is a method of extracting natural gas by fracturing shale formations that are deep in the earth. In my area, this has meant that multi-national gas corporations have come to town in droves. While New York state (whose border is a mere 20 miles away) has issued a ban on fracking, Pennsylvania continues to allow this industry to pillage the countryside (yes, I know that is not objective language. Consider it foreshadowing.).
FRACK-AWFULLY:
Remixed Monopoly : Based on a loose interpretation on the Iron Triangle, this is A Game for Exploring the Experience of Being Caught in the Middle of the Fracking Country!
Four actions: Get a gas job, tap the Community Chest, Lease your Family's Land, and Invest!
Cards that dictate the changes to your experience:
In the end...who wins? The gas companies, of course. If you live in the area where fracking occurs, you will probably gain financially if you are willing to work 24/7 in questionable conditions and trade in your health and family life. If you already have good credit and some assets,you can grow your wealth by investing in the industry. When the industry leaves, you will be left with too many rentals and too much inventory to meet the local needs. And you will be drinking poisoned water, so who cares how much money you made anyway? If you lease the acreage that has been in your family for generations, your consequences are the same as if you had invested in other ways in this industry, except that the industry footprint will be present ;long after your lease expires.
Four actions: Get a gas job, tap the Community Chest, Lease your Family's Land, and Invest!
Cards that dictate the changes to your experience:
- A landman signs a deal offering three hundred dollars per acre for your family's farmland, which has been part of your heritage for six generations. You sign it, then find out that the neighbors signed for $1000 per acre.
- Three months after well construction: You turn on the kitchen sink and find that your tap water is ignitable, as the frack process has unleashed the methane gas trapped in the shale. Because you did not have your water tested officially before the fracking begin, there is no proof to support that there is any cause-effect relationship. Lose a turn.
- A well-pad and well site are set up half a mile from your living room. The noise and bright work lights make your home virtually inhabitable, and many of your surrounding neighbors now refuse to speak to you.
- Drug test! Three of your co-workers are fired. You get to pick up their shifts and are onsite for the next six days, straight.
- Three weeks of overtime make one sweet paycheck! Take out a loan on a speedboat, then put it in storage because you will not ever have time to use it.
- One gas company pays for drinking water to be trucked in for residents and workers, after independent water testing shows carcinogens in the water. Lose two turns.
- Money from a state impact fee is used to rebuild the roads around your house, which had been damaged severely during the building of wellpads. You are not reimbursed for the wear and tear on your vehicle, nor for the extra hour it has been taking for you to get to and from work because the road traffic has increased ten-fold.
- You have been fortunate enough to have had a good job, pre-gas times, and have considerable savings. Invest your money in a gas-related business: carry a flame-retardant clothing line, start an onsite catering truck, start-up an apartment-cleaning service, open a new bar, or side-step in something more illicit to serve the workers and the "man-camps" that have sprung up in and outside of town.
- Take a second mortgage to buy and flip a house so that you can rent it to gas workers. Charge double the usual rent, just because you can.
- Use your rent returns to buy more apartments. Raise the rent, forcing the current tenants out.
In the end...who wins? The gas companies, of course. If you live in the area where fracking occurs, you will probably gain financially if you are willing to work 24/7 in questionable conditions and trade in your health and family life. If you already have good credit and some assets,you can grow your wealth by investing in the industry. When the industry leaves, you will be left with too many rentals and too much inventory to meet the local needs. And you will be drinking poisoned water, so who cares how much money you made anyway? If you lease the acreage that has been in your family for generations, your consequences are the same as if you had invested in other ways in this industry, except that the industry footprint will be present ;long after your lease expires.
MAKE FIVE: Public Spaces
HOW TO HACK A PUBLIC SPACE: Flash mobs are the ultimate hacking of public spaces, in my opinion! I have used this one
as analogy for the role of the teacher in society.
My classes regularly take to the sidewalks to post comments about the class or in response to an reading selection or essential question.
as analogy for the role of the teacher in society.
My classes regularly take to the sidewalks to post comments about the class or in response to an reading selection or essential question.
Costumes are fun for hacking public spaces and challenging the accepted norms at academic gatherings. Our TC's dressed as pirates for an NCTE presentation in 2006, and here are three "Teaching is our superpower" costumed heroines from the PCTELA conference this fall. Meet Book Beast, Mentor Maven, and Writer Woman.
Writing Marathons are by definition place-hacks. The idea is to use the place itself as a writing prompt. Split into small groups and disperse. Stop and write 'as the spirit moves you" and read aloud from what you have written. No commentary, just thank yous. We have hacked towns, parks, cemeteries, colleges (I'm talking about you, Cornell), swimming holes, honky-tonks, museums, coffee shops, etc. When people ask what you are doing, respond only with, "I'm a writer. I'm writing."
Writing marathons are a big part of the work of many national Writing Project sites. They didn't originate with our site, but we love them!
Writing marathons are a big part of the work of many national Writing Project sites. They didn't originate with our site, but we love them!
MAKE CYCLE #6: Get outside....go to the PARK!Imagine my pleasure when I not only have a good excuse to spend the day roving and writing, but also spending time with the regional Girl Scout troops
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NY-PENN Girl Scouts hosts its annual summer camp at Hill Creek State Park, Tioga County, Pennsylvania. This year the theme was board games! Check my video make here... |