For Make Cycle #1 of the Connected Learning MOOC (CLMOOC) 2015 we were to “unmake an introduction” to ourselves. We/I spend a lot of time polishing my digital identity. I partially do this so I can learn best practices and guide educators and their students as they build up their digital identity. I’m intrigued by this first make because it asks that we get our hands messy…and chose to deconstruct a version of ourselves and present it.

For my submission for Make Cycle #1, I chose to create a glitch video of myself and share it out in a format that would allow it to loop. Let me be more explicit…I wanted the final submission to look messy, incomplete, and downright annoying. 🙂 I broke some digital eggs along the way…but I think I achieved my goal.

The Process

First, I stole Popcorn video from Laura Hilliger. She recommended the following Popcorn video available below. Since Mozilla Popcorn is being deprecated, I decided not to use it for this make.

Second, I used YouGlitch to record video. YouGlitch was a lot of fun. It basically uses your webcam to collect images or video and make it look glitchy. I’ll keep this in my back pocket for later.

Third, I edited, ripped, and messed around using Adapter video editor, YouTube to MP3, and iMovie to get a final video clip in which I remixed pieces from the Popcorn video with my clip from YouGlitch. I cannot recommend Adapter and YouTube to MP3 enough. Adapter regularly converts video into formats I can use on my iPad, phone, or Plex server. YouTube to MP3 is a foolproof way to strip audio from YouTube clips. This rocks if you’re creating audio podcasts from webinars.

Fourth, I used VineClient to upload to Vine and annoy everyone. This is where everything broke. 🙂 At first, the Vine worked well in the Vine client…but I started receiving comments that it wasn’t working in the browser. You can check my original post to the CLMOOC here. I double-checked and it was working in the Vine app, working on my mobile browser, but not working anywhere else. 🙁 I emailed Twitter and Vine but have not received a response as of yet. You can see the broken Vine below.

Fifth…I went back to iMovie and stretched out the clip a bit to 13 seconds. I then moved it over to my Android phone using Google Photos. For some reason PushBullet wouldn’t move the video over from my computer…but Google Photos worked perfectly. Sixth, from my phone I uploaded the video to Instagram. Instagram will allow for videos of up to 15 seconds. I’m considering using it to build up a video glossary of technology terms. I didn’t want the extra seconds that Instagram provides over Vine, but since Vine wasn’t working…

The Product

You can review the final product below. I think it looks appropriately messy and annoying. It’s a nice counter to the usually polished versions of myself that I put online. It also works. 

I’ll definitely have teachers and students complete this type of project in the future. As we onboard individuals into creating online content, first we need to have them construct something messy that isn’t supposed to be perfect…and know that all is still well in the world. 🙂

Glitch Remix of my identity for #CLMOOC

A video posted by Ian O’Byrne (@wiobyrne) on Jul 3, 2015 at 5:21am PDT

Cover photo by eaubscene http://flickr.com/photos/eaubscene/4403124926 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) license