We’re nearing the end of week two of the first iteration of the #WALKMYWORLD Project. For more information on the project, please visit the following thread of this blog…or better yet, go take a peek on Twitter for yourself. VisibleTweets and TweetBeam can be fun to display to a class a students.

This past week there has been a ton of interesting pieces shared on #WALKMYWORLD.

We’ve had a series of clips of people reporting in from the Planet Hoth.

We’ve had the complete opposite of the spectrum…thankfully…

Another English assignment#eng152 #walkmyworld pic.twitter.com/0vnoE1YbrW

— ♡ Amanda ♡ (@Amandammedina_) January 22, 2014

 

We’ve seen tons of the cutest dogs on the face of planet.

This is what I come home to every day. #walkmyworld pic.twitter.com/O93qhm3rus — Chelsea Tobe (@ChelseaNTobe) January 22, 2014

 We’ve had Donelle Batty start us up with some great archives on Storify. 🙂

We’ve had Kevin Hodgson continue to push the envelope to see what we can create and make in this space.

Oops. Fixed a typo in #walkmyworld comic (I do not teach until 3:30 AM.) pic.twitter.com/JrIHTYAsST — KevinHodgson (@dogtrax) January 23, 2014

 

As we see these creations come in from all parts of the globe, it is fascinating, and in a way…beautiful to see people play, create, and express themselves. Still…it makes me wonder what more we can do. Several of us have had discussions in the #WALKMYWORLD thread to push our thinking in terms of what we share. This includes the inclusion and use of Memes. In short, a meme is an artifact of Internet culture. It’s like an “inside joke” for a discourse community.

How I feel being asked to tweet for class. #walkmyworld @wiobyrne pic.twitter.com/5TGpz5EKfa

— Jessica Tommaselli (@innermeetme) January 15, 2014

We’re slowly starting to see memes popping up in the stream. We’ve also had some experimentation with the writing of poetry and the inclusion of audio clips.

Since I encouraged #walkmyworld people to podcast, here is a poem I wrote this morning while walking the dog http://t.co/yXcMKtsdng — KevinHodgson (@dogtrax) January 24, 2014

 

Thinking that I know how culture develops, and inspired by my reflection from last week, I know that as the weeks progress, we’ll see people start to experiment more. We’ll see more images and videos that push our representations of identity. We’ll see some memes and audio clips. I’m excited to see a continuation of the archiving of this work in spaces like Storify. I’m also looking forward to…dare I say it…remixes and mashups of the work of others… 😉

The big challenge that I have been struggling with over the past couple of days is what is my role in this? I’m really motivated by the thoughts of Molly Shields and Kristy Pytash as I think about problematizing and pushing our notions of text and online content construction. I really want to see where we can go in these worlds as we continue to push, and play, and construct, and reconstruct content. I know that we can create some really cool things, and push the thinking of others…but how do we get there? Molly Shields stated in our Hangout from earlier in the week that she just puts people in front of the computer…and gets out of the way. This struck a chord in me as that’s how I approached teaching in secondary school. The challenge with not providing some exemplars, or models of what you’re looking for is the angst that learners have as they start to work and create. The benefit is that the final end projects are ridiculously, ridiculously creative. They’re far better than we could have imagined. Additionally, I want to play, explore, and create as well. I see what Kevin and Molly…and others are doing and I’m thinking…Holy Smokes…that is cool…I want to do the same…or better. 🙂

I think what I’m saying is that I’m urging all of you in the project to continue to play, and open up, and try new things. Pay attention to the stream on Twitter and connect with others. We’ll have a series of new groups joining us in waves over the next month…let’s treat them with something to strive for. In terms of my own creating and sharing…I’m following the Call of the Wild. I’m going off on a personal journey that will be conducted in the public. I’m using this time to play, create, share, and be multimodally. I urge you to do the same. We can look back at the end and try to figure out how we got here.

 

Image CC by rtil