This week we continued to share representations of our worlds. Specifically, we shared creations of the “dawn” of each new day in our worlds. While viewing the content that everyone has been sharing, it’s be awesome to see everyone playing online together. In my classes, I have urged my students to experiment, and play online. At no other point (probably in your lives) will you be given time to play, experiment, and create with new digital texts and tools. For my students, the homework each week is to go online, play, experiment, and tweet out what you create. Amazing!!!

This week we’ve had a lot of people step outside of their comfort zone and share poetry, and start to remix the work of others. We’ve had participants borrow a word, line, image, or video from each other and use that to create something new. We live in a remix and mashup culture…and it’s fun to play and remix the work of others.

In addition to the remixes and incredible creations, we’ve had people playing with, and sharing new tools. I’d like to highlight some of them here.

SUPER

I hate to admit it, but I’m obsessed with this app now. It’s available on iOs and Android. I first saw it a couple of months ago. Kevin Hodgson brought it up last week and I finally jumped in. I have been using it to document funny things that I catch my son saying.

SUPER is created by Biz Stone, one of the founders of Twitter. SUPER is free and allows you to plug in text and create a slick, funky designed image. The images can stack to create a story. I have been trying to keep the stories to one card, or image. I typically share the story that I create with Instagram and then send it out. The reason for sending it to Instagram is I want it saved in one or two places in case SUPER folds…and then I’ll lose it forever. I’ll explain more of this in a later blog post.

Ragemaker.net

Last week I asked Kevin Hodgson for a good tool for creating political cartoons. Kevin explained that he uses Ragemaker.net. The tool is free, and helps you create some basic, if messy cartoons to share with others. The use of the term “messy” is not meant to be an insult to the tool at all. In fact, I think that is part of the charm of the product, and end results.

I definitely recommend checking out Ragemaker. Many of you have indicated that you like to include cartoons, and specifically political cartoons in your classrooms. I would suggest that you also provide opportunities for students to create and share their own work as well. This product can easily become a hit with students.

Voice and Audio Captures

This is one of the tools that seems so simple that we often ignore it. While we’re online, we sometimes think that everything has to be fancy, and have images, video, bells, whistles. I often like to use technology as a way to limit or focus our expressions into a specific mode. Take for example, focusing on sound and the human voice.

I was reminded of this again while reviewing work that Kevin shared. I asked Maureen Maher why the use of the human voice was so important. She provided the following response. I think she captures why the human voice is so important as we share and connect.

I think voice reminds us of a vestige of our past when stories were passed down by oral tradition while giving us more of a personal sense of who the speaker/poet/créateur is.  Plus a warm fuzzy feeling-it’s emotional but I’m sure there is some neuroscience there about what it triggers in the limbic system too. Plus, I’ve quoted this one before “Hearing is a way of touching at a distance.”

There are a couple of free tools that do a great job of capturing and sharing audio content. Soundcloud is a great tool. They give you a small amount of time to capture and share audio content. The web interface and apps are beautiful. Clyp also looks intriguing, and I plan on testing it out some more. I might test it out with the Parrot app to use my phone.

I urge you to test out new digital texts and tools. Have fun. Play. Break things online. Remix and connect. 🙂

Cover Image CC BY-ND 2.0 US Embassy The Hague

Image CC BY-SA 2.0 Howard Lake