This week’s Annotation/Conversation activity from Tellio the Pirate is all about comix making. I realised when I made this that my problem was not so much with making the pix part of that, Witty Comics did that easily – it was thinking of something for the characters to say. So here’s my first one – two white men saying nothing much to each other.
Riches indeed – the postcards I have received as part of Karen’s postcard writing collaboration. All beautiful, in their different ways. Thank you, friends 🙂
It started with Simon’s students Etienne and Loic who wrote a song about a road trip which Simon encouraged DigiWriMo peeps to record their own version. Several did, and you can find the lyrics and links in this Google Doc as well as in Simon’s blog post. This afternoon, with the house to myself, I sat down to think about what to do.
First I used Audacity to record myself reading the lyrics aloud (I could have just used my phone, or the free sound recorder on my Windows PC, of course). Then I exported the recording and imported it into Soundtrap. Soundtrap’s an online studio that allows you to upload audio and remix it. It also has a fairly extensive selection of sound loops which you can add to make your stuff sound really professional. (Note that I am not saying that my stuff sounds professional though!). I added some synth and piano sounds, tweeked the volume et voila – in a relatively short time I’d produced a new version. Soundtrap allows asynchronous collaboration, so if any of us wanted we could produce a version of this song together. Some of us did that during #Rhizo15 (see the first two tracks on this playlist).
Here’s my version of the roadtrip song.
Image of The M8 motorway running through Glasgow, Scotland taken by Finlay McWalter on the 7th of May 2004. (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Soundcloud image by Derek Bathgate [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0), GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons
We don’t have resumes here in the UK, just CVs. Whether you’re applying for a job as part time bar stuff, retail manager or academic, you pull together an appropriate CV, which should only stretch to 2 sides of A4 maximum. Which explains why, when we were thinking about a warm up activity for #DigiWriMo we ended up calling it an “AltCV“.
But apparently some people do make a distinction, and write about a resume being short and snappy while a CV is “a fairly detailed overview of your life’s accomplishments“.
It’s funny how a common language can lead to such confusion sometimes – we think we are talking about the same thing, but we are not really. AltCV seemed snappier than AltResume, that’s all.
[This is part 4 of a story jumping activity for Digital Writing Month. Bruno started it, followed by Kevin and Maha. Sign up in the Google Doc if you’d like to join in]
Ouch – my head hurts! What on earth happened last night? I remember going out to play my uke with the gang, then one drink led to another and at some point I have a hazy recollection of us getting chucked out of the pub because Kevin would not stop playing his sax. Ugh, where’s the paracetamol? Darn – my uke’s broken again – I’ll have to take it over to Kevin and see if he’ll fix it. I’ll go round the back way, though – that weirdo who lives across the road from him freaks me out – I’m sure she fancies him – she’s always there at her window – she thinks we can’t see her, but we can. Honestly, she should find a hobby like knitting or something – or get a cat.
What day is it today anyway … hmmm … November 1st … I’m sure there was something I was meant to do … Hang on, what’s this bit of paper – it’s so crumpled up I can hardly make it out Digi … Wri …Mo … Nope, not a clue. I’ll ring my friend Ron and see if he can help me find out what happens next.
[Over to Ron Leunissen]
As part of Digital Writing Month (#DigiWriMo) we have introduced a pre-course activity for folk to introduce themselves by writing an alternative CV, or resume. I’ve started curating these using Hackpad. I am loving seeing the diverse approaches people are taking to this – it is turning out, as we hoped, into a lovely way to get to know everybody.
If you’re taking part, please add you Alt-CV to this – or drop a link into a comment here if that doesn’t work for you.
While I love participating in events such as the rhizothings and other connectivist happenings, they can be both overwhelming and isolating at times. Overwhelming because of the sheer volume of content that is being disseminated; isolating because while everybody is sharing with everybody else, sometimes it doesn’t feel like anybody is listening to what others are saying. There’s nothing lonelier than a tweet with no favourites, replies or retweets, a blog post with no likes or comments, or a forum post with no interaction.
Of course, there some folk who are amazing at sharing what others have done, responding to what they are saying and encouraging them (you know who you are!), and I thank everybody who ever takes the time to engage with what I say or do. I’m conscious that I often do not so as much as I could to let other know how much I appreciate what they do, so I’m going to make a conscious effort during #DigiWriMo to practice something Terry Elliot suggested recently (sorry, Terry, can’t remember exactly where you said this). For every blog post I write I am going to make sure I comment meaningfully on at least 5 others. I’m not much of a one for setting myself goals, objectives or outcomes when I enter into these events, but this seems like something I should aspire to do.
This November I’m going to be co-facilitating Digital Writing Month (#DigiWriMo) with Maha Bali and Kevin Hodgson. We thought that a fun way to lead into this would be to suggest that folk create an alternative CV. As a way of introducing it we each put ours together – Kevin did a comic (of course!), Maha said hers would be mainly text so I said I’d put mine together in audio (though actually I used Thinglink to collate everything).
This month promises to be a lot of fun – we have an amazing bunch of guest writers lined up and we’re all excited to see how this unfolds. Will you join us?
witter verb (wittered, wittering) intrans (usually witter on) to talk or mutter ceaselessly and ineffectually.
ETYMOLOGY: 19c: probably a variant of whitter to chatter. Chambers Online Dictionary
It’s hard to know when rhizomatic learning is appropriate. On the one hand, when the community is the only curriculum then there does seem to be a real danger of inexperienced learners coming up with some awful nonsense – but on the other hand there is the serendipity of making new connections when learners are allowed to let their thoughts roam freely.
This week I met with both my supervisors. We were chatting, about stuff, and towards the end Fiona exclaimed with surprise that we’d really made progress. A seemingly unfocussed conversation had actually been circling around a cluster of issues that are core to my thesis, and which I had not realised were connected.
That’s the creative art of wittering 🙂
flickr photo by Internet Archive Book Images http://flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14563308480 shared with no copyright restriction (Flickr Commons)
In his History of Animals, Aristotle asserts that:
Males have more teeth than females in the case of men, sheep, goats, and swine. History of Animals 2, 3
One wonders why he did not conduct an empirical study before making this false statement – but it seems he did not – he just assumed that what he was saying was true. Who knows why – maybe Mrs Aristotle was born with less than a full set of ivories – maybe it fitted with some of his other beliefs about women – we’ll probably never know. His assumption makes him look a bit of an idiot, in my opinion, but it’s not particularly devastating and I doubt if dire consequences would ensue if anybody followed him in believing every word he wrote.
By contrast, consider Chicken Licken. As a result of his hasty assumption he and all his feathered pals ended up as a tasty meal for a cunning fox. The moral of this tale is that we should make very sure of our facts before making important decisions.
So what does this have to do with education? Well, maybe this. In 2001 Marc Prensky published his seminal paper Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants Part 1 In this paper he refers to modern students as “digital natives” who:
… think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors, as a result of being surrounded by new technology …
Now, despite being pretty much debunked – see for example this by Gregor Kennedy et al:
Previously assumed to be a homogenous and highly skilled group with respect to information and communications technology, the so-called Net Generation has instead been shown to possess a diverse range of technology skills and preferences.
or this by Dave White, I still hear folk referring to their students as digital natives, or assuming it when they design their teaching.1
Now, while the consequences of these academics’ assumptions are not life threatening to most of their students, they are damaging to some of them. The fact is that a lot of our students are not digitally literate. Sure, they can use whatever the latest social media is to chat to their peers, they can consume YouTube, flickr and the like – but they are not good (on the whole) at transferring any skills they acquire there into a formal educational context. We see this frequently in my unit, as stressed students contact the help desk for help with what seem to us to be trivially easy things to do (like clearing their browser cache, saving their files into an approved format, or ticking a box to say that they agree to the T&Cs). It’s not FAIR to assume things like this of our students. We have a DUTY to provide them with an education and that includes appreciating what they can and can’t do (and, of course, taking steps to help them to acquire the skills they need both during and after their education).
So don’t be like Aristotle or Chicken Licken – find out what your students can and can’t do before designing their learning.
1. A couple of days ago I read something that suggested that the digital natives rhetoric was sometimes used by academics as an excuse not to engage with technology – that as they were not digital natives it was too late for them to learn. That’s even more cynical than I am!
