The Muppet ReMix (Same as embedded video posted below)

This might date me a bit, but nothing was better than sitting down and watching The Muppet Show. Those two critics in the balcony, Statler and Waldorf,  put Simon Cowell to shame.

For some brilliant commentary on Internet culture by Statler and Waldorf, view https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSDj7bjAv2s , and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pCW0bd-gH0.

Enjoy the ReMix below
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[Posted November 23, 2009 to YouTube by The Muppet’s Studio ]

I thought it was great how Kermit tried video conferencing to discuss the upcoming show with the cast and his stage manager Scooter. What a way to relate to parents who are newish to technology yet entertain the kids at the same time!

Hi everyone,

For my rip.feed.mix assignment, I decided not to re-invent the wheel, but instead to add to an already existing wheel. When I took ETEC565 we were asked to produce a similar project when exploring different web 2.0 tools. We were directed to The Fifty Tools. I used PhotoPeach to create my story. My wife and I moved to Beijing in the fall of 2007 and we’ve been traveling around Asia whenever we get a break from teaching. The story I’ve made is a very brief synopsis of some of our travels thus far. Since the original posting, I have updated the movie with more travels. You can view the story here.  If you’re in China, the soundtrack U2 – Where the Streets Have No Name will not play because it is hosted on YouTube.

What I enjoy most about these tools is that they are all available online, all a student needs to create a photo story is a computer with access to the Internet. To make the stories more personal, it would be great if they had access to their own digital pictures. However, if they have no pictures of their own, they can find pictures, through Internet searches that give results from a creative commons license to include in their stories.

Furthermore, as I teach in an international school in which most students speak English as a second, third, or fourth language, and who come from many different countries, Web 2.0 has “lowered barrier to entry may influence a variety of cultural forms with powerful implications for education, from storytelling to classroom teaching to individual learning (Alexander, 2006).” Creating digital stories about their own culture provides a medium through which English language learners acquire foundational literacies while making sense “of their lives as inclusive of intersecting cultural identities and literacies (Skinner & Hagood, p. 29).” With their work organized, students can then present their work to the classmates for discussion and feedback, build a digital library of age/content appropriate material, and share their stories with global communities (Skinner & Hagood).

John

References

Alexander, Bryan. (2006). “Web 2.0: A New Wave of Innovation for Teaching and Learning?” EDUCAUSE Review, 41(2).

Skinner, Emily N. & Hagood, Margaret C. (2008). “Developing Literate Identities With English Language Learners Through Digital Storytelling.” The Reading Matrix, 8(2), 12 – 38.

My original plan was to have a short animation re-invention video presentation on Ahead but the application proved too frustrating to use. I kept the link for anyone to see on my website which is run with WordPress. Ahead is similar to Prezi, which I am more familiar with. However, when I went to the Prezi website to create my project, it was down for maintenance so I resorted to restarting something else in Capzle. The Capzles project contains a slideshow of photos from my recent trip to Hong Kong in late September.

If you cannot see the embedded slideshow above, view my Capzles project here.

First of all, this activity is really FUN! Just following the links suggested on the Rip/Feed/Mix wiki page had me totally involved and entertained for over two hours. I’m a big fan of http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com and I was initially going to do this activity with Roxio Photo Story. However, I used that tool in my own wiki posting for 540, and I thought I’d try a new one.

I wandered over to http://search.creativecommons.org/ and somehow found a link to http://bighugelabs.com/ and once there, Mosaic Maker seemed perfect. I had to create a free account, which is tied in to my Yahoo account, which is then tied in to Flickr. Interesting path of convergence on Web 2.0! There was an option to sign up using Facebook, but I thought Yahoo was more secure. Using Mosaic Maker, I linked to Flickr and searched Creative Commons images that were free to adapt, remix and reuse. I wanted to make a mosaic that reflected the computeras a communication tool. I saved the images in my Flickr favourites, and then Mosaic Maker searched my Flickr favourites to create the mosaic. Pretty simple, yet highly networked!

Computers and Communication

BigHugeLabs encouraged me to include the html code from the images, in order to give credit to the people who uploaded to Flickr. Here are the references automatically created by Mosaic Maker:

1. Informatics 2005/2006 Creative Commons photo-patchwork, 2. Computer History Museum, 3. Silicon Gallies – Next Generation Glass Tile Pendant – Black Laptop Computer Key – CTRL ALT DELETE Necklace, 4. Computer Testing, 5. die computer die 2.22.07, 6. Computers, B&W, 7. Build Your Own Z80 Computer, 8. Predicting the Computer of 2004 in 1954, 9. Apple: Keep Your Lawyers Off My Computer, 10. Computer History Museum, 11. Computer Graveyard, 12. Controlling a Computer with Eyes

I chose to remix a photo. The original photo was found on flickr and is a photo that the user ‘Whiskeygonebad’ had taken in 1976 while in the hallway of his high school. I decided to remix it and add an iphone and a laptop, two types of technology that we see high school students using in this day of age. Enjoy!

1. FDR HS Hallway 4 Students. http://www.flickr.com/photos/badwsky/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
2. Ipod. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jrnoded/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
3.  Laptop computer. Retrieved from the website FreeFoto.com at:
http://www.freefoto.com/images/04/20/04_20_52—Laptop-Computer_web.jpg?&%3Bk=Laptop+Computer

Some of you may have come across this project in your past courses but I thought I would share it here as we enter the RipMixFeed section. RiP: A Remix Manifesto is a documentary film about copyright and remix culture. The neat thing about this project is that it is participatory (I think participation is now closed though). Brett Gaylor, the filmmaker, has encouraged people to remix his work by providing his raw film footage to anyone. Ultimately Brett intends to mashup all the remixes submitted. The film is divided into chapters based on specific copyright issues. Each section is a mashup in its own right – to be remixed by others.

Girl Talk is the first chapter of the film and is about Girl Talk, a musician who mashes up music.

See part of the original film: http://films.nfb.ca/rip-a-remix-manifesto/

Now compare it to an example that has been remixed: http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/19/boing-boing-videos-r.html

(Note: I have provided the links to the videos insteading of embedding them as they go beyond the parameters of the blog post)

In the past I cleared copyright for educational materials and Girl Talk’s music would be a nightmare to clear permissions for. Some say that the Fair Use (USA) or Fair Dealing (Canada) clauses should cover a lot of Girl Talk’s work, as only snippets of music are used. However the debate often overlooks the length of a clip, to instead look at its value; meaning it could be the ‘essence’ of the entire song, thus royalities should be paid. What do you think? Does this limit artistic interpretation? What does this mean for digital literacy?

My Mashup of Mike’s Mashup of My Mashup, originally uploaded by cambodia4kidsorg.

Hi all, this is Brian, one of the putative instructors…

I like this image for a lot of reasons. The multi-dimensional tensions it illustrates between digital and analog, read-only and read-write formats. The clever, low-tech mixture of media… paper, photography, Second Life. The way it playfully explores an ongoing controversy concerning alternative copyright approaches. The slightly mischievous insertion of Stephen Downes (the first ed tech blogger, so far as I know) makes me smile.

I came across this image while preparing a presentation on mashups. I didn’t end up using the image, but it was too cool to pass up. So I did what I often do when I encounter something I don’t know what to do with — I blogged it. And was delighted the following morning to see that Beth Kanter, a very interesting and accomplished educator and the creator of the image, had commented on my post. She shared some resources having to do with how social media can be employed by people in the non-profit sector, which I have subsequently shared with others.

I’ve since come to think of Beth as part of my personal learning network. And this image and the stories behind it illustrate to me how content, and the reuse of others’ materials, has moved beyond simply managing inert resources. Increasingly, the work we do online becomes the framework for rich and ongoing social learning relationships.