CLMOOC Does DIGIWRIMO: S L O W Chat Observations

CLMOOC’s official make-a-thon may have come to a close after the summer, but connections have stayed alive in the G+ and Facebook communities. An now there’s the CLMOOC Popup. As one of CLMOOC noble (and somewhat anonymous) instigators leaders writes, “The notion of Pop-Up Make Cycles is that they pop up suddenly, do their thing (and invite you to do your thing, so we can all do our things together, perhaps with a cool dance party soundtrack), and then disappear after the party is over.” This week is a fun dip into animation and other cool stuff.

Last week, I started a Google Doc with a provocation I hoped might start a discussion. Here’s what I wrote:

“In our CLMOOC activities, we play with making; we draw on the visual & the aural, we use digital tools to make things move. We thought it might be fun to work together to make sense.
Below is a provocation for a slow chat. It’s slow because it will take place over the next 24 hours, on this GDoc, either in the body or in comments. Words, images, sounds– all are welcome as a response to this provocation. At the end of 24 hours, we’ll post a curation to the CLMOOC G+ and Facebook pages.”

Here it is, way more than 24 hours– and nine pages of discussion–  later.  This morning, I felt like a shirker. So I added this to the discussion:

“I said something about curating this discussion, and it seems to keep evolving. At this point, I’d observe that we continue to wrestle with all the terms that traditionally have been associated with and used to describe expression/representation in words, on paper, using specific tools, i.e., pen, pencil, typewriter.

It seems that we are saying that the minute we add digital technologies t
o the mix, everything changes. Digital technologies explode the number and kinds of tools we can use to represent (media), all the different things we can do to represent (draw, paint, sketch, write, animate, photograph, etc. etc.), and the ways we can distribute our productions/compositions/makes. (No wonder we use the word “makes”– it seems to capture ever form and tool and way of sharing.)

Do we keep talking about the terms because the act(s) of expression/representation are/is changing, evolving, exploding with so many possibilities that the traditional terms don’t fully capture these?

Do terms matter because we need for students to understand the choices they have in communicating as they use different modes so that their audience can travel with them? I think that might be so.

Is this part of the landscape we/others (specifically for me, teachers) need to learn about/experience in order to understand deeply, as creators/composers/makers and as guides (teachers) for younger learners? (Am I the only one who thinks this hasn’t been fully expressed in the push to take up digital/web-based activities?)”

The conversation seems to be ongoing and given the ever-changing landscape where we find ourselves, maybe that’s just how it should be.

Feel free to join in.