After watching @scottlo & Rowan Peter decipher wtf is going on with cogdog and learning that the answer lies somewhere in the network I came across this audio advice. It’s not quite a bird call but when navigating networks, it just might work.
[warning IP nerd humor]
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For me to do Audio @scottlo suggested, I’d have to stop listening to Productivity Radio. That would be counter-productive. And I don’t want to stop listening.
I want to be productive as these two dudes from Office Space. See how they are sharing the floppy?
I really, really wanted to hear all of @SIMKathy‘s stories she had posted as a teaser to her website so I begged her to tell those tales and offered to be in her group (even though I didn’t feel quite worthy)
We started a Google doc, which was confusing and hard to track who was saying what so we quickly moved to Typewithme. That really worked well for asynchronous work and knowing where people were at as far as ideas and contributons. Through twitter and Typewithme we were able to coordinate a skype call.
Araba & Abbie in Virginia
Kathy from Seattle but in Vancouver for a conference
Me in Ontario, Canada
We decide to go with the camp theme, even though no one had ever gone to summer camp as a kid. I show them a drawing that I feel exemplifies DS106radio for me. I ask the group what experiences they have sitting around a campfire. Telling stories, talking, singing.
Turns out both Araba & Abbie are from Ghana and their ideas of sitting in the circle revolve around elders telling moral tales, like Anansi tales. (I honestly had never heard these specific stories before, although I have heard the name before for sure)
I am still totally stuck on Kathy telling us the cool stories from her site, so I try and shift us back to each of us telling a litle 5 minute story and I want Kathy to tell one of the ones she mentions.
Abbie & Araba specifically want to hear about how Ricky Martin paid her credit cards. I won’t give away that tale – (YOU HAVE TO GET KATHY TO TELL YOU!) but will say that the story starts with the time that Kathy spent in West Africa, which she says, coincidentally is not far from Ghana, in fact. She shares some audio clips from her CD on Amazon that she made during her time there.
Araba & Abbie say that a couple of the tracks sound like some of the music one could hear in Ghana, while listening to Anansi Tales.
And an idea is born.
We decide to have us lost in the wilderness, in the land of Oblivion and we tell the tales of Anansi to make sense of our situation.
We assign roles, deadlines and finish the two bumpers. (It was bit more hectic that just that, with a lot of sharing, re-recording, editing but at the end of the day- we got them done!)
Kathy was concerned about the consistency and audio levels if we split it up the 20 minute segment. Also skype sound quality was terrible at our first meeting. So she set up a voice line free conference call .
Over the phone we manage to collaboratively work out an action plan, a rough script outline, and prompts for freeform dialogue. Kathy records the story into 4 parts, which coincide with the four challenges that Anansi the spider has to face in order to get the stories from Nyame, the Sky God. We split the four sections, edited them separately with agreed upon background noises for the crackling fire and then restitched them together at the end. I used GarageBand and the others used Audacity. I was hoping to try and use the free tools so I could be a better support but the timelines on this assignment were INSANE for someone with a full time job, family responsibilities and random long time friends appearing out of the blue. If that sounds like an excue (IT IS!!)
In any case this is the resulting final project and I am very proud!
(It is worth noting that in our skype call we had decided that Martha was a great leader but that did not come out in our final recording because it didn’t fit the binary choice the two-headed python provided. Sorry Martha- you DO rock, don’t forget it!)
Final note, I also decided that since we collectively have 8 legs and 8 eyes that we should rename ourselves Team Anansi, the spider. I hope to have an exquisite corpse of that done soon. But now, my other identity has to get ready for 24 hours of SMARTBoard Training by doing a series of multiple choice pre-tests by way of “online learning”. Groan. Expect that *other* identity to be reporting back on the cavernous difference between these two online learning experiences.
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In a town in the woods at the top of a hill
There’s a house where no one lives
So you take a big bag of your big city money there
And buy it.
But at night, the house is dark
And you’re all alone, there’s a noise upstairs
At the top of the stairs, there’s a door
And you take a deep breath and try it.
And the flashlight shows you something moving just inside the door
There’s a tattered dress and a feeling you have felt somewhere before.
<Oh, great, the subject of nightmares…>
<What is that!????>
And there’s the creepy doll
That always follows you
It’s got a ruined eye
That’s always open…
And there’s a creepy doll
That always follows you
It’s got a pretty mouth
To swallow you whole…
So you scream and you close the door
And you tell yourself it was just a dream
In the morning you head into town,
‘Cause you want to go antiquing.
In the store there’s a strange old man
With a wandering eye and a withered hand
When he hands you the old wooden box
You can hear his old bones creaking.
And you know what you will find inside the moment that you see
That someone carved your name into the tarnished silver key.
And there’s a creepy doll
That always follows you
It’s got a ruined eye
That’s always open…
And there’s a creepy doll
That always follows you
It’s got a pretty mouth
To swallow you whole…
And when you come home late, the doll is waiting up for you
And when you fix a snack, the doll says it would like one too
The doll is in your house and in your room and in your bed
The doll is in your eyes and in your arms and in your head – and you are crazy.
Now it’s late and you head downstairs
’Cause you just can’t sleep so you make some tea
And the doll disapprovingly asks
If you really need that much honey.
You decide that you’ve had enough
And you lock the doll in the wooden box
You put the box in the fireplace
Next to your bag of big city money.
As the smoke fills up your tiny room there’s nothing you can do
And far too late you see the one inside the box is you.
And there’s a creepy doll
That always follows you
It’s got a ruined eye
That’s always open…
And there’s a creepy doll
That always follows you
It’s got a pretty mouth
To swallow you whole…
=========
How I did it:
Originally I wanted to do these assignments so I could improve my own skills using the tools I have for work: Illustrator, Photoshop, Garageband, iMovie.
But after seeing many students struggle with these tools (GIMP & Audacity) I’m thinking I might move to the free tools so I can help you out better.
So, I used Garage Band for this audio assignment and it’s a bit of a hack, really quickly done meshing together JoCo’s song with snips of Scary Stories. I changed volume on the song in parts so that the Talking Tina bits would be more audible.
As for the sign, I took the picture on a trail with my phone. Imported it into Illustrator traced the tracks. Then I searched for the Toy Story doll head, saved it to my Photo Library. I imported that image into the iPad using AutoDesk SketchBookPro and traced it. Then back on my PC, I imported the doll into Photoshop and pasted the train track-zipper mouth. I could have done the track tracing in Photoshop but I had actually done another Reimagined sign entirely in Illustrator in an attempt to do the I can Read Movies (Pulp Ficiton)…but I didn’t like it.
So, even though I know that responding to prompts about copyright and creativity really shouldn’t cause me to provide MORE resources about creativity and copyright but these two pieces have shaped my thinking about these issues for a few years.
R.I.P! Remix Manifesto, A documentary by Brett Gaylor, about copyright and remix culture.
So, if you are thinking of watching television tonight, I suggest you take a break from that and watch these twothree videos instead.
If you really are too busy, it’s okay, skip it- but keep it at the back of your mind -because if you haven’t seen these- you MUST!
When that same particular 11 year old first watched the Remix Manifesto (which is very similar to everythingisaremix - thereby making that statement very true!)- her response was: “WE HAVE TO START MIXING….RIGHT NOW!”
I agree!
As for creativity. This is old by Internet standards but it’s so important and has some great points. Lawrence Lessig is my hero.
