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The Network

Playing Around With A Family of Arty-Bots

dogtrax on January 16, 2023January 16, 2023

I don’t remember how or when I stumbled upon the collection of Twitter bots by B.J. Best but I suspect it have been during one of the handful of Networked Narrative projects I engaged with (in one session, we all created our own bots and mine is still rolling along as the PeaceLove&Bot). The Artybots collection by Best, a poet and designer, are fascinating, particularly because they were released before this latest wave of AI Art platforms. Here is my […]

Open Participants 2021, The Network

Nerdwriter: Dark Patterns

dogtrax on February 3, 2022

This one has been in my blog draft bin for some time. Worth re-visiting for understanding better how companies try to manipulate us (users) to gather more information and to keep us inside their tents. I support Nerdwriter through Patreon. Peace (breaking out), Kevin

Open Participants 2021, Pandemic2020, The Network

Comic About Teaching: Zoom Mutterings

dogtrax on February 18, 2021February 18, 2021

I find it fascinating how pretty much universal this is: a presenter/teacher talking out about the technological things they are doing as the Zoom crowd waits for whatever comes next. I’ve even found myself apologizing to my students to narrating what I am doing to get things ready for class when we are on Zoom. I always imagine my students having a chuckle about it at my expense. Which I don’t mind at all. The mute button is … right […]

Open Participants 2021, The Network

Turning Collaborative Poem Into Song (but it ain’t no Shanty)

dogtrax on February 17, 2021February 17, 2021

The other day, I wrote about a collaborative poem that folks in #ds106, and #clmooc, and beyond had contributed to. With 106 lines in its construction, the poem has now become a place of possible remix. I had joked at one point at trying to write a Sea Shanty with some of the words (ie, TikTok trend) and yesterday morning, after watching a bunch of YouTube videos of the recent Shanty trend, I was pretty confident that I could remix […]

Open Participants 2021, The Network

Slice of Life: Documenting Opportunities (Pandemic Year)

dogtrax on February 9, 2021February 9, 2021

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write on Tuesdays about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.) It’s a year or so into the Pandemic, and it seemed like a good time to have my sixth graders reflect in writing on life in the Pandemic. I framed their responses as a Message in a Bottle (digital version) for Future Historians. […]

Open Participants 2021, The Network

NetNarr: Then What?

dogtrax on February 8, 2021February 8, 2021

I’m not completely sure what I am doing here, but Networked Narratives is designed on the reality that the Pandemic has changed learning at the University level. I followed the lead of some others in designing some art about this concept. It’s not that I think this disruption will completely dismantle higher education, but it is going to be impacted (as it already is) by technology and remote learning and more. That’s worth noting and thinking about, and the NetNarr […]

Open Participants 2021, The Network

Old Paths, Newly Revisited: NetNarr and WalkMyWorld

dogtrax on January 25, 2021January 25, 2021

I am dipping my toes into new iterations of two projects that I have participated in as “open participant” in the past — Networked Narratives: Net Mirror (with Mia and Alan) and Walk My World: 2021 (with Ian). Like some others (such as my friend and collaborator, Wendy), I might tangle the two together, bundling my learning and explorations across platforms and networks and learning programs. Both NetNarr and Walk My World are situated primarily in college classrooms, at the […]

Open Participants 2020, The Network

Three Gifted Poems for #CLMOOC

dogtrax on February 13, 2020February 13, 2020

Through the course of the day yesterday, I wrote three different poems as gifts, inspired by our month-long Poetry Port adventure in the CLMOOC community, where folks are writing poems to daily themes, composing words as gifts to others, and requesting poems be written for them. (learn more) The first poem, above, was written as a gift for the collective students in the Networked Narratives class, which I dip in and out of as an open participant. I went through […]

Open Participants 2019, The Network

The NetNarr Field Guide: A Journal Worth Exploring

dogtrax on May 17, 2019May 17, 2019

Early on, I was pretty active in the Networked Narratives course as an open online participant, as a sort of satellite with a few others to the actual university course being taught by Alan Levine and Mia Zamora. My comic strip alter-egos — The Internet Kid and Horse with No Name — were also part of the Twitter conversations and activities. At some point, I admittedly lost track in a peripheral way (this is the beauty of RSS feeds — […]

Open Participants 2019, The Network

CLMOOC: Where Rings and Planets May Yet Connect Us

dogtrax on April 16, 2019April 16, 2019

Greg has been building out a few fun, helpful video tutorials on our move in CLMOOC to use Web Rings and RSS Planets to gather the work and writing and sharing and connection of people together after the plug got pulled on G+ space. Sheri wrote a useful post that gives more specific details on joining these ventures. The CLMOOC Web Ring, still under construction with a few hiccups along the way (including this platform of Edublogs not quite in […]

Open Participants 2019, The Network

Conversations in the Margins: NetArt with NetNarr

dogtrax on March 22, 2019March 22, 2019

Networked Narratives held another of its regular Studio Visits earlier this week as the theme of the online course with an open invitation (allowing me and others to join in) shifts from the darkness of the web and technology to the light and the possible. Things are going from negative to positive. Here, Alex Saum is the guest, and she has been exploring the world of NetArt, or the leveraging of technology platforms to explore the notions of art. This […]

Open Participants 2019, The Network

Our Real Selves/Our Fake Selves/ Our Shadow Selves

dogtrax on March 19, 2019March 19, 2019

The mic hears everything flickr photo by kreg.steppe shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license “We’re looking at the relationship between fake and real.” — NPR Host Alix Spiegel The National Public Radio’s Invisibilia program turned its focus on the idea of our Invisible Selves, the way our online social media-infused identities are often in conflict with our offline identities. This radio program — Point, Shoot — is long, as a deep dive into an important issue, but it is […]

Open Participants 2019, The Network

CLMOOC Book Group: Exploring the World of Nerdfighters

dogtrax on March 17, 2019March 17, 2019

(Note from Kevin: I actually wrote this post two days ago, thinking I would post it yesterday. I left it lingering in my draft bin. Then, the massacre in New Zealand happened, and I had a poem spilling forth about madness and hate and social media that I just could not shake without writing it, and that poem is what I shared yesterday as a blog post. The final stanza is a call about kindness in the world. I wondered […]

Open Participants 2019, The Network

The Shared Humanity in Our Digital Lives

dogtrax on March 15, 2019March 15, 2019

The other day — Sunday, in fact — my wife came home from service at our church, raving about the sermon from our passionate, activist, youth-orientated co-pastor. The theme was technology in our lives, and Pastor Sarah, who often uses hip and modern allusions in our sermons, talked about how our devices are removing us from our interactions. My wife later sent me the link to her post/words/sermon later, which includes Sarah’s sermon (if you are interested in listening, you […]

Open Participants 2019, The Network

#CLMOOC Book Club: Affinity Online

dogtrax on March 1, 2019March 1, 2019

I still remember the student who came back from a weekend trip to Boston, all hyped up about the cosplay convention, and how excited they were during our morning meeting that they had found others who were into what they were into. Their classmates looked on as they explained the concept of dressing up like comic characters and interacting with others as if they were crazy. The student showed us pictures, and we all were intrigued. The classmates, though, didn’t […]