National Writing Project Hack Jam

Initial reflections after facilitating the CVWP 2012 Hack Jam

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 18:53:00 -0400

Some highlights from the hack jam:

We laughed enough to make our neighbor come close our door.
Two groups danced, and one of those groups also added a construction paper dance floor to the game board for the little figures.
One group moved from figuring out how to compete to figuring out how to work together.
People balanced beetle-monster statues on their heads.
One group made bracelets and rings - the meanings of which were kept secret from me.
For the second hack jam in a row, the Star Wars board wound up having hyper bridges between squares.

More significantly, perhaps, the entire group did a great job discussing the hack jam in relation to teaching, learning, writing, and making. We came away with profoundly compelling questions about what we should do with our time, what we are asked to do with our time, and what is best for kids. What should the system change? What do we need to change about our practice? How do we balance the lessons and codes we feel we must teach to all of our kids in order to give them the best shot at leading successful and fulfilling lives?

I felt humbled to be included in the conversation; I tried to facilitate it without steering it. The honesty, vulnerability, and support shared between teachers wondering what technology and making mean to writing, teaching, learning, and schools seemed brave and true and right. The questions and responses shared between participants seemed like inviting paths into more inquiry, learning, and new practice.

I think in schools we forget that play can lead to serious, rigorous, passionate learning because we assume that the best way to get rigor is to begin with seriousness.

I look forward to more conversations with this cohort about how hacking, making, and play can help us each find a way into thinking, talking, teaching, and learning more about ourselves, about writing, and about our students as writers.

CVWP 2012 Summer Institute Hack Jam - Table 4

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 18:36:00 -0400

Rules from a great game that went from figuring out how to compete to figuring out how to build together:

Game Title: The Community Build

Set Up Game:

Put 10 sticks at brown, 10 at orange, 10 at green
Put 10 pipe cleaners on blue, 10 on light blue

Objective

How to Play:

The person right of the designer goes first. All players start at GO.

Set the timer for 30 minutes. Play until you hear the bell.

Roll the dice - go as many spaces – either direction. When you land on that space:

If you land on CHANCE choose any item to add to The Community Build

When you land on a property select the item that corresponds with that color. See “Game Set-Up.” Then look at the great value and select that number of items to add to The Community Build.

Any property that is non-color , you must remove the greatest value of items from The Community Build.

If you land on COMMUNITY CHEST, roll again

If you land on JUST VISITING JAIL – everyone has to go too.

CVWP 2012 Summer Institute Hack Jam - Table 3

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 18:33:00 -0400

From Table 3’s hacked game of Monopoly:

Start in jail.

Roll dice - subtract big number from small.

Move to your left.

If you get the evil eye than everyone goes back to to jail and take place that is the furthest along (eye of the law).

Roll complement person to left.

Roll but bead on bracelet.

On community chest take a cookie or a cherry.

Roll less that 3 get to take a bid bead.

Land on the railroad; take a card and do what it says.

Get doubles, do a dance.

When one person does the dance, we all do it.

Land on the luxury tax you make a play-doh ring, and it goes in the middle, and you can buy it back later.

The person furthest away from the Eye of the Law goes to jail and you take their place.

If you land on chance spot (question mark) you have to put all your beads back.

Choose to multiply or subtract your dice.

If you land on your own property, you do not have of dance, but others have to do all of the dances.

If you send someone back to jail, get a diamond ring.

If you get a double dance you can wipe the dance routine over and start a new choreography.

Community chest now gives three beads & a cookie or a cherry.

CVWP 2012 Summer Institute Hack Jam - Table 2

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 18:27:00 -0400

Game objective: Get the most balls/coins to win.

1. First player holds one of each of the 6 color pompoms in their closed hand.
That person says a color to the team then the person to the left chooses the color from his/her open hand and if the gumball is chosen correctly he/she gets to go anywhere on the board. If not he/she loses her turn.

$5=$100 dollars

2. We are taking turns counterclockwise.

3. Each of us represents a color in the palm of the hand

Betsy=Yellow
April=Pink
Christina=Blue
Barb=Orange
Leilani=Purple
Now each person has a playing piece.

4. Open the playdough and make 12 balls. The balls are more valuable than money. If the person whose turn it is guesses correctly then he/she gets to steal one ball from any player.

5. Rule Change.

Now moving will be based on each color representing the number of spaces moved.

Yellow=1 now 11
Orange=2 now 12
Pink=3 now 13
Green=4 now 14
Blue=5 now 15
Purple=6 now 16

6. The place you move into turns into a sand pit and the next person that lands on it will lose a ball to that player.

7. When a person lands on a sand pit he/she will lose 3 balls.

8. Anytime anyone in the room laughs the person whose turn it is has to choose someone to play rock, paper, scissors with that person and whoever wins gets a gold coin. When the gold coins are gone then you get to steal a gold coin from someone.

9. When you lose rock, paper, scissors you have to balance the beetle statue on your head for 5 seconds without dropping it.

10. If you lose rock,paper scissors you have to balance the beetle statue on your head until someone else loses the game of rock, paper, scissors.

11. Each gold coin is worth 10 balls.

CVWP 2012 Summer Institute Hack Jam - Table 1

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 18:24:00 -0400

Here are the rules from Table 1’s game of hacked Monopoly.

New Monopoly Rules:

Roll both die, start at go and move the number of spaces that you roll on the dice.

If you land on the emperial logo then you build something out of playdoh. If the rest of the group can guess it, you get $500 and the person who guesses would also get $500.

If you don’t roll over a 3, you have to walk around the room like a chicken.

After you land, you can use the tape to make a slide but it has to be a straight line. Others can use any slide.

If you roll an even number, put a circle around your player creating a hyperspace so you can go to any space.

No matter what your roll, you can move 3 times that much, 2 times that much or that much.

The object of the game is to pay the power ranger to leave our planet alone. We have to collect enough money to pay the power ranger to keep our planet safe.
We can get money by landing on the Rebel Alliance symbol and pick a pom pom. If you can flick it into the correct color ring you get $500. You get 3 tries. If you get it into another color ring you get $100.

You can’t build a slide to Emperial Logo or Rebel Alliance

If you land on Go To Jail you have to put $500 on the sheet of paper. If you do not have $500 you owe it as soon as you get it.

If you land on Go or Pass Go collect $200. You can not ring or slide directly to Go.

Space Auction- the most money wins the statue at the end.

The buildings are banks. You can get loans. Choose a card with your eyes closed. If you pick blue you get $1000 orange gets $500. If you land on indigo, purple, blue or red. And you get a pink pom pom.

You can use the pink pom poms to flick. If you hit someone the person you hit has to pay $500.

If you ever have a fine and you can’t pay it or you don’t want to pay it, then you can move the statue to the paper and dance to avoid the fine.

If you roll a three or under and you don’t want to walk around the room like a chicken, you can hire another player to do it for you.

The dance has to be a partner dance and you have to dance in the square. You must dance 10 seconds.

If when you flick, you hit the power ranger then for sure the person of your choice and Vick have to dance!

No slides to money spaces. No circles to teleport to money making spaces. You can’t use any special moves to move to money- making spaces.

Opt-in "Readings" for the CVWP 2012 Summer Institute

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 07:06:00 -0400

Here are a variety of resources gathered around the idea of writing as composition as making something - a text, a game, a course, a movement, a thing, a school.

- DML 2012 Ignite Talks by Ben Chun, Tessa Joseph-Nicholas, Peter Kittle (NWP), Chris Lawrence, & Nishant Shah

- NWP’s Digital Is

- NWP’s Teachers Teaching Teachers webcast

- NWP Teacher Kevin Hodgson’s gaming resource

- NWP Makes

- Center for Make/Hack/Play (w/ Bud Hunt, NWP Teacher)

- connectedlearning.tv

- be you.

- Coder Dojo

- ds106

Hack Jobs

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 20:13:10 -0400

Wow! What an unusual project. I love it! The idea of taking html code and changing it for projects with kids is so cool.

Thanks!

Rules to our Monopoly Hack

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 16:13:55 -0400

We hacked Lord of the Rings Monopoly and changed it to Land of Writer’s:

· Instead of “jail” it’s “Published- collect $500 and a visit with Oprah for her book club”

· Instead of “Go to jail” it’s “Win the Newberry”

o either of these ends the game and everyone returns to “Go” to start again

· If you get the symbol on the dice- you lose a turn

· land on People = add a new character in the story

· land on Horses = someone in the story has to travel somewhere

· land on Events= change or add events in the story

· You can move whichever direction around the board you want

· Make up a collective story as you go and change it as you land on things

· You can double the dice score if you want

· When you land on a space, you can use the word or the picture to add to the story

What is the relation between hacking and writing? (a question from the WIDE-EMU hackjam)

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 16:13:07 -0400

I see helping students take risks in writing as one of my key teaching goals — so in a sense, all writing is hacking, as in questioning, finding alternatives to, undermining standardized and templated forms of expression, and also knowing when those forms are useful and employing them knowingly and thoughtfully.

For News HackJam Image

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 16:13:01 -0400

At the WIDE-EMU Un-Conference, Andrea Zellner introduced us to Hackasuarus and the idea that we can remix websites as a form of digital writing and expression. So, given the very limited time that we had, I wanted to try to make something that was a political commentary. This was an interesting digital writing process, as I had to quickly learn how to use the Hackasaurus “X-Ray Goggles” then identify a website that I wanted to critique, find alternative images to place in that website (alternate logo and alternate ad) and use a photo editing service to hack together two sections of the image (to remove a banner ad) before posting to Flickr.

That’s a heck of a lot to do in just 15 minutes, and it raises questions about what we are able (and should do) with students in our writing classrooms, but here is my final image:

Quite a neat idea, and one that I need to consider as I think about teaching ENG 201 next semester…

Post created by Troy Hicks

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

First and foremost, I have to say this: I am not a digitally...

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 16:12:55 -0400

First and foremost, I have to say this: I am not a digitally literate person. I’m more digitally literate than my mom, but I fill in the blanks on someone else’s template when I blog. However, I think this addresses the question asked, “How do we place these hacking tools in the repertoire of a digitally literate person today?”

I hacked my own blog!

Does this enhance or detract from growing writers? Well, we study the why and how of composition, right? And if we agree that craft (ie: non-traditional, unconventional, emergent, pick your buzzword) functions as composition, coding and html are necessary aspects of digital literacy.

What do we have to say to the world about hacking and writing? Did you see the superhero girl on hackasaurus.org? I think I’ve found a new role model for my daughter.

I made a site there (hackasaurus), too, through htmlpad.

http://jsbin.com/eqetow/15

-Chelsea Lonsdale

@parablematernal

nashifeet.blogspot.com

parablematernal.wordpress.com

A participant’s visualization of hacking from the CVWP...

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 10:02:16 -0400

A participant’s visualization of hacking from the CVWP Hack Jam on Friday, July 8th, 2011

A hacker black-out poem from the CVWP Hack Jam on Friday, July...

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 16:11:31 -0400

A hacker black-out poem from the CVWP Hack Jam on Friday, July 8th, 2011

A reflection on the CVWP Hack Jam

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 16:01:00 -0400

I (Chad) wanted to capture a few thoughts about today’s Hack Jam with the Central Virginia Writing Project (CVWP) before I forget them or muddle them.

CVWP site directors Jane Hansen and Kateri Thunder invited me to join the CVWP Summer Institute for a morning of discussion about educational technology. The group expressed interest in a wide variety of topics ranging in scope from game-based learning to specific screen-casting tools. I wasn’t sure how to approach the different interests and needs expressed by the institute’s participants, but I figured that if we started a conversation together, we would be fine.

I also thought that a hack jam might help us talk about approaches to technology, rather than about specific technologies. So I brought along three sets of Monopoly - you know, just in case. Like how Paul Allison never goes anywhere without a microphone.

Given the choice between a conversation about different tech topics or a hack jam, the group chose to hack. I remember one participant expressing some worry - the hack jam “sounded like something you had to have a lot of preparation for.” I brought out Monopoly to set us all at ease and we began to play by imagining new ways to play.

Each group approached hacking Monopoly differently. One group collaboratively decided on an entire rule-set before starting to play. One group started with all the houses and hotels already in play. One group started with all the houses and hotels in the middle of the board. It was great to watch each group, in its own way, move farther and farther from parts of Monopoly. While one player rightly pointed out that this hacking activity could be done with any board game, we agreed that games like Monopoly - those with which many people have a common experience - are best for ice-breaking over a hack.

I’m not sure I gave enough time for us to share out our new games before we moved on to visualizing hackers and hacking. Our group talked a lot about the negative connotations of hacking, but also asserted that digital agency and authorship were missing from - and desperately needed in - most schools and classrooms.

When we tried to come up with synonyms for hacker, we wondered how using those synonyms - like “author” or “digital producer” - sent power and/or positive connotations back into hacking. If a hacker can be called an author, does that mean we should view and treat hackers as authors?

The group consistently named and described the tensions of hacking without being at all defensive about hacking or dismissing it from their work.

We talked about whether or not technology is neutral (consider the biases Rushkoff would cite), but also about how important it is to weigh human intent in using technology, or in choosing to program or not.

Before we played with Hackasaurus and the Web X-Ray Goggles, we talked about access and equity and the role of hacking in teaching. What rules can be bent and broken to give authorship, control, and voice over to those kept out of digital/social programming courses in our schools? How can we hack school in positive ways for students and their learning? I mentioned Greg Hill’s work with the Disruption Department.

You can see some of our hacks below - I will add more as they arrive.

Here are some thoughts from hack jam participants, captured by Jane in her notes:

The more you do this, the more you want to do it.
This is fun.
For some students, they may come into creativity, writing while hacking.
I’m going to share this with tech people at our school.
This can be a form of authorship.
Students can post headlines and articles alongside New York Times pieces and compare them.
If kids aren’t allowed to blog, maybe they can change headlines on New York Times instead.

I hope all of today’s hack jam participants will share a reflection here, as well. Please let me know if any of us facilitators can be of service to your schools!

"The Matrix made me see myself differently as a person; this made me see myself differently as a..."

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 15:37:53 -0400

“The Matrix made me see myself differently as a person; this made me see myself differently as a teacher.”

- A Central Virginia Writing Project Summer Institute participant at the CVWP Hack Jam on Friday, July 8th, 2011

In thinking about hacking the Douglas Rushkoff’s SXSW...

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 15:34:00 -0400

In thinking about hacking the Douglas Rushkoff’s SXSW talk, I remembered the scenes from Akira in which government communications technicians (?) type with prosthetic finger buds shooting out on filaments from each “normal” finger. When will we reach a tipping point at which our technology alters our physiology, not just our behaviors, or are we there already? Do current and emergent interfaces make the need for more fingers obsolete?

Here hacks from today’s play with the Web X-Ray Goggles...

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 15:28:33 -0400

Here hacks from today’s play with the Web X-Ray Goggles from Hackasaurus. I’ll add more as they come in to me via email.

And, finally, here’s a shot of the last group that ended up with...

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 15:20:00 -0400

And, finally, here’s a shot of the last group that ended up with partnered-play and duels involving throwing game pieces into a cup.

This last group said that the game became more and more fun the further they got away from their preconceptions about Monopoly.

I am struck, as I was in Philadelphia, by how different each game was from the other games. In both Hack Jams, at least one group decided to alter the game-board the with Post-Its, while another group has wound up throwing stuff around the room.

Update: here are the rules from this group!

Board face up.

Each player takes 3 Rebel cards and 3 Imperial cards.

Roll the both dice. One dice tells you how much money to take (if you roll a 5 you can take 5, 50, or 500 dollars. The other dice tells you how many spaces to move. Or you can give up one of your car.

If you roll doubles: you must give two of your ships (of either color) to any player of your choice. Or if the game ends and no one has all of the ships, the winner is the person with all of the money.

The object of the game is to collect all of the dark gray ships or all of the light gray ships.

When you have 100 dollars you can buy a ship of your choice from any player.

Roll consecutive numbers, contest against all players to build the highest tower out of small ships. If it falls down you’re out – no rebuilding.

When you land on a “place” space you take the corresponding card. If someone already owns that, your turn is over.

You can form an alliance with another player: combine money, planes etc. Partnerships are fluid.

If you land on the same space as someone else you must duel against the person. Put a cup in the middle of the board. Whoever throws a small gray piece in the cup first gets EVERYTHING the other player owns.

There was another game played in the middle of the room that...

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 15:19:13 -0400

There was another game played in the middle of the room that involved dares. I’m not sure of the rules, but some cheerleading and the chicken dance both came out of this group. I suspect the kid with the purple faux-hawk had something to do with it. Kids.

This group reported that the game was rarely about winning; instead it was about entertaining the other players and being silly.

While I (Chad) hope that groups will post their rules later in...

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 15:17:00 -0400

While I (Chad) hope that groups will post their rules later in the day, I want to share these photos and impressions of the games we hacked into being at the Central Virginia Writing Project Hack Jam.

Here is The Land of Writers hack. Players moved around the board and constructed a shared narrative by introducing new characters and events according to the spaces on which they landed. From what I caught of the story, Princess Brie set out to woo Monterry Jack. The game could end if a player landed on either the Newberry Award spot (Free Parking) or the Oprah Book Club Spot (Go).

This Land of Writers group collaborated top set up the rules for their game, but then reported feeling somewhat frustrated as group members kept changing rules after that. It felt chaotic to some group members. Creating a new game was fun, but attachment to its original rules got in the way of enjoying new ones.