Remixing Curriculum Tools

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Remixing Curriculum Tools

Remixing Curriculum Tools: Hybrid Web Applications, Mashups and Portals

Mashup defined: A derivative work consisting of two pieces of (generally digital) media conjoined together in some interesting way, such as a video clip with a different soundtrack applied for humorous effect, or a digital map overlaid with user-supplied data

WHAT?	WHY?	HOW?
Taking content that is already created and mixing it together to create a new product is a common activity of students these days. Clipping portions of a video and moving the content into a different order and applying a musical track in the background to tell a different story or give a new message would be an example of a mashup. When students create a product with transformative value, they are permitted to use copyrighted materials in the mashup.	The ability to take existing content and think of new ways to use it for different purposes is a skill that requires higher level thinking. Thinking skills, as well as technical skills are required for this type of project. Both of these skills are important for students.	Identify a project that can allow for the student to take content and manipulate it into a new product, expressing the point of view, emotion, or message to match the assignment.

Contents

1 Tools for Remixing
1. 1.1 Google Earth
2. 1.2 Flash Earth
2 Tools for Organizing
1. 2.1 Aggregators
2. 2.2 Mashup Resource Links

Larry Lessig: How Creativity is being strangled by the law

This video demonstrates how mashups (remixes) are important in today's day and age.

Tools for Remixing

Google Earth

Google Earth lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings and even explore galaxies in the Sky. You can explore rich geographical content, save your toured places and share with others.

Google Earth Tour Creation

Students can search for tours that have been created or create their own tour to accompany just about any content area topic. Google Earth allows the user to stick pushpins to the map and then include images, audio, video, text, and links in the pushpin window to provide information about the location as it relates to an assignment.

Google Earth tours can include a single pushpin or multiple pushpins, depending on the topic. Once a tour is complete, the user saves the tour as a .kmz file and it can then be opened in Google Earth on other computers.

The links below include ideas for tours, as well as some already created tours.

Flash Earth

Flash Earth is an experimental application for viewing satellite and aerial imagery of the Earth from multiple mapping websites inside a single Flash-based interface. It is not designed to be a fully-fledged mapping application but more for enjoying and exploring images of our planet. The Flash Earth creator is mashing up data from various mapping API's ~ Yahoo, Microsoft and even NASA.

Tools for Organizing

Aggregators

RSS in Plain English

PageFlakes

Pageflakes is a service for creating a social personalized homepage. At www.Pageflakes.com, you can easily customize the Internet and make it yours using ‘”Flakes” – small, movable versions of all of your web favorites that you can arrange on your personal homepage.

Pageflakes also has a developed user community, where users share pageflakes pages as “Pagecasts” with a private group or with the world. Pageflakes is connecting users with other users across the globe. The Pageflakes user community creates and helps discover more new Flakes and Pagecasts every day.

Pageflakes has thousands of Flakes (widgets or modules) including Facebook, a universal News Search, YouTube, Twitter, message board, blog, and hundreds of RSS feeds to choose from. Design and create a page that you can have for yourself or share with anyone you choose.

Mashup Resource Links

Mashup Links

v.1

Crib_Earth.pdf

(800k)

Michelle Krill,

Dec 4, 2008 3:50 PM

v.1

Crib_Reader.pdf

(801k)

Michelle Krill,

Dec 6, 2008 3:18 PM