Faces of Death revisited

When I was little I was never allowed to watch the viral VHS videos entitled Faces of Death, which, reportedly (I still haven't seen them) showed real life murders, like executions, and fatal accidents caught on video. I played with three neighbor boys, all brothers, who were allowed to watch rated R movies when I wasn't. When Faces of Death enjoyed a brief spike in popularity, I heard their vivid descriptions of the murders they witnessed while watching Faces of Death and eating popcorn. It must've been about 4th grade when those brothers would tell my brother Jason and I about firing squad executions and skydiving accidents they'd seen. They'd re-enact deadly scenes on the school playground between touch football games. I don't remember what I would say when I heard their second hand accounts but I remember knowing for sure that I didn't want to watch Faces of Death. I was too young, I knew, to handle those films that my buddies bragged about. When they weren't bragging, my neighborhood friends confessed to being haunted by nightmares of the footage. I preferred Star Wars and my lingering fear of monsters under the bed. 

Still nightmare averse and squeamish about violence, I've been watching a different kind of Faces of Death in my social media stream. The helicopter footage of the police shooting of Terence Crutcher in Tulsa is a scene straight from a nightmare. It is an execution pulled straight from a Faces of Death editing table. The video clip left me sick, sorry, and wanting to take action. The sound of the video clip of Crutcher being shot is gruesome in its own way, even though you can't hear a gunshot. Instead, the arial footage of this Black man being shot is accompanied by a White man with an Oklahoma drawl.

And the cover up is such a familiar narrative that we can hear this helicopter pilot starting to spin the tale even before Terence Crutcher was shot. From his arial vantage point, a white man with a badge describes Crutcher, who had his hands in the air, as a "bad dude" who is probably "on something." The officer who shot Crutcher is being described by some in the Tulsa police and by her attorney as a "drug recognition expert." Instead of calling this murder the way we can all see it, this murder is being quickly reframed as the shooting of a "bad dude" by a "drug recognition expert."

This morning I'm still scared of monsters and I still long to hear mythical tales of good triumphing over evil. This morning the rebellion isn't a bunch of fictional characters fighting the Empire. This morning the heroes are in the streets demanding justice and risking their own health and welfare to bring murderous monsters to justice. 

My untroduction to #clmooc 2016... leading with my interests

Happy Saturday, #clmooc. Though I've posted a number of times already in the spaces and places of our online collaboration, I haven't unformally untroduced myself yet. At the risk of being self-congratulatory, I'd like to note for the hallowed digital record of #clmooc that I was posting about Pokemon before it was...errr...cool? So the first question I'll pose in this blog is: was my untroduction last year, in which I pictured myself on a Pokemon trading card, celebrated the sleepy Snorlax, and described my interest in games and learning, clairvoyant or coincident?

Maybe I should concede right here that I had no visions then about swarms of players in parks at virtual Pokestops (see below). I just wanted to enter into #clmooc's connected learning by declaring my playful curiosity about the characters and narratives connected to a game that my daughters and I were playing.

Vaporeon stampede Central Park, NYC from Woodzys on Vimeo.

So, even if I didn't see this convergence of augmented reality, fandom, fitness trackers and geolocation coming, I think I was on to something last year untroducing myself by leading with Pokemon and my interests.

I'm interested in games for learning and games as texts

I'm still interested in games and learning, evidenced by my recent posts, "A letter to professor Willow..." and "14 reasons why #PokemonGO has a future in education." When I posted on Soundcloud a brief conversation with my daughter about the game, I was thinking about how games and fandom situates youth as experts, experts with background knowledge about the digital texts they navigate in Pokemon Go.

I'm interested in badges as microcredentials that might serve social justice aims

I recently had the opportunity to hear from Nichole Pinkard and Doug Belshaw speak at the Aurora Public Schools #badgesummit. They both helped me develop a deeper understanding of badging and that learning experience has me thinking of experiments I'll do with digital badging in the coming year with the APS badge system. 

Screenshot of this tweet.

Screenshot of this tweet.

I'm interested in social annotation and it's civic potential

Learners who watch the #clmooc channels during the year probably have seen examples of digital annotation and discussion about where the practice of marking up digital texts in the open might lead. I've blogged about my desire to encourage youth who have experience with immigration to comment openly as experts in much the same way climatefeedback.org activists mark up texts about climate change.

For educators interested in working toward more equitable schools, communities, and policing, I invite you to mark up this post by Antero Garcia, "There are No Lessons for Alton or Philando." (Just get the hypothes.is Chrome extension here and watch the video below.)

Finally, I'm interested in open learning

As I read the tags and posts of #clmooc for the fourth year now, I remain interested in how a community of learners develops and strengthens, swells and shrinks, plays and questions. I'll end my newest intro with one of my first creations for #clmooc, the teaser video below. I have the same sense of anticipation about where this experiment will take us now as I did then, back when this MOOC was still just an idea.