Updated Media Product Names for Mapping Media to the Common Core

This week I’ve been working on updating several of the “product names” for my Mapping Media to the Common Core / Curriculum website and forthcoming eBook. I made changes to six of the twelve products:

• Blogging is now “Interactive Writing” (so it can include Google Docs too)
• Concept Map is now “Visual Notetaking” (I created a webpage draft of it this evening)
• Photo 180 Project is now “Narrated Art” (I’m quite enthused with this new category, however it’s one of five products I still haven’t drafted as a webpage)
• Narrated Slideshow and Screencast are now combined as a single product, rather than being separated on two different pages.
• Scratch Project is now “Simulation or Game” (I’m going to add websites/tools for iOS and Android-based game development like GameSalad, as well as highlighting Scratch software)
• The combination of Narrated Slideshow with Screencast opened up a slot for another product, so I added “Digital Story” (I initially drafted text and links for this page tonight as well)

Here’s what the “Mapping Media to the Curriculum” website menu is looking like now:

I want to give a BIG shout-out to the amazing educator and digital artist Giulia Forsythe, who gave me permission to use an excerpt of her Visual Notes from Unplug’d 2012 in my graphic for “Visual Notetaking.” I really like this category better than “Concept Map” because it can include concept mapping, but also creative, nonlinguistic representations of ideas. I could have feebly attempted to draw an example of visual notes, but I couldn’t possibly do better than Giulia did last week for Unplug’d. I’m particularly fond of the fact that “The Wolf and the Townspeople” is included in this remix!

Narrated Art is another category change about which I’m very enthused. I’m thinking iPad apps like ShowMe and Draw and Tell will be great to use for this project type. AudioBoo could also work, although I currently have it included on “No Edit Podcast.”

Overall I like the product name changes which hopefully include less “jargon” and sound both more inviting and less threatening to teachers. Hat tip to Adam Zodrow for helping me brainstorm ideas for the “Digital Story” graphic, the media streams of ones and zeros were his suggestion!

I hope to get the remaining five “media products” which I don’t yet have drafted (with starter text and links) finished by the end of this month. My overall goal this fall is to write and publish “Mapping Media to the Common Core” and “Mapping Media to the Curriculum” as eBooks by the end of December. I feel VERY centered in this work and the way it’s building on my first eBook, “Playing with Media: simple ideas for powerful sharing.”

I’d love to hear your thoughts and responses to these media product title / name changes, as well as suggestions and ideas you have. My rather ambitious goal with this website and writing project is to help redefine “digital literacy” in our schools through these products we can create and share together. Eventually I’d like to create a DVD curriculum, facilitator’s guide, and participant workbook which would be based on this website and eBook. Dave Ramsey‘s “Financial Peace University” curriculum is one model I’m thinking about trying to emulate. It’s an ambitious goal, so time will tell… I’m very glad to at least have these visual product changes made tonight and the connected webpages ready for content.

The last change I’m still contemplating is making “Podcast” into “Radio Show.” The phrase “No-Edit Podcast” sounds like technospeak, but everyone knows what a “radio show” is. Radio Show is not entirely inclusive of the ‘no edit podcast’ product genre, however. Since I added “Narrated Art” to this mix, that category could include shorter, individual audio recordings. I’m not sure. What do you think?

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