Hacked! Reflections on a Hackjam
One of my favorite parts of NCTE 2011 wasn't a scheduled session. It was an ad-hoc National Writing Project sponsored hackjam (not to be confused with Spacejam). Organized by the incomparable Andrea Zellner, the hackjam gave 20 or so folks the opportunity to muck around on the web. Using Mozilla's FireFox browser and a toolbar button from the hackasaurus site to modify websites by changing the HTML code for the site.
- I think Paul and Andrea were pretending to type
I took the opportunity to "hack" the NY Times webpage to date it a day forward in tribute to my favorite 90's TV show, Early Edition, and to replace some of the ads with Buy Nothing Day logos. With so many people on the Corner Bakery wi-fi, we were draining it, so instead of tweeting out a pic from my page, I took a pic and tweeted it out.
On one level, it was a futile activity. Other than a screenshots we took, there was no evidence of our work. Using hackasaurus doesn't actually modify the website, but just the way it displays in your browser. It'd be easy to say, "That sounds fun, but what's the point?" For me, mucking around in the HTML was like making bread from scratch or changing a tire. They're activities in which I want to engage as an act of understanding and joy, not necessarily of utility or efficiency. I think for ourselves and our students understanding the means of production are important, so that we can be responsible and thoughtful teachers, students, and humans.
Cross posted from In For Good
Comments
Chad Sansing
on Dec 07 2011
at 08:46
Hack on
I'm really interested to learn more about the #NCTE11 hackjam, Meredith - I wish I could have attended! I hope you can attend the #EduCon one on Sunday.
For me, the hackjam is really a vehicle for thinking about school. How can we (the big we) hack school? How can the changes we make last over time and not be one-off classrooms or projects? How do our pop notions of schooling prevent us from working other kinds of learning into public education?
Beginning with play seems important to me as United States public schools don't allow for a lot of play.
I hope to catch a bunch of people virtually and F2F at EduCon to learn about the Chicago hackjam -
All the best,
C
Elyse Eidman-Aadahl
on Nov 24 2011
at 14:23
You don't have to have a point to have a point
Hi Meredith,
I really appreciated your naming, and addressing, the question of the point of a hackjam. It recalled for me Oblio's observation in The Point: "You don't have to have a point to have a point."
For me, Hackjams and hackasaurus remind us all that the browser is, in fact, a writing/authoring tool. That's something we're quickly losing as the browser becomes normalized and even rejected in favor of browser-less apps. So if you've grown up with this magical tool as a routine part of your web environment, it would be easy to foret what it can do. Hackasaurus reminds us of that.
Your post really nails that issue of "understanding the means of production." Thanks.