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Making of a Zeega:

I was trying to write a post of literacy and identity. It began with a search for google scholar. My computer smashed. I don’t have access to my curated literature. Not that it is tagged well. I need to get better at.

I wanted to try and write a post that meant something. That condensed these archaic academic articles into a succinct post. I admire bloggers like that. I try and tag posts like this to serve as mentor texts in class.

I didn’t happen. I got sidetracked into a more meaningful multimodal musing. 

After going back to the slideshow by Rick Beach about #walkmyworld I decided to use it to frame my piece.

That and it was too late to write a post heavy on digestible academic discourse. Besides when I usually try to cook these up I end up with a burnt turkey burger covered in vegan cheese.

I also had remix on my mind. Laura Hillinger had posted a query to #teachtheweb about remix lessons. I shared some previous ones I did but I wanted to give it the old college try.

Who’s got a project about remixing literature that I can steal from? @writingproject? Got a link? Some plan? An Etherpad? #teachtheweb

— Laura Hilliger (@epilepticrabbit) January 20, 2015

Finally I wanted to make a Zeega for #walkmyworld. We want folks playing with images and identity. So I figure let me play and co-learn.

I had a bunch of PDFs open. One of those happened to be Donna Alvermann’s piece I decided to use that piece as well.

I find remixes easier when they are anchored in more than one source or idea. It makes metaphors easier. This gets you away from literal intermodal concurrence and lets you play with meaning.

I wish I had my old computer. I would have recorded the creation process, but I will try my best to recount here:

• I started with the four questions we asked in our #walkmyworld session and Rick Beach’s idea that we have multiple me’s that move across our digital spaces.
• We were asking people to name their world.
• This brought me back to the King Killer Chronicles. It opens the remix. If you haven’t read it start now. Magic in the book works by knowing the name of things. The real true name. Seriously read it.
• I played off this naming magic because naming ourselves in hard work. I screw it up all the time.
• I then made my two definition slides where I talk about literacy moving to literacies. I was trying to get at the idea we have rejected a model of literate and the illiterate and recognize multiple pathways to meaning making. I searched for book and dumb. You can figure out which opicture is which? What do these images say about gender identity? Searching, tagging and social media?
• Its kinda cool though that one image looks to be in the brain of the other. Not sure if that was luck or if I did that.
• The next slide is the point I think Rick was trying to make…or at least it is the way I am repackaging it.  Not sure what my search term  was. 
• Zeega lets you search a bunch of web media and remix it. dogtrax probably has a comic.
• I then went and made the 2nd and 3rd slide. I had a text structure start to formulate in my mind. Strange bc I usually have to storyboard out stuff like this.
• I would draw my literature base on Gee and identity kits from Alvermann, stick in Ricks beginning thoughts. 
• Then I would  use images of doors folks have posted to #walkmyworld with the four questions.
• To capture what I meant from Gee’s identity kits I wanted to use the tired trope of using L33T when discussing youth technology. I did a quick ethnographic netography ofold gaming forums…kidding„
• The text copied froim academia.edu just came out that way. Either DRM or incompatible fonts. Either way. Eureka.
• The discourse page was from the method Rick suggest we use in the future. 
• The song choice, well The Doors seemed too literal. There is mention of a door in the song, and I spent all day in the Post Office trying to figure out the most convoluted mail order practice ever.
• I guess I made some design choices. It is fun to play with meaning, identity and pictures.