MixedInk is seeking high school social studies and English teachers in the tri-state area interested in testing standards-based collaborative writing projects in their classrooms.

Here is a brief overview of our plan:

1. Brainstorm project ideas. After a brief phone call to discuss your preferences, you can choose from a range of collaborative writing project ideas.
2. Design lesson plan. We will create a customized lesson plan based on the content you are teaching.
3. Software demonstration. If desired, a MixedInk representative will demonstrate our collaborative writing platform via screenshare.
4. Start project & in-class observation. As you implement the lesson plan with your class, we will conduct a one-day classroom visit to observe and provide support with the software if necessary.
5. Student & teacher surveys. You and your students will each complete a brief online survey.

Your feedback will provide a valuable resource for other teachers and help to inform MixedInk’s development. In thanks for your cooperation, MixedInk will provide you with one year of free access to our soon-to-be-unveiled premium educator features for the number of classes in which you test it.

To find out more or to sign up to participate, please contact Bryan Rosen at Bryan@mixedink.com.

I had the great pleasure of co-leading a conversation about “the remix” at the EduCon gathering on January 29-31. Held at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, the conference focuses on innovation and the future of schools & education. Here is the description of our session, The Art of the Remix in the Social Media Classroom, from the conference website:

Remixing is as old as art itself. As digital technologies expedite the transition from passive consumers of text to an engaged, read/write culture, we explore the pedagogical benefits of the remix in relation to literacy and tackle the thorny issues of plagiarism and illegal appropriation.

I worked with Leif Gustavson, a professor from Arcadia University, who teaches pre-service graduate students studying education. His students regularly use MixedInk to craft collaborative reflections on their field work, remixing their unique ideas into one collective piece.

Leif started our EduCon conversation with an experiment in collaborative writing: the exquisite corpse. The exquisite corpse is a game that originated with the Surrealists in the 1920s, and, as André Breton describes, is a “game of folded paper played by several people, who compose a sentence or drawing without anyone seeing the preceding collaboration or collaborations.” The game was named when Surrealists first played the game and came up with this phrase: “The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine.” Reflecting on the exquisite corpse, Breton says: “What excited us about these productions was the assurance that, for better or worse, they bore the mark of something which could not be created by one brain alone…”

We played this game during our conversation at EduCon, resulting in a wonderful (or shall I say exquisite) set of exquisite corpses. Check out a few of my favorites below!

1.
A trampoline of brain sparks
Staring into the abyss
Ring fingers
Panicked
Snow crunches beneath me
I want more cake
Chocolate, melted and sticky
Groceries on the mind
Sense of wonder
Time
To engage completely
The unexpected fate

2.
Time stood still
Cold nose wet paw
A warm buzzing
Singing loudly
Yellow sunshine
Dynamism between rabblerousing
A little too close for comfort
Another knuckle sandwich
Rabbit poop
Group effort, one mind
Nice!

3.
Pressured body
Hidden by an open window
Missing myself, feeling old
Stinky grids
Through the wind
Showing creativity
Leaping off twitter cliffs
Tiny little redundancies
Stillness

4.
Falling lightly
Patience
Snowflakes dancing underneath
It became so important
A vast! Below!
Lithesome beauty
Feeling relaxed with green
With fallen leaves crunching beneath my feet
Quiet
Change the channel!
Breath of air
The pen explodes on paper

Pretty impressive! When we started the process, I noticed a bit of nervousness in the group. Very quickly, though, the process erased the stress, since we shared responsibility for the end product. The weight of writing was broken down into something manageable – and fun. In the end, we were struck by the surprising cohesion of the poems we created – what Nicolas Calas described as the “unconscious reality in the personality of the group.”

MixedInk enables exactly this sort of interaction – by encouraging people to build upon each other’s ideas, it removes the barrier of getting a first draft on paper. With MixedInk, original versions are just a foundation, the building blocks for something new. As one of Leif’s students said after using MixedInk, “In the end, you have this amazing explosion of thoughts and ideas that belong to a group of people.” I love how the exquisite corpse process leads to the same end – what another student described as “creating new meaning through the mixing of everyone’s words.”

Many thanks to Leif for helping us discover MixedInk’s surrealist roots!  If you have a collaborative writing experiment for us to try, please leave it in a comment.

In partnership with Carles Campuzano, a member of the Spanish Parliament, and NuestraCausa, a Spanish non-profit organization, MixedInk is excited to launch Spanish and Catalan versions of its collaborative writing platform!

To coincide with an important debate around immigration in the Spanish Parliament, Campuzano is inviting the public to craft a collective text that represents its most popular ideas and opinions about immigration using MixedInk. Campuzano has pledged to fully consider the public recommendations and hopes this will lay the groundwork for future participatory projects.

NuestraCausa is promoting MixedInk’s platform in Spain to bring citizens closer to decision makers – their goal is to enable people to influence public policy decisions. Among its many projects, NuestraCausa is partnering with Personal Democracy Forum to plan a European version of its annual conference, which explores the intersection of technology and politics, in Barcelona this November.

In the United States, government officials and agencies have paved the way for such groundbreaking projects. For instance, Representative Anthony Weiner used MixedInk’s platform to collect opinions about health care, and the White House used the platform to crowdsource policy recommendations for achieving open government. Needless to say, we are excited to see the same energy around citizen participation in Spain.

NuestraCausa is at the forefront of promoting citizen participation – and extending some of the lessons from the Obama campaign – into Spain and throughout Europe. We look forward to a fruitful, collaborative relationship with Marc, Javier, Gemma, Maria, and the rest of the NuestraCausa team as more and more leaders around the world recognize the value of citizen input!

Check out the coverage this project has already attracted:
• Un diputado de CiU, primer político español que utiliza MixedInk
• CiU apoya la reforma del Gobierno si refuerza las competencias en inmigración
• Campuzano (ciu) abrirá un debate en la red sobre la reforma de la ley de extranjería
• El PSOE se asegura superar la primera votación en el Congreso de la Ley de Extranjería con los votos de CiU

To use MixedInk’s writing platform in Spanish or Catalan, just put “es.” or “ca.” at the start of the URL. For example, to see http://mixedink.com/CarlesCampuzano/Inmigracion/ in Spanish, use: http://es.mixedink.com/CarlesCampuzano/Inmigracion/. Soon, we’ll make it even easier to toggle languages automatically.

If you’re interested in using MixedInk in any other languages, let us know by sending an email to info-at-mixedink-dot-com. With help from folks like Carlos Campuzano and the Nuestra Causa team, we hope to eventually make MixedInk available the world over!

MixedInk is proud to serve, once again, as a One Web Day ambassador. Inspired by Earth Day, the goal is to raise awareness of, and advocate for, an open, interconnected, accessible internet – with a belief that it will play a vital role in how regular citizens will solve global problems.

One Web Day was founded in 2006 by Susan Crawford, who now advises President Obama on science, technology, and innovation policy, and has grown into a global event, with activities taking place in cities around the world on September 22nd. You can get involved by organizing or attending an event on One Web Day, editing a Wikipedia article, donating a computer, or joining the Electronic Frontier Foundation, just to name a few options.

This year, the focus is on a key internet value: online participation in democracy. This is something that really inspires our work, here at MixedInk. Looking back, here have been some highlights in public participation and engagement:

• The Netroots Platform: Even before our public launch, a group of online activists used MixedInk to write a progressive political platform – a piece of which was included in the actual Democratic platform. See the ABCNews and Wired articles covering the project.
• GovTrack, a non-partisan group that tracks legislation, invited its community to write a collective letter to Congress opposing a gun control bill. This letter was converted into a petition, signed by over 3,000 people, and delivered to several members of the House.
• Congressman Anthony Weiner invited citizens to help generate a set of health care principles to help inform his work on the subcommittee on health.
• The White House invited the public to help craft open government policy, including how to make the federal government more transparent, collaborative, and participatory as part of its groundbreaking Open Government Initiative. You can hear me talking about the project on Federal News Radio.

In each of these cases, we’ve been so inspired by the ordinary people who have taken time out of their busy schedules – who have spent their precious nights and weekends – to do the hard work of writing policy, expressing their priorities, and participating in democracy. It has been a lesson in true citizenship.

Carlos Campuzano, a member of the Spanish Parliament, just invited constituents to weigh in on immigration law. In the next few weeks, the City of San Francisco will invite residents to weigh in on local policy issues. At MixedInk, we look forward to watching these projects unfold and are thankful for the opportunity to play a small role in this movement.

Check out this video about One Web Day and then get involved!

The White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) is using MixedInk to enable citizens to draft collective recommendations for the open government directive!

From the blog on WhiteHouse.gov:

President Obama issued a Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government in which he called for recommendations on making the government more transparent, participatory, and collaborative.

From the start, the White House Open Government Initiative has approached the crafting of these recommendations in an open fashion.

[snip]

Today, we ask you to work together to draft recommendations that translate good ideas and lofty principles into specific actions that can be taken to achieve open government. This Drafting Phase invites you to collaborate on creating recommendations for open government policy using a web-based wiki tool.

The collaborative drafting process is hosted by MixedInk here.

MixedInk has been used by a number of media companies, advocacy groups, and elected representatives to gather citizen input, but this project represents the biggest step we’ve taken yet towards fulfilling our mission.

When we set out on this journey, we were driven by a desire to empower regular citizens – we wanted to make it easy for people to exert their collective strength by speaking with a single voice, loud and clear. We sought to create a system that would enable people to express nuanced opinions about complex issues together. The approach had to be democratic and meritocratic, so that the collective voice would carry the weight of the individuals behind it. We believed groups possessed immense collective wisdom, but they lacked a way to synthesize their best and most eloquent ideas concisely.

In addressing these broad challenges, we developed a system through which policymakers can gather feedback democratically and transparently, without being overwhelmed by the task of processing it – by giving the community the responsibility for curating and judging the content it creates.

Mass citizen-to-government communication is an area with great promise. We’re inspired to see the Administration trailblazing through uncharted territory, and redefining policymaking in the process. It’s truly an honor to be part of this innovative initiative.

The final phase of the Open Government Initiative will last just one week, so be sure to add your $.02 while the project is underway. Your recommendations will inform the drafting of an “Open Government Directive” to Executive Branch agencies. If you’re new to MixedInk, check out our demo video first.

If you work at a government agency or hold elected office, we’d be happy to brainstorm potential applications and explore customization options. You can reach us at government [at] mixedink [dot] com.

You may have noticed that we tend to update our blog pretty infrequently. We’re sorry! This is not due to a lack of news to share – it’s just that, these days, the time needed to write a blog post doesn’t seem to be available all that often.

So we’ve started using Twitter to share news about MixedInk in smaller, bite-size pieces.  We’ll still post here at our blog, but those who want to hear the latest should definitely follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/mixedink.

As a teaser, here’s our latest tweet…

MixedInk is excited to be participating in the Innovation Incubator Program at this year’s SIIA Ed Tech Summit in San Francisco. We’ll be presenting at the conference and demoing in the exhibit hall – there’s also a virtual exhibit set up at: http://k-12.veplatform.com – check it out!

For those of you who have been tracking MixedInk’s progress, you might be surprised to see us at an education-focused conference. While our platform was originally designed as a tool for citizen engagement, we’ve been excited to see a lot of use among educators. We have also had other positive feedback from educators; aside from being selected for this conference, we’ve been covered enthusiastically by a number of education blogs, the service is being included in MIT’s New Media Literacies learning library, and – most importantly – teachers have given us great feedback.

Within the classroom, it generally works as follows: First, a teacher sets up a project for their class describing the collective text the students will create. Then, students submit their own versions of the text, edit their peers’ work, and weave different versions together to form new ones. At the same time, students comment on submissions and rate different versions to bring the best written, most popular ideas to the top. At the end, the class can explore the strengths and weaknesses of the top-rated collective text(s).

Using a democratic and collaborative system, the tool encourages students to take creative risks in their writing, understand varying perspectives among their peers, evaluate the quality of what they are reading, and gain experience working as members of a team. The process increases student engagement by building on their online behavior outside the classroom, fostering a sense of community among students, and enabling peer-to-peer learning.

MixedInk was recently selected as a finalist for the We Media “pitch it” competition.  We’ve got a shot at the $25,000 award!

It’s a huge honor to be selected as a finalist from among over 400 entries.  But win or lose, the We Media conference will be a fantastic opportunity to meet and pitch MixedInk the entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs who are shaping the media of tomorrow.

You can vote for our contest entry here: http://www.changemakers.net/en-us/node/16890

The judges will be taking the community’s votes into account when they make their verdict, so your votes will make a big difference.

I’ll be representing MixedInk at the conference in Miami.  If you’ll be at the conference and would be interested in meeting up, drop me an email (david-at-thisdomain) or just stop by our booth in the gallery.  Hope to see you there!

————————-

Belated update: MixedInk finished in second place (the judges said it was tantalizingly close) behind SeeClickFix.  They’ve created an online platform that lets citizens point out non-emergency issues, like potholes, and enables public officials to manage the complaints and respond in transparent fashion.  They were a worthy competitor, and a fun bunch of guys to boot.  Check out their site at www.seeclickfix.com.

It was great hanging out with all the contest finalists in Miami, as well as leaders and innovators from across the social media spectrum – we heard about some very cool projects in the works.  Hope to see everybody back at We Media again next year!

The People’s Inaugural Address concluded last week – it was a huge success!  When all was said and done, over 400 people had contributed (not including the 43 presidents).  You can find a copy-edited version of the final collective address here and the site where it was created here.

The project earned quite a bit of attention from the media and blogosphere.  One person, taking advantage of the fact that the inaugural addresses were published under a creative commons license, even created a free e-book from all the different submissions.  See our recent buzz for more highlights.

One last thing to bring to your attention – here’s Slate’s Michael Newman being interviewed on the WNYC’s Brian Lehrer show about the project.

He does a pretty nice job of explaining how MixedInk’s process works.  We also thought this “word cloud” that WNYC created using from the People’s Inaugural Address was pretty cool:

All in all, this was a pretty innovative project, and a great way to kick off the grand adventure that is MixedInk.

A big thanks to Slate – and to all who contributed!

See for yourself: www.mixedink.com

‘Nuff said!

Update: We’ve just been written up at TechCrunch!   (As a bonus, our site seems to be humming along despite the additional traffic…we’ve heard horror stories).