Summary Project: We Didn't Start the 'Net

Billy Joel’s hit ‘80’s song “We Didn’t Start the Fire” was written as a reflection of historical events of the first 40 years of his life. Billy Joel organized the song in accordance to the decades in chronological order. 

In EC&I 831, I have been introduced to a multitude of digital tools, ideas, concepts, websites, and topics surrounding Social Media and Open Education. I have learned a lot and have grown tremendously since the beginning, but am still trying to process all of what I have learned. Thus, the song “We Didn’t Start the Fire” was appropriate in helping me to explain how I have felt during the class. The song quickly lists a variety of the discussion points of the class, in a purposefully overwhelming way. At times, I felt it difficult to keep up to all that I was learning, but there was still excitement in the possibilities. 

The Creation Process:

- I knew I wanted to make a video for the summary project, as this is something I’ve never done before. 

- At one point in the course, I heard “We Didn’t Start the Fire” on the radio. This made me think of the abundance of new technology I was learning. The idea of creating a song and video to the tune of “We Didn’t Start the Fire” was born.

- I then began to write my own lyrics to go with the music. I started by listing all of the tools and websites that I could think of. From there, I analyzed the rhyming scheme of the original song and made templates to fit in my words. 

- At this point, I knew I needed to learn how to even make a video. So I went to YouTube and watched a video called How to Make a YouTube Video Part 1. This video suggested to use Windows Movie Maker.

- Then I found an instrumental version of song on YouTube, which was labeled for public use.

- To get the song to play in Windows Movie Maker, I needed to convert the YouTube to an mp3. I used this website: www.youtube-mp3.org Then I embedded the song into my movie project.

- Then, I searched for creative commons photos to use illustrate my lyrics. This was a tricky part of the project, as some of the concepts are metaphorical, so I had to think of an image that would help to illustrate the concept.

- Once the pictures were laid in, I created a caption for each photo using the previously-written lyrics.

- At this point, I had to figure out the timing of each slide. I had to make each slide match with the song. This was definitely the most challenging part of the whole process. The music moves very fast from slide to slide, and often the captions wouldn’t line up or they disappeared when I changed the timing. In the end, the timing is not perfect, especially since the original lyrics are the ones that the song’s melody is using. This doesn’t always work with the lyrics that I wrote.

- This project was not without its difficulties.  I had many challenges and problems to face, and it was quite time-consuming. However, I am pleased with the overall result and I feel that my vision of the video came to reality the way I wanted it to. And I got to learn how to make a video and upload it to YouTube!

Here’s the text version of the lyrics: 

Facebook, Twitter, Hashtag, Flickr

Flipboard, Mashups, YouTube, Edublogs

Network, Wordpress,Widgets, Pinterest

Hyperlink, Gmail, Netiquette, Cogdog

We didn’t start the ‘Net

But the way we use it is what makes us human

Blogger, About Me, Google Plus, Photography

Flipped Class, Compfight, Bring Your Own Device

Instagram, Collaborate,Ted Talks, Curate

Vlogging, 2.0, MOOC Class, Ask for some advice

We didn’t start the ‘Net

But the way we use it is what makes us human

We didn’t start the ‘Net

But we’ll find a way to use it every day

Blog hub ,Genius Hour, Screencast, Richard Schwier

Aurasma, padlet, open ed, Tube Chop

Couros, Makey Makey, Flying Cats, F2F

Udacity, comment, keeping up, Don’t stop

Digital identity, Digital legacy

Knowledge, Linux, The Oracle of Bacon

Copyleft, 3-D print, Shock site, maker movement

Android, pingback, use your attribution

We didn’t start the ‘Net

But the way we use it is what makes us human

We didn’t start the ‘Net

But we’ll find a way to use it every day