#HearMyHome

#HearMyHome is an online connected learning project interrogating the sonic possibilities of earwitnessing culture and community literacies. Focusing on “everyday” cultural heritage, #hearmyhome demonstrates how users can “hear” and “listen” to better understand difference through expansive personal learning networks (PLN). Illustrated by a mobile site’s larger open-networked soundscapes map, #hearmyhome is an affinity space wherein participants share both knowledge and life experiences (through sonic composition) as a way to form interpersonal relationships and create a fuller understanding of community.

Networked and hosted across microblogging and social networking sites such as Twitter, Instagram, and Vine, #hearmyhome operates through user participation. Through sonic production and play users earwitnessed the everyday through a series of sonic events. Tracing these ambient acoustics and sonic soundscapes, #hearmyhome has three primary goals:

1. As an area for research, #hearmyhome is about examining rhythmic rituals and the ambient soundscapes of culture that cut across the contexts of home, school, and community, looking at the connections, overlaps, and disjunctures
2. As a pedagogical project for learning, #hearmyhome posits that some of the most meaningful forms of learning happen when a learners have interests or passions they are pursuing across contexts of (inter)cultural affinity, social support, and shared purpose
3. As a model for connected learning design, #hearmyhome offers a way of connecting the spheres of home, school, and community-based learning, leveraging the affordances of digital and networked media.