There is NO AWOL in #ds106

The past two weeks have been devoted to Audio in #ds106 and I feel like I have been unconnected.

Fortunately, there is nothing like AWOL in #ds106, because there are......

...notifications from the group on their Daily Creates, their radio commercials and teasers... or people like Ary Aranguiz who is participating in StoryHackVT and seek our support... or Kevin Hodgson who is always dabbling with some new tool and sharing his incredibly creative work.. or Alan Levine on the road spreading the #ds106 word and looking for stray MOOSE!

Not to mention Mariana Funes who posted a #Phonar that prompted me to record my own... and new member #106 Gail Desler who may be overwhelmed by the fanfare of her auspicious arrival as the 106th member of our G+ group (I had to drop what I was doing to add a celebratory GIF in her honor)....or running into Janet Webster in Stephen Downes online Moodle MOOC2, or wondering where Dave Barr went... All of this makes me feel connected to a community -- a community of learners, of artists, of creators. An open community with no rules or teachers, where you are free to come and go as you please, yet you KEEP SHOWING UP because there is value in these connections.

So, while I was consumed by other work, I was able to find a way to combine some of the key elements of audio into a few key ideas that resulted in the following work.

Because this is audio week, I went back to an idea that I had earlier, but never put together.  I was taking pictures for the Design Safari and took a picture of the wind chimes in the bathroom for "A Good Use of Space."

I realized that I had accidentally switched the setting to video and I recorded the sound as well.  This made me remember an old childhood song that I wrote with a friend (I can't remember the whole song or the friend), but I thought it would be a cool exercise to record as an audio exercise.  Not to mention, it would help me get more familiar with Audacity and Movie Maker.  Here is the result:



Motivated by Mariana Funes'  "What the Hell, I'm doing a #Phonar as a Daily Create", I decided to combine a few elements together, the personal story and the Daily Create #647.

Write a satirical article riffing off a typical news story inspired by the Onion.

The personal story talks about the creation of the news story of the Mendenhall Glacier.

Things would not be complete without a Daily Create "Notice the Ground Beneath Your Feet.Document with an Enhanced Photograph." This opportunity afforded me a chance to bring our community a little closer with the Mosaic above. I took the liberty of using a cool beach sarong to use as my "ground." I then took all of the images posted for the Daily Create and made a mosaic illustrating the importance of our connection, our intersection, and our relationships that make #ds106 the magical place where 'Puff' lives.

"Puff"

Haiku in Haiku

It’s October! Write a haiku about any special October day

When was the last time you wrote a Haiku?  5-7-5?  I am fortunate to live in Haiku, Hawaii and took the opportunity to make a Visual Haiku.  Quite frankly, I need to improve my GIMP skills, so it was a great way to explore layers, typeface and manipulation. Did you know that typography evokes a sense of place?

The papayas were picked on the property.  The background is a placemat that was the perfect backdrop.

I was thrilled that my #designmeld partner +Ary Aranguiz followed my lead with her own visual Haiku.  It's all about inspiring each other to be more creative.

What's your Haiku?

We Are All [Artists]

We started off Design Week with inspiration from Tim Owens @timmmmyboy.  I loved it and used it as inspiration to create a Haiku Deck using all original photographs.  (First time ever!)

We have been asked to reflect on all aspects of design -- "What is design? It is everywhere you look- anything we create or manufacture has key design elements.   This exercise makes you acutely aware of your environment.  You begin to see things in new ways. Even fonts and typography are elements of design.  Are you a Comic Sans Criminal:  Spoiler Alert - I was formerly a CSC)?  Did you know that typography can evoke a sense of place?   

I have become so attuned to design that I spent the week watching TV with no sound.  It really is an eye-opening experience!

We have been given a plethora of Design Resources for review in order to become more familiar with elements of design.  My favorite resources is from Duke University's Lab in Digital Knowledge:   "What Do 21st Century Literacies Look Like?  This is ds106 in action!

"When we expand the digital meaning-making conventions that make up 21st century literacies, we expand our ability to interact and connect with each other. Designing in this new digital medium contributes to the development of an even wider collective effort of understanding and communication."

In order to demonstrate our understanding, we were to undertake a Design Safari.  As I write this summary, I realize I don't follow directions very well, and selected one image from my week's catalog of photographs to illustrate my understanding of the concepts. Since it was a safari, I couldn't resist importing the images into MovieMaker and adding a safari soundtrack (thank you YouTube Downloader/Converter).  What I like best about the piece is that it is a safari in Hawaii.  My granddaughter loves to make dioramas when she visits, so the title slide is her contribution.  (We were supposed to upload to Flickr tagging photos #designblitz and blog about whether the images were effective or not...next task).

Another assignment was to design a poster...These projects all involve some aspect of re-editing existing content to change the meaning or making something new that visually represents an idea.  

I decided to use this opportunity to combine ideas for 2 different classes and the 6 Word Memoir was the perfect opportunity.  I ended up with a poster as well as a slide presentation in order to share the idea of "Promoting Creativity in K-12 Education in multiple ways.  I have already received feedback that the font and placement is too busy on the poster and am working on the revision.

 6 Word Memoir

I have also watched with fascination the development of a ds106 collaborative story writing project started by Ary Aranguiz using gifs to tell a story.  Not having the opportunity to participate as yet, this project is the embodiment of "experimentation with collective design processes combined with the development of the images" that is described in "What Do 21st Century Literacies Look Like? 

As Tim Owens pointed out, a creative environment can foster creativity, and ds106 is giving us that environment."

How Do You Know You Are Learning?

List twenty ways you can document your learning. How many have you done this week?

As you might imagine, because this was a written assignment (no frills, no pictures, no html code) I started to generate a list...and then half way through the exercise, I realized I needed to be more creative [duh, it's a Daily Create, stupid]. So I decided to use words that ended with     -ate. It was kind of fun. Did you know that in chemistry, -ate is used to form the names of salts from acids [acetic acid ..acetate].  Sounds like a transformation to me, doesn't it?

Kevin Hodgson @dogtraxx upped the ante when he created a humorous Haiku Deck to illustrate his ideas. Since I had done a Haiku Deck earlier in the week [I really like Haiku Deck, btw], I decided to illustrate my ideas visually as well. Thanks for the inspiration, Kevin.

1. Write a Story
2. Make a Diagram 
3. Record a Poem
4. Shoot a Video
5. Write a Song
6. Post a Blog
7. Take a Picture
8. Create a Slide Show
9. Make a Movie
10. Host a Google Hangout
11. Create
12. Innovate
13. Curate
14. Narrate
15. Illustrate
16. Annotate
17. Meditate
18. Accommodate
19. Debate
20. Bloviate (I love this word.  It summed up the current discussion of the U.S. government shutdown this week).

(NB:  I intentionally only illustrated 10 of the ways that I document my learning using the words that end in -ate).

How do you know you are learning?  How can you document it?