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?

Digital Creativity: Harnessing the Collective Energy

"It is innate for human beings to create stories and to create art."  ~Jason Eskanazi

In Week 5 of DS106, we were challenged to create stories through our photographs. Using suggestions borrowed from David duChemin in his book Ten:  Ten Ways to Improve Your Craft,  we were asked to be more deliberate in taking photographs.  In an age where everyone takes pictures of everything ALL THE TIME, they are doing just that.  They are taking a picture to record an event, not a photograph -- a creation, a play on words,  light, or perspective.  Not since I took a photography course in college have I been so deliberate about taking photographs.  At the time I had a 35mm SLR that my father bought on a trip to Vietnam in 1965.  We developed our own film.  We captured ideas and translated them to images.

The first exercise was a PhotoBlitz.   The exercise challenges you to think quickly and creatively.  You take 11 pictures given certain key words in 15 minutes that evoke the given idea.  I chose Ho'okipa Beach on Maui's North Shore for the exercise.  Other students expressed feeling awkward taking photographs in public (who is this weirdo)?  Beach goers are more relaxed and I was free to roam.  I chose to create a Haiku Deck on Visual Literacy using my pictures.  Schools focus on Literacy, Digital Literacy, Numerical Literacy and Cultural Literacy.  Rarely do we see focus on the importance of Visual Literacy and how it can be used to draw connections across the curriculum.

We were then asked to select what we considered our five best pictures.  These were my favorites....

PhotoBlitz!

"And we find that people doing this week’s work come away noticing the world around them in more detail." ~Headless #ds106

My next photography exercise was not assigned.  We took a Road Trip to Hana and I decided to try out the suggestions that I learned during the week.  Follow the rule of thirds, change your perspective, get pickier, pay attention to the moment.  No longer was I just clicking, I was actually designing the picture.  Not too bad for an amateur with an iPhone.  I also employed the Fast Tricks for the iPhone to further enhance my skill set.

Road Trips, a set on Flickr.

The final exercise I was able to complete was to "pimp up" my Flickr account.  That included creating a set of my best photos.  I decided that I would select the Blue Ribbon photo for each week of #ds106.  This way I can see the progression of my work (hopefully)!  As you can see above, I was able to embed a Flickr set into my blog and used FlickrSLiDR to embed the Blue Ribbon Photo of the Week in a Flickr Slideshow below.

Blue Ribbon of the Week

Created with flickrSLiDR

I spent a considerable amount of time looking at the work of fellow DS106ers, commenting on blogs, seeing incredibly creative images, methodology, and hard work that has been expended this week by the community.  I am energized by the collective energy that is evolving.  Each idea generated creates a flurry of activity, support and partnership.  Consider Rochelle Lockridge & Christine Hendrick's Audio Week in Review, or Ary Aranguiz's CollaboGiffing Project, Mariana Fuenes's determination to isolate the "eyes" in Ary's animated GIF and John Johnston's Photoblitz App..to name a few.   

DS106 channels the collective energy into the creation of stories, sounds, and art that allow us to make make meaning of our experience.  In Is There Such a Thing as Digital Creativity by Julian Sefton, she suggests that the process of selection, manipulation and decision-making in meaning-making through comparison of editing across media...points to the way that digital creativity – or at least meaning-making in the digital era – brings together in the new ways processes that used to be separate and bound by academic convention.

DS106 showcases the power of digital creativity by harnessing the collective energy of the group.  In eLearning and Digital Cultures: A multitudinous open online course, Jeremy Knox (a co-facilitator of the course),  observes that where work was collected and displayed together, the observer begins to get a sense, not of the individual merit of a single piece, but of the collective energy and intensity of the multitude...a shift away from thinking about individuals to thinking about connections, flows, and relations that exceed us as human beings.

DS106 transforms digital creativity into an engaging (often intoxicating) social experience.  We move from passive participants to active content creators. In the sharing of our individual stories, we contribute to the collective energy of the group.   In his blog, Kevin Hodgson reminds us that  the activity of making shifts consumers away from mass-produced materials and therefore, provides an individualistic sense of creation; and that the social element of digital literacies has the potential to increase engagement and heighten the creative element of making something that will impact the world.

What DS106 exemplifies is the synergistic creativity of the group, the importance of collaborative storytelling,and the opportunity to hone the skills necessary for creating, communicating, collaborating and networking in a digital world.

Communication - A Lost Art

Make a photograph that illustrates an aspect of communication.

I enlisted my granddaughter in this exercise.  We seem to be obsessed with communication these days, our cell phones tethered to us wherever we go.  But are we really communicating?  

My initial idea was that I wanted to use a picture that showed communication devoid of technology, something like this (my granddaughter receiving a lei after her dance recital).  

This exercise made me think about what communication is really about these days.  Is anyone listening, or are we just talking...

Make a photograph featuring a path, road, or trail that leads the eye through the photograph.

Sandy Brown Jensen picked up that these lupines were in full bloom and in Oregon, hers were long gone.  Yes, I cheated just a bit.  This picture is our home in Steamboat Springs Colorado.  This picture was taken in early July, but it is the background image of my computer, so I look at it every day.  You can just barely see the road curving out to the right, but it was just such a great image that fit the Daily Create. 

Make a photograph that features a grid of some sort today.

One thing that DS106 teaches you is that if you look closely, you can see many things.  We move too fast to notice the details.  This is actually the table on our lanai that sits on a tile floor.  I love how the grids intersect.  I also started to play with the Rule of Thirds.  I downloaded Gorilla Cam to my iPhone (I don't have a camera) which overlays the grid for you.  

What is Philosophy to you? Record an audio definition in 30 seconds or less

 

This is my first adventure into Audio in a very long time.  As our Headless Volunteers, Christina Hendricks and Rochelle Lockridge pointed out in their DS106 Headless 13 Audio Week 4 Review, the VoiceOver is too low.  I am just learning Audacity, and spent so long just getting the 3 sounds to work together, I let it go at that.  Fortunately, the podcast was full of great ideas, including the simple AMPLIFY to make it work.  Not sure how I missed this in the tutorial, but that's the great thing about DS106, we are all here to help each other.  They also questioned the use of the echo. I was going for the cellar effect, but I see that it did not exactly work.  I should go back and redo it, but I am already launched into Week 5, so we shall see.

Thanks for listening!

Little Miss Muffet...

I am finally sitting down to write a reflective blog on Week 3:  What Mean Ye Digital Storytelling for DS106. In a recent comment, I described myself as being way behind -- and our Headless Cheerleader +Christine Hendricks  reminds us that "it really doesn't matter if you're "behind." I've heard people say there's no "behind" in ds106, because, of course, nothing is required! You can do what you can, when you can."

I enjoyed describing what Storytelling means to me in my blog Once Upon a Time.  Little Miss Muffet was one of my favorites, and my Dad always used to call me that.  It brings back many wonderful memories of my childhood.

In addition to the stories that make up our cultural literacy, fables, fairy tales, myths and legends, nursery rhymes and the Bible, +Sandy Brown Jensen reminds us of the Hero's Journey.

Kurt Vonnegut gives us the shapes of stories,

Image: visual.ly's infographic-style interpretation of Kurt Vonnegut's "Shape of Stories" theory.

and our High School English teachers taught us there are 7 types of stories summarized in Christopher Booker's, The Seven Basic Plots.

I tried the 5 card Flickr story exercise "Think Globally, Act Locally" which resulted in a rather bleak story about extinction.  +Sandy Brown Jensen commented that she learned this exercise by writing a sentence for each picture.  This exercise clearly indicates that the pictures alone should convey the story with the narrator able to add only a title and description.  The randomness of the pictures selected forces you to think outside the box, but it can also create a somewhat disjointed story which was clearly expressed in the comments by the viewers.  "I understood your visual progression up until the horse, then I lost the mental thread."

flickr photo by keepps

We were also encouraged to view stories created by the DS106 community.  I started out looking at inSPIRE, a community created collection of the best work of past DS106 students.  I was immediately taken by Silent Era's Back to the Future inspired by Ben Rimes, the Tech Savvy Educator, because of the author's comments.  This is the true spirit of DS106.  (It is interesting to note that Ben's original video went viral).

Many times, I see the awesomeness in other people’s work and think to myself, “There’s no possible way I can do that!,” and shy away from the assignment.  But for some reason, Ben’s jaw-dropping “Silent Era” assignment and the genuine and unselfish way he shared his process inspired me.  It gave me that needed push to improve upon what I had already done.  Not only was I inspired to do my own assignment better, but I am also inspired to try and inspire others in the same manner in the future.

As I checked out Ben's Blog, I was fortunate to find the perfect example of a Digital Story that was created by his wife "One Day in 60 Seconds."  There are lots of web sites out there that allow you to create different digital stories over time, but this is so poignant, crisp, and to the point -- all in the span of one minute.  It has a beginning, middle and a perfect ending.  I am inspired to create a similar type of story.

The importance of the daily create discipline is becoming more evident as the course progresses.  Our creativity is like a muscle that needs daily exercise.  I am struggling with being able to technically create the image in my mind, but each with each exercise, the muscle memory is taking over.  It was nice to be able to combine this week's work into a single blog, Creativity - A Daily Exercise.

One of the most important ideas that is conveyed in DS106 is the importance of documenting the process used to create your image.  I am not at the point that I am using any complex design, but looking at +Alan Levine's description of "On the Cover of a DS Book" for Anya Kamenetz's next book is a standard that I will strive for.

In many cases, I wait to view other people's imagery until I have at least the idea of what I would like to construct in order not to be influenced by other's work.  Once I have an idea, or even after it is posted, I will then look at what my colleagues have created.  I am amazed at the talent that is exhibited and am learning many tricks of the trade.

I also appreciated the comments this week for #talkingheadless106.   I tried to provide good feedback and appreciated the comments that I have received.  I think that because I am new to the group, it will take a while to be more comfortable in providing effective feedback.  Steve Wheeler talks about the importance of blogging and feedback in his blog - Blogging as Conversation.  The community of DS106 is constantly evolving, but it provides a safe environment for experimentation that encourages creativity and conversation.

Parting Shot: The important thing is not the camera but the eye. ~Alfred Eisenstaedt

Eisenstaedt reminds us that our films and cameras can only take photos of what we see through our creative vision. It also emphasizes the importance of training the eye to “see” a picture before clicking the shutter.

Is God Dead?

What is Philosophy to you? Record an audio definition in 30 seconds or less

As a freshman in college, I was introduced to philosophy through the words of  Frederick Nietzsche.  Nietzsche led to Kierkegaard  and Kierkegaard led to Descartes.  For me, the construction of an argument to prove that God does exist is absurd.  Fortunately for me,  Alan Watts opened the door to Eastern Philosophy, and to this day, through the practice of yoga, I believe that each individual has their own personal philosophy that is an integration of the mind, body and spirit.

This is the first time I have used audio for the Daily Create Exercise.  In her comments,  +Christine Hendricks calls it 'polished.'  I had done an off the cuff version that was 58 seconds and thought the feed would cut it off at 30, so I transcribed the words, cut out the chaff and this is the result.  I was pleased to find out that Black Sabbath had the perfect album cover to compliment the clip.

Creativity...A Daily Exercise

I was feeling like I had done little work this week when I went to look at my Daily Create blog posts.  There were none!  Fortunately, I had participated, I just did not take the time to write up the process (I confess that I don't have a complex process yet for what I am doing).  I will just share what I succeeded at -- and where I failed.  Failure is good.  It is part of the learning process.  I was thrilled when I went to review the Weekly Assignment Checklist to discover that it was suggested to combine the Daily Creates for the week into a single post.  So here it goes...

Take a photo that represents the TDC idea of regular exercises of creativity

This is probably where I got stuck at the beginning of the week.  I wanted to use a rotating 3-D Text animated GIF to use in another daily create.  I was able to create the GIF.  I just did not manage to insert the animated GIF onto the static image.  Despite assistance from Rochelle Lockridge and Christina Hendricks, I did not have the time to stick with it so I let it go.  I ended up using a portion of the GIF for this image.  I never did the Daily Create for this day, but it went perfectly with the title of my blog.  Next time.  

Baby panda bears are happening everywhere! Write a birth announcement for one.

What's in a Name?

需要八個字符的熊貓寶寶名稱

熊貓寶寶出生於2013年8月24日5:32

母親美香和父親是個謎

請幫助我們一起慶祝！

Since I couldn't come up with a pithy little statement that hadn't been done by fellow DS106ers, I decided to use Google Translate for the announcement.  I thought it might be fun for the Zoo to have a contest to name the Panda Cub, because I am fascinated with the importance the Chinese place on the naming of babies (pandas included).

Another custom is to find the newborn baby's Eight Characters (in four pairs, indicating the year, month, day and hour of a person's birth, each pair consisting of one Heavenly Stem and one Earthly Branch, formerly used in fortune-telling) and the element in the Eight Characters. It is traditionally believed in China that the world is made up of five principal elements: metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. A person's name is to include an element that he lacks in his Eight Characters.

Take a photo that represents the idea of clarity

I can see Clearly now...

This is the image that I took that I wanted to have DS106 4Life in a 3D animated rotating GIF. I thought that somehow I could use the screensaver on my computer to capture the image, but that failed.  I did however,  find a 3D Text generator. I also wanted to lift the glass and have it float on a different background, but all the techniques that I tried were hampered by the lack of definition of the color of the glass and the background. I tried many different manipulations and eventually called 'Uncle.'  When I looked at the original image, I actually thought it was quite cool and decided that it was a worthwhile submission. And the bonus is that I have a DS106 4LIFE screensaver.  Apparently, I am hooked.

We predict the next book by @anya1anya is about #ds106. Design her some cover art.

I had this idea at the beginning of the course, and thought that this Daily Create was perfect for it. Unfortunately, I didn't get the entire gist of the exercise and have the image and title, not the whole book cover.  I try not to look at the Daily Create gallery until I have started on my idea so that I am not influenced by others.  In this case, when I saw the other images, I realized that I had totally missed the boat.  I did read with interest +Alan Levine's detailed blog on the creation of his image.  The process and the final image is what DS106 is all about.  

Create an interesting high contrast black and white image of an easily overlooked object.

A Dying Breed

This is the cover of the Maui Wrap which is delivered free to our mailbox.  It is the only print newspaper that I read anymore.  Hence the title:  A Dying Breed.  When I posted to Flickr, I got a comment on the article itself by someone who thought I was referring to the Outrigger Canoes.  I appreciated the opportunity to have the conversation.  This is another attempt at attempting to insert an animated GIF into a static image (newspaper boy in upper left corner over mailing label).  Again, unsuccessful, but with experimentation, I was able to get a negative image which reminded my of the original type presses.  

In looking back over the week, I had actually contributed to 5 of 7 Daily Creates.  While I was unsuccessful in executing many of my original ideas, I learned a great deal.  I also realized the importance of mastering the animated GIF, as well as other basic PhotoShop (or GIMP) manipulation techniques.  I appreciate the time that seasoned DS106ers take to document the process for newbies such as myself.  I appreciate the opportunity to be in such a creative community.  Indeed, I am in DS106 4LIFE.

Once Upon a Time....

What do you associate with the word storytelling?  What comes to mind visually when you think of the word?

When I think of storytelling, the first thing that comes to mind is my grandmother's Curio Cabinet.  For as long as I can remember, when I would visit, we would spend one afternoon cleaning the cabinet in which she placed her treasures from around the world.  Since she was Russian, many of the objects came from her mother prior to the Revolution.  We would take each object out, clean it and she would tell me its story.

For me, storytelling embodies voice, emotion and  connection.

The cadence of one's voice is a critical component of storytelling.  When I worked as a Librarian is the Aspen Middle School, I loved to read stories to the kids.  It was my voice that made the story come alive.  I do one helluva "Wicked Witch of the West."  But, I am just an amateur.  Listen to some Cowboy Poetry, or the poems of Sarah Kay to hear how voice makes for a compelling story.

Stories are powerful when you are connected to them emotionally.  A great memory I have of storytelling are the stories told 'round the campfire.'  When I was young, I went to camp in Vermont.  The all girls camp had an affiliate boy's camp and several times during the summer, we would go to Camp Norway to sit round their large campfire.  We would listen to stories, sing songs, and play games.  I can still retell one of those stories that I heard over 45 years ago.

Our culture is based on stories.  Whether it is the Creation Story of the Bible,

the constant battle of Good vs. Evil in fairy tales,

or the subtle imagery of nursery rhymes,

most of us remember these stories from our childhood.  They are the remnants of the oral tradition, the way that wisdom and learning was passed from one generation to the next before the invention of writing.

How does Digital Storytelling change the way we tell stories.  I will never forget the time I visited my grandmother with my MAC Laptop and a camera shaped like a ball that connected to the computer (can't for the life of me remember the name), and we documented the Curio Cabinet together with a cassette tape recorder and camera.  I transcribed her words and printed a booklet for her.  I only wish I hadn't lost the original file, because now, I would be able to post this online.  What a treasure.  Fortunately I still have the printed version.

Digital storytelling is about sharing.  It is about extending your story beyond your horizons.  Gardner Campbell tells us of a boy from Africa who contacted him because he read a story that was posted by Gardner for one of his students.  This boy contacted Gardner because he HAD to contact the student who had written about Tupac Shakur.  There was a shared CONNECTION.

Storytelling for me is about voice, emotion and connection.  Without the story of my grandmother's Curio Cabinet, I would never have created one of my own.  Oh, and the stories it could tell.

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