How can you be #4life without over 600 blog posts about ds106?
This week in ds106, my class starts a week of looking at visual storytelling, primarily in working with their own photographs. For me, this is some of my favorite stuff since I love taking photos. I’d like them all to get better at taking interesting photos, moving from snapshot mentality to be composing in their […]
Angela, in dire need to get medicine for her dying mother, makes some unwise decision on the streets of Naples on how to get the 20 lire- the opening bit of the 1929 silent film, Street Angel. I’m watching this movie, well at least the first bit, as part of the Coursera open course on The Language of Hollywood: Storytelling, Sound, and Color.
In the scene above, she is sentenced by judges who don’t seem to care a whole lot about her or her story, she’s just another on a treadmill, and the guard who brought her in escorts her out. It’s a nice full cycle, perfect for beng GIFfed
Given my previous track record of less than one week duration in Coursera classes, I had already let most of the week slip by before showing up for class. I cannot say I am thrilled at the courser design. The first week has 5 “mini-lectures” each about 15 minutes, in which the professor mainly tells me things I could much more efficiently read on my own. Then he reads to us from a book.
Ouch.
And then there was the first quiz. I might have busted the honor code here, but frankly this is a joke, insult, or just plain _______.
Man these MOOC quizzes are tough. pic.twitter.com/Cjj050h2
— Alan Levine (@cogdog) February 8, 2013
Frankly, I just skipped this question just to screw up their analytics.
But really, the five week course format is:
If this is the best design Coursera has going, I don’t see how higher education, broken or rotten tree or whatever, even has a worry. I would be embarrassed to paint this as the triggering disturbance sending tsunamis of change out.
But I digress.
Inspired by tonight’s #etmooc live animated GIF variety show from Jim Groom, Tom Woodward, Michael Branson-Smith, and Brian Lamb, I could not help but stay up later than advisable making a GIF. It’s a break in the action from grading. No, it’s just like an idea that gets in your brain, and will not stop […]
cc licensed ( BY SD ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog I rather enjoy spotting juxtapositions, as when I opened a cabinet in a friend’s kitchen, and noticed a tupperware containeer with a #ds106radio sticker sitting atop a copy of The Joy of Cooking. That’s whats happening in a few hours, when I try out […]
cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by NoiseProfessor This still cracks me up, and I had rustling around my iMovie a certain comercial that I wanted to mashup, so here it is, featuring the lonliest edtech repairman (note one f-bomb in the audio).
cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by dmixo6 For open participants in ds106, we can dispense of the entire “I dropped out of another &$*#ing MOOC” because there is nothing to drop out from. No one-pace-for-all ramming speed schedule, no weekly lectures, no multiple guess quizzes. We have a very easy […]
Fresh off the electronic press, dripping with electronic ink and smelling faintly of dittos, my words are in the Jauanry/february 2013 issue of Educause Review in the New Horizons department (yawn, horizons) (oops). Look ma, a citation! ds106: Not a Course, Not Like Any MOOC:
Looking for something different from the current hysteria of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)? A digital storytelling course started by Jim Groom at the University of Mary Washington (UMW), ds106 was set loose as an open course in January 2011. Yet the UMW catalog does not include such a course. Its actual course designation is CPSC 106 (Computer Science)””a small but telling example of how ds106 plays with and questions the norm.
Most classes in digital storytelling revolve around the personal video narrative form as popularized by the Center for Digital Storytelling. But ds106 storytelling explores the web as a culture, as a media source, and as a place to publish in the open. Not claiming to authoritatively define digital storytelling, ds106 is a constant process of questioning digital storytelling. Is an animated GIF a story? What does it mean to put “fast food” in the hands of Internet pioneers? Why would we mess with the MacGuffin? Is everything a remix? Though this is perhaps simply semantic wordplay, ds106 is not just “on” the web””it is “of” the web.
A few weeks (months?) back, I got an email from former Maricopa collegue Vernon Smith who is the new editor for the column, who asked me to write something for them on ds106. His eye had caught the “It ain’t no silly MOOC” tag I had on the site for a while last semester, when it seemed fun to bait MOOCs. Now? Meh. Yawn.
But I did want to write about the things in ds106 that make it special, unique, in my mind. I was happy to fit in some quotes from former students and open participants. It’s a real skim by, but what can you really do in 1500 words?
Thanks to Teddy Diggs for thorough editing. Now when is someone going to convince her to get in her car and drive north two hours to visit me? I’ve been offering to buy beer…
Here is another story demo for ds106, using my Five Card Flickr Stories site to generate a story from 5 random photos drawn from the Daily Create pool. I still find these a lot of fun. Five Card Story: Oh Brother a The Daily Create story created by CogDog flickr photo by Michael Branson Smith […]
This is a demo of a ds106 assignment for my students to get a taste of telling stories with pictures. The task is to use two different photos from recent Daily Create Photo assignments and tie them together with a story, a sandwich if you will. Where am I? Bad dream? Last thing I remember […]
cc licensed ( BY SD ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Computers have feelings usually not expressed. They have hurt, anger, depression, and in this case, inordinate feelings of inferiority. Today’s Daily Create was to make a blue screen of death message using type only. My screen just wants to die and not come back. […]
