ds106 — Camp Magic MacGuffin

Archive for the ‘ds106’ Category

Tuesday, May 29th, 2012

Hello campers.
This summer the DS106 summer session is organized around a summer camp theme. Camp Magic Macguffin opened up last Monday for a ten week run and who knows what is in store. This this is my “camp letter” for the first week.

Well like a good camper, I spent most of the week outdoors. Although that took me away from my digital world for a while, its the first time this year that my schedule, my health and the weather have cooperated favorably to let me get out and take care of some much neglected yard work. Thanks to Cris’ Daily Create post recently, I was able to take this on as a creative challenge rather than as a dreaded chore. And after several days of work, when it finally hit 90 this afternoon, I was able to take a break in the shade and look around at what I had accomplished with some sense of satisfaction, rather than just seeing all the work that remains to be done.

I wasn’t really completely disconnected from the digital world though. As I worked, I listened to the Michael Wesch presentation that was assigned this week.

In fact I found a number of interesting talks at the UMW Faculty Academy Vimeo Channel in addition to the Wesch talk, so I loaded them all to my phone. I grabbed a pair of headphones and listened to them all as I worked. Very interesting stuff. Recommended viewing/listening for all. Then the phone and headset seemed a perfect subject for me to use for today’s Daily Create on connections.

So after admiring my yard work and cooling off a bit I again picked up my phone to check on the Camp newsfeed and catch up on the latest news. Campers’ blogging activity is picking up and I read many interesting accounts and camp letters. Although I’m here as just another open online student, the teacher in me couldn’t help but wanting to say a thing or two about some of the posts. But my fingers and my phone keyboard don’t make a good match, so commenting from my phone usually doesn’t work out too well. Anyway, what I was thinking of posting as advice has already been well written up in the post Earn Your Blogging Badge on the Camp Magic Macguffin web site. I think all campers (me too) could probably make our blogs and letters more interesting if we keep some of these tips in mind.

Well another week of camp is about to begin, so this tired camper is going to hit the camp cot and catch some ZZZs.

That’s my story. Any Questions?

Posted in ds106, magicmacguffin, openonline | Comments Off on Summer Camp at #DS106

Diving into the DS106 Pool and Camping Magic Macguffin Style – Part 1

Monday, May 28th, 2012

Already having my own domain and website, as well as nearly all of the requisite social media accounts, completing Week 1 of DS106 – Camp Magic Macguffin was a pretty easy thing to start. The bulk of the first … Continue reading →

Posted in alan levine, alec couros, bunk4, Camp Magic MacGuffin, dave cormier, digital storytelling, ds106, DS106 - Week 1, George Siemens, Jim Groom, magicmacguffin, Massively Open Online Courses, moocs, openonline, Stephen Downs | Comments Off on Diving into the DS106 Pool and Camping Magic Macguffin Style – Part 1

Daily Create Recaps: Week 1 of Magic Macguffin

Monday, May 28th, 2012

The summer of Unicorn Love ds106 Camp Magic Macguffin has started, and our campers seem to be happily making art and stuff. In keeping up with them, here is my weekly run down of Daily Create activity- it is refreshing to see the new surge of activity here, and this is one easy way to participate in ds106 at a regular level.

The only required one for our ds106 students at UMW was the Family legend video, and as before, this has become a really interesting way to get to know people in the course/community.

May 22, 2012: TDC 135 Video telling a story of an old photo
here I talk about a horrible old photo of me that I swore I would never put online

May 23, 2012: TDC 136 Video of a Family Legend
The story of my sister’s busted nose- what a great showing for this video assignment.

May 24, 2012: TDC 137 Make a drawing of a face trace
This was a great new kind of assignment, I followed others and did this on my iPad using Brushes to trace the photo

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

May 25, 2012: TDC 138 Photograph of a front of a building
What would be Vancouver without a visit to the blue house in East Van?

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

May 26, 2012: TDC 139 Take a Photo of (or something that represents) the Moon
There was a lovely crescent spotted at dusk in Coquitlam

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

May 27, 2012: TDC 140 Make a picture that captures motion
Bryan Jackson’s playful pup Vince provided a bit of blur (I did shake the toy to get the motion)

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

Posted in ds106, Magic MacGuffin, magicmacguffin | Comments Off on Daily Create Recaps: Week 1 of Magic Macguffin

Casserole Ensemble

Monday, May 28th, 2012

Casseroles – Montréal

Sunday’s Daily Create was to take a picture that shows motion. I decided to make it rather show a movement. I love the celebratory, non-violent movement of this ensemble featured in The Huffington post. I’ve included the embed of the video below. It’s quite moving. I love the track titled Intuition by Astronomie. It’s en français; my fave line is “D’un même élan” (roughly translated: the same momentum).

Quebec students have been on strike for over 100 days and most mainstream media has mostly ignored them or chalked them up to “self-absorbed brats”

Last week the National Post ran an op-ed from John Moore where he challenges the prominent notion from the R.O.C (Rest of Canada)

He points out, “Today’s youth face a grim future not of their own making. Is it any wonder that they’re angry about it?”

Born in Toronto, Ontario but living in Montreal, QC, my brother, Matt Forsythe has done some beautiful art work as his contribution to the Casserole.

In addition, his recent FB status update has generated a lot of discussion.

Students should be realistic and think about the economy. Let’s be realistic.
Raising tuition fees reduces social mobility, increases personal debt, reduces spending and home ownership, increases student loans (which, by the way, is great for banks), creates a less-educated and less-skilled workforce.
So how is raising tuition fees good for the economy?

I agree. I think this argument is brief but clear and his friends are commenting in droves, not all agreeing but all being quite respectful.

Now this is really looking like a fan site for my brother, but I really have to also give credit for this stunning picture he took from a rooftop in Montreal:

=======
NOTE on making the Animated GIF: I took a screen grab of the video for about 5 seconds. The more observant of you will notice my sloppy mouse icon in the bottom left corner]

Then I Imported mov as layers into Photoshop CS5. I masked out the movement I wanted to freeze and what I wanted to move.

I applied the filter: Brush strokes-Ink Outline to the layers and exported as B&W animated GIF.

Photoshop screen shot of layers for casserole gi

Posted in counselor, dailycreate, ds106, higher ed, Lifelong Learning, magicmacguffin, occupytogether, openonline, Tuition, University, VisualAssignments, VisualAssignments2 | Comments Off on Casserole Ensemble

ds106 It’s Own Space

Monday, May 28th, 2012

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

Even before coming to work at University of Mary Washington I carried a large bias towards the force that is ds106; having taught in and doing it again (hey the doors are open for the summer version a la Camp Magic Macguffin), I am in the middle of the MOOC woods not really worrying if there are trees or not. Or maybe, if a Massive Open Online Course falls in the woods… ok, enough useless metaphors.

There’s enough static flying in the webs about MOOCs but I was pleased to have caught the conversation at the Digital Campus podcast Ya Big MOOC where Dan Cohen, Mills Kelly, Amanda French, and guest Audrey Waters provided interesting viewpoints and recognition of ds106 (not that we need more people clamoring for credit)

Ya Big MOOC

Some brief notes- Mills praised ds106 for not being the “correspondence model” of Coursera and Udacity (which now I know from the podcast is pronounced “You Da City”) as an old model of distance education. He described this approach as if content goes online and you work through it then you will know something — an instructivist model

On ds106, he said “This is what MOOCs ought to be” that it takes advantage of inherent qualities of the Internet. Audrey waters says it is “of the web and for the web” (hey I thought I coined that) and ds106 stands in contrast to other moocs in that it is really about community of learners,

Audrey’s experience in some of the other MOOCs is that she won’t be missed if she is not in the course, that it is isolating. I should add that despite completing only 1/2 of a first You Da City course, I still get emails congratulating me for making it to week 4:

Congratulations! You’ve made it more than halfway through the course! Unit 4 and homework 4 are both up. This unit is on search and complexity, which I hope you enjoy learning as much as I enjoyed teaching.

I know this course has been challenging, but if you’ve made it this far I have no doubt that you can finish. If you have any questions, or just want to take part in interesting discussion, feel free to visit the forums.

Despite the million dollar infrastructure, they don’t even know where I am at.

The group pondered Why now? for MOOCs, why the fervent interest. They speculated a global demand for the branded experienced, but also questioned whether Stanford, Harvard, MIT will take as value/credit a student entering their institution with MOOC experience- its good enough for us to brand our X version for people to use elsewhere but not good enough for people coming to us?

I can say with almost 100% assurance, ds106 will never have a cheapened x in front of it.

There is a lot that is unique abut ds106, it has kess to do with the structure, technology (which are integral though) and more about its leveraging the social nature of the network that was drawn in from the start. But tio does not mean that there cannot be more courses in this mode and not just the Ya Big MOOC kind.

I’d have more to say, but I have to get back to camp.

Posted in Blog Pile, ds106, magicmacguffin, mooc | Comments Off on ds106 It’s Own Space

Meta-Media Fluency

Monday, May 28th, 2012

Michael Wesch’s talk on new media as a learning tool illustrated the potential that multi-media operations have on the future of the world. The two men who posed as corporations and public figures to fool people who don’t have a hand on new media yet was brilliant. As is how Twitter helped publicize the conflicts in the middle-east, even after all other forms of communication were essentially banned, the government didn’t understand how to stop it.

New media can play a vital role in politics as well… I thought of this video while thinking about people who don’t understand how to work social media. (From Stephen Colbert.)

If you don’t feel like watching, Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley didn’t understand twitter, and would tweet completely illegibly because he didn’t understand the process or concept. Colbert made a mockery of him and the tag #tweetslikegrassley trended when people didn’t feel like tweeting coherently. It was significant enough for me that I don’t know anything about Iowa except corn and Grassley.

Kony2012 took the world by storm a few months ago when people who had never heard of Joseph Kony at least took notice of the atrocities he was committing.

Ultimately, I’m learning to appreciate what social media can do besides showing everybody my new beach pictures.

Posted in ds106, magicmacguffin, Reflections, umwsum12 | Comments Off on Meta-Media Fluency

TDC 136

Monday, May 28th, 2012

Forgive my awkwardness, I hate talking into cameras.

So, the quick version of this is that my dad is a Charlottesville “legend” to anybody who graduated UVa in the 70s and 80s, or went to high school in the area and spent some underaged evenings on Frat Row.

Fun facts about my legend..

Born in 1949
Rumored to have played in a very short-lived garage band with Tommy Ramone
Locally known as Johnny Sportcoat
Has a few albums, the most fun being Sun Gin Chocolate (things that make him sneeze) which people misread as Sung In Chocolate.
There’s a documentary about the C’ville music scene
I spied some DS106 artwork in his office the other day which proves to me that this world is too small
He thinks he is hilarious

Here it is. And yes, that is a very flattering still of me…

Watch this video on YouTube.

Posted in ds106, magicmacguffin, TDC, umwsum12 | Comments Off on TDC 136

My Grandfather: A Family Legend

Monday, May 28th, 2012

While I have more than enough already to do, this week I decided to dust off the old Fritzwinkle.com and jump into this summer’s version of DS106, Camp Magic Macguffin. Since I have been doing a lot of research and … Continue reading →

Posted in bunk4, Camp Magic MacGuffin, digital storytelling, ds106, magicmacguffin, openonline, tdc135, tdc136 | Comments Off on My Grandfather: A Family Legend

Getting Acquainted

Sunday, May 27th, 2012

I’m finally getting accustomed here at Camp Magic MacGuffin.

My first week, despite a few bumps in the road like getting completely turned around as I tried to maneuver my way through setting everything up, has been pretty neat. Though I already had a family-friendly Twitter account, I’m glad to be doing something actively productive with it instead of just posting pictures of my adorable cat. (Here Littlefoot is covered in packing peanuts.)

I like to add a little narration into everything I do, so…

I don’t know definitively what my guidelines are for my “Letter Home”, but here is what I’ve learned so far this week: