Archive for the ‘Learning’ Category

 

The Daily Create: Response to The Seven Day Challenge

Thursday, July 19th, 2012

A week ago, Alan Levine tweeted out a challenge to accompany a summer downturn in the number of submissions to The Daily Create:

With visions of screaming drill sergeants and mean, sand-kickers going medieval all over everyone’s case, I decided the best thing to do was to play along and do my best to meet the challenge, and encourage others to do the same. Alan’s Charles Atlas comic taunt was sufficient to prompt a similar Charles Atlas response.

I was out of town during most of the intervening days, but with pretty much everything I needed in my backpack (with the exception of my USB mic, which was with me in my wheelie bag), the bits and pieces necessary to keep pace were close enough at hand. Tethering to my phone let me post from my non-internet enabled location.

Day One: July 11th: tdc185: Draw a Tornado.

I’ve already written about this one in “Tornado, Revisited,” but here again is the “drawing,” and then my subsequently animated GIF-version of the drawing process.

"Tornado" by aforgrave, on Flickr

“Tornado” by aforgrave, on Flickr

Tornado: TDC185 (animated GIF)

Tornado: TDC185 (animated GIF)

Day Two: July 12th: tdc186: Make a photo of an outdoor scene free of any human artifacts.

My little holiday get-away had me hanging out on the south shore of the St. Lawrence river in Québec near Rivière-du-Loup, and walks along the beach during low tide were part of my daily practice. While collections of a variety of items, including “sea glass” and other human artifacts were of interest (a couple great stories to come over the next day or so), there were also wonderful opportunities to get images of nature, undisturbed.

"Nature's Artifacts" by aforgrave, on Flickr

“Nature’s Artifacts” by aforgrave, on Flickr

I snapped this image using my new 50mm lens, and later marvelled at the wonderful detail captured in this pic. Check it out in a larger form. On Monday, while in Ottawa (and dropping by the Rideau Centre Apple Store) I took a moment to view this image on a new MacBook Pro with Retina Display. Wow. Amazing.

Day Three: July 13th: tdc187: Make a video of what is playing on channel 106 on your cable? (or make it up).

This one was a natural “make it yourself” opportunity, since there was neither Internet nor Cable (and thus no Channel 106) where I was staying during the week. Although I sorted out an idea (based on a photograph I took on the beach), plotted an outline, gathered the footage, wrote a narration, and started to translate it, there wasn’t time on Friday to complete everything (a short film, entitled “Sur la plage”), and so what I edited together (while on the bus to Montreal on Saturday), wound up being a channel-surfing excerpt entitled “Les Escaliers” — a portion (and actually, only the final paragraph of the thirteen-paragraph narration) of the concept. Good thing my time was limited. The short film would have been waaaaaaaaaaay to much for The Daily Create. As it was, this took hours.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOL7HtzwIbo

Kudos to Spencer (@robertssw87) for the channel surf inspiration. I switched it up with a bit of a rationalization behind the meaning of the “ds” for Channel ds106 on cable. And waiting for the “static” file to download over my tethered connection while on the bus heading towards Montréal was worth it in the end.

Day Four: July 14th: tdc188: Make an annoying 30 second pre-recorded telemarketing call.

While many of my TDC items early in the week were influenced by my visit to the beach, this one wasn’t. This attempts to include some of the more annoying aspects of recorded messages which I get — most notably a continually received message that always starts in the middle of the message loop. I’ve also incorporated the content from a regular spam text/email notification that my Android phone number (don’t have one, likely never will), was randomly selected as a winner for a free MacBook Air w/2 TB drive (out of stock). I know you can’t get 2 TB notebook HDs yet, and pretty certain you can’t get 2 TB SSDs yet either.

Just as the Of Bananas, Coconuts, and Organ Grinder: The Influence of Monkeys on Human Civilization radio show earlier in the course was an opportunity for me to get some familiarity with Audacity (rather than my usual tool-of-choice, GarageBand), I took advantage of this Create to practice those same skills. I’m liking Audacity more and more. 

Day Five: July 15th: tdc189: Philosophy series; Tell us about “Technology You Can’t Live Without.”

By the time the prompt for this Create had been posted, I had arrived in Montreal.  My initial inclination was to choose from between the iPhone (likely contender), iPad, MacBook, or Sony NEX-5 camera, technologies I enjoy using on a daily basis. But that’s not what I wound up choosing, as Karen (@KarenJan ) was quick to notice:

I’d been spending some time working on learning to make my first cinematic animated GIFs (still working, but a post coming soon), and had been thinking a lot about my once-most-favourite movie, Ridley Scott’s 1982 Blade Runner (it lasted as the fav for almost 20 years, and is likely now my second most favourite, supplanted in the early 2000s by Ang Lee’s  Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.)  When I first saw Blade Runner, I was living in Toronto (now the most populous city in Canada, fifth-most in North America). At the time, the incessant rain in the film, together with the ongoing images of decaying buildings, made me ponder the question, “Where would I (along with the millions of other folks in Toronto) go to get water,” if suddenly one day I turned the tap, and nothing came out? And this was before the modern commoditization of (un-sparkled) bottled water.  It wasn’t too many minutes after reading the prompt that I had my “technology I can’t live without.”

Walking around the city of Montréal that day, in an incredible heat, and climbing all the way up the switchback paths to the summit of Mount Royale served to provide wonderful grist for my iPhone video camera. As it turned out, the heat the next day in Ottawa only served up additional images, and so this little Daily Create turned into a bit of a mega project. The spoken commentary at 2:00 minutes was done in one take — I edited it a bit with Audacity to remove a couple “ums” and some slightly-too-long “thinking gaps,” and then layered it back over the original video for that segment back in iMovie.

Having this TDC lens in front of my eyes for the day was a prime example of how The Daily Create can really jump start your creativity. Despite the time spent on this one, I really enjoyed putting this together. The free water handed out by the Vitamin Water folks was pure serendipity (wonderful shirt!), and the contrast provided by the vending machines at the summit of Mount Royale — and that long red hose watering the flowers, presumably pumped all the way up from the river level in the city far below — were moments of pure “found example” joy. The non-functioning “dry” fountain at the end was a great closer to punctuate the message. And the title of ‘s song from Jamendo is just another wonderful little bit to make this work.

Day Six: July 16th: tdc190: Flip the decibels. Make a loud sound soft, or a soft sound loud.

By the time this one arrived, I was back home. And a bit tired. And certainly hot. So it wasn’t much of a stretch to join up Brahms’ Lullaby (I went with an anonymous MIDI version to avoid the potential of hurting anyone’s feelings with the manglement) and the fan, duking it out for the loudest influence on the pending sleeper. Clearly, the sleeper (me) won out in the end.

Day Seven: July 17th: tdc191: Illustrate attraction in a photograph today.

The reality of the pending Seven-Day-Challenge Mashup hit this morning, and I toyed with the idea of returning to the tdc189 “Technology I Can’t Live Without” iPhone “attraction” as a means of tying the week’s work together, as a chunk of it was facilitated by the phone.  I also spent some time grabbing some video from Minecraft — scenes of how the critters there are attracted to wheat (it’s fun to run in circles and have a mass of chickens chase you), and how pairs of animals will be suddenly attracted to one another (and make a little baby animal) when you feed each of them a sheaf of wheat.  But then I found myself shooting pics of coins attached to the magnets in my pdo iPhone case. And as I moved around the room seeking some better light, I suddenly found the inspiration in shadows and location to create something more than just a photo of some coins stuck to my phone.

"Creative Attraction" by aforgrave, on Flickr

“Creative Attraction” by aforgrave, on Flickr

Still, the photo alone seemed like a bit too little effort for the seventh day of the challenge, and I was inspired with @cogdog‘s enthusiasm to generate interest in The Daily Create, and so I spent some time turning the image into a poster, and then a new ds106 Design Assignment, #611: “‘Celebrate The Daily Create’ poster”.

"Celebrate 'The Daily Create' poster" by aforgrave, on Flickr

“Celebrate ‘The Daily Create’ poster” by aforgrave, on Flickr

If you’re not yet following The Daily Create, the assignments are posted daily at 10 AM Eastern Time. Check out The Daily Create online and follow @DS106TDC on Twitter.

Seven-Day-Challenge Wrap Up (and beyond)

Given that these items represent the individual The Daily Create elements for Alan’s Seven-Day-Challenge — the next task will be to complete a mash-up of items from the past seven days into some form of narrative, the final stage in completing the Seven Day Daily Create Challenge (and Mashup Thereof).

That, and continuing towards my self-challenged #21daychallenge. As of tdc191, I’m on the 11th consecutive TDC.

Who else is looking to extend their Seven-Day-Challenge towards a consistent daily habit?  It’s fun! Unleash your creativity! 

Posted in alan levine, audacity, bunk1, cogdog, ds106, imaginages, imovie, Learning, magicmacguffin, mixed-up media, openonline, sevendaychallenge, something made, tantalizing text, The Daily Create, TheDailyCreate | Comments Off on The Daily Create: Response to The Seven Day Challenge

Explore your Inner Creativity: The Daily Create

Wednesday, July 11th, 2012

Towards the end of 2009, a number of friends on Twitter proclaimed their intent to participate in a project 365 photography adventure, and I decided to rekindle my interest in photography by playing along.  Supported in part by @duncan‘s TheDailyShoot, I managed to get into the daily habit of making time for photography, and sharing a photo a day to my account on Flickr. By the end of 2010, I was pleased, not only with the collection of photographs I had accumulated, but with a number of other incidental results:

  • a significantly improved understanding of my camera (primarily pocket-cam, a Canon Digital Elph Powershot 1000, at the time);
  • an improved eye for composition and techniques related to photography;
  • an appreciation for the work and shared community of other photographers;
  • a wonderful collection of images reflecting memories and experiences from throughout the year;
  • a serendipitous engagement with writing, as descriptions of photos sometimes turned  into mini-essays, commentaries, and juxtapositions of thoughts.;
  • and, perhaps most importantly, an understanding that a conscious effort, applied on a daily basis, was easily capable of instilling a new daily habit, whether it be photography or any other kind of endeavour. A technique that could be transferred, to other areas, be they intentionally creative, or otherwise.

My enjoyment of the 2010/365 project led me to continue on into 2011/365. Armed now with a self-bestowed boxing-day present, a Sony NEX-5 DSLR (actually, an EVIL or MILC camera, the choice after conversations with @digitalnative and several months investigation), I continued taking photographs, using the new Sony, the older Canon, and the ever-present iPhone to capture daily events and thedailyshoot photo challenges.

However, In August 2011, things got particularly busy (numerous trips, photo outings, and other things), my laptop hard drive became filled to capacity (Aperture and even the OS ground to a slow crawl as space for page swaps became virtually(pun) non-existent), and my habit faltered. September brought the return to school (numerous variables there) and October saw the end of thedailyshoot (after 690 prompts, it folded on October 6th, 2011), and by that time, the habit was upset. Despite a couple of attempted jump-starts (drives to visit the Muse Tree, for example, and the arrival of a new 2012/366 self-challenge), the daily practice of shooting and posting a photo to flickr had been disrupted.

(Perhaps, I should also acknowledge to myself, in hindsight, that I had become engaged in the fall of 2011 with a new regular (though not daily) practice of broadcasting on #ds106radio …)

At any rate, very shortly after January 1st, 2012, @timmmmyboy tweeted out a few test posts related to something new, TheDailyCreate, which would provide a daily prompt, not always for photography, but also for audio, video, and other sorts of creative inspirations. After providing a few test posts, I saw the value in this new prompt source, and decided to try it out.

The Daily Create

Skipping forward over February – June, we arrive at July 11th, and what do I see but a challenge from the @cogdog , somewhat uninspired by the recent summer engagement in TheDailyCreate (yes, folks are on summer holidays, relaxing, BUT you still need to nurture that daily creative habit, folks — and to that I can attest!), and so he presents a seven-day challenge. Do the daily create for the next seven days. Starting today. Starting NOW.

Daily Create Seven-Day-Challenge on CogDogBlog

CogDog’s Charles Atlas remix “Seven-Day-Challenge”

Now, a couple years back, I employed a “follow 30 people for 30 days” mantra when introducing new folks to Twitter, as a way of helping folks “see, over time” how the social media service could be supportive of their work as educators. And if I recall correctly, research somewhere has indicated a “23-day” adoption period during which a daily application of a routine will result in the forming of a new habit.

So I’m going to prematurely suggest that once you meet Alan’s seven day challenge, you repeat it, twice more. I figure 21 days ought to be close enough to 23 days for you to get the gist. And at that point, why stop?

One caveat. You may find yourself pushed to complete some of TheDailyCreate challenges. I would suggest that if you struggle with one of them, go back in the Archives and complete another one from that same category and post it, with its respective tag, instead. While I’ve not employed that strategy yet, I’m going to deploy it starting today.

In response to Alan’s visual seven day challenge, I reply:

"Twenty-One Days to a Creative Habit" by aforgrave, on Flickr

“Twenty-One Days to a Creative Habit” by aforgrave, on Flickr

Get your create on! Get it on on a daily basis. The Daily Create can get you started.

BTW, two days ago, I replaced the hard drive again in my laptop. I’m currently starting out the summer with a glorious 620 GB of free space on my drive. Yesterday, I managed 200 photos on my Sony, and when the battery ran out, I took another 108 on my iPhone. Both batteries are now recharged. And I just “created” that cartoon.  Time to draw a Tornado. (There are currently seven posted. Will you ad yours today? Now?)

 

Posted in @digitalnative, @duncan, alan levine, bunk1, Camp Magic MacGuffin, CampMagicMacGuffin, cogdog, Colin Harris, commentary, creativity, dailyshoot, ds106, duncan davidson, flickr, imaginages, Learning, magicmacguffin, mixed-up media, openonline, Project 365, Seven-Day-Challenge, something made, The Daily Create, TheDailyCreate, thoughts, Twenty-One-Day-Challenge, twitter | Comments Off on Explore your Inner Creativity: The Daily Create

Early Demos from My New Fake Band

Monday, June 25th, 2012

In a few different broadcasts over the past year, I’ve messed around with some of the various filters and effects available with the free version of Nicecast and found its dials and visual interface both a lot of fun and helpful in the makeshift studios I’ve set up in my classrooms and house.

With a new one-man-band on the horizon, an extension of a #ds106 Visual Assignment, I turned to Nicecast and recorded a live session that yielded the following tracks. Ladies and gentlemen of Camp Magic Macguffin, I give you Dactyloceras lucina!

Not generally in my “wheelhouse of sound,” I was going after a certain, heavy, atmospheric texture that seemed appropriate for my randomly generated band name and album cover. “Goth soul,” Alan Levine calls it, which GNA Garcia clarifies as “rhythmic Emo-noise,” which is what I think I managed to create.

Dactyloceras lucina – Untitled Jam 1 by Bryanjack
The stupidity that keeps us from knowing any better by Bryanjack

Posted in audio, blogging, bunkx, Creative Writing, digital storytelling, ds106, ds106radio, guitar, Learning, learning networks, magicmacguffin, music, nicecast, openonline, orginal composition, podcasting,, recording, software, songwriting, technology | Comments Off on Early Demos from My New Fake Band

A DJ is Born

Monday, June 25th, 2012

Posted in blogging, bunkx, classroom, Collaboration, communication, ds106, ds106 radio, education, jabiz, Learning, learning networks, listening, magicmacguffin, music, networks, openonline, personal learning network, radio, technology, tribes | Comments Off on A DJ is Born

Create with The Great

Sunday, June 24th, 2012

Snoopy - It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

How would you like to have the support of six seven classic authors sitting at your table, collaborating with you as you compose your next great piece of writing?

The Greats + 1

My friend and colleague Doug Peterson has a new blog post waiting every morning at 5:01 am, and this morning’s post prompted me to immediately launch the web browser on my iPad to test out his latest find on the web, Google’s demo Masters Edition.  Shortly thereafter, I was sitting at my computer, running a screen capture as I pounded out the opening lines to my next great epic.

Now granted, I didn’t give The Masters a lot to work with. And I would assume that in their day they needed editing for context and syntax in their writing, too — in this instance, their contributions didn’t necessarily always get the gist spot on. Perhaps I was expecting that their additions would automatically improve the quality of the writing piece, and rather, need to see them more as collaborators, merely contributing suggestions. It must be up to us as the writer to make the final call.

Here is my tentative text, augmented with colour to highlight each author’s initial contribution. You will note that a couple of extra lines were added by Poe and Shakespeare after the video capture was stopped. Clearly, those two weren’t paying attention at the time. 

It was a gloomy and stormy night. Snoopy comfortably esconced huddled over his typewriter. That dratted Black Baron was up to no good again.

Suddenly, Woodstock as well as his tiny little yellow friends appeared, flittering around the dog house, attempting to cheer Snoopy up.

Under the canopy of darkness, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage, the triplane of the nemesis of all good. “What shall I do presently?” imagined Snoopy, as he lowered his goggles and wrapped his scarf tightly around his neck. “This wilt be the undoing of me and my tiny little feathered friends!”

As the shining eye of heaven rose, and Snoopy’s Sopwith Camel rose into the sky and headed into battle, the birds began to issue forth their morning war cry, and the day was good. I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat. … Let not sloth dim your horrors new-begot.

Tally and My Assessment of the Contributions

I’ve indicated below my take on the contributions (how many of their suggestions “might work” out of the total number of suggestions offered).

• Nietzsche      0/0   no contributions
• Shakespeare  1/4  I kind of like “shining eye of heaven” in place of “sun”
• Dostoyevsky  0/0 no contributions
• Dickinson  0/0 no contributions
• Dickens  0/1 totally out of context, man!
• Poe  2/7  points for effort, Edgar! Not sure about that cat comment though.

While I don’t know that I would select any of Poe’s suggestions specifically, at least, “gloomy,” “as well as,” “presently,” and “imagined” kind of fit into the flow. So half a point each.  But changing the Red Baron to the Black Baron is right out. 

I would be remiss if I didn’t give Shultz a nod:
• Shultz Great characters, that dog house setting is a little sparse. 

So. This initial attempt results in a question. Would a longer engagement with the Google Docs: Masters Edition result in improved product? (Maybe a bit more engagement on my part might help?) Perhaps the act of contemplating the suggestions of others is the intent — whether their suggestions themselves are incorporated, or rather simply serve as springboards, and create pause for reflection.  Would I press on with more formal narrative writing, looking to see improvement from this tool? Or is it more of an amusement?

Perhaps you can give it a whirl and offer your own thoughts?

By the way, while a search on Google resulted in multiple instances of Shultz’s image of Snoopy typing “It was a dark and stormy night,” these two images both came from a post titled “11 Great Writing Tips and Overcoming Writers’ Block.” FWIW.

If you are interested in seeing the real time authoring, I’ll be posting it to the Youtube.

Posted in bunk1, Camp Magic MacGuffin, Doug Peterson, ds106, Google Docs Demo Masters Edition, Learning, magicmacguffin, openonline, Snoopy, something made, tantalizing text, thoughts, writing | Comments Off on Create with The Great

TALONS Hunger Games

Thursday, May 10th, 2012

Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V

Imagine a life where possibilities are opening at a speed that veers unpredictably between exhilarating and terrifying. The familiar, precisely because it’s familiar and safe, still tugs at you, but even so, you want out because your old life constricts as much as it comforts. Besides, your social milieu, which often feels like an endless struggle to achieve, or resist being slotted into some arbitrary niche—pretty, ugly, smart, dumb, athlete, klutz—is changing fast. You feel driven—by inner need and outside pressure—to make choices. Meanwhile, the manipulative, often harsh, powers that be, who created the larger world they’re busy shoving you into, have clearly not done a bang-up job of it, either in their personal lives or as part of society. And they want you to get out there and ?x their mistakes—just at a moment when worry over the imminent demise of their entire socio-economic structure is never far from the surface. It can be cruel and scary out there. Dystopian, even.

Chances are, anyone not imagining this life, but actually living it, is a teenager.

Macleans

In some ways, I guess it is natural that the TALONS class would incorporate into its evolving storytelling and myth-making the influences of dystopian literature, fan fiction, and the classic zombie film. In the background of the class’ study of novels, history, and current events, math and science, the approaching Adventure Trip (constituting the class’ Leadership 11 Final Exam), the class blog has become the setting for unfolding video, and literary riffs on the classroom setting, as well as TALONS characters enacting both a five part series of zombie films and an epic, multi-authored fan fiction bringing the Hunger Games to the afternoon corhort.

There is no avoiding the violent nature of the Hunger Games, and each post begins with a variation of the following caveat:

(Warning: The following post depicts scenes of violence, using fictionalized examples of real people. Please do not read if you might find any of this offensive  / disturbing. This narrative is for educational purposes only. Any references and ideas taken from the Hunger Games trilogy are the strict property of the brilliant Suzanne Collins).

But what I find remarkable about the TALONS versions of each story – and perhaps what constitute each genre’s appeal with today’s young people – is an awareness and an articulation of the human qualities that perpetuate our survival in desperate times, whether in real life, a zombie movie, or young adult fan-fiction. Each are excellent examples of using an existing structure of genre or plot-line to tell a story that is uniquely personal.

Check them out (and don’t miss the informative ‘Legend‘ to help see into the intricacies of the class dynamic at work in the story):

“Welcome to the First Annual TALONS Hunger Games!”
Part I

The platforms stilled, each tribute squinting in the sudden light, trying to adjust to their surroundings. They were standing in the middle of a field of grass, an enormous ancient stone city before them, practically crumbling before their eyes. Behind them was a forest, thick with every kind of tree, green and lush with life. The tributes looked around, dazed by the beauty of their surroundings. For a moment, all thoughts of death and murder disappeared out of their heads, but seconds later, the gong sounded and each tribute shot off their platform, scattering in all directions.

“There are no friends in the Hunger Games.”
Part II

Morning came and Bronwyn wasn’t prepared. She had hardly slept that night after yet another cannon had roared, causing her to wonder who had died this time. She exhaled softly and packed up quickly, sliding down the tree ready for day 2. The moment she hit the ground, she heard the sound of feet running. She ran and leapt behind a bush, peering through and seeing, to her surprise, Leanne. She was standing in the middle of a clearing, holding a badminton racquet. Bronwyn frowned. A badminton racquet? What kind of a cruel trick was that? But suddenly, the small hole Bronwyn had been staring through darkened as someone stood in front of it.

“What was that?”
Part III

Chelsea climbed up the tree, searching for a place to stay. Sean climbed close behind, trying not to look down. He didn’t know why he had saved Chelsea, but he had. Shaking his head, Sean called up to Chelsea that he had found a branch. Swinging sideways, Sean landed on the branch and pressed himself against the trunk, closing his eyes and listening for any noises. Instead, the anthem played and Sean blinked and looked up at the darkened sky.

“I got her with a tree branch. Hell-o, irony.”
Part IV

About half an hour later, Alisha was happily roasting several chunks of meat over a spit. She leaned forward and studied them carefully, inspecting them and making sure they were cooked thoroughly. Then, with quick and precise hands, she whipped out a handful of Japanese Yew berries and stuffed them into the meat.

Humming to herself, Zoe loaded up Jonny’s crossbow, and crouched down, lying on her belly and began to aim. Alisha had been right. Only one could win.

Posted in 2012, aprilmayjune, blogging, Collaboration, digital storytelling, ds106, education, English, fan fiction, film, human behavior, Learning, learning networks, literacy, literature, magicmacguffin, movies, openonline, remix, stories, storytelling, student examples, talons, technology, tribes, writing, zombies | Comments Off on TALONS Hunger Games