Spent some time exploring camp and taking some pictures. I’m using the oh-so-popular Pinterest to house photos. I’m keeping all of my camp memories on a Camp Magic Macguffin board.
Things are getting weird here. Bunk X makes me kind of nervous. I’ll talk more about it in my letter home when I figure out what’s going on.
Last year at this time I was … two years ago, three?
Packing up and moving on has been my way for many years, lifetimes. The last three years have been particularly transitory, even for a self-labeled Gypsy Rogue Scholar.
Presently, I’m packing up to head over to Bunkhouse X at CAMP MAGIC MACGUFFIN. To prepare for the trip I found my pack and realized that I hadn’t unpacked from my recent adventure to Burlington, VT for the M. Ed. graduation of my dear friend mae.
Having a pack that’s still packed is a dirty-sock-stale-half-eaten-snack-ridden reminder that I’m in constant motion. Searching. Not yet finding.
Maybe I’ll find what I’m looking for in Bunkhouse X. Most likely, I will enjoy a few campfires, friendly riots, panty raids, and sing-a-longs, and then I will move on. Searching.
Next year this time I will be … in two years, three?
This is an old picture I had that was great for the optical illusion visual assignment. My friend and I were finding ways to make optical illusions one night because we were just bored and thought we’d make funny pictures. I decided that I wanted to cut her head off with some scissors & it really looks like I’m chopping off her head.
I actually used no real photo editing or anything for this photo. I just put the scissors in front of my camera and moved back like 15 feet from here and put the scissors in front of the camera near her head. Shockingly, it came out perfectly and she was clueless to the fact she was about to be headless.
I LOVE mysteries, so I had to do the “find the error” photo. I wanted to make it easy, just fun at the same time. I know everyone loves shoes, so I found 2 pair of my bright colored shoes and some sandals and did the photo. This probably was the more fun one to day for me because I love mysteries, I love shoes, and I love colorful things.
This process was really easy. I used no photo editing, just a little switch-a-roo. In the original picture(top), I just put the shoes together regularly and took the picture. In the “find the error” photo I just switched the left and the right shoe. It was very simple and fun. = )
Love. Ha, isn’t it wonderful. This assignment was inspired by my love for my male friend that means the world to me. When I saw they had a visual assignment that allowed me to show my passionate side I had to do it. The 3 pictures above are just a few pictures of us being us. We always hold hands, we always take professional pictures, and we also know how to be goofy together.
I used a picture collage to complete this assignment and it was very easy. All I had to do was pick which background I wanted and then added in the pictures that I liked the most. I had to do a little cropping to make the pictures fit into the small squares but again very simple and fun
Sean Astin and Kevin Bacon starred in a film back in the late 80s titled White Water Summer. What starts as a rather innocent summer camping trip meant to help shape a few young men’s outdoor survival skills while teaching important life lessons, turns into a battle of wills. Alan, a teen more focused on sports, computers, and isn’t entirely excited about “roughing it” begins to butt heads with Vic, the lone adult leader of this wilderness adventure. Alan, played by Sean Astin, tries to use his wits and crafts several “smarter” ways of getting things done in the great outdoors, one of the more powerful scenes being his creation of a fishing trap, catching a horde of fish for dinner. Vic, the “do it the right way” leader, admonishes Alan for using his brains rather than his brawn, and after berating him in front of the other campers, he forces Alan to gut all of the fish himself (something Alan doesn’t seem excited about), and leaves him on a small island in the middle of the lake, telling him to signal when he’s done. Alan of course, becomes disgusted, and not only doesn’t signal that he’s finished, but sleeps outside in the rain just to spite Vic’s harsh “life lesson”. The battle between the two only escalates from there, to the point where Vic severely injures himself while trying to teach Alan another lesson. It then turns to Alan to see the entire troop safely down the mountain, using a mix of both Vic’s survival skills and Alan’s ingenuity.
Other than being a rather rudimentary and rushed description of the scene, it’s an excellent metaphor for how I see myself as a learner. It’s not that I want to be obstinate, and purposefully look for ways to “circumvent” what it is that any of my teachers have asked me to do (I asked my 5th grade teacher if I could dress up as an actual flag-pole sitter for our class musical about the roaring 20s rather than dress in a white shirt with a bow tie). I’ve recognized over my 33 years on this planet that I have a fierce independent streak within me, and quite often it shows itself in the learning environment. I want to learn “my way”, reflect upon and build new knowledge in ways that make sense to me, whether they mesh with a given assignment or not, and I’ve butted heads a couple of times with instructors who don’t seem to “get” that what I’m doing is not only helping me learn, but doing so in a much more personal and meaningful way than the assignment they’ve doled out.
That’s not to say that I don’t get along well with my teachers and colleagues, but when your 7th grade science teacher yells out across the room as class is being dismissed, “that’s another nail in the coffin, Rimes” it makes you wonder whether or not you should dial back just how independent you are.
So as I write this letter to any other obstinate learners out there, I say strike a balance! Work with your teacher, but just don’t accept assignments and tasks given to you by your teacher as the simple tasks they may be, completing them without question. Find ways that you can make some of them your own; find ways to inject your own personality into them. Case in point; this letter was supposed to be written as a letter home from camp. Not an actual camp that Alan had to endure under Vic’s leadership, but a virtual one. I’m helping out as a “Camp Counselor” for ds106′s Camp Magic Macguffin for the next 9 weeks (go bunk 5!), and while I was supposed to write this letter to those “back home”, I choose to write it instead as a reflection for those that might struggle with either obstinate learners, or for those that might be obstinate learners themselves. Teachers, please find ways to let your students add their own personality into projects or regular assignments. You might not always get the best academic work out of them, but they’ll be much more engaged in what they’re doing, and the good will you’ll earn usually pays off later when you have to ask them to complete a particular assignment the ways it’s written (because eventually they have to conform at least a bit).
So to all you obstinate learners out there, develop good relationships with your teachers, whether you want to or not. Those relationships will help you in the future. And teachers of obstinate learners, try to find ways to mingle what you need your students to accomplish, with how they want to accomplish it.
Sincerely, Ben
P.S. Camp is great! I already have several baskets woven and more leather punched money pouches that I have pockets!
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
Leelzebub continues to set the pace with her recent outpouring of fun and inspiring ds106 assignments. I learned more about using photoshop in the 90 plus minutes it took me to do the Warhol This assignment than I ever did watching those YouTube tutorials that the youngsters like to make nowadays. And that’s one of the great and wacky things about doing these things.
What at the beginning looked like a quick and easy warm up assignment for Camp Magic MacGuffin (it begins tomorrow, BTW), turned into a serious challenge. It again forced me to confront the digital skill set I am least comfortable with: image editing. I haven’t a clue about color, perspective and all that jazz. I’ll certainly look at Warhol’s soup cans with greater appreciation after my struggle to follow this helpful tutorial in trying to make something out of this old Second Life snapshot I found in my inventory recently.
And I suppose this virtual friend from a long time ago is where the story in this assignment is. She and I met at the headquarters building of the now defunct Communist Party of Second Life. The group had formed in playful opposition to the then rampant commercialization taking place in SL. Lots of PR and marketing firms were trying to get their clients to invest big in the virtual world. It was supposed to be the next big thing.
Though it was just a few years ago that I dabbled in such politics and activism, I’d completely forgotten about it until I found the photos of this character whose name I cannot for the life of me recall. There’s even the possibility that the avatar was me. How’s that for weird?
And suddenly there are dozens of potential story lines fighting for my attention. They’re just begging me to run with them for a little while to see what happens. There’s been a lot of these unexpected imaginative flights of fancy these days. The text files needing to be revised and revisited are piling up like Oreo cookie crumbs on a Tardis (new series) bed.
But I haven’t time for such frivolity. I need to get my bags packed for CMM. Leelzebub is miles ahead and I’m stuck on Corona Cay with my domestic Daleks. They don’t even exterminate intruders while I’m away. Things are getting serious here – very serious.
Warhol Something: Andy Warhol was an iconic pop art mastermind. Now you can be one too! Take a photograph, or use an existing one, and create a piece of pop art.
Son of a Took!
Click here to see this image on Flickr.
I’d wanted to do this assignment for a while, and since graduating, I’ve had a bit of time on my hands. I began with a photo I’d taken about a year ago of my boyfriend’s dog, Pippin, and followed the very useful tutorial provided by the assignment’s creator. The process was more complicated than I thought, and I had to bite down the urge to go off on my own. I’m glad I chose to stick with the directions, because I learned several new things, like creating sets/groups, texturizing, and the “load selection” ability, which wowed me.
I’m happy with the way it turned out, and I may even print it off at Kinko’s!
One thing the tutorial suggested that I couldn’t do was attached a signature. I may end up pulling out ye olde clunky scanner and digitizing my John Hancock, since I thought that was a neat idea. I might as well “own” my creations. I’ve been really surprised by my skill for this stuff.
Ol’ Hatchet Jack is busy getting ready for the campers. This morning I went out to Lake Macguffin to see if I might find a spot for a tent or secret cabin for them little campers. I know they are building some fancy new camper cabins, but we are going to need secret hideaways and forts!
There seemed to be an inordinate amount of trash around the lake. Perhaps when it was drained some varmits brought stuff what was at the bottom, back to the shores? Anyway, I know it was a camp before these new folks purchased it.
Here is some video I shot lake side this morning.
I also added my two cents, or a hatchet in this case, to our pack bag that one of the camp directors shared with us. You should add your ideas too! Camp Director Alan shared some nice views of Lake Macguffin with us and a nice look at the new pavilion! I am sure excited to see what the new camp look like!
I am wondering if we might map out the camp?
Sorry, but camp is over! Head over to ds106
The Campfires have all been put out.
Camp is now over (see the final story. If you are craving an experience like this, head over to ds106 and see how to participate. For more on the Summer of Magic Macguffin, see.....
