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Better Late Than Neverā€¦Please Forgive Me

Monday, June 4th, 2012

Greetings from Camp Magic MacGuffin and Bunkhouse 2 (aka WƤscƤlly WƤbbits)! Sorry I didnā€™t write home sooner; I started my journey a little behind schedule and got lost along the way. I am happy to report I arrived safe and sound, albeit a little frazzled.

I am slowly, but surely, getting up to speed with the camp agenda, activities, and, of course, the technologies. Arriving a little late and a little naive left me lost in the woods for a week or so, but following the sounds of activity at camp and sending out the occasional smoke signal, I found my way to camp, gathered my supplies, and dove (or belly flopped) into the stream of other campers, counselors, and the activities!

My social networking experience was limited to Facebook, LinkedIn, and very limitedly Google, so I had to sign up and learn to use Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and SoundCloud. Itā€™s pretty cool that these tools have apps I have added to my iPhone and iPad to make my participation easier while away from my laptop.

I also got to chose my very own domain name, set up a blog site, and started blogging! Be proudā€¦it was quite an accomplishment for me! This is where you can follow my progress through the summer. So far, Iā€™ve been able to add a Gallery that posts by Flickr photos, a Twitter feed, and a little window dressing to pretty it up a bit!

Everyone here has been helpful and nice so far, except for one rogue camper that raised some hackles. The camp directors have him sequestered now, so we can get on with the fun and games. Looking forward to meeting new people, getting new perspectives and trying new things. That was one of my New Yearā€™s resolutions this year, and as it turns out, this camp is a great opportunity to do just that!

The Daily Creates (TDC) are a lot of fun. This campā€™s visual assignments gave me excuse Iā€™ve been looking for to buy a new camera. I chose the Canon Powershot SX260 for its compact, point and shoot size with a megazoom (80x!!!) So far, I am LOVING it and the ds106 TDCs are giving my great way to play with my new toy and explore its features and capabilities. It also took awesome photos at the ZZ Top concert yesterday!

Iā€™ve been sharing the TDCs on my blog individually as I completed them, but I think in the coming weeks as my blogging become more frequent, I will be transitioning to a ā€œonce-per-week recapā€ format. Maybe. I get so excited about each one that I canā€™t help but share, share, share it!

I also learned about Vonnegut and The Shape of Stories. This gave me a get opportunity to share my newest literary (ok, I use that term loosely) obsession with Fifty Shades of Grey! Iā€™m on book #2 now, Fifty Shades Darker. True, itā€™s kinda like ā€œmommy pornā€ but all the hoopla and controversy over this book trilogy seems a little miss placed. If youā€™d be offended by a sexually explicit language or acts, donā€™t read it. But if youā€™re open-minded and not a prude, give it a try. Itā€™s making my commutes from work to camp (more than 2 hours each way everyday), MUCH more interesting! Hahaha! :)

Due to my other obligations and responsibilities, I have yet to be able to join the others at the campfire, but I trying to get there this coming Thursday, if I can de-conflict my schedule. In addition, I still have a few things to do to get completely up to speed and get some badges, including:

  • Complete TDC136, a video recap of a family legend. But which one to share? And I HATE myself on video. Guess Iā€™m gonna have to suck it up and get used to it. I doubt I can avoid video assignment for the entire experience.
  • Watch the Mike Wesch video on internet culture and media learning and write a reflection of the material on my blog. Iā€™ve started watching it, but boy, is it long. I rarely make it through watching an entire movie these days. All my activities are exhausting, but watch for it. Iā€™ll have it done by the end of the week.
  • Iā€™ve spent a significant amount of time on Bryan Alexanderā€™s (author of Introduction to Digital Storytelling) website and checking out his stories and links. Now I just have to put pen to paper, so to speak, pick one and discuss it.
  • Minecraft. Well, Iā€™m not really looking forward to this one. Iā€™m not much of a video game person. Okay, except for maybe Angry Birds, if you consider that a video game. A shortage of funds has kept me from starting on this adventure, but Iā€™ll be starting soon. I hope to find a lot of help there; as Iā€™m sure my inexperience in these types of forums will have me in a learning curve. Maybe Iā€™ll type a rope around my waist or leave a trail of bread crumbs, in case my bunk mates need to send out a search party

All this and more will be accomplished by my next weekly letter home this coming weekend. Iā€™ve already seen the Week 3 announcements and agenda and Iā€™m optimistic that Iā€™m proficient enough with the tools to set a good pace forward. Time to wrap up my rambling…

Stay tuned until next timeā€¦

 

 

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Two Down

Monday, June 4th, 2012

Two weeks down here at Camp Magic MacGuffin. There’s definitely a monster in the lake, my bunkhouse is called Slaughterhouse 4, which just feels like a bad omen, and people have gone missing.

I had a busy week with my Daily Creates, which you can see here.

I watched a video of Vonnegut telling the shape of a story, and I read some of Bryan Alexander’s book on digital storytelling. It was a pretty successful week, despite a few setbacks on my end.

Overall, I just opened my eyes a little bit to the possibilities that storytelling has, the different forms it can take, and the shapes that they take. I’m starting to wonder how my own life will fit a story… Which parts would I leave out? Which parts will I lie about? Which life lesson will be the one I focus on? What’s my tragic flaw?

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Letter Home for Week 2

Sunday, June 3rd, 2012

Dear Mom/Dad,

It was in interesting week in camp full of activities and learning. First off I had to get settled which included setting up my blog and downloading some other fun stuff. My favorite part about setting up the blog was customizing it, I got to set the background to one of my favorite soccer teams the Celtic and I set up a couple starter categories to organize it. I found the counselors instructional videos to be really helpful while setting up my blog. The next thing I did to set up was I joined and downloaded MInecraft, I had never heard of it before but it seems like a good was to have camp meetings and Iā€™m interested to see how well it works.

Some other activities I did this week were the Daily Creates the first one I did was I had to record a video of myself saying I Love DS106 ten times. This assignment was pretty fun I had a hard time suppressing laughing because of how focused I was on not messing up and saying the wrong thing as people often do when they have to say the same thing over and over. The next TDC I did was to draw bugs bunny, I am not a talented artist at all usually my artwork would be below par in an elementary school art class so I took some time on this Daily Create. I found a picture I found interesting and I free sketched it and after multiple attempts I had a picture I was really happy with. The final one was to take a picture that represented destruction, about an hour before I saw the daily create my parents were yelling at my brother about how his room looked like a war zone so when I was the prompt I knew what I was going to use a s a picture of destruction. Later when I told him what I did he thought it was funny and I was relieved he was a good sport about it.

Earlier in the week I watched a video of a lecture by Kurt Vonnegut on the shapes of stories. Before I watched this video it had never occurred to me that you could use a graph to describe a story. I though Vonnegut did a good job of keeping it interesting and using humor to keep the viewer interested and I really enjoyed the short clip. So I had another good week at camp Magic MacGuffin hope the next one is just as good.

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Dear Obstinate Learners

Wednesday, May 30th, 2012

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”.Ā The battle between the two onlyĀ escalatesĀ 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 eitherĀ obstinateĀ 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!

Posted in Art, bunk5, counselor, ds106, Featured Articles, magicmacguffin, openonline, Photoshop, VisualAssignments, VisualAssignments2, weeklyletter | Comments Off on Dear Obstinate Learners

05/25 Letter Home

Tuesday, May 29th, 2012

Dear Mom, Dad, and family,

During my first week at Camp Magic MacGuffin, I’ve been helping the camp directors set up my activities! I’ve also been doing lots of unpacking. You remember how long it took me to pack up everything I needed for camp! I already had a Google account, but now I also have a Flickr account for photo sharing, a YouTube account for video sharing, a SoundCloud account for sharing sound clips, and finally, a Twitter account, for, well…tweeting! My fellow campers and camp counselors/directors all follow me on Twitter. I follow them too. When we tweet at each other, we use hashtag “#ds106″ to categorize our posts. When you click the hashtag, you will be able to see all the people talking about that category! My picture on the sites is of our puppy, Tux! I used his picture as an icon to represent all of my new accounts. I set up my profile for the DS106 class, listing all of these new accounts. My new website, marcey109.com, is being set up. I will write blog posts on the site. In fact, I have a new post to add. We watched a video presentation by Michael Wesch, an expert in internet culture. He was a keynote speaker at UMW last year. I wrote a blog post reacting to his speech. It was very informative and taught me a lot about the internet. It is so important to educate the next generation (my future students) on how to use the internet properly to tell their story!

I have downloaded a virtual world program called Minecraft. You will see that on the credit card billing statement ;) We haven’t used it yet, but it looks pretty cool and I am excited to get started. Eventually, our campfires will take place on that program.

I participated in my first Daily Create on Wednesday. I recorded a short video clip of myself talking about a family legend. I wrote about Mom’s mother. It was really neat to reflect and share my stories and thoughts with everyone at camp. I liked that the camp directors both responded to my video. It made me feel special!!

I wasn’t able to join the first week’s campfire, because I was away at EA’s (my best friend) graduation. Hopefully I will make it around the campfire this week though!

Camp has been lots of fun and I am looking forward to next week! Miss you!

xoxo Marcey

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Hello Muddah; Hello Faddah ā€“ 5/27 (albeit late)

Tuesday, May 29th, 2012

This letter is late because I enjoyed my Memorial Day weekend free of distraction and thinking. This was a boon to my sense of normalcy but disruptive to my dissertating and ongoing learning. So, let’s recap Week One at Camp Magic MacGuffin.

Daily Creates


Jumping into the work I completed a few Daily Creates. I love this quick project list, a lot, it allows me to get in and get out quickly and with more energy. The Google Hangout Campfire this week held to take aways for me about the Daily Create:

  1. Limit yourself to 15 minutes of work on these project.
  2. Check in the morning and let it incubate all day

Mike Wesch


I watched the Mike Wesch video and it wasn’t anything terribly surprising. What we’re finding is that social media and instructional technology in general can foster a lean forward/collaborative learning experience for students and teachers. Too many saddle instructional tech and social media with a disconnection between faculty and students. These videos, however, showed that when used correctly, wrapped with the right instructional design, and focused on socially constructing knowledge instructional technologies can propel learning and connection forward.

Throughout the videos I reminisced about a similar point made by Ze Frank at a recent TED conference.

Not as learning-focused but it shows how meaningful connections can be made. In a learning environment, these projects and connections become powerful engines for learning.
Lurking

Like a lot of new experiences, I spend some time lurking and getting to know the experience through observation. I’ve read and responded to comments from others, read blogs, viewed projects, etc. No more lurking.
Death by Zombie

I got into Minecraft this week and bumped around. I felt it wasn’t appropriate (nor was it available) to use my real name. It was pre-Hector story and so if you see Gorlington (a WOW holdover) bumping around there say hello. I took a wild roller coaster ride into the swimming hole (there’s some coal down there) and tooled around an NPC village. I managed to get killed a few times by zombies.
I’m eager to find the bunk houses and explore the Magic MacGuffin Minecraft world this week.
The Outside World

I’ve been parts of many conversations about distance learning in the last several weeks as we begin to investigate closely the quality, academic freedom, liberal education values, etc. One element that continues to come up is the idea of creating community. Wesch’s video, Frank’s video above, and my experience all tell me that creating a community is more possible now than ever before. It is a matter, though, of finding the voice of the community and making it sing loudly to the world.
I’ll leave you with one of my favorite parts of Frank’s video which comes at the very end. This week being particularly busy both at camp and outside camp, there will be times when we need to chillout. Perhaps there is no more fitting example of how technology and media can form community than the story from the video above. Here’s the full song to help you chill this week.
Hey, you’re okay; you’ll be fine. Just breathe.

Posted in bunk2, Magic MacGuffin, magicmacguffin, openonline, weeklyletter | Comments Off on Hello Muddah; Hello Faddah ā€“ 5/27 (albeit late)

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