What did I do in DS106 Headless 13 Week 2? Tried to keep up with essentially two courses of ds106 at the same time, and it’s stretching me to the limits. I’m learning tons setting up the 3M-DS106 Salon’s cyber-infrastructure behind the 3M firewall. And continuing to experience a lot of frustration as I come up against technical obstacles with the 3M systems that I know I can do here on my WordPress blog, in Twitter, in Tumblr, on Flickr and YouTube. But the small group of brave souls who are taking this journey with me are jumping in, starting internal blogs, commenting on one another’s posts, sharing their skills and workarounds, creating headless self-portraits, and GIFs – even had an unexpected GIF riff today with a Koala bear that wanted to blink. 🙂
The 3M-DS106 Salon going headless.
I just have to share the headless self-portrait created by one of the 3M-DS106 Salon members, HC. He had followed the advice to take two photos- one with him in the picture and one just of the wall. He hadn’t counted on the lighting casting a shadow against the back wall. With GIMP he created two versions which I’ve ‘riffed into a GIF’ to illustrate the differences. When asked which we preferred I was torn. I’m certainly familiar with the flat no-head-at-all version, but his shadowed headless self invokes in me the realities of the work that goes on behind the scenes in any collaborative effort. There are always leaders in some shape, way, or form, but they may not be visible.
BLOGGING
“Each blog post must be able to stand on its own as something that makes sense if that is the only thing a visitor reads on your site.”
I’m getting a lot of practice blogging these days, and I found the blogging tips very helpful:
- Blogging Tips for ds106
- how to write up ds106 storytelling assignments like a blogging champ
- Every Box You Type in Can be a Doorway to Creativity
DAILY CREATES
Some of us who have been through a round or two of ds106 know the realities of balancing a full-time job, family, friends, and the addictiveness of being an open-online participant in this digital story telling community. We were joking about the three R’s could be “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle”. You can read all about how I’m using these to try and keep my balance and sanity as I manage all of my responsibilities. State of The Daily Create – wk2
“IT’S SHOWTIME” WITH A DIGITAL STORYTELLING GIF
One of my favorite movies of all time and characters is Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice. The ghostest with the mostest. This 1988 comedy horror film directed by Tim Burton is a scream and I’ve always thought quite romantic too. [Wikipedia Post] There are indeed headless ghosts running around from time to time. But none of those scenes seemed as appropriate to sum up the movie and capture the essence of a key scene as when Beetlejuice, a self-proclaimed “bio-exorcist”, is being released from his exile in a small model town in the young couples attic. Indeed… It’s Showtime! Including a post on how I made the GIF.
Removing GIFFight for 3M
Headless Over Heels In Love
Picking up the GIFFight challenge this week turned out to be a double edged sword. I had no problem creating and posting my “Headless Over Heels In Love” GIF. But a serious issue arose when another GIFFighter, not in DS106, posted a GIF that I feared could be labeled as sexual harassment by someone viewing it from 3M. This prompted the e-mail exchange below with one of our ds106 headless mentors.
I’ve been struggling with this decision since the 80’s toys poster GIFs. The drug & sexual references in a couple of the GIFs are not appropriate in the corporate world. The latest naughty GIF could even get me in trouble for sexual harassment. I know the guys are just having fun, but I take my professional responsibilities seriously. I’m going to remove the GIF Fight assignment references from my 3M version of the weekly assignments.I don’t feel I have any right to ask the GIF Fight guys to not post those kinds of GIFs since this is their game & I am just a visitor. These are some of the consequences we run into with the open nature of the course. How have you guys handled stuff like this in past DS106 courses?Sincerely,Rochelle****************************Rochelle,Perfectly understandable. First of all, not everything listed in each week’s laundry list is necessary; it is more of a buffet than a required consumption list. GIFFight was an add-on; the real challenge in this week is asking people to figure out how to create an animated GIF w/o us providing explicit directions.It could be a lot worse. A lot. But this is the flip side of a class on the open internet. We had a case in 2012 where some male students did a radio show played in class that had some offensive content to women. It led to some hard but good discussion on grounds of decency.But for the most part we have avoided as much of this that could easily happen.
Gardner Campbell Golden Treasures
Figuring out how I wanted to share my reflections on Campbell’s article and videos took some time. My first attempt had me making a little GIF from a discussion point about the work of John Medina on the human brain.
After seeing Mariana Funes use the Tapestry app, I wanted to give it a try. It seemed like an interesting new platform to capture my notes from the Gardner Campbell 2012 discussion with a group of UMW DS106 students. And I tried to incorporate my little alien presenter. It turned out “okay” – nothing to write home about though. Next time I make one, I’d like to add more images to the mix and figure out the best animation speed when adding a GIF.
UPDATE: 9/11/13… Imbedding the tapestry story so that it work across multiple operating systems, browsers, desktops, and mobile devices is proving to be an issue. I’m trying to figure it out and will keep an updated list of ways to help you see the story.
- You may need to refresh the page to have the story show up.
- Try a different browser. I know Goggle Chrome works for me.
- By refreshing the webpage on a desktop computer you can return to the beginning of the story when finished.
- Here is a direct link to the story in Tapestry:
- Link to the story posted in Tumblr:
Trying to keep up w/ essentially 2 concurrent #ds106 #talkingheadless106 . What did I do in week 2? @cogdog http://t.co/h7IyXm9WQo
Balance is always difficult when we engage in such stimulating, creative work in a environment such as DS106. I admire the way you have chosen to introduce it to your team at 3M and can see by the headless example of your colleague that it is taking root. I appreciate how you take the time to write up your experiences, your challenges and your successes. I have a similar problem with embedding the tapestry into the blog, and posting it in Tumblr is a great way to solve it. #talkingheadless106
Hi Rockylou,
Your output is prodigious I can only guess at the amount of time you are putting in.
Really interesting finding out how the 3m-ds106 is going on behind the firewall. There are some important idea to discuss around this tension. I wonder how much effect the lack of a perceived external audience will be.
I like the headless shadow, some good stuff comes from serendipity;-)
#talkingheadless106
Hi John,
It is interesting that you are wondering about the effect of having an audience. Your pondering has me looking a bit closer at what’s going on, and I do indeed see an audience effect. Although 3M is cloistered behind a firewall, we have our own community that is a microcosm of the bigger world out there with a global employee workforce of over 87,000. And having a perceived audience does make a difference. We’ve had blogs and wikis and our version of Twitter, called Spark for the technical R&D folks, for around 4 years with a relatively small number of first adopters taking on the buggy new technology. Those that figured out how to use the tools and capture an audience, even if it is small, continue to lead the way.
What I am seeing in the 3M-DS106 Salon is that even those first adopters are more energized and engaged right now. They are increasing the engagement of their audience with other engaged and interested salon members. Their circle of visibility and influence is widening as I am using the 3M social networking tools to share in real-time what we are doing with DS106 with links and mentions back to the individuals. Other 3Mers are seeing what we are doing, commenting, answering our questions. showing interest. I’m watching people take risks, putting themselves out there because they see another salon member being vulnerable taking their first steps. They are learning from, supporting, and teaching one another. I was totally shocked and pleased beyond belief when I saw that first unsolicited riff to help another salon member with her desire to have her koala bear GIF blink. I didn’t know what to expect coming into this, but so far it seems no different than what I experience in the greater DS106 community.
I appreciate you bringing the audience factor into my awareness so that I could contemplate it myself and write about it. I hope more stuff like this pops up in your pondering and you continue to share them with me. Who knows where it will lead. 🙂
Hi Rochelle,
thanks for taking the time to spell this out. I’ve always taken it as a given that working in the open has added value, perhaps I need to think again. Hope you find the time to keep posting in such detail (I love when I can pop in a few words and get many more back) could be an interesting discussion in audio once we are in a few weeks. Radio perhaps?
#talkingheadless106
Hey John…. I like your idea of holding a live conversation on DS106 Radio. I’d be open to being a guest on your Edutalk show too. We could talk about my experiences behind the firewall at 3M and how it compares and doesn’t compare to the outside world. Would you be interested in doing anything together for next week? (week 4 audio introduction). I’m thinking about something we could collaborate on for your chicken casts. I was even considering riffing your podcasts with my own ‘chicken little’ podcast. I could see what I’d come up with using your 10-10-10 approach. I’m assuming that doesn’t include creating the chicken GIF and finding your music. 😉
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Hi Rochelle,
Love to do a two person chicken cast.
Love to do something next week, on holiday and do not know if I’ll have a connection though? At home on Sunday so might manage then.
Be great to have some ds106 input into edutalk. I’ll email you.
[…] Last week “HC” created his headless self-portrait that I riffed into this GIF. [Read about it here.] Now this week he’s created his own GIF to go along with the post […]