Category Archives: Weekly Summaries

DS106 Audio Week 4 Reviews Are In

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Play AUDIO ONLY Version DS106 Headless13 Audio Week 4 Review

Link to VIDEO version DS106 Headless13 Audio Week 4 Review

Christina Hendricks and I volunteered to be helpers for the Headless 13 DS106 week 4 Intro to Audio – Listening. As a part of that Christina organized a Google Hangout: ds106 Radio How To Jamathon on broadcasting to DS106 Radio. Then on Saturday we pulled together and reviewed the radio bumpers and sound effect stories created by the “headless” ds106ers this week.

DS106_wk4_RnC_Smile

Rochelle Lockridge & Christina Hendricks review the DS106 Headless 13 week 4 audio projects.

To make it easier for the two of us we’ve divvied up the write-ups such that Christina’s post provides the discussion of the audio material for the podcast, while my post is covering the nuts & bolts of production.

1. To start with we took quite a bit of time scouring the ds106 Google+ Community, #ds106 Twitter feed, and ds106 linked blogs to find completed assignments. We kept track of links and comments in a shared Google Doc.

2. We had contemplated doing the show live on DS106 Radio, but neither of us had the experience to pull that off. Eventually we’ll get there.  But first I have to figure out how to route my system sound through Skype, so the person on the other end can hear the additional audio I’m playing at my end.  I’ve read a bunch of tutorials, corresponded with experienced ds106 radio broadcasters, and have become quite friendly with the Skype test call lady testing a multitude of settings to use with NiceCast.  Nothing has worked yet.  I’m beginning to think that my Mac hardware and operating system (10.6.8) might be the culprit.

3. We finally settled on “simply” recording our Skype conversation and turning it into a podcast to play on DS106 Radio next week.  For recording I use:

Call Recorder For Skype (Mac Only): $29  http://www.ecamm.com/mac/callrecorder/

It allows me at the click of a button the option to record each side of the conversation as audio and video on separate tracks. It also provides a number of translation tools so I can combine them as needed.

4. It took us almost an hour to get ourselves set-up to record the conversation.  We tested levels and other settings to make sure we were good there. We had all of our audio tracks lined up and ready to go as quickly as possible in real-time.  This would lessen the post-production editing time.  Dead air and click, click, click as we find something on our computer doesn’t make for a riveting podcast.

5. Our 53 minute conversation went smoothly, except for three spots we had to edit when:

  • My little dog Abby was scratching the floor so loud Christina couldn’t concentrate.
  • Christina’s husband decided to pop in to get something from the fridge.
  • I pulled up Stefanie’s DS106 Rap too early in the sequence. (This caused me to move the segment to later on in the podcast, which resulted in some jumbled conversation as noted in Christina’s comments below.  Oops!)

6. Once the recording was finished, then comes post production.  We had both thought the review would be about half as long, and I wasn’t keen on using up half of my remaining minutes on my SoundCloud account to post the 50+ minute podcast.  Christina also had restrictions on what her Tumblr blog would allow for media embedding.  My inspired idea to post it on YouTube addressed both of our issues.

7. I used the movie translation tools with the Skype recorder app to produce a side-by-side video chat. This was loaded into Adobe Premiere Elements 11 for the Mac. Unfortunately, something went wrong with the translation or maybe importing it into Premiere which resulted in the sound and video being out-of-sync after only a few minutes into the conversation.  I was able to keep our introductions, but the remainder of the video would have to be manually re-synced bit by bit, (which would be painstakingly slow and tedious). My fix? To overlay still images & GIFs in place of the messed up video.

DS106Headless13_wk4

 To make it a little more visually interesting, I added the animated DS106 Radio GIF when we are playing an audio clip.

7.  chicken_2After the first draft was completed, Christina reminded me she had envisioned us including John Johnston’s Chicken Talk podcast material as intro and outro clips.  Boy did I amuse myself. I used the Mel Blanc and Sound Effect Man- Chicken Farm Song. Then one thing led to another and John’s B&W chicken GIF and his Red cartoon chicken GIF became once again stars in one of my videos [First appearance in Star Spangled… WHAT?!] The B&W movie studio chicken brings us in, and a duet with the B&W and the Red chicken take us out. I think it’s really funny! Although after looking at it again, I wish that I had flipped sides so they were singing to each other instead of back-to-back. (See update below.)

LouNChristina_Flag_38. Christina also noticed that our sound levels were unbalanced and at times she had difficulty hearing her comments when listening on her iPod earbuds.  Unfortunately, it would have been a HUGE piece of work for me to go back in and fix it for the video. I should have used the Levelator before I began the editing. This is a free software app that helps to balance the volume of a recorded conversation. It was recommended by John Johnston in his audio post Levelling up the LoDown . (The tip is about 3:30 minutes in.) I tried using it after the fact and it brought her volume up, but also the background hiss. It didn’t make it easier to hear her, so I left it as is.

9. The finishing touches required me to add two additional DS106 Radio bumpers at the beginning and end.  The first one is a mashup I created this summer.

The final bumper at the end of the podcast was produced by Ary Aranguiz.

10. But wait… there was more that wasn’t quite right…. an excerpt from an e-mail received while I was writing up this post.

The only thing I noticed is that when we switch to talking about Ary’s project, after we talked first about Stefanie’s, the wording gets a bit garbled and then jumps to “Ary”, then goes right into her sound effect story (at about 27:25). I expect this is the best that could be done with the fact that we had to cut something out! Just wanted to check that how it ended up is what you meant, as it seems a bit jumbled.

Oh, and I just listened to the end, b/c I hadn’t had a chance to do that yet, and your last words are: “I had fun…I will” and then it jumps to the music. Not sure if you wanted to end it there?

But hey…this does not have to be perfect, and I don’t want you to put any more work into this if you don’t feel it’s necessary…so feel free to say: Christina, it’s just fine as is!

And in the end… that I decided to NOT INDULGE MY PERFECTIONISTIC TENDENCIES and let these go is a good sign.  I’m getting more comfortable allowing myself to be seen in the world as a work in-progress, blemishes and all.

UPDATE: I tried…. I really tried to let it go.  But when I heard the HUGE error with Ary’s radio bumper accidentally playing over a part of our conversation – I HAD to fix it.  It turned out I had moved the bumper clear up to layer 8 while adjusting something else and forgot about it. The error was towards the end, and I hadn’t taken the time to listen to the entire 51 minute audio file before I posted it. Lesson learned? Either make my projects shorter or listen to the whole thing before I decide to release it to the public. I may’ve let it be played on DS106 Radio, but when Alan Levine decided to add it to the week 4 assignment page, so that future students could hear it, there was no way that mistake was going to remain for posterity.

Since I was going to edit the file anyway, I decided to fix the rest of what I could.

  • I essentially started over by separating the two audio tracks, which allowed me to boost Christina’s volume and apply a noise reduction filter to her audio only.
  • Alan Levine & John Johnston had recommended that I dial down the audio quality from 256k to 128k to reduce the file size.  John said he’ll even go as low as 94k.  My comfort level with the lower sound quality isn’t great, but I’m willing to listen to the voices of experience here.
  • Alan also suggested that I add meta data to the mp3 version so that when it plays on DS106 radio people will know what it is.
  • Remember my concerns about the length of the 51 minute audio file and where to post it? Once again Alan & John came to the rescue offering me advice on uploading the file via FTP to my own website and embedding that file into my blog post. I use Cyberduck for the upload and followed the directions for the Compact WordPress Audio/Music Player settings to get the cute little player button at the top of this post
  • What the heck… I flipped the chicken images too.  They are now singing their duet to one another.

Attributions & Links:

Ary Aranguiz- DS106 Radio Bumper 2 (The one accidentally inserted into the original version of this podcast.) https://soundcloud.com/ary-aranguiz/ds106-radio-bumper2

Rochelle’s sound effect story: [Headphones highly recommended] Spend a summer day at an island cabin in Northern Wisconsin. Wake up to the sounds of loons on the lake. Spend the day enjoying all the amenities that no running water or electricity can provide. Fall to sleep to the rumbling of a thunderstorm. And don’t get me started on the MOSQUITOES!

Me In Week 3 – Telling Stories

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Weekly Summary Checklist

Here’s a run-down of what I accomplished in DS106 Headless 13 Week 3 – Digital Storytelling.

First Things First:

Rockylou_HeadlessWhat is a story? What is storytelling? What is digital storytelling? Wanting to understand and become a better digital storyteller is what attracted me to DS106 in the first place, so I’ve been doing some serious pondering all week.

In my professional life as a strategic business/technology analyst at 3M I am often presented with a great deal of data and information that needs to be communicated to a variety of audiences with different levels of interest and familiarity with the subject matter.  Sharing the raw data, as it were, would almost certainly be a waste of time for everyone.  It’s my job to “COMMUNICATE” that information, not just gather it and spit it back out again.

I am paid to be a curator of information AND a storyteller. It is the story I create and tell that is based upon that data and information that is the key. Even the media I use to tell the story has an impact on the effectiveness of communicating the information. With a global asynchronous audience I can’t rely on personally sharing the story in real-time with a live person in attendance who is engaged in the moment, that can ask questions, get clarification, etc. Mastering the art of DIGITAL storytelling is a must for me. Read my complete blog entry Whatsa’ Story! for more. And here’s a cute tappable digital story from Nathalie using the Tapestry app I learned about in our DS106 Google+ Community. (If you see a great big blank space below, refresh your screen and try again. Embedding the Tapestry stories is buggy.)

And from one of my 3M-DS106 Salon Members: “Storytelling Used in Poaching Talent (3M-DS106 Repost)” shares how storytelling can be used in a number of ways, from sharing experiences, showing a vision, an escape from the real world or even poach top talent from another company.

Kurt Vonnegut’s Shape of Stories:

StoryShape_WormsCrawlIn_EditI chose a favorite childhood song that my mother taught us to sing as part of her master plan to keep us kids from fighting, “The Worms Crawl In, The Worms Crawl Out”.

“Did you ever think when a hearse went by, that you might be the next to die. They wrap you up in a big white sheet. They bury you down about six feet deep.  The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out. The ants play pinochle on your snout. Your liver turns to a slimy green. And puss comes out like whipping cream. Your eyes pop out your teeth decay. And this is the end of a perfect day.”

 

Vonnegut’s video was entertaining as well as informative, and I could easily understand how to apply his theory of common graph-able shapes to stories. But mine didn’t quite fit until I had looked at the infographic created by Maya Eilam and discovered the “From Bad to Worse” story shape.

Here’s the video I made for a past daily create TDC577 singing through this sorrowful story shape.

Daily Creates:

tdc611 An Interesting high contrast B&W image of an easily overlooked object:

Lamp

tdc613 Photo representing TDC idea of regular exercises of creativity.  The write-up for this photo included a blog post on the The Chemistry of Creativity: Riding The Dopamine Wave

Riding the DS106 Dopamine Wave

tdc614 an Alien Inspirational Greeting Card

Alien Inspirational Greeting Card

I love the surprises and inspirations I find by following other DS106 blogs and accounts. For the alien greeting card daily create, Bill Smith’s image inspired me to rif-a-GIF.

DS106 Hijacking. View Oiginal Image Here

Shared from rockylou22 using Embeddlr

 

 

tdc615 Idea of Clarity

Clarity

As a bonus daily create from week two, tdc607 –  the movie trailer for my website, was finally completed with A Trailer for Two.

Telling a Story in Photos:

Creating my Five Card Flickr Story ,”Five Card Poetry – My Story” wasn’t as easy as I thought it was going to be. I was way too literal at first. I started by reading the directions and figured this was going to be a piece of cake- just pick out 5 photos and tell a story ‘about’ them. (ALERT: “about”) I tried a few hands, picked some images that seemed to follow a theme, but none of them told a story…..

Oh… that was different than what I was thinking. They were continuing to flesh out their stories in a poetic rather than a prose format. The photos were telling the story, not me telling a story ABOUT the photos.  Back to the drawing board. This time I got out of my literal mind and engaged my heart and soul to sense what was here. Then the story revealed itself.

I crave community. Do I need to be flashy and bright to be seen? Do I need my words set in stone to be valid? Is it okay to have fun and learn along the way? With heart, body, and soul my story can be shared.

Participating in DS106- It’s not just ME!

Participating in DS106 continues to be a rich learning experience.  As I am facilitating a concurrent version, the 3M-DS106 Salon at my professional workplace, it permeates all areas of my life.  I have found my direct interactions through blogging, commenting, reading, and sharing with other DS106 participants to be more valuable than the lectures or texts shared with us.  This was unexpected. I had wanted to learn about digital storytelling and thought I just needed to get access to the “professionals” out there who could define it for me.  I was mistaken.  Don’t get me wrong. The videos, graphics, texts, etc are helpful, but I learned the most simply reading other DS106ers explain and illustrate their definitions for what a digital story is. Here’s a list of those I could link back to.

3M-DS106 Salon

And sometimes I am totally surprised and delighted with what I find when I pop in to leave a silly comment like when I witnessed a touching father-son interaction in Bill Smith’s post,  Art Making

Website Always Under Construction

ConstructionSign_1

I’m always working to improve the experience of visiting my blog – for my guests and me personally.  This week I…

 

  • Added the Flag Counter and Revolver Maps widgets after seeing it on Ary Aranguiz’s blog, All The World Is A MOOC.
  • Continue to debug my comments interface.  I’ve really appreciated people letting me know they are having problems when trying to leave a comment.  I need to know about stuff like that so I can fix it.  Thanks!

What did I do in Week 2?

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FdeTroyLectureMoliere_DS106-3MWhat 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.  🙂

HCHeadlessGIF

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:

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

BeetleJuiceGIF_2

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 

Shared from rockylou22 using Embeddlr

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

Brain_AliensFiguring 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:


Shared from rockylou22 using Embeddlr
download/iPhone

State of The Daily Create- Wk 2

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It’s week 2 of the Headless 13 dS-106.  While we were finishing up boot camp and continuing to build and personalize our personal digital cyber-infrastructure, we were also having some fun along the way creating GIFs and doing some 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”

REDUCE: I try to work smarter by choosing foundational media that will be easier to manipulate technically if I have limited time on my hands. i.e tdc609 showing the “coolness” of a refrigerator.  Lassoing that refrigerator was so easy, plus no need to extensively rebuild background with these images, that I ended up creating two photos. 🙂

What do we do with this thing? This long lost outtake from the opening scene of “2001 A Space Odyssey” wasn’t quite what Stanley Kubrick had in mind.

What do we do with this thing?

That 1969 refrigerator was so cool it was selected to fly to the moon with the Apollo 11 guys. But there were a few glitches in getting it hooked up.

Apollo 11 Fridge Debacle

I may choose to not make a big production out of a project, even though I could have for tdc603 when making a video to tell the story of my keychain that gives a deeper look into who I am.

I also continue to toss aside my perfectionism and let my technical vulnerabilities be seen in public as I shared with the world my limited ability to draw a 3D perspective for tdc606. I’m using the Paper53 app on my iPad.

3D Drawing Skills

I was quite pleased with my brilliant use of the reuse principle by combining two daily creates into one photoshoot.  tdc601 asked us to draw something DS106ish backwards in recognition of 601 being the reverse of 106. Here I’ve drawn DS106 backward again on my iPad with the Paper53 app.

Backward Glance at DS106

In combination with my submission for tdc602 capturing the elegance of Apple products that are designed with elegance in mind from the device to the packaging right down to the details of the insert materials.  It is an experience just to open the box for an iPad or an iPhone.

Elegance in the 21st Century

A very simple GIF was also added to the mix.

DS106 Elegance for tdc601

Shared from rockylou22 using Embeddlr

UPDATE: (9/10/13) The above daily create duo now has a project process posted: DS106ish Elegance. There were a few little tricks to getting the images and GIF to look nice that I thought should be captured.

REUSE: I use pieces of past projects too. Either from another ds106er, an on-line source like Microsoft Clip-art or free image and GIF sites, or from my own art collection. Like this photo of my grandson actually taken the day before tdc605 was announced.  I’ve captured the calm amongst the ever lurking emotional chaos of the typical two year old. My grandson DJ looks so sweet and adorable here. And he is… most of the time. But those tantrums can come & go at anytime.

Calm & Chaos at Two

Headless_Rockylou_3_GIF_Final_500RECYCLE:  Not sure if this would fall under Reuse or Recycle, but either way for tdc604 my headless self-portrait was created a few weeks back for one of @IamTalkyTina’s August GIF Challenges.

Read all about how I created the GIF and the image at:

Engineering Headless Rockylou

There was one final daily create, tdc607 “Create an exciting movie trailer for your ds106 web site. Use The Voice.” that I really wanted to do. But due to my youngest daughter getting married this weekend, that balance of personal time and ds106 weighed most heavily onto the family side.  I plan on doing it this week though.  I have some ideas floating around in my head I’m excited to try out.

Headless13 Week 1 Summary

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Headless_Rockylou_3_GIF_Final_500

August GIF Challenge: My Headless self. [link to post]


DS106 Fall Headless course started on August 26, 2013. Our first week’s assignments were pretty easy for me since I already had my blog up and running, [About Page ] I just needed to tweek it a little. The biggest tasks for me were around building the digital infrastructure for my 3M-DS106 Salon for which I’ll publish a separate non-proprietary blog post. I’m pretty much into the swing of doing the daily creates and we watched three short videos.

Along with the videos were a set of “Rules for Students and Teachers” by John Cage we were to read over.

JohnCageRules

My three nuggets to report were:

  • Ideas take time to incubate, sometimes one, two years, sometimes 10 or 20 years. I often feel if I don’t get it right away something is wrong.  But 10 or 20 years? Now I can have a more compassion with myself over the radical collaboration ideas I am trying to introduce to the 3M corporate system.
  • Nothing is a mistake. There is no win & no fail. There is only make. This reminds me that it’s okay to be vulnerable amongst the DS106 crowd. We are here to create, to learn, to share at our own pace and level of expertise.

  • Do not try to create and analyze at the same time.  They are different processes. Boy do I know this – even though I forget at times.  I need to stay out of my own way when I’m in creation mode, and it is important that I go into analyze/reflect mode and write up my process when I’m finished.  It took me about a month to get my Etude de la Musique posted.

What advice from previous students seems most useful? Why?

Don’t be afraid to try new things and make “mistakes”.  Push your creative edge. For me that initially took the form of not pulling myself back for those daily creates that involved video, which has historically been my most used digital story telling media format.  For TDC 597 we were to take a video clip and add something unexpected.  In my Star Spangled… WHAT?! I had a lot of fun looking at other people’s work and finally deciding to use John Johnston’s chicken GIFs to add an unexpected visitor to a previous daily create of mine.

Another edge for me is with drawing. I don’t have much confidence in that area, but with some gentle nudging and encouragement from other DS106ers who I follow, I took a stab at it by drawing birthday wishes for Giulia.

 

Birthday Wishes Doodle

My attempt at today’s ds106 daily create tdc599 to doodle for doodler Giulia our wishes for an ideal birthday. I didn’t feel confident that I could do a drawing create. But at the gentle nudging of Stefanie Sofie and a subversive CogDog, I gave it ago on my iPad with a sketching app called Paper 53. There was a lot of erasing and deleting as I practiced with the tools. But in the end, I’m glad I stretched my art making boundaries. I won’t be so apprehensive next time.

A couple of other daily creates… (Click on captions below images for blog posts and more information)

BuildABug

Build-A-Bug – more info  tdc598

600BCHorse

600BC horse celebrating the DS106 600th daily create TDC600

Making my DS106 impression at 3M for TDC596 . The photo was taken at home with my iPhone mounted on a tripod with an Anycase Tripod Adapter. Then using my earbuds’ volume control to activate the shutter.

Making a DS106 impression at 3M

Making a DS106 impression at 3M for TDC596

GETTING SOCIAL: I’ve had a Twitter account, @rockylou22, for at least 3 years and finally tweeted my first tweet in June as I started the DS106Zone summer 2013 session.  YIPEE! Learning the proper etiquette and how to utilize the hashtags correctly has been quite a learning curve.  I’ve also had a Flickr account for quite some time, but never posted anything until I needed it for my first DS106 Daily Creates.

Before that I had just used Flickr to gather creative commons photographs for some of my video creations that I post to my YouTube channel.  My SoundCloud account is up and running…

Vader_DS106_GroomJoinAlliance_2

and I added Tumblr in August- mostly for posting GIFs like this one.  [Link to post about creating this and other similar GIFs]

 

 

 

Moving on to Embedding Twitter with an example using the #ds106 hash tag in your message was not as easy as our week 1 assignment suggested.

To do this, go to your twitter home page (http://twitter.com when logged in) and click “Tweets” in the upper left. If you click on the date/time stamp of any of your messages, it will load that tweet in a single page with a unique URL. WordPress users can easily embed a tweet by copying that URL and pasting it on a blank line in your Editor.

I tried for a couple of hours to get this to work.  Copying the URL into either the visual or text page of my WordPress blog only gave me a link to click on.  If I copied the imbed code I code get a parent tweet and one reply by pasting it into the text view.  I, however, wanted to embed an entire conversation, without resorting to imbedding a single tweet at a time.  I searched the web and widgets for help, but notta! I’m wondering if the recent Twitter conversation upgrade is the culprit here.

But I was able this week to imbed my own Twitter feed with a nice looking user interface into the sidebar of my blog.  Previously it was just an ugly text list.

To do this I went to my Twitter home page and clicked on the settings gear icon in the upper right corner. In the drop down menu I selected settings. In the settings screen select widgets in the left hand column.

EmbedTweetStream

1. To embed your Twitter stream on your WordPress blog.  Under settings choose Widgets.

2. Make your configuration choices and copy the automatically generated HTML code from the lower right hand box.EmbedTweet_Code

3. In WordPress make sure you have already downloaded and installed the Text plug in widget.  Then open Appearance => Widgets and pull the text widget over to the Main sidebar. Open it by clicking on the arrow in the upper right corner and paste in your HTML code you generated from Twitter.TwiiterEmbed_WidgetSidebar

 

Week 1 FIREHOSE Summary

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ProfGroomFireHose_DS106

DS106: What was I expecting? [Original Image from “Piled Higher and Deeper” by Jorge Cham]

Oh my… What was I thinking when I decided to sign-up for this course?  I’m taking this class, DS106,  as an open online student, and I wasn’t expecting the level of work requested by the instructors and the speed at which the material and assignments are rushing by during this summer version of the course.  I’m planning on doing what I can now and participating again during a future full semester course, hopefully this Fall.

Although warned when first reading over the material that this was not something to take lightly, I was still not prepared.  My own enthusiasm has surprised me with wanting to fully absorb the material being taught, completing the assignments and taking the time to do them well, and my desire to interact with my fellow students  There is so much good information, as well as the technical skill learning, that I feel I just don’t have enough hours in the day to digest it all.  Writing up this weekly summary is a huge job in and of itself. Any suggestions on how I might streamline the process?  Is this time well spent and appreciated by the instructors or my class mates if I’m just an open onliner?

THE BLOG: I started late in the game (Thursday of week one) and creating my new blog site was the first hurdle.  I unsuccessfully attempted to create my first blog site with the RapidWeaver software I have been using for the last couple of years.  After hitting my head against the wall for a couple of hours I decided to try using WordPress, since it was being used for the UMW students anyway, and I knew I could get additional help if needed.  GREAT DECISION!  My web hosting site, BlueHost, had a simple script download option for WordPress that worked great once I got out of the way with my RapidWeaver obsession and let it do its thing.

I liked and used the free 2012 theme that was offered.  Then customized it with the banner header and background color I use at my Rockylou Productions website. (The tree logo was designed by my daughter Amber.) I love all of the widgets and how easily I can update my pages and blog entries with WordPress from any computer or mobile device. I’ve used all of my Apple devices at some point, my iMac, iPad and iPhone. I watched the tutorial videos for week one on setting up your blog, checked out the Embedding Media in Your Blog Tips page and happily followed all of the recommendations, as well as TalkyTina’s requirements for becoming her “true friend”.  I will definitely be changing over my current blogging tool for Rockylou Productions to a WordPress template when I finish up the course.  I’m continually tweaking my DS106 blog design and pages (especially my About page as I learn more about its purpose and importance), and updating past posts with new links when it seems useful. I’m not happy with the Twitter feed formatting though, or the recent comments format in the sidebar.  I’ve seen some better formats on other blogs and will be asking for suggestions soon.

GETTING SOCIAL: I’ve had a Twitter account, @rockylou22, for at least 3 years and finally tweeted my first tweet this week.  YIPEE! Learning the proper etiquette and how to utilize the hashtags correctly has been quite a learning curve.  I don’t think I’ve got it right yet since I don’t always see my posts at the #ds106 feed. I had my privacy settings to restrictive at first, but  I thought I fixed that. I’ve also had a Flickr account for quite some time, but never posted anything until now, just used it to gather creative commons photographs for some of my video creations that I post to my YouTube channel.  I not only created my SoundCloud account, but uploaded a podcast that my daughter and I had created a few years ago to see how it worked.  (Link to the rest of the podcast series. ) No issues there. Oh… and I almost forgot.  I created my gravatar too.

DAILY CREATES: I’ve enjoyed playing with these, but since I’ve had to play catch up they are all posted to one blog page.  But I’ll get into the swing of things this week.

Daily Create Assignments: Introducing Myself, Alien Rochelle, 500th Daily Create Celebration, Life, Love & Laughter with my grandson, iPad + Toes = FunFunFun

VISUAL AND DESIGN ASSIGNMENTS: Again, it’s unfortunate that I didn’t learn about the course sooner so that I had time to complete the required number of assignments.  I’m hoping when I have a whole week to work on them it will be different. But with a full-time day job as a Business/Technology Opportunity Analyst at 3M, I’m not sure if I will be able to. If not, I’ve decided to prioritize those assignments I choose as enjoyable and worth while for me personally.  I’ve not had too many technical issues yet.  I’m pretty well versed in the technology needed to complete the assignments I’ve chosen so far.

  • ManyMe In Spring Multiply Yourself: VisualAssignments943 (5 stars)
  • Splish Splash Splash the Color: VisualAssignments340 and VisualTutorials340. (3 stars)  While I was at it I thought I might as well create a quick one-page tutorial on how to make one of these photos with Photoshop Elements.  Do I get extra points for that? 😉
  • Go Daddy…. Wheeeeeeee Required GIF VisualAssignments920 (4.5 stars).  This was my first attempt at creating a GIF. FUN!FUN!FUN!  I used one of my own videos to cut down on the time required to find a clip I could easily use. I felt the downloading and watching a Twilight Zone episode was better spent on learning how to create the GIF itself. I loved this assignment.
  • GIF Evolution of ManyMe Photo It Like Peanut Butter: VisualAssignments347.( 3 stars) I enjoyed the GIF assignment so much I wanted to use my newfound skills for another project.  I started to make it and realized that maybe there was an actual assignment heading I could use.  Yep… there was.  Killed two birds with one stone.  I had fun with a new skill and got to claim it as a completed assignment. You’ve no doubt noticed the creative GIF I made for this post?  🙂 Any extra stars for that one too?

MEDIA REFLECTIONS:

Scottlo’s Podcasts: I haven’t found them especially informative yet.  So I’m listening for style.  I found his vivid description of the beach in episode 4 to be a good audio technique learning moment.

Gardner Campbell’s essay and video Key take-ways:

    • “No digital Facelifts”, Open education is not just open to content, but open to other ways of doing it.
    • I am the architect of my own digital life.
    • The objective is to be a participant AND a producer. Narrating, Curating, Sharing.
    • 3 levels of openness: Open to the world, open to each other, open to ourselves

Michael Wesch’s presentation (Part 1 , Part 2):  Now this was some powerful stuff. I had to keep pausing the video to take notes.  I didn’t want to miss a word. A few key take-ways:

  • Learning to BE rather than learning ABOUT
  • GLOBAL DANCE, GLOBAL COLLABORATION
  • The goal isn’t to learn the technology.  It is to do something much larger by using these tools as a resource.
  • Media are not just tools, not just a means of communication.  Media changes the way we connect with one another
  • Web 2.0 is linking people: Sharing, trading and collaborating.  We need to rethink copyright, authorship, identity, ethics, aesthetics, rhetoric, governance, privacy, commerce, love, family, ourselves.
  • “Long slow death of the middleman”, 10% of financial loans expected to be peer to peer.
  • A ubiquitous, context-aware, semantic, social network of things, people & information
  • All the reasons to learn to read & write are relevant to creating video now.  Being a good citizen and having an effect on the world.
  • Moving from Information Literacy => Meta-media fluency => Digital Citizenship (Gardner Campbell)
  • Meaning Seekers => Meaning Makers
  • People think we are creating an unstructured environment, but we are actually creating a structure for participation
  • Creates possibility for more, but has darkside as well.
    • Freedom < – > Control, 
    • Openness < – > Surveillance
    • Community < – > Isolation
    • Participation < – > Distraction

First Week’s Daily Creates

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500th Daily Create- Party Time

500th Daily Create- Party Time

I may’ve started late, but once I started, there was no stopping.  I was able to get my DS106 blog up and working, finish the entire week’s Daily Create exercises, uploaded my first photos to Flickr (and even created a photo set for DS106), and learned how to post to Twitter (@Rockylou22).  SoundCloud was new for me too. But my YouTube account has been up for about 5 years.

Daily Create Assignments:

Introducing Myself, Alien Rochelle, 500th Daily Create Celebration, Life, Love & Laughter with my grandson, iPad + Toes = FunFunFun