Life After DS 106

Great Facebook Post of the week: Picture saying “It’s Merry Christmas, not Happy Holidays!” Second comment on the picture “unless I’m Jewish…”

To start things off, I’m not Jewish. I believe in Christmas, but I also have enough world knowledge and common sense to know that not everyone celebrates Christmas or believes that Jesus is as great as I do. That being said, I’m not going to tell someone Merry Christmas during the WHOLE month of December. It’s not Christmas yet, and frankly after you’ve told me Merry Christmas 858593 times, by the time Christmas actually gets here, I’m over it.

I’m also not going to tell someone Merry Christmas if their religion focuses on some other holiday during the month of December. I would be just as offended if someone told me Happy Hanukkah when they knew I celebrated Christmas, or maybe I wouldn’t: when all my “people” are going around “yelling” that it’s Merry Christmas and not Happy Holidays, why should I be offended about someone else doing the same with a different holiday?  I was very confused a couple years ago when people started boycotting Target because they were saying Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. It’s silly. We don’t have a national religion, we supposedly don’t discriminate, so why should we get angry when a company strives to decrease that discrimination. The store is still decorated in red and green, sells Christmas trees and ornaments and is closed on Christmas, why are people so worked up about what the store allows their employees to say. It’s not like they’re requiring all the employees to say Happy Hanukkah or Happy Kwanzaa instead of Merry Christmas; they’re just trying to make a shopping experience a little more enjoyable for everyone.

With all this, I think people should just step up and realize that we live in a diverse country, people believe different things. By saying “Happy Holidays,” no one is trying to demean Christmas and Christianity, they’re just trying to be more accepting of everyone. Also, if you don’t want people to take Christ out of Christmas, you should think twice when you put up your Christmas tree and fight through the crowds to get the newest toy for your children, therefore promoting the very commercialization that is supposedly taking Christ out of Christmas. I’m not saying I’m a great Christian either, but I think if everyone stopped and took a step back and looked at how entitled and elitist you act during Christmas because you know the real reason for the holiday, you might just see why everyone hates Christians as much as they do.

David’s “date” with Jim Groom and Kelsey’s pleading post made me a little jealous like Kelsey was jealous of David’s date.

I remember that time Sadie, Claire, Jessica, and I (maybe someone else, I don’t remember) went to see the Social Network with Jim Groom. That’s something I have that David and Kelsey don’t. Ha. Also, from that trip, I know where you live, Jim Groom.

Although my blog doesn’t speak to this, David, Kelsey, and I have semi-regular conversations about Jim Groom being a Food Lord and such. Speaking of that, I want a copy of the burrito picture. I miss ds106. How regularly do you have to do something for it to be 4life? Can I blog once every year until I die for it to be 4life? Or do I have to blog once a month, twice a month, once a week? Or can I simply keep the spirit of ds106 in my heart and call it a day? (I think the last one isn’t going to work. My blog for my History of Social Theory class reminds me of ds106, without all the crazy. Also, writing about theorists and not Head Start and practicum and how all that works (or doesn’t). One thing has stayed the same, I still do everything at the last minute. It’s kind of a problem. Still.

I agree with Kelsey though, the internet is a scary place when I can’t come to class twice a week and ask you how to fix things. It’s also not very motivating when there isn’t a grade involved.

Well, this was fun and actually didn’t take very long. Maybe it will happen more in the future. Near future.

this is how the food lord came to be 🙂

My first thought before taking Digital Storytelling was “An Art Process class. Are you kidding me? I can’t even draw a stick figure!”

My second thought was, ” Oh, good. A class where I don’t have to draw or act. I got this.”

Little did I know, I would have to draw on every ounce of creativity that I had.

I did not do this nearly as much as I should. I got overwhelmed. I didn’t know what to do. I hit a point in the semester where I thought this was even more un-useful than knowing how to differentiate an equation. (I heard that term from my roommate and vaguely remember that word from when I *actually* took math classes.) Why do I  need to blog? Who really cares about what I have to write? The question I asked the most was: How in the world do I do this?

Throughout the *hundreds* (okay, maybe I rounded up a bit like Mina did in class)  of assignments, I often found myself having no clue what to do. Not just lack of knowledge with the technology, but lack of creativity. It takes a long time to think of what to write, what to say, and what to do. I did what I knew how to do first, which often happened to be my other classes.

I would try to blog when I was bored of doing other work or when I didn’t have anything else to do. The assignments came crashing in like an avalanche.  Both in this class and my other classes. I have a class every semester that is my class that I put the least effort into; this semester it just so happened to be this one. Spanish was only one step higher, and sometimes it was even lower.

When I did *finally* do the assignments, I didn’t put as much effort into them as I could. Someone in class last night said something along the lines of it taking as much time as the quality of work you want to do. I guess I just wasn’t concerned about quality. I’m not trying to do this for a living so I didn’t feel like putting as much effort into mashing, editing, creating, and telling.

One thing I had a real problem with was the lack of a syllabus. Or one that gave an outline with the assignments we would have to do throughout the semester. If I knew what I had to do all semester, I probably would have been more prepared/willing to do things. I had a class last semester where we would get seemingly unanticipated, even by the professor, assignments. It was annoying. I had so much other stuff to do that I had already planned when I was going to do it and if I knew about all these extra assignments, I could have planned accordingly. The assignments we did have were not horrible and extremely difficult, but frustrating. More details in advance would be useful and very helpful.

I’m not saying I hated this class. I really didn’t. Maybe it would have been better if I took it a different semester when I had less classes, less practicum, and less stress in general. But honestly I don’t know. I don’t particularly enjoy anything about making my own media. I don’t mind blogging, but I don’t see it as something that I could do regularly ever, or at least in the near future. But who knows?

Suggestions:

1. More detailed syllabus.

2. Maybe combine the assignments into the Digital Story more. It might be useful to say at the beginning of the semester that you will have to incorporate these assignments into the Digital Stories and list what the assignments will be so that it may be easier to plan the story. It also might make everyone’s blog look cleaner and more organized. This might not work for some assignments, but others it would work great.

3. It would have been nice to have a day where we met each other again. Maybe after we proposed our Digital Stories. It would be a good way to get to know each other’s faces and not just the layout of the blogs.

My Digital Story:

This did not happen nearly as much as I had imagined. Once it got started, I realized it wasn’t really working how I had planned. Mostly, I didn’t like Head Start as much as I thought I would. I was burnt out on Head Start. I’m writing my final paper for Sociology on Head Start, I was in Practicum there, and I was going to blog about it. Bad idea, if there ever was a bad idea. I feel like I did teach the class something with the posts that I did do. I also learned a lot along the way. I got to the point where I was so far behind on my story and so far behind on my assignments that I just gave up. It almost felt like I was in 2 classes.

My final words to ds106:

“Farewell to the world of Digital Storytelling, I got what I needed out of you. An Art Process credit. It’s not you, it’s me. I may come back to you sometime in the future and knowing that the web is, in fact, not dead, you will take me back. Right now is just not the right time.”

Tags: assignment 13

I don’t really know if this is what we were supposed to do with the fanfiction assignment. I’m not super obsessed with anything, but right now my favorite TV show is Raising Hope. The basic story line is that a guy in his early 20s gets a girl pregnant, finds out she’s a felon, she gets the death penalty 6 months after the baby is born, he ends up with the baby – originally named Princess Beyonce – and has to figure out how to raise a baby. He lives with his parents, but they don’t really know much about raising a baby either. It’s just a crazy ridiculous show that I have to watch on Hulu because my roommates hate it. 🙂

I put this together in paint, but I couldn’t figure out how to get rid of the white around the edges of the image. If anyone knows how, let me know and maybe I can try to fix it.

Tags: assignment 11.2

Here’s my mash up of Pretty Boy Swag and High School Musical. I tried to find a better quality video, but I couldn’t and I don’t know anyone who owns the movie to get the clip off a DVD.

Tags: Assignment 9

I’m not super obsessed with much of anything, but I would say one thing I do thoroughly enjoy is anything ridiculous. Anything from a half-eaten grilled cheese sandwich in the Poptart bin to, my most recent discovery, the cast and crew of the Today Show remaking some of the most viral videos. Also, viral videos in general fascinate me. Some of them are amazing, and some of them are not; no matter how amazing or complicated, they are still ridiculous. The idea of random people, you and me, making a video posting it to YouTube, then having millions of people view it is crazy! Or at lease it would have been before the age of YouTube.

This week on the Today Show (which my roommates and I watch in the mornings) they were remaking their favorite viral videos. Here are the 2 that I saw in the middle of running around and getting ready.

This first one is a guy named Mike Tompkins. He remakes songs using only his voice and mouth. It’s pretty crazy and you should just watch it.

Next is the version that the anchors on the Today Show made.

This morning was my favorite one. They remade a video that students at the University of Quebec Montreal made. Here is the original

Here is the one the Today Show anchors, crew members, and producers made

These last 2 videos were filmed in one continuous shot and the group from Canada had 2 rehearsals and 2 takes. I’m not sure how many takes or rehearsals the Today Show had.

Anyway, where I’m going with this is, explaining that I don’t have much of an obsession with any certain thing, but rather an obsession with ridiculous things. The whole Twilight thing is ridiculous. I’ll admit, I went to see New Moon at the midnight premiere, but I do not agree with the parents who took their 11 year olds to the midnight premiere. I’m not really sure what Stephanie Meyer was thinking when she wrote this book for preteens. The fact that the main character *disclaimer* has a baby with a vampire when she is right out of high school is ridiculous to me. The movies and story line isn’t even that great, it’s ridiculous. Which is one of my criteria for watching a movie, it has to be ridiculous. I was recently discussing this with ___ (I don’t even remember now), and I decided that I like all the movies that make no sense at all, movies that have story lines that don’t even fit in what ever world they take place in. For example, I thought of the movie Deep Blue Sea. Completely ridiculous. Genetically altered “smart-sharks” who end up turning on the people there to guard them. I don’t necessarily love this movie, but I enjoy how ridiculous it is.

Mostly, what I’m trying to get to in this post is what anyone who knows me well enough has figured out. I obsess over ridiculous things. I find something that I think is ridiculous, obsess over it, rant about it, then get over it. I don’t really know that this fits in with what we’re going to have to do in terms of fanfiction, but it’s what I’m obsessed with. I don’t have a TV show, movie, or music that I watch all the time and know everything about, I don’t even know everything about what is ridiculous.

Tags: Assignment 11.1

I chose to do my commentary on Mulan. I don’t usually enjoy movies but this is one that I am actually able to watch multiple times.

Here are the Google street view captions. Courtesy of Sadie, Ashley, Claire , and me. We have 2 more – the “best” ones – that can be found on Claire’s blog.

All these pictures came from http://9eyes.tumblr.com/.

Service Worker's Revenge

Dog Park Rejects

"Mom! There's a spaceship outside!"

Flowers do not equal happiness.

Best. Fort. Ever.

Madagascar 3: Escape to the Arctic

Lemonade: $1 per hour.

Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?

I can't do this while you're watching me!

"Are there no more cabs in this whole city!?!?"

Even heroes have the right to dream.

You may get there faster, but I'll get there fitter.

Honey, I Shrunk the Rockclimber

Hazards of Narcolepsy

Tags: captions

The Head Start schedule is pretty straightforward and normal for the most part.

9:00- Students get off the bus

9:10- Bathroom break (already)- The kids put their coats and backpacks in their lockers then we make a pit stop at the bathroom before heading to the classroom.

The lockers were there when the original school was built, and they use them since there isn’t much room for storage in the classroom.

9:20-Calendar

Go over what month, date, and day of the week it is. They also talk about what the weather is that day.

9:35ish- Breakfast in the classroom

The assistant teacher goes to the cafeteria to get the cart, which is also used for lunch, and brings it up to the classroom. One of the teachers then takes it down right before the kids are done eating.

10:00ish- Brushing teeth and some songs 🙂

They brush their teeth after breakfast and lunch. Because they possibly don’t do it at home, and they are trying to get them in the habit of brushing their teeth.

10:20- Choice Time

The kids get to choose where they want to work/play for that day. They can choose from house, blocks, writing center, shelf toys (puzzles and such), sand center (which actually has dirt in it now), or computer.

10:50- Clean up and sit back on the rug.

During this time, they can read a book for a few minutes until everyone is finished cleaning. Then we make sure their shoes are tied so they can go outside.

11:15- Head out to the playground or to the gym.

We also take a bathroom break on the way out to recess and if we are going outside, we have to stop and get their coats.

11:50- Come inside

Put coats away, the assistant teacher goes and gets the lunch cart (same as breakfast). The kids sit on the rug and the main teacher will read a story while the assistant teacher gets lunch ready. Then they’ll wash their hands and go sit at a table.

12:20 Lunch

12:50 Clean up

The kids have to throw away their trash, brush their teeth and go sit on the rug

1:00- Lesson

During this time there is usually some sort of lesson. They use these puppets called Al’s Pals, which are pretty cheesy but get the job done. This is usually the time where they will play the song that the kids have been begging for all day, if they’ve been good.

1:30: Get ready to go out to the buses

This is the trip to the lockers to get coats and backpacks and head out to the buses.

After writing this, I feel like I have the times messed up a little, but the events are in the right order.

Katie’s Story

I wasn’t really sure what to do to make this story more interesting than it already was, so I added in some sound effects. I think it’s somewhat difficult to find someone who will tell you an uninteresting story because whenever we do tell an uninteresting story, we don’t get the feedback we get from an interesting story. The sarcastic remarks are enough to keep us from telling a story that we might think is uninteresting.

Tags: Assignment 7