This Week’s Twilight Zone Episodes

This week you will be required to watch and create around three Twilight Zone episodes: “The Eye of the Beholder,” “The Midnight Sun,” and “Time Enough at Last.”

You can find “Eye of the Beholder” in bits and pieces on YouTube but it might be easier to watch on Hulu here (restricted by country).

You can only find “The Midnight Sun” in clips on YouTube, but it is available in its entirety on Hulu here (restricted by country).

You can find “Time Enough at Last” on YouTube here or Hulu here (restricted by country).

I will have copies of all three accessible on media.umw.edu for watching and download by tomorrow.

Creative Commons

Start the week off by learning a bit about (or a bit more about) the Creative Commons (CC) movement and how it relates to our notion of copyright and intellectual property. It’s up to you this week to do the research on this topic! Use the power of the Web to learn more about CC and copyright — don’t worry there are TONS of materials online about this topic. We’d like to see what you find and come up with on your own.

When you’re done, write up a blog post in which you share your research findings — what exactly isCreative Commons? In addition, let us know what Creative Commons resources you found most useful and informative. Finally, share your thoughts about how you’ll be licensing your work for this class from here on out — and let us know why you made this choice. Tag this post ds106CC.

DailyCreate

You must do at least four of the possible seven assignments on the day the assignment is published. It must be posted Flickr with the proper tags and then tweeted with the title and the hashtags #ds106zone, #dailycreate, and the tag for that day, namely #tdc504, #tdc505, etc. Make sure your flickr images and tweets are tagged correctly so I can see them and you can get credit.

This Week’s Design Assignments
Complete at least 15 stars of Design assignments—keep in mind you can substitue up to two animated GIF assignment for a design assignment. You can find the design assignments here, and the animated GIF assignments here. The only condition is at least 8 of those fifteen stars must be based on one or more of the three Twilight Zone episodes that are required viewing this week. Also, you can’t do any design assignment you already did in week 1. One of the design assignments we recommend is the DS106 Design Review, which will give you a sense of some of the best design work in ds106 over the past three years.

As with last week, each assignment must be blogged! Don’t forget to review  Alan’s tips of how to write-up assignments like a pro.

Feel free to submit new assignments as you feel compelled, you have to submit and document at least two assignments before the end of the 5-week session. A few pointers for design will be provided in tomorrow’s live session at 2 PM EDT which you can find at http://ds106.tv. Before hand, however, check out Tim Owens ” We Are All Artists” as well as the list of sites below that he refers to in his talk.

Links

• Breakfast is Overrated
• Prelinger Archives
• Bathroom Stall Icon
• Kuler
• The Noun Project
• DaFont
• Stock Exchange
• Principles of Design
• Behance
• Smashing Magazine
• Threadless
• Abduzeedo
• Creative Business Cards
• Ffffound
• Dribbble
• Book Cover Archive

Additionally, review this assignment document put together for last year’s summer session of #ds105 and spend some time reviewing the design concepts and the linked resources. The goal here is for you to develop a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the basic elements of design. For our purposes,  the following major design elements have been identified  for further investigation this week:

• color
• typography
• metaphors/symbols
• minimalism & use of space
• form/function/message
• balance
• rhythm
• proportion
• dominance
• unity

After reading and reviewing the assignment document, you should be able to provide a basic explanation of each of these concepts.

To reinforce your understanding, you need to understake a “Design Safari”: Carry your camera with you this week and take photos of objects, ads, signs, etc. that illustrate one of these concepts. At a minimum, provide examples of four of the concepts. Share all your photos on Flickr and tag themdesignblitz.  In addition, add a link to your Flickr photos in the assignment document within the proper concept areas, under the heading “Found Examples.” These are in additoin to your Daily Creates!

When you have completed your Safari, write a blog post that includes (THAT MEANS EMBED!) the photos and your analysis of the design elements and what makes them effective or not. (You can do this in one single post if you like, or in several.)

(PRO TIP: Sometimes we can learn just as much from badly designed things as we can from well-designed things!)

Audio Assignments

Despite what Scottlo says, the Scottlo podcast is required listening daily throughout the course (he’s trying to undermine my authority and will pay dearly for that). What’s more, he will be demonstrating audio assignments throughout the week on the LoDown Cast as well as giving you pro tips along along the way. The man is a genius of audio, tune in, take notes, and ask questions. What’s more, tomorrow is the last day for students to drop, once I figure out who is staying or going in terms of registered, for-credit students I will form you all into radio groups so that you can get going on the half-hour radio shows you’ll be creating during week three.

If time allows, Scottlo and I will have a live session this Thursday on ds106radio to talk through the audio assignments, the details of the radio shows, and more. In the mean time, you are required to do 15 stars of audio assignments  which you can find here, and at least eight stars worth have to be somehow based on at least one of the three Twilight Zone episodes you are required to watch this week.

Scottlo has already recommended downloading Audacity for these assignments (a robust, open source audio editing software) and I will reinforce that here. Most of the assignments are geared towards you gettign familiar with the basics of audio editing, there are a ton of tutorials out there for using Audacity, but Andy Rush’s overview of all things Digital Audio is a real good overview of the landscape. What’s more Andy Rush also has a great tutorial for helping you get the MP3 export function working in Audacity, which can be a pain for some.