The chapter 7 reading was intriguing. This time, the amount of academic theory about learning was essentially the entirety of the chapter, and this provided much more substance to delve into. To begin, the concept of social learning is one that is very popular these days. In many ways, this idea that how people learn […]

The Work Itself: Can you guess what this is a photograph of? The Story Behind the Story The assigned DS106 assignment this week was our own choice, so I decided to go with a visual assignment. Those types of assignments I think I work with well, and I enjoy getting to try them. In this […]

This week I decided to critique a more simplistic (but not necessarily less effective) digital story: “The Ultimate 64-Hour Weekend: Climb Shelf Road.” After more complex digital stories like 360 degree videos and well-choreographed YouTube productions, I was curious about the faster, easier-to-read, more commonplace sort of article that was presented by this magazine. It […]

The reading on writing about hiking that I checked out this week, like the reading from two weeks ago, once again approached the topic of hiking from a new perspective: essential hiking gear for writing a hiking guidebook. This was from a writer of guidebooks who described the gear he brought along with him in […]

As we come into the last portion of this course, it seems as though (in both the readings and out assignments) there is an increased emphasis on the participatory, interconnected nature of digital storytelling. That is to say, that an important part of digital storytelling, apart from just the ability to use new tools to […]

This week I chose to do the daily create assignment to find some leaves, take a picture of them, and turn the leaves into negative space in the image. I did this with a photograph:

I chose this week to look at the Ultimate Hiking and Camping Gear Guide from National Geographic. I thought that a more “practical” digital story would be fun to critique this week. I chose to critique it based on media application, audience, and economy. Media Application While using older digital storytelling tools, this was still […]

Chapter 6 was a definite improvement over the previous chapter that had more or less spent the majority of its time explaining some fairly straightforward examples of uses of blogs. This chapter, however, really decided to dig into more of the academic theory behind the way humans interact with one another in groups. That is […]

This week I read a piece that took a different approach to digital storytelling and hiking. It was called “10 Ways Hiking Can Help Your Writing.” Rather than being specifically about how to write about hiking, it dealt primarily with the reverse: how hiking can influence one’s writing for the positive. It was written by […]

The Work Itself The Story Behind the Story The mashup project this week was really interesting. I was predominantly interested in using my own original content for mashup work, and this assignment of mashing up digital projects that we’ve created specifically for this class sounded like a fun one (Mash Thyself Before Ye Trash Thyself). […]

I decided to critique a digital story this week on a brief video about a hike that was unique because it lacked a very common feature of hiking videos—narration or commentary. It was called “Hiking Manistee River, MI – 20 Mile Loop – May 2015.” The elements I decided to critique the digital story on […]

I continue to learn that digital storytelling, not unlike the opening definition of “literacy” in New Literacies, is a much broader concept than expected (and it continues to grow). The design assignment from the DS106 portion of class definitely demonstrated this. It was odd to approach the concept of digital storytelling from the perspective of […]

Here’s the daily create I did this week for the DS106 portion of INTE 5340 class.

The digital story I critiqued this week was “Yosemite National Park in 4K | Bushcraft Backpacking, Hiking, and Camping at North Dome/Upper Falls.” I chose this story because I thought it would be interesting to critique a truly long form digital story at roughly an hour and fifteen minutes. The criteria I critiqued the story […]

Chapter 5 was probably the chapter that I already knew the most about before reading so far. Most people from my generation are already very familiar with things like blogs: we grew up with them! It’s hard to remember a time when they didn’t already exist. So, in this particular chapter, I was most curious […]

This week I critiqued a digital story on the best ways to lace hiking boots called “How to Lace a Hiking Boot For Better Fit.” The digital story presents many options to find the best way to adjust the laces on hiking boots to create a fit for the boot that best works with one’s […]

This week, I chose to complete the Menu Design assignment from the DS106 portion of our class. The Story Behind the Story I chose to make this particular “Menu” creative assignment for two reasons. First, I use Adobe InDesign regularly and really enjoy any chance I get to use it creatively! The software is excellently […]

Since the digital story I critiqued last week was a VR/360 Video, I decided to look for readings on how to make these digital stories. As it turns out, there’s not a ton of literature out there that isn’t essentially very surface-level advertisement (i.e. look at how great the cameras XYZ companies produce are!) or […]

These last two weeks have been good in INTE 5340 one again. I’ve been primarily interested in our readings in terms of how they can be viewed from a larger scale. Rather than the explanations of minute individual examples/styles of digital storytelling (in the readings), the way those larger concepts can be seen as factors […]

Here was my Daily Create assignment for the DS106 class portion of INTE 5340.

The digital story I critiqued this week was “Trailer: As It Is – A Grand Canyon VR Documentary in 360 Video.” I critiqued the story based on economy, media application, and media grammar.   Media Application Media application was the main reason I decided upon this digital story. 360 Labs, the creators of this video […]

The primary points of interest came in the opening portion of the chapter, specifically with the broadening definition of the word “remix.” Much like the term literacy, the term “remix” has been broadened beyond its more common usage (remixes of songs, i.e. when DJs remix other popular pop, rock or other song genres). Now, the […]

And here’s another daily create assignment for the DS106 portion of our class. I was a little confused by this one, so who knows!

The Story Behind the Story I chose this particular DS106 audio assignment, “Rhythms With Things,” because it seemed like a unique way to to express myself creatively. I’m primarily used to writing as a way to be creative, and working with music seemed like a unique challenge. Since we were already using audio, I decided […]

This week, I decided to respond to an article on nature writing by Paul Evans from Discover Wildlife, titled simply, How to be a nature writer. As its title implies, this article made some strong, sound-bite quality points about how to “be a nature writer.” Of course, there’s no particular agreement on what exactly that […]

The digital story I decided to critique this week was an article slideshow from National Geographic, “World’s Best Hikes: 20 Dream Trails,” by Doug Schnitzspahn with help from a variety of other writers and hiking experts. My reasoning was that if anyone could make a compelling piece of digital storytelling about hiking, it would be […]

These last two weeks I’ve learned about some intriguing new elements of digital storytelling from our assignments, but in particular, I was struck by the idea of digitally-mediated stories versus “truly” digital stories. It arose after reading a blog post from Darren (also in INTE 5340), who read one of the other selected readings that […]

The digital story I critique this week was “Hiking Half Dome,” a video produced by the National Park Service. The three criteria I chose to critique were story, media grammar, and sense of audience. Story This particular digital story, as a sort of introductory informational video for the hike to the top of Half Dome […]

Chapter 3 of New Literacies was an intriguing exploration of the myriad ways that recent technology has facilitated new literacies. This leads into an almost inevitable question on page 59 that asks why new literacy practices through technology (digital content creation, social media, etc.) frequently aren’t considered important—especially in comparison to traditional reading and writing. […]

This week, I read and responded to an essay from Andrea Nolan called “Not Your Grandfather’s Nature Writing: The New “Nature” Journals.” It dealt with, primarily, the shifting definitions, uses, and approaches to nature writing in online journals. Andrea Nolan’s essay on nature writing—and its heavy emphasis on nature writing in online mediums and its […]