Touch the firehose of ds106, the most recent flow of content from all of the blogs syndicated into ds106. As of right now, there have been 92792 posts brought in here going back to December 2010. If you want to be part of the flow, first learn more about ds106. Then, if you are truly ready and up to the task of creating web art, sign up and start doing it.

  1. Tom

    Police Beat

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    I was listening to “Ain’t too Proud to Beg” coming to work this morning. I’m always surprised what songs actually say when you really listen to the lyrics. Essentially, a number of the things advised by songs can be highly questionable- even in innocent seeming songs from The Temptations. Given that and the predilection of ...
  2. Tom

    My Take on #DS106

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    I recently tried to present something on #ds106 and MOOCs in general at VSTE. It’s probably best it wasn’t filmed. I’m going to try to present something more coherent in writing.1 This will be a description of what made this course work for me although I believe it could be generalized at least some to ...
  3. Tom

    Google Form as Choose Your Own Adventure Tool

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    Just a quick proof of concept for a session I’m doing at VSTE. I’m trying to show how you can use most things in all sorts of ways despite what they were intended to do. Apparently the example Google put out for this way back when actually used choose your own adventure to demo the ...
  4. Tom

    All My Cars are Immigrants

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    I heard this line coming home. My drama need a passport. All my cars are immigrants.1 How could I not make a poster for Gucci Mane and adding a whole slew of immigrant cars? I’m sure he meant he had a lot of Kias. 1 Language and themes in this song are questionable if you ...
  5. Tom

    2 for DS106

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    These two apps for the iPhone are not necessarily educational but they make for some decent entertainment. Think of this as my high fructose corn syrup post. VidRhythm This app was kindly given to me by the Debbie Roethke who knows what kids like. It’s stupid fun. Basically, you pick a song type and are ...
  6. Tom

    19 Strangers

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    It has taken me quite a while to get to 19. Clearly, I tend to do this project in fits and starts and I do much better when I leave town. Because the Universe has a sense of humor, I will be in Las Vegas for BlackBoard World and I’m hoping that will result in ...
  7. Tom

    Introducing Randomness

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    I had a great time at UMW’s Faculty Academy. Got to meet a number of people face to face for the first time which is always interesting. I was lucky enough to be able to present as a plenary speaker1 as well. After being repeatedly told to “bring my A game” I had completely psyched ...
  8. Tom

    Performance Based 21st Century Assessment

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    We’re looking to put some more muscle behind the idea of preparing students to do more than take multiple choice assessments. We looked at a variety of products and were not happy with the options so we decided to make our own. Working with, John Ross1 we got together a team of core content teachers ...
  9. Tom

    Henrico 21 Lesson Videos

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    We just wrapped up this year’s 21st century lesson plans awards. Below is one of the student work winners- a great stop motion ad created for Alexander’s BBQ. The restaurant has the ad running on its website. You can also find quick video summaries of the winning lessons (like the one below) on the ITRT ...
  10. Tom

    Minimalist Poster

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    My try at a minimalist movie poster. All1 sorts of people have already done it. Although most don’t seem to be tagging with visualassignments572 it so that it aggregates under the assignment on the ds106 site. That’s going to make it harder for Jim to count every assignment by hand when he does the big ...
  11. Tom

    Strangers #5 and #6

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    This little girl was at a birthday party for some family friends. She alternated between closing her eyes and sticking out her tongue (in a non-annoying way that made me like her more) and that real smile. Her older sister was there too but she was old enough to pose. She smiled but it wasn’t ...
  12. Tom

    Stranger Portrait #4 – David

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    David was suspicious of my motives. It seems explaining that you take pictures of strangers to interact with new people and work on your photography skills is not seen as a normal motive for doing something like this. I soldiered on and (semi?) convinced him I was simply odd and not evil. While suspicious in ...
  13. Tom

    One Picture Story

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    The goal was to take one photo and chop it up to make something that tells a story or creates some kind of tension by breaking the image into pieces. I had the idea for the “assignment” after seeing this shot1 on #FFFFFound. I’ll rate this one a partial success. It’s not quite what I ...
  14. Tom

    One Picture Story

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    The goal was to take one photo and chop it up to make something that tells a story or creates some kind of tension by breaking the image into pieces. I had the idea for the “assignment” after seeing this shot1 on #FFFFFound. I’ll rate this one a partial success. It’s not quite what I ...
  15. Tom

    Stranger #3

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    Michelle is from a small “hick” town (her words) outside of Austin. She has a younger sister who she basically raised because their father left and their mother had to work. She is on her way to visit family in Germany. This is the first time she’s made the trip to Germany without her sister. ...
  16. Tom

    Stranger #3

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    Michelle is from a small “hick” town (her words) outside of Austin. She has a younger sister who she basically raised because their father left and their mother had to work. She is on her way to visit family in Germany. This is the first time she’s made the trip to Germany without her sister. ...
  17. Tom

    Stranger Portrait #2

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    I don’t want to be the “creepy guy with the camera” that D’Arcy mentions in his #ds106 talk but I do want to be able to capture certain images and interact with other humans in a variety of ways. If I can make myself keep trying these I’m hoping, eventually, I will have the banter ...
  18. Tom

    Stranger Portrait

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    I often see people and think that I’d like to take their portrait. It sounds creepy in my head as I write that but I promise it’s a fairly widespread idea. I just happen to think certain people look interesting but I don’t ever do anything about it. I worry my social skills are not ...
  19. Tom

    Stranger Portrait

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    I often see people and think that I’d like to take their portrait. It sounds creepy in my head as I write that but I promise it’s a fairly widespread idea. I just happen to think certain people look interesting but I don’t ever do anything about it. I worry my social skills are not ...
  20. Tom

    1 Story – 4 Icons

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    Assignment: Reduce a movie, story, or event into its basic elements, then take those visuals and reduce them further to simple icons. That’s my attempt above. I tried to stick to a three color scheme. The first image is supposed to be a parking meter. My wife was unable to ID it. It needs work. ...
  21. Tom

    1 Story – 4 Icons

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    Assignment: Reduce a movie, story, or event into its basic elements, then take those visuals and reduce them further to simple icons. That’s my attempt above. I tried to stick to a three color scheme. The first image is supposed to be a parking meter. My wife was unable to ID it. It needs work. ...
  22. Tom

    Better Animated GIF Tutorial for PS CS4

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    I’ve been fairly obsessed with animated gifs lately. My apologies. It was really If We Don’t, Remember Me that had me stuck in this loop. This person churns out such really interesting visuals, I couldn’t rest until I got something fairly close. I feel like the image above, while not perfect, is close enough to ...
  23. Tom

    Better Animated GIF Tutorial for PS CS4

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    I’ve been fairly obsessed with animated gifs lately. My apologies. It was really If We Don’t, Remember Me that had me stuck in this loop. This person churns out such really interesting visuals, I couldn’t rest until I got something fairly close. I feel like the image above, while not perfect, is close enough to ...
  24. Tom

    Bag of Gold – BlackBoard Remix

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    After reading Martha’s awesome post, I was not happy. Against my better judgement, I went to watch the BlackBoard “Mashup” tool tutorial1. There was something about the voice and the strangely stilted cadence that forced me to do this. Bag of Gold – BlackBoard Remix Actually, this would be a pretty interesting assignment. Take the ...
  25. Tom

    Giving It Away

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    The Knight Rider gif has nothing to do with this post but it might make you feel better. If you’re here from #ds106, that image is for you, the post is likely to be depressing although it does at least reference Gardner’s digital facelift talk. What passes for deep thoughts on this blog Here’s my ...
  26. Tom

    IOGraphica: It had to be done

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    I blame D’Arcy for this. I kept thinking that it’d be interesting to take the results of IOGraphica and make it into stop motion animation. I looked for ways to download the image every X minutes but failed to find any way to do that in the program. I then thought, I could just remember ...
  27. Tom

    A Bag of Gold

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    I really liked Gardner Campbell’s “No More Digital Facelifts” talk that was recommended watching for #ds106 (embedded below). I like it enough that I decided to remix it. I don’t claim to have captured all, or perhaps any, of the spirit/content of Gardner’s talk but it was an interesting experiment and hopefully one that entertains ...
  28. Tom

    Everything Tells Stories Now

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    After seeing D’Arcy’s mouse drawing1 I decided to download iographica and make one myself. It does tell the story of my day- including when I went to a 2.5 hr meeting and forget that I had the program turned on. It might be interesting to do trade these and have outsiders describe what led to ...
  29. Tom

    Predator

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    I’ve been posting a lot of garbage animated gifs on here, essentially just reveling in the chaos of what can be made. After reading Alan’s post I decided to publish something a little more serious and a little more in line with the spirit of the original challenge. The movement is minimal. The eyes convey ...

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