The next 60 days are going to be crazy. I’m leaving one job, starting another, moving, and during all of this, I am squeezing a 16 week semester into eight weeks. It shows too. Looking back on Week 1, I realized I produced some form on content every single day of the week, whether a response to the course’s text, a daily create assignment, a critique, etc.
Looking ahead at the remaining seven weeks, I can’t help but be a bit worried. But, as the sayings go, “nothing ventured, nothing gained,” and “the show must go on!”
For me, the most profound concept this week was dissecting the term “literacy” in Colin Lankshear’s and Michele Knobel’s book New Literacies: Everyday Practice and Social Learning. As I described
in my reading response, previously my notion of literacy was whether or not a person could read or write. Terms like “computer-literate” were simply a turn-of-phrase. My understanding of literacy has expanded to include the “three dimensional model,” which I find the most fascinating definition, as well as the “multiplicity of literacy.” Furthermore, as I read more of my selected scholarships for the course, The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield, I see myself accumulating literacy in defeating writer’s block, or as Pressfield calls it “Resistance.”
My biggest challenge this week was critiquing two digital stories. Both of mine came from the same source, Radiolab. I critiqued a
behind-the-scenes video, and a
podcast about Facebook. Both were incredibly engaging and interesting, which made them so difficult to critique. Because Radiolab produces such amazing content, I felt a bit like an impostor using
Jason Ohler’s criteria to assess their digital stories when I have only produced a few examples so far this week.
Nevertheless, I was very surprised and pleased by the stories I created, all of which happened to be visual images. The story that surprised me the most was my first daily create, “
Dearest,” which I created using only Microsoft Paint. I think the outcome was rather gorgeous. Initially, I had a different vision of what it should look like, but I was able to produce the final product through some experimentation with colors. A close second (only because the end product wasn’t as surprising) is my visual assignment “
Blocked.” As I am days removed from finishing this image, the back-and-white color scheme I was so afraid of doesn’t seem nearly as bad as I thought. And finally, my last daily create “
Wet Spring,” was a nice surprise as the added element of rain made the picture of a flower more interesting.
Despite feeling a tad overwhelmed at times during Week 1, I think this week was a swift kick in the ass to create, and jump into that mode of creation. As Pressfield described in the prologue of The War of Art, starting to create something comes down to just sitting down, and putting in the time.
