Week Two – We got D(i)S106! This week we got to explore the Assignment Bank, make four Daily Creates, customize our blogs, comment on other classmate’s blogs, and answer the question of the week using Slack. I was actually really excited about this week’s assignments, mostly because I have been itching to try out the assignments in the Assignment Bank and to check out what the Daily Creates were all about! Assignment Bank: When taking a glance at the assignment bank, I was a bit overwhelmed with the amount of options I had. Though very quickly I began to find assignments that I knew I could get creative with! I decided to spread the assignments out over the week to ensure each one had my full attention and creativity. One thing I noticed with doing these assignments is that although none of them were meant to take more than 10-15 minutes, I spent way longer just playing around with other ideas. For the first assignment, I chose to go with a Web Assignment. This assignment called for creating art with GoogleDraw in order to help Google learn and recognize doodling. I actually had a lot of fun with this assignment- it didn’t take very long but I spent a few extra minutes playing a few more rounds. Additionally, I created a video on how the game works using my iOS device. This assignment wasn’t very challenging but I was proud to have added another element by adding the video! For the second assignment, I chose to do a Visual Assignment. This assignment incorporates our secret agent theme. For this assignment I was tasked with finding a picture of any secret agent I would like. Next, I chose a quote from a similar secret agent, and finally, contributed the said quote to a third similar character. Although I enjoyed this assignment due to the creativity aspect, it wasn’t my favorite assignment. My final assignment of the week was my favorite! This Design Assignment allowed me to get really creative! I learned more about Adobe Photoshop too. Along with the first assignment, I did several versions of this assignment but went with my favorite, kayaking on Saturn’s rings. Daily Creates: I had a blast doing these Daily Creates! These are far by my favorite to do. They don’t take long and I like the creativity that goes along with them. I decided to post each of my daily creates into a blog post and described each one of them: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Here are the actual responses on Twitter: Monday: How will you celebrate MLK day? Tuesday: Explain something technical using furry animals. Wednesday: Find a song lyric describing a real place/thing and draw it. Thursday: Zoom in on nature! Again I really enjoyed these daily creates! I was not able to tie any of the creates to our secret agent theme, but I hope to be able to do so next week. Question of the Week: This week’s question was about what we thought a good example of storytelling in the secret agent genre, here is what I posted in Slack: “I am definitely not well-rounded in the genre but I think a good example of storytelling in the secret agent theme would be the movie Spy Kids. I believe this is a good example mostly because I don’t have much to compare it to! By watching Spy Kids as a child, I gained a good understanding of the basics of what it means to be a secret agent such as spying, the high technology used, and action that takes place. The storyline is parents of two young kids were kidnapped, and after finding out their parents were previously secret agents, Juni and Carmen decide to take matters into their own hands. They become secret agents themselves and take on the mission to save their parents. A different example I could think of would be the show Game of Thrones. Although it is not explicitly a secret agent show, there tends to be a good amount of espionage that goes on.” I find the secret agent theme very exciting but unfortunately I am not well-rounded in this genre. I have seen movies with spies in it but I haven’t seen any of the Bond movies, or quite frankly most of the movies people are referring to. Though I plan to gather some movies together on Netflix and watch them this weekend! Hopefully that will help me get more into the theme and coming up with creative ideas for the class. Customizing Blog: Another task for this week was to spend some time customizing our blogs (http://bubbl3s.com/). Although I think I spent most of the first week doing this, I still changed a few things! For one, I updated my blog name to “Spy Hard”. I actually got this name by generating some words into a blog generator. The generator used the title of the movie “Die Hard” and replaced it with Spy Hard. I have never seen the 1988 action movie but after watching the trailer I might have to! It looks as if it could pertain to our theme. Second, I adjusted the “skin” of my site, to a darker color rather than just white. I actually really like the change, it makes my header picture pop more. I actually took this header picture last summer at our local ice cream shop, Carl’s, in downtown Fredericksburg. It doesn’t necessarily pertain to our theme, but who knows, maybe it will appear in a future secret agent story! I also added a little secret agent girl. The last thing I did to customize my blog was to finally fix my blog so that people can comment on my posts. Speaking of commenting, this week we were also supposed to work on commenting on others’ work as part of the participation in this course. I found commenting on other’s posts/twitter and having others comment on my posts/tweets exciting! Seeing other people get excited about my work just gets me motivated to do more. The other great thing about participating is it can be extremely helpful. If I am unable to figure out how something works but one of my classmates did, I can simply ask or read how they did it, or vice versa. For example, this week someone posted on my post about the Photoshop I did for daily create and how they couldn’t get it up on their computer, but I was able to offer advice or suggestion to do it through their phone. I think the participation aspect is so important because we can all learn and create so much together! As far as this week goes, I think it went pretty well! I didn’t have too many frustrations and everything was super exciting to do. I can’t wait to watch some secret agent movies this weekend to help with creating ideas for our theme! P.S. I now realize that changing the skin of the blog makes it harder to see my links…I might have to change it back.
