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 92924 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.

And so it begins…

Posted by
|

So Jim Groom’s Digital Storytelling (ds106) MOOC (Massively Open Online Course) begins today – hooray! – therefore I’m adding to the surge of new posts declaring hullo to the world and bit of context as to why I’m looking forward to taking part (I even set it up it’s own special wordpress for the process.)

The course aims and ‘learning outcomes’ (for those not registered and might be reading this via twitter):

*Develop skills in using technology as a tool for networking, sharing, narrating, and creative self-expression
* Frame a digital identity wherein you become both a practitioner in and interrogator of various new modes of networking
* Critically examine the digital landscape of communication technologies as emergent narrative forms and genres

These are pretty straight forward – but are not things that can be ticked off regimentally like traditional assessment criteria. They are skills which are difficult to be “taught” and come through practise, even play. From following the feed for the weeks on the run up to the course, I’ve been entertained by animated gifs, movie mashups and some interesting takes on existing media (like swapping lyrics and images – and playing with the boundaries of what we already know and assume) – only now it is my turn to try out some of the crowdsourced assessments and exercises.

I’ve recently blogged and stated an interest in running my own open course (working with an existing module at the university where I work part time) in correlation with my PhD research into new media and the Olympic Games. The course would correspond to the citizen media network being ‘set up’ on the run up to the London Games – and would be offered up as a open training/context exercise around the possibilities of the internet alongside existing media events. Essentially, the assignment (and the outcomes of the modules) are to produce a social object that is connected to the wider #media2012 network but is working with a local context (could be community media cafe, could be an internet radio station, could be a simple website – but the focus is on the people involved, not just building a website that becomes redundant once the course is finished – an exercise in thinking creatively but critically.)

What I would love to take away from these next 15 weeks is the experiences of being a student on an open course (learning and engaging in this way around the topics and skills of digital storytelling), where some of the participants are actually taking it as a ‘real life’ module, earning credit as part of their degree course at UMW. So it’s kinda meta why I’m here – I’m interested as a person who spent the best part of her student days winding up people on the Internet using animated gifs and swapping heads/bodies on a cracked copy of photoshop, and as somebody who is developing a real research interest into new and exciting (potentially radical) methods of course production and course delivery.

Look forward to getting started!

Add a comment

ds106 in[SPIRE]