There were two aspects of the class which surprised me somewhat. One was the fact that after the first half of the semester the concept of telling stories and examining what it means to be a story seemed to fall somewhat by the wayside. I was also under the impression that more formal sorts of digital tools were going to be used in the class, such as Powerpoint or Photoshop / Gimp. Rather much of the class was focused online.

While I did enjoy the class and learned a few things along the way I do not believe that I learned any valuable skills. Part of this was due to the fact that every week a new topic was covered and thus every aspect of the course was given only very cursory treatment.

It should also be said though that being forced to interact with the various tools of the course was still a useful experience. I am indeed quite proud of my ossified video presentation. I am also pleased with my mashup. As to the final project I am pleased with some of my postings (namely the troll quotes, fresco and fanfiction) over others. Otherwise the vast majority of my work and those of my peers is rather mediocre.

Indeed this relates to my main criticism of the course which is that I feel that the whole of the digital culture of today is severely lowering the bar as to what can be considered an impressive piece of work. All told there are only about half a dozen worthwhile blog posts from this class (and none on my site). This is not a criticism of my peers merely one of the culture which seems to wish to enshrine the so-so and thus detract from the great. The disregard for laws (copyright)* and standards is another issue.

Even so I found the class to be rather enjoyable on the whole and worth my while independent of the fact that my main motivation was to fulfill the art process requirement.

*Though I am a staunch advocate of copyright protection I will say that the 190 years of protection under the Bern Convention is ridiculous.