Reflection on media from this week:

1. Robert Hughes says that art is important because it makes the world whole and comprehensible. Once a piece of art has been completed and displayed and a viewer views this piece of art, their point of view is changed forever. They will never look at objects the same way as they did before.

2. Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson was a really interesting video to watch. I love how he scribbles all of these drawings and combines them all together to produce a single message. The message about creativity that Johnson is trying to get across is that several people working together to achieve a goal is better than a single person attempting by themselves. This is because everyone has ideas and when put together, make things work.

3. Rule 2 of Rules for Students and Teachers resonates with me as a creator and student. When nobody puts effort, no results will come from it. But when everything is putting forth their best effort, results will come. So if the teacher and the students are both working hard and thinking critically, each individual will get the most out of whatever they are discussing.

The Daily Create assignment I did this week was from Tuesday, August 28, which was also my birthday! Here it is:

When I found out that we had to introduce ourselves with a short video and then post it to YouTube, I freaked out! I’m not that great at telling stories anyways, in person, so telling a story to potentially limitless amounts of people through video was a little intimidating. I had never made a video of myself before either so that also added to the scariness. But, once I started, I found it wasn’t that hard. And I was calmed down because the assignment was to talk about your keychain, not about introducing yourself. So I was glad I didn’t have to think about things to tell people about myself because I find it’s hard for me to do that and I also find it awkward lol.

Here are the links to all of my sites:

• https://twitter.com/laurstray20
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/85912864@N06/
• http://www.youtube.com/user/laurstray20?feature=mhee
• http://soundcloud.com/laurstray20

The introduction to the #ds106 class through Twitter was one of my first tweets because I’ve never had Twitter before, actually have always tried to avoid getting it for a few reasons. Everyone has it, it always seemed dumb and annoying (why do I care about what everyone is doing every second of the day?), and it was just a waste of time, another thing to distract. Some of those things are true now that I have it but it’s very convenient to get in touch with @cogdog and he is so helpful! So here is my intro tweet to Digital Storytelling:

@cogdog excited for #ds106 doing big things

— Lauren Strayhorn (@laurstray20) August 27, 2012

Here is the link to my About Me page:

http://dontstrayaway.com/sample-page/

The first week of #ds106 was a bit confusing and frustrating, but really interesting despite this. I was confused about all of the things that we had to accomplish this week but @cogdog provided plenty of information and links to help us get everything done this week. The confusing part was just being able to piece it all together and make sure I was doing all of the things he was asking for. And the frustrating part came during several stages of this week. I’ve never used social media like Twitter or YouTube for my own personal use, so it was a little frustrating learning how to configure these sites to do what I wanted. I’m not a very patient person and when I don’t know how to do something right away when I first learn how to do it, I get really frustrated. But once I kind of explored these things and played around a bit, I got a little more used to it and felt more at ease with it and the class.

I’m excited about more Daily Creates we can do and what else this class has in store for me. I have no idea what to expect in the coming weeks but I think I got a pretty good idea of what the class will entail this week. This introductory week was a little overwhelming because all of this is new to me so I’m thinking (hoping) that each week will get better and easier to manage. I’m excited to learn more about how to personalize this site. When I was in middle school, I had several Xanga sites and loved changing the background, fonts, etc. of those sites.

So that’s it for my first week! Excited for the second week of Bootcamp!