Way back in week three of our Voyage, we were asked to reflect on Digital Storytelling. It seems that I was just a regurgitator of knowledge that week. I more reflected on what I was being told Digital Storytelling was, rather than giving my own incites. I basically said in an elaborate sort of way that Digital Storytelling was using forms of media to tell a story. Duh. Well, my thoughts on Digital Storytelling have thankfully evolved. My realizations matured to encompass that Digital Storytelling is a phenomenon that encompasses everything we do in the information age. It starts with an idea, and can be anyone’s idea. A simple idea can be seen as raw material, like what architects use to make a house. The idea can be the foundations of the house, or the screw that holds the door hinge up. At any rate, what I am trying to say is that an idea can be added to an idea, or an idea can be added to that idea. All together the ideas function to create something larger, and we use digital storytelling to share ideas. Our ideas can be influenced by prior ideas by other people, but what we express is our own idea. We then (hopefully) encourage others to build off of our unique idea.

It is my new reflection on digital storytelling that I have based my selection of Best Works on. They all encompass this idea of adding to ideas, and then encouraging others to add on. In my Good Eggs Gone Rotten post, I contributed to a phenomenon of telling stories with five pictures. I used the idea of drawing on eggs to tell my five picture story. How I went about encouraging others to add to my idea is by posting this blog to Twitter and Facebook and encourage feedback. This feedback was other peoples ideas. They may be inspired to do the same, but if not, my idea is in their heads now and could be accessed again through its influence on whatever they use my ideas to do. On my Betty White project, I am sure I inspired something. My goal was to create humor, but also as sense of dread at imagining how horrible reading so many pages on Betty White’s love advise would be. I used the idea of a magazine cover, and added my humor to it, and I also shared this one with other people. My Star Wars poster was hilarious to me. My favorite thing that makes me laugh about it (yes, I make my self laugh) is the bottom right corner where the Disney Characters are mixed in with some X-Wings. If you look closely, Peter Pan’s face looks like it is making plane noises too while he flies. I used Disney’s ideas on characters, as well as George Lucas’ to show my humorous take on the Disney buyout of Lucas Arts. Then, possibly my best work was my remix assignment on Photoshop. I got really creative with this one. I used a tutorial video created by a former DS106 student in my remix for some true remixing. As far as I was concerned, nothing was out of limits in the remix assignments, so why not remix an assignment by another student while I remixed an assignment? Obviously, I am really smug about my creativity on this assignment. Now is where I get really sappy in my Best Works selection. I include my advice to future students in my Best Works. Why? Because it includes my own ideas based off of the ideas I have worked on the whole class in an attempt to positively influence future Digital Storytellers. It is a story to Digital Storytellers that they can use to build their own ideas.

So here is my final project of the semester. It is a quest to find the Dread Pirate Santa and bring him to justice. The Dread Pirate Santa did not follow the copyright rules of asking permission before distributing free copies of music and movies to children across the globe. For this, Santa is a criminal. He did not borrow the material properly, or use bits of its ideas to create his own ideas like we have learned to do this semester. He simply took other peoples works without paying for them and distributed them indiscriminately across the world. So this is where I pose the reader a question. Is the Dread Pirate Santa really a criminal? How would you defend him, or how would you incriminate him?

So what more can I say about digital storytelling that I have not already said this week? Ahhh maybe I should be thankful for my opportunity to take part in such a unique online class. Some last minute brown nosing is definitely in order. I would like to thank my professor Alan Levine for all he has done for us throughout this semester. With his help and the help of this class along with the help of my fellow students, I have a new outlook on Digital Storytelling. I look for video editing and new ideas in every video I watch now. It is a curse, I used to just mindlessly enjoy them. Nah that is not entirely true. I was getting ideas from video and applying them to life and new ideas before this class, I just was not aware of what I was doing. I do this to the radio now too. When listening to broadcasts, I now know more of what goes into the broadcasts and the ideas behind loud noises and soft noises. Furthermore, I get to understand the ideas behind the design of anything that gets designed. Photos, billboards, webpages, houses, pretty much anything that is designed, I understand better. In closing, I have known through my collage career that you can utilize every class in any other class you take, and I know that this class will come in handy as I continue my major and future endeavors. That being said I leave you with one more borrowed and edited phrase. Cap’n, out!