Yes that is right, it is weekly summary time! Man has this week certainly flown by. I must say that I let procrastination get the best of me this week as I took a few days vacation from ds106. Please, don’t take it personally, but the King and Queen were in town and I had lots of tidying up to do. It’s Super Bowl Sunday and I still have plenty of time before the game starts which means that I did not procrastinate too bad.

I struggled a little bit with this week, but not with the assignments. I know that may seem a bit confusing, but I really want to get that princess diva-y writing voice back that I started out with. I think that some people in my comment group do a great job at keeping their writing voice, so I want to improve on that. Originally, I wanted to make this week all about cleaning. I know that seems strange, but last week was all about magic. Most Disney princesses have some cleaning song with woodland creatures, but I am not like most princesses, and I refuse to clean. So yes, even though I all thoughts about cleaning my room, I only got about halfway through then got tired. I guess cleaning is another weakness of mine (along with GIMP which you will read about later).

The reason for this title about the mirror is because this week required a lot of reflection (pun is always intended). When reading the weekly assignments on Monday, I immediately started to reflect on what I thought that digital storytelling was. At first I was very set on just one idea, but then I realized that pretty much the possibilities are endless. If you want to see more of my rambling on this, just simply check out my blog post on it!

Now we had to reflect on a wonderful Kurt Vonnegut video that I took a liking to. This video really helped me reflect on telling a story and thinking about the ups and downs that the characters portray to the audience. I even had the opportunity to make my own “shape” of the movie The Princess and the Frog that you can check out here. I found myself constantly decided whether or not the lines were accurate enough or if I was being too sympathetic. Comment on my post and tell me what you think! (Be aware, there are spoilers right after my picture).

Now came even more reflections, it just never seemed to stop! I started to look at the past ds106 posts that have been done by both UMW students and not. With my new perspective of digital storytelling, I analyzed these posts like no one has before. There was talk of love and whispers of villains, it was a great time and if I had to Vonnegut my post it would be a straight line at the top. I think it is really important to look back on what other students have done to get an idea for what works and what may not work. Learning from other is the best kind of learning that you can do. Seeing not only the finished product, but their thoughts on how they got there as well really makes it easier for you to learn.

Finally we can get to the good stuff! I will be honest, I did most of the reflections last this week and I wish I had done them earlier so that I could incorporate what I learned into my posts, but I still was pleased with my work. This week we needed to do three different Daily Creates, and I started doing them right away. Monday I was drawn in when we had to make our own Blue Screen of Death. After having computer problems all weekend (which actually still are going on now) I thought it was only appropriate, I decided to make my final blue screen be about doing laundry. Tuesday was a new story, but same idea. I wanted to incorporate the struggle of cleaning my room, so my invention that I got to create was a laundry sorting machine. While my laundry is all sorted now, I believe that my design would have really made my life easier this week. Finally, I decided to do Wednesday‘s daily create assignment as well (since I was on a daily create roll) where I got to reveal my biggest fear to the public. Sure, rollerblading may be an embarrassing fear, but princesses always need to be honest! To read more about why I have that awful fear, just simply click here! I really wanted to do Thursday’s Daily Create as well, which involved math in the real world, but with the King and Queen being in town, I didn’t seem to have any time. What I wanted to do? The Reuleaux Triangle. This is a triangle that is created by drawing three different circles, and it always amazes me. This triangle can be found with tools, specifically drill bits, and can be found in public restrooms so that people do not steal the stall doors! Crazy I know!

Now here comes the really fun part, the main assignment for the week. Telling stories using photos. I decided to do the take the pictures part instead of telling the story simply because words are not my friend (which is strange since this post is a little over 900 words in). However, my week seemed simply standard so I wanted to find pictures that were specific enough to guide people in the right direction, but vague enough to give creative freedom. I found myself stalking Facebook for pictures and came across some lovely ones from my days of being on the UMW Volleyball team (which seems like it was another lifetime ago even though it’s only been four months). Now I do not want to give away the rest of the story, so find out what it’s all about in my blog post!

Finally came the comments! Let me just start off by saying that my comment group rocks! I think we are all different princesses. So my fellow princess friends have great pages, and I am really glad that I got to read all of their posts. I really like the idea of comment groups because it is like we are going through the class together and will have each others backs. It’s like we are virtually sitting next to each other in the class. I certainly did pick up a lot of things from different pages, like keeping a writing voice, hyperlinking to other websites and not just ds106 oriented ones, and also different themes. We all have different styles, which is something that I like so much. We can take an assignment and interpret it in a completely different manner. I am excited to see what else my group has to come up with for the rest of this class!

As for the comments that I received on my blog. I am very pleased with the comments I got, it seems as though people enjoy the princess theme (if they don’t then they can get out of my palace) and I am glad that my website was visually appealing. I was a little scared that it would be too much. I’m excited to get more feedback back and I am glad that I was able to help other princesses out!

So overall, I’d say that this was a great week for me. I really reflected on what digital storytelling is and I got to really get a feel for this class for the first time this semester. It only makes me that much more eager to see what we have in store for weeks to come.

I promise the sass will be back next week,

Princess Karissa