It’s the first week of doing assignments for Digital Storytelling. Last week, I was very overwhelmed trying to figure out how to use all of these new social media sites and even my own website.

I read the weekly assignment to find that I have to do three assignments from the assignment bank and I started to feel overwhelmed again.

I went on to the assignment bank website and actually got excited. I explored a bunch of the categories I thought were cool, such as the GIF assignments and 3-D printing assignments. There are so many cool things I get to do this semester. Maybe this isn’t so bad.

Knowing the assignments that I first looked at are a little too complicated right now, I decided to explore the Web Assignments and one of the first things I saw was using Google Draw Something – I was hooked. Before this school year started, I got a new Surface Pro and loved the fact that I can write notes and draw pictures on my computer. This assignment gave me an excuse to use my favorite part of my new computer.

The point of Google Draw Something is to let the computer guess what you draw, which is given to you before your 20 second time limit starts.

The first thing I had to draw was a flamingo and I did it horribly. I quit that one pretty quickly, but mostly because I had some technological errors. On my computer, I can flip my stylus to erase, but on this program, that does not register and you have to press an erase button. My screen was full of random marks.

I played the game a few times. For some of the prompts, I had to look up a picture before I started drawing. I have zero artistic ability, so trying to draw a clarinet off the top of my head without making it look like a leg (which Google thought it was) was complicated.

I stopped once Google was able to recognize all 6 of my drawings so I could share my artwork with the world. I didn’t even get to finish some drawings before Google guessed it.

This assignment was a good intro to this semester, in my opinion. It made me realize how fun this can be. Although there really isn’t a story behind what inspired me, it excited me for the rest of the semester. And, I’m totally going to play this whenever I have down-time. If you aren’t going to do this assignment, at least try it just for fun.

Not to mention that this game is very similar to Pictionary….which was invented in the 80’s. Coincidence?