Much of the last eight weeks are a blur. I remember three different airports but could only tell you what the one in my home city looks like. I remember hotel rooms and rental cars restaurants, but the only thing that sticks out is hunting for a WiFi signals so i could get online and… Continue reading Different and Better – Week 8 Final Reflection →

A long time ago, I made a promise to myself. I promised myself that I would never lie to myself. To me, that means I will never say that I agree with something that I know in my bones isn’t true. This also means that I will not let myself be labeled as something I’m… Continue reading Raising My Voice Without Yelling – Week 7 Reflections →

This week’s readings were all about finding what doesn’t work and building something new. Processes, systems and societies are constantly evolving. Sometimes, pieces get stuck and repairs need to be made. In White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, we see that, even now in the 21st century, there are pieces of our society where the evolutionary… Continue reading Creating the New Normal →

As a final attempt to find an answer to the question of “What is normal?” I found a video on YouTube that took a deeper dive into the question and explored the issue from multiple directions. In “What is normal? Exploring folkways, mores, and taboos,” Jeffrey Walsh looks at four ways individuals and cultures try to… Continue reading Sometimes a Good Idea Isn’t Enough →

I confess! I have become an illegal Girl Scout Cookie dealer! And Steven Seagal is coming for me! Funny thing is, I’m probably one of the few people you’ll meet who DOESN’T eat Girl Scout Cookies. It all started by accident. A friend of mine from work has her daughter in Girl Scouts and when… Continue reading Backroom Girl Scout Cookie Dealing →

I know what I am about to write here will not go over well with everyone, so I’ll apologize in advance. I’m saying it because I need to say it not because I think that anyone needs to hear it. So, warning posted. This reflection is really just for me and to me. The events… Continue reading The Price of Connectedness – Week 6 Reflective Summary →

I have always believed that there are connections that, if you look hard enough, will bind everything together. Nothing is truly isolated. This idea was very much in focus in our readings in Lankshear and Knobel Ch7: Social Learning, “Push” and “Pull,” and Building Platforms for Collaborative Learning. For me, this chapter reiterated ideas I… Continue reading Connecting, Disconnecting, and Reconnecting – Week 6 Reading Response →

This week, I wanted to keep things playful and start circling back to my interest that “There is no normal.” What better way to find a playful way to look at a resonant topic than to have stop-motion Lego minifigures share their message while tickling the funny bone. This week, I chose The School of… Continue reading As “Normal” as Any Minifig Could Be – Week 6 Story Critique →

I call this image “Betrayal” and this is my nightmare. When you hear the story, you might think the title is irrational and a little bitter, but this has handicapped my life. When I was little, maybe two or three, my family went on a trip to Washington, D.C. and, like you do, we took… Continue reading I Still Can’t… →

I’ll admit it: I am geek and I geek out a lot about things that most people would have absolutely no interest in. I, and a few of my friends, are big fans of classic kung-fu movies. We’ll debate which series of movies are the best and, within each series of movies, which movies are… Continue reading Geeking Out – Week 5 Reflections →

It’s an interest question – What is normal? Have you seen any normal people today? Who looks like a normal person? For my Week 5 story critique, I headed back to YouTube and asked the question: what is normal? In JulianJamesTV’s The Normality Project: What is ‘Normal’? the author took to the streets of London to try… Continue reading And the Answer is… →

Lots of fun readings this week. So many ways to play with text and meaning that I almost want to giggle with glee. To counter some of the leftover negativity and frustration from last week, I chose a more upbeat article for my interest reading. In Eccentrics May Have Found Key to Happiness, Psychologist Says… Continue reading Turning the Kaleidoscope – Week 5 Reading Response →

In case you can’t tell, this is a mashup of the classic children’s book Goodnight  Moon and the anime Sailor Moon. My father is a HUGE anime fan. Fullmetal Alchemist, Bleach, Rurouni Kenshin, Gurren Lagann, InuYasha, Fate/Zero – you name it, he’s watched it. That is the power of Netflix. All this anime watching has also… Continue reading Goodnight Sailor Moon →

Yeah…that was me this week. I really enjoyed my Daily Creates this week. They help me get the creative juices starting in the week and just have fun interacting with the rest of the class. My DS106 Assignment Bank Design creation brought back one of my favorite childhood memories and gave me the opportunity to share… Continue reading Umm…? – Week 4 Reflections →

I have to be honest. My responses to this week’s readings is very mixed and I’ll explain that in a minute. I’ll just let you know up front, as you’re reading this blog you may (hopefully) feel the mix of delight, frustration, and anger that I experienced from the different texts or you may, from… Continue reading A Tale of Two Blogs – Week 4 Reading Response →

I wanted to something a little different. I wanted to use this week to get back to the foundations of my area of study – there is no normal. So I searched out videos related to the idea of trying to get a firm definition of what is normal. I liked What is Normal? One… Continue reading The Unanswerable Question – Week 4 Story Critique →

My grandmother was a very wise and patient person. She had to be. She was the calm center of the hurricane that is my family. There was always some crisis that at least half the family had to get involved in that my grandma would patiently listen to, make the right noises from time to… Continue reading Enjoying Failure →

Things really came together for me this week conceptually. From our readings about DIY and the recommended/personal interest readings, the idea of perception of worth is really starting to gel in my mind. In the hands-on and online DIY culture, it’s about the value that the finished “product” has for the creator/produser and the enjoyment… Continue reading Mixed Nuts & Bolts – Week 3 Reflections →

I’m a big fan of DIY. A couple of years ago I renovated my house: new carpets, tile, countertops. That stuff I had the professionals do, but I did all the rest: painted the walls, painted and sealed the cabinets, installed the sinks and new plumbing, updated the electrical outlets, and installed mosaic wall tile.… Continue reading A DIY Kinda Post – Week 3 Reading Response →

Can adhering to a definition or “type” create an environment where we are stifling natural behavior and limiting what we consider as “good?” In Average Oppression, Laura Grace Weldon takes a sharp look at the current obsession to define and standardize everything from weight to grades to how our food looks. The author sets up… Continue reading Comparing Apples to Apples – Week 3 Critique →

There are some days that I wish that I could have one thing about me that is normal. It’s never going to happen. The weirdness permeates my family on a micro-cellular level. Most of us accept it but I’ve never been one to blindly accept anything. So, what makes me so special that I would… Continue reading Isn’t that special. Well, sort of… →

I was very surprised by all the common themes I was finding in my readings this week. From our Lankshear & Knobel readings to Kris Shaffer’s “An Open Letter to My Students” and my interest-driven article, Fredric Neuman’s “Determining What Is Normal Behavior and What Is Not,” the common theme was remixing. Whether it was… Continue reading Week 2 Reading Response →

This week went a lot better, and a lot faster, than last week. Unlike last week, I had the time and mental space to be able to plan out my week and how I would approach each assignment and take my time to find a story and article that touched on my interest. The daily… Continue reading Some Days Are Better Than Others – Week 2 Reflections →

Are You Eccentric? It’s a valid question? Coming from a family that revels in eccentricity it’s kind of a given. My struggle is accepting my own eccentricity and trying to feel like it’s safe to be a little kooky. For my second digital story critique, I wanted to take a deeper dive into what it… Continue reading How well do you (not) fit these pants? →

I am infamous for not being a morning person. I will sleep until the last possible moment then jet through my morning routine. Breakfast is always eaten standing up next to the kitchen counter and I brush my teeth at the kitchen sink in between opening the garage door and getting my lunchbox out of… Continue reading Better Late Than Never… →

I’m a great lover of eccentrics (I’m related to many of them) and so I chose Paul Wallis’s Sydney Media Jam’s blog in praise of eccentrics to critique this week. For my critique, I will focus on: Originality, Voice and Creativity, Flow, Organization and Pacing, and Story As I started to read the blog, I really… Continue reading Week 1 Critique: Wanted – Eccentrics, experience preferred →

After reading a little bit about how Web 2.0 is driving the evolution of literacies in our reading of Lankshear & Knobel’s chapter “Sampling ‘the New’ in New Literacies” from A New Literacies Sampler (2007), I was curious to learn more about the technologies involved and how different they are from the technologies that emerged… Continue reading Interest-Driven Scholarship: “What is Web 2.0” by Tim O’Reilly →

There comes a time in everyone’s life when, no matter how sane you are, something’s gotta give and you can’t hold back from going a little crazy. That’s when you experience blavango. The best example I know is a bizarre moment from my childhood. We’re a kooky family but my oldest sister has always been the… Continue reading When you just can’t hold back… →

This is the excerpt for your very first post.… Continue reading First blog post →