This past Thanksgiving break was one of the most relaxing, peaceful, and downright memorable holidays I’ve had in a long time. Among the highlights of the break were homemade cranberry sauce, Thanksgiving Skype session with relatives in South Carolina, crepes for brunch, driving around Chicago with my brother while car shopping in the rain, and ...

A long time ago, in a pre-computer media landscape when copying and pasting meant you actually got to play with scissors and glue, teachers and students created multimedia projects with little regard to copyright law. Images from magazines, corporate logos, and other media were used with reckless abandon to create visually and aurally pleasing projects. Before ...

It’s a Monday, it was a relatively uneventful weekend for me, but I did manage to create a little bit of ds106 art. The current incarnation of ds106 recently received a large influx of students from Japan last week, and they’ve been blogging, creating art, and accomplishing new assignments at an amazing rate, so I ...

What better to do on a lazy Sunday afternoon while waiting for a batch of applesauce to cook down then make lazy art? My previous attempt at the ds106 Visual Assignment didn’t fit neatly into the assignment’s paramaters, and I’m perfectly alright with that. In fact, it’s a general principal of mine that students are always ...

At the great risk of people thinking that I am either a very poor student of history, or a closet racist (both of which I can strongly assure you I am not), I created this digital artifact as an example of how you could stir a debate, a discussion, or prompt a deeper exploration of ...

A couple of week ago I posted a video I created about my average daily commute….only sped up to about 1200 mph. The result was quite interesting, and an excellent study of how to create a certain “mood” or convey a particular type of experience to the viewer. I was able to turn my daily ...

I found this video out on the “wild, wild, web” so I thought I’d share it with you all, since a lot of teachers ask me about how they might use Facebook without having to friend their students. I know a lot of districts, and teachers (myself included) don’t feel comfortable with teachers friending students, ...

As a part of my ongoing exploration of media, digital storytelling, (thanks ds106) and how to use both comical and satirical effect to help learners understand important elements of writing, I decided to attempt the most recent ds106 Design Assignment, “Messing with the MacGuffin”, using something that most fans of the cinema and the literary worlds ...

If anyone was a fan of “Out of Control”, the wacky Dave Coulier hosted show on Nickelodeon, they’ll probably remember a segment known as “Hurry Up!”. During the segment, Dave would take a video clip submitted by a viewer, and “hurry up” a portion of their day that was considered boring, dreary, and otherwise a ...

“Reduce a movie, story, or event into it’s basic elements, then take those visuals and reduce them further to simple icons.” Those aren’t my words, but rather the instructions from the Four Icon Challenge ds106 assignment. Since this coming semester’s ds106 theme is apparently that of a “fantastical voyage” (the opening post for the course ...

My official experience with the reality-altering course that is ds106 may be over, but my love for creation has not diminished in the least. If you’ve ever let your mind wander while laboring through some menial task such as weeding the garden, scrapping paint, or doing laundry, then you’ll understand where my concept for this ...

I’m a teacher, an educator, an educational technology coordinator, an instructional technologist……I work for a school. That’s usually how I introduce what it is I do to people these days, as my true job is actually quite difficult to explain. Not just from the standpoint of everything I’m involved with, but more importantly, there’s a ...

No, this post doesn’t a clever title, comparing pop culture icon Ozzy Osbourne’s career to an out of control carousel ride. It’s an attempt to create a discordant piece of media that both confuses and delights viewers. In reality, it’s a secret assignment that I’ve been wanting to submit to ds106 for a few months, ...

  It may not come as a surprise to anyone who has followed my thoughts and ramblings since the inception of my blog, but I am NOT a fan of “walled gardens”. I like my classrooms to be as open as possible, parents and administration willing that is. While I’ve stepped on a few toes ...

As a part of ds106 (the best digital storytelling class ever, guaranteed to blow your mind), I recently had the pleasure to converse with @alanliddell, @shannotate, and @cherylcolan. We each posed one “big question” related to the course, and then proceeded to dissect it in every way possible for close to an hour. Topics covered include the purpose and value of community, ...

Kittens, Kittens, Kittens by techsavvyed Exploring the most excellent tool that is SoundCloud while on another ds106 assignment, my wife became excited about the “over dramatic reading” activity. I had checked out a rather cute children’s book titled Kittens! Kittens! Kittens! last week, and she had just finished reading it to our toddler, we thought ...

Peace and Quiet by techsavvyed It’s the 4th of July here in the United States, a day to celebrate our independence, our freedom, but mostly in modern America what we celebrate is enjoying a little summer relaxation before the big fireworks show at night. Here’s a brief sound effect story for your ears that hopefully ...

Yes faithful readers, submitted for your eyes is another ds106 assignment, this one focused on taking an image from the Boston Globe’s Big Picture website, and adding either a humorous caption or comment on the image. While it’s easy to make light of some of the images, it’s a terribly difficult assignment as many of ...

An integral part of the ds106 course that I’m taking at the moment is that participants are encouraged, even expected, to submit their own ideas for assignments. Rather than just wait around for the instructor to hand us our next batch of digital storytelling assignments, the students are welcome to create their own idea for ...

As a part of the increasingly mind boggling and transformative ds106 course that I’m currently participating in, I created this warning poster for a rather infamous piece of fictional technology; the flux capacitor. The assignment itself was based on the work of an excellent graphic artist with a streak of dark humor. However, I wanted ...

For those that have been sending me tweets, e-mails, voicemails, and carrier pigeons trying to figure out what exactly ds106 is……I’m sorry. It really can’t be explained. That’s not to say I haven’t tried! However, the sheer preponderance of ds106 means that describing a typical day of one’s participation involves explaining the use of no ...

Apparently the ds106 course has taken a turn for the worse! Not only is our beloved mentor and instructor missing, but we’ve all become part of an insidious role playing plot, forcing the ds106 participants to reveal ourselves for the nerds we re...

As a part of the most excellent ds106 course, I’ve been exploring tools, media, and realities of education that I haven’t had the ability to explore in quite some time. Despite the fact that my recent master’s program had me digging deeply into constructivism, social networking, and exploring the very nature of “play” and its ...

For those that might be utterly confused with why I’m posting the following image, I’m taking part in an intensive 5 week digital storytelling course through the University of Mary Washington. No, I’m not receiving credit, and I don’t even have to make all the deadlines…..I’m just an edu-geek like that! Suffice it to say, ...