For my last “Design” assignment, I chose to meet the “Bumper Sticker” challenge of Michael Branson Smith, who suggested that participants demonstrate creativity in the following manner: Remix classic bumper stickers to promote the cause(s) of ds106, ds106radio, and ds106tv. I realize that my creation is hardly a remix but it symbolizes the appreciation I ...

For my last “Design” assignment, I chose to meet the “Bumper Sticker” challenge of Michael Branson Smith, who suggested that participants demonstrate creativity in the following manner: Remix classic bumper stickers to promote the cause(s) of ds106, ds106radio, and ds106tv. I realize that my creation is hardly a remix but it symbolizes the appreciation I ...

Linda McKenna, as a DS106 colleague, has an amazing flair for design. This is evident when one looks at the layout of her powerful blog entitled “Never the Same River“, together with her creative assignments that I have witnessed her submit and share as part of this amazing Digital Storytelling (DS106) course. However, Linda is ...

Linda McKenna, as a DS106 colleague, has an amazing flair for design. This is evident when one looks at the layout of her powerful blog entitled “Never the Same River“, together with her creative assignments that I have witnessed her submit and share as part of this amazing Digital Storytelling (DS106) course. However, Linda is ...

This DS106 Design assignment is called “The Little Caption” to differentiate it from a similar activity called “The Big Caption“. In this endeavour, participants are challenged to: “Take one of your own photographs, one from Flickr Creative Commons (http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/) or one from the DS 106 Flickr group (http://www.flickr.com/groups/ds-106/) and caption it.” I chose to re-take ...

This DS106 Design assignment is called “The Little Caption” to differentiate it from a similar activity called “The Big Caption“. In this endeavour, participants are challenged to: “Take one of your own photographs, one from Flickr Creative Commons (http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/) or one from the DS 106 Flickr group (http://www.flickr.com/groups/ds-106/) and caption it.” I chose to re-take ...

Our family became active members in the Springhill Ski Racing Club, where our two boys learned to compete in ski racing under the guidance of dedicated ski coaches. Learning to ski on the side of a floodway ditch is not exactly “mountain skiing”, but what our teams lacked in altitude they made up for in ...

Our family became active members in the Springhill Ski Racing Club, where our two boys learned to compete in ski racing under the guidance of dedicated ski coaches. Learning to ski on the side of a floodway ditch is not exactly “mountain skiing”, but what our teams lacked in altitude they made up for in ...

Today’s DS106 “Design” assignment is one that has a creative application in middle and senior year classes. Tim Owens submitted “The Big Caption” which he describes as: In the spirit of http://thebigcaption.com/ take any photo featured on The Big Picture (http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/) and add typographical text elements in a way that changes the message. I was ...

The overwhelming majority of individuals who are engaged in the DS106 course are doing so remotely. Today’s statistics indicate that there are 596 active DS106 members whereas less than a total 80 are in attendance in the two sections facilitated by Jim Groom and Alan Levine at the University of Mary Washington. However, if you ...

I guess it is human nature to ask yourself if you might have chosen a different career path? Educators, like many others, sometimes have second thoughts about their teaching profession during our long, cold winter. My solution for such mid-winter “blues” is to compare the tasks that others must do in order to better appreciate ...

Wow … what a rush! Even though I am retired, I must have invested 30 hours or more this week learning, creating, and sharing as I progressed along my Digital Storytelling DS106 journey. I am “pumped” by the learning opportunities, however my wife says that perhaps “addicted” might be a more appropriate adjective. Teachable Moment ...

Want to see your students engaged in a creative activity? Want them thinking about the important parts of a story, movie, instructional video, or historical event? Do you want your students engaged using higher order synthesizing techniques rather than regurgitating low level facts? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then I have ...

Although this assignment and tutorial has been created as part of my contribution to the Ds106 learning community, it also has great potential as an activity/project for our Senior Years’ students. “ReCaptcha Illustrated” is a unique Visual Assignment that was proposed by Alan Levine (aka cogdog), who challenged DS106 students to: Include a screenshot of ...

One of the challenging activities that each participant in our Digital Storytelling DS106 online course is asked to complete is “The Daily Create”. This activity is an opportunity to demonstrate creativity and think “outside the box”. During the current week, we have been concentrating on visual assignments so we were prepared to become engaged in ...

Today’s DS106 assignment, entitled “Splash The Color“, was submitted by Alan Levine (aka CogDog). He states: “Color splash is a technique to emphasize details – you remove all color from a photo, and then restore original color to a single object.” I began the task with the help of Annie Belle’s excellent video tutorial. Although ...

This post demonstrates how I used “Blabberize“, together with a cartoon I created, to share information about the Web 2.0. As my third week assignment, in my Digital Storytelling (DS106) course, I was asked to do two things: 1) to read and reflect on three resources and; 2) to “experiment” with a web application to ...

The purpose of this post is two-fold. Although I am reflecting on both an article and a video by Gardner Campbell as part of my DS106 online course, I also want to introduce regular readers to the concept of a “Personal Cyberinfrastructure” that is definitely going to empower University students and, in time, perhaps even ...

I want to share a remarkable educational vehicle for stimulating creativity and engaging students. Through the “The Daily Create” participants are offered a unique invitation to engage in creative exercises which help individuals look at the world differently. Too often, we become complacent and approach day-to-day events in much the same way with little opportunity, ...

I begin my first creative DS106 post with this teaser … “What do René Descartes, Neil Diamond, Alan Levine, the cartoon characters Popeye, and Dr. Seuss’ Sam-I-am, all have in common?” I plan to answer this question while demonstrating how students can become actively engaged in learning through the use of creative projects. Today marks ...

Purpose This somewhat technical post is a detailed account of the steps that I went through as I attempted to create a feed from my personal WordPress blog to be aggregated into the DS106 learning community. My hope is that I will be able to save other DS106 participants time and effort if they should ...

The purpose of this post is to advise my readers of an important writing style transition in some of my upcoming blog posts. In past, I have struggled “behind the scenes” drafting, editing, and proof-reading each blog post before I felt it was “ready for prime time” and could finally be published. Perhaps some might ...

Today, I embark on a new learning adventure. I have signed up for the free, 15 week online course known as Digital Storytelling 106 or more affectionately referred to as “DS106″. Up until two weeks ago, “DS106″, for me, was just a combination of letters and numbers. However, after Darren Kuropatwa, made the following comment, ...