I was born in Dixie in a boomer’s shack Just a little shanty by the railroad track Freight train was it taught me how to cry The holler of the driver was my lullaby I snapped a series of photos of this freight train going by out on the Santa Fe tracks behind La Posada (a true western gem and proof that there is much more in Winslow than a tacky corner). The quick series was in hope of doing an animated GIF, as I fiddled in Photoshop, I wondered about applying filter effects on each frame, maybe trying to make it flash like an old movie. Well that did not happen, but a combination of the black and white adjustments and some edge filters gave it a surreal effect. No real message here, just making a GIF. And in a few weeks I will be headed in this direction ...

Why he read all of the ancient and modern parables of the Wise One, especially borrowing attributes of those who took on Empires, like Jedi Yallow, for later training. He than sought out The Boing Boing Being in the deep depths of Hainault Forest, spending weeks at his feet, taking notes on his iPad. This is a quick remix example for an exciting ds106 project, where our students are among the first to get a crack at remixing the portrait photos of Cory Doctorow that Jonathan Worth is sharing with the world for open remixing. Jonathan described it for us and as well visited with me and my students during this week’s ds106 show. To be a base for the site, and knowing the flood of action once Cory announces this on Boing Boing, I suggesting hanging the web site on wordpress.com- with the name borrowed from internet speak and ...

UPDATE APR 18, 2013: The archive lives! Watch the insanity! A bit of shtick I used in today’s TCC World Online Conference keynote was an idea that settled in my noggin and would not shake loose. The session was billed as: Dim the lights, cue the music, roll the open credits… but the ds106 show is not where the audience just sits quietly in their seats. You will not only learn how this open online course in digital storytelling works, but have a chance to try a few of the creative challenges and assignments we give to our students. Digital storytelling 106 (ds106) offers a versatile opportunity to create a learning community. This open online course in digital storytelling is part of a networked architecture built of participants’ own blogs to which our web site subscribes and shares back content published by individuals. Special features of ds106 include an open ...

You should be confused. Today was a ds106 daily create monstrosity I can take responsibility for, and is one that busts my usual mantra of “things that you can create in 20 minutes”. Today’s assignment: Lipdub a video of yourself in another language talking seriously about crickets. Write the script and record the video. Then use Google Translate (example) to generate an audio track, and edit that into your video. This is likely one that came in originally as “do a lipdub video” and I felt needed a bit more of a …. twist. And to help people see that Google Translate as a small feature at the bottom right that does text to voice of what ever gets translated. I started out by scrummaging YouTube for cricket videos. I found an interesting mini documentary by National Geographic, but it was too much humans talking. So I liked the simplicity ...

A special edition of the ds106 show (the weekly live broadcast all about Digital Storytelling and ds106) takes place Tuesday, April 16 as a keynote session for the 2013 TCC Online Conference. The folks down in the basement have been working feverishly to produce the new promo spot for this sessions: This is pretty much the same format as our other show intros, except this one has a nice section of videos of UMW students over the last year talking about their ds106 experience. It ranges from Cat Breading to “I love my blog!” The ad copy for the show reads: Dim the lights, cue the music, roll the open credits… but the ds106 show is not one where the audience just sits quietly in their seats. You will not only learn how this open online course in digital storytelling works, but have a chance to try a few of ...

Don’t cry! ds106 can help you clean up that hard drive littered with discard media files! cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by confidence, comely. We want your media leftovers from your ds106 projects, stuff you did not use, things that you may have downloaded and left side, stuff maybe you made and did not finish. There is a use for it. My students already contributed their stuff for last week’s assignment. Do not let those mp3s, pngs, gifs, mp4s just sit there and rot, bring them to the ds106 Media Recycle Yard. We sort them, clean them up, and will make them available starting April 14 for one of our Remix assignments. That’s right, we challenge you to sift through the pile (currently at 118 items) and create a new story out of them. Here’s how. Just upload them to the drop box at http://dropitto.me/ds106phonar (the ...

Just last week, my ds106 students applied Roger Ebert’s How to Read Movies for their weekly assignment. One of my students was first in my network to share the sad news that Ebert passed away today @cogdog on a completely random note, just saw this article about robert ebert! movies.yahoo.com/blogs/movie-ta…#ds106 #moviecritic — micaela (@mmbutlerr) April 3, 2013 What a better way to honor his contributions that a ds106 assignment (well there are likely much better ways), but here you go, Thumbs Up For Ebert: Just a week after the Spring 2013 ds106 class applied Roger Ebert’s How to Read a Movie to analyze scenes of movies, he went on to that big movie theater in the sky. For this assignment, create a tribute to Ebert’s love of movies; but do more than just make a montage of clips of him. Put him in context with film characters, musicians, or place ...

Two reminders from past UMW ds106 students. The ethos of ds106 carries on. First, a short email from Eric, who was in my Fall 2012 class: I was checking up on my final project videos and was amazed at how many views it has. I just thought you might think it was cool haha. Definitely cool, haha. Step back, this video, that was part of Eric’s final storytelling project, has over 112,00 views. You might add up the views on all my YouTube videos, and its still less than that. Crazy, right? Now views are not everything but 100,000 has to at least mean something. And this was really just a montage of clips from the Pawn Stars show, Eric even discounts the video a bit in his writeup: As somewhat of a conclusion, I chose to use the video assignment ds106 fave moments. I made a video montage of ...

What is going on here at CogDOGBlog, taking the side of the cat? But you see, the way I saw this video, the poor cat was just trying o sleep at that Lil Tramp kept messing him up: This is an example for my ds106 students of this week’s video assignment. Here’s the deal- in weeks 7-8 while we were working in audio my students were charged with generating 30 seconds of foley sound for the action in a segment of a clip of Charlie Chaplin’s The Circus. They tagged their clips in SoundCLoud to match the section of audio (well except for the last section, cause the teacher had a typo in the original lesson). The assignment for this week is to use those FOley segments and the original clip to make a new story. In my story, What’s a Cat Gotta Do to Sleep Around Here? it’s is ...

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by volperic Late night fiddling, don’t ask why– I was doing my photo editing and saw nothing on #ds106 radio, so set out to play somethimg from iTunes. For some reason, Nicecast no longer allows me to select an application as a source (Maybe because I installed Audio Hijack), so I switched by rig to Ladiocast, especially since the ds106 radio status page was not updating at all. Previously, I found I could manually push updates to the metadata via Ladiocast, but this seems manual and tedious. I mused before searching Not quite sure anymore what generates metadata on #ds106radio, NIcecast fails — Alan Levine (@cogdog) March 31, 2013 Searching on “itunes metadata script ladiocast” I then easily found a nifty Applescript for Ladiocast Automation. It’s pretty easy to see what it does; polls itunes for a new song, and ...

I’m bringing ds106 to the 2013 TCC Online Conference (the 18th Annual “Technology, Colleges and Community” Online Conference). This keynote session (look at my along side Terry Anderson, I cannot wait for some of his trademark jokes) is listed as Dim the Lights: The ds106 Show. My original thought was to build a presentation metaphor around the weekly live Google Hangout shows I have been running for my ds106 class at UMW. Dim the lights, cue the music, roll the open credits… but the ds106 show is not one where the audience just sits quietly in their seats. You will not only learn how this open online course in digital storytelling works, but have a chance to try a few of the creative challenges and assignments we give to our students. Digital storytelling 106 (ds106) offers a versatile opportunity to create a learning community. This open online course in digital ...

I could not pass up this tweet LuLu Hypermarket doesn’t have Grape Nuts but they do have Scottlo Porage Oats. #WhatToDo?? twitter.com/scottlo/status… — scottlo (@scottlo) March 28, 2013 to customize the box of oats I cannot get enough of these. Dig the Saudo kilt on that dude.

Something to unclog the CogDogBlog Blog Clog… both of these were made on the long trip back from Hong Kong. I wish I had talked more to the guy who makes the naan at United World College East Campus in Singapore, or at least, gotten his name. Every day, blissfully, he whipped together these luscious slaps of soft Indian naan. Each day of the three I visited school I had this for lunch. If you did not get there before the rush, the line was loooooong. Gotta make the naan, gotta make the naan, gotta make the naan… This one was a short video clip captured on my iPhone imported into Photoshop as a .mov – I reviewed the imported 34 frames and reduced it to 15 to try and keep the file size lower. I added the text layer in frame 11. By default Photoshop makes it visible in ...

cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by Lee Jordan In about 24 hours I will be running a live show on ds106 radio featuring the radio shows my UMW students have been [joyfully] working on the last 3 weeks for their mid-term audio assignment. This will take place Monday night from 8-11:30pm EST. Please tune in and give them an audience, tweet back comments and questions with a #ds106 hash tag. To tune in use the web player at http://ds106rad.io/listen or dip directly into the stream. The shows have been recorded ahead of time, but this is the premiere we will play live, and members of the teams will be available to talk about their show and answer questions. You can catch the lineup at http://ds106.us/2013/03/17/spring-is-for-radio-shows/… if all the knobs and buttons work for me (doing this from 12 hours in the future from Hong Kong). ...

cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by Marcelo Tourne This is just a pulse on the blog o meter to let someone know I’m still out and about, now in Singapore. As usual, I have completely underestimated the toll of travel and lining up a lot of sessions. The pile of back blog material now will not fit in my suitcase. I can see a bit of breathing room in a few days, on to Hong Kong on Sunday and back to my dog house in Strawberry by March 23, where I will take a big huge nap. For my ds106 students – I’m scanning your blogs looking for the rest of audio work due end of this week. The live broadcast of your radio shows will take place starting 8pm Monday, March 18 on ds106 radio. I am anxious to hear your stories.

cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by The Daring Librarian One of the things the veterans of ds106 radio miss with the new station software is the ability for the @ds106radio twitterbot to recognize when a live braodcast has been started. I have full confidence Grant Potter will sort it out. Tonight, I was fiddling with a live broadcast from my hotel room in Japan, just playing some iTunes music via Nicecast. Rowan Peter called out for a voice over, so I switched over to my preferred Ladiocast mixer sert up. I was curious though, there is a setting in Ladiocast I do not see in Nicecast, to edit the metadata being sent out with the stream. Usually it’s the song info from iTunes, but there is a setting under Ladiocast (Streamer 1 -> Metadata) where you can update/override what is being sent out. So I tried ...