Week Two – We got D(i)S106! This week we got to explore the Assignment Bank, make four Daily Creates, customize our blogs, comment on other classmate’s blogs, and answer the question of the week using Slack. I was actually really excited about this week’s assignments, mostly because I have been itching to try out the assignments in the Assignment Bank and to check out what the Daily Creates were all about! Assignment Bank: When taking a glance at the assignment bank, I was a bit overwhelmed with the amount of options I had. Though very quickly I began to find assignments that I knew I could get creative with! I decided to spread the assignments out over the week to ensure each one had my full attention and creativity. One thing I noticed with doing these assignments is that although none of them were meant to take more than 10-15 minutes, I spent way longer just playing around with other ideas. For the first assignment, I chose to go with a Web Assignment. This assignment called for creating art with GoogleDraw in order to help Google learn and recognize doodling. I actually had a lot of fun with this assignment- it didn’t take very long but I spent a few extra minutes playing a few more rounds. Additionally, I created a video on how the game works using my iOS device. This assignment wasn’t very challenging but I was proud to have added another element by adding the video! For the second assignment, I chose to do a Visual Assignment. This assignment incorporates our secret agent theme. For this assignment I was tasked with finding a picture of any secret agent I would like. Next, I chose a quote from a similar secret agent, and finally, contributed the said quote to a third similar character. Although I enjoyed this assignment due to the creativity aspect, it wasn’t my favorite assignment. My final assignment of the week was my favorite! This Design Assignment allowed me to get really creative! I learned more about Adobe Photoshop too. Along with the first assignment, I did several versions of this assignment but went with my favorite, kayaking on Saturn’s rings. Daily Creates: I had a blast doing these Daily Creates! These are far by my favorite to do. They don’t take long and I like the creativity that goes along with them. I decided to post each of my daily creates into a blog post and described each one of them: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Here are the actual responses on Twitter: Monday: How will you celebrate MLK day? Tuesday: Explain something technical using furry animals. Wednesday: Find a song lyric describing a real place/thing and draw it. Thursday: Zoom in on nature! Again I really enjoyed these daily creates! I was not able to tie any of the creates to our secret agent theme, but I hope to be able to do so  next week. Question of the Week: This week’s question was about what we thought a good example of storytelling in the secret agent genre, here is what I posted in Slack: “I am definitely not well-rounded in the genre but I think a good example of storytelling in the secret agent theme would be the movie Spy Kids. I believe this is a good example mostly because I don’t have much to compare it to! By watching Spy Kids as a child, I gained a good understanding of the basics of what it means to be a secret agent such as spying, the high technology used, and action that takes place. The storyline is parents of two young kids were kidnapped, and after finding out their parents were previously secret agents, Juni and Carmen decide to take matters into their own hands. They become secret agents themselves and take on the mission to save their parents. A different example I could think of would be the show Game of Thrones. Although it is not explicitly a secret agent show, there tends to be a good amount of  espionage that goes on.” I find the secret agent theme very exciting but unfortunately I am not well-rounded in this genre. I have seen movies with spies in it but I haven’t seen any of the Bond movies, or quite frankly most of the movies people are referring to. Though I plan to gather some movies together on Netflix and watch them this weekend! Hopefully that will help me get more into the theme and coming up with creative ideas for the class. Customizing Blog: Another task for this week was to spend some time customizing our blogs (http://bubbl3s.com/). Although I think I spent most of the first week doing this, I still changed a few things! For one, I updated my blog name to “Spy Hard”. I actually got this name by generating some words into a blog generator. The generator used the title of the movie “Die Hard” and replaced it with Spy Hard. I have never seen the 1988 action movie but after watching the trailer I might have to! It looks as if it could pertain to our theme. Second, I adjusted the “skin” of my site, to a darker color rather than just white. I actually really like the change, it makes my header picture pop more. I actually took this header picture last summer at our local ice cream shop, Carl’s, in downtown Fredericksburg. It doesn’t necessarily pertain to our theme, but who knows, maybe it will appear in a future secret agent story! I also added a little secret agent girl. The last thing I did to customize my blog was to finally fix my blog so that people can comment on my posts. Speaking of commenting, this week we were also supposed to work on commenting on others’ work as part of the participation in this course. I found commenting on other’s posts/twitter and having others comment on my posts/tweets exciting! Seeing other people get excited about my work just gets me motivated to do more. The other great thing about participating is it can be extremely helpful. If I am unable to figure out how something works but one of my classmates did, I can simply ask or read how they did it, or vice versa. For example, this week someone posted on my post about the Photoshop I did for daily create and how they couldn’t get it up on their computer, but I was able to offer advice or suggestion to do it through their phone. I think the participation aspect is so important because we can all learn and create so much together! As far as this week goes, I think it went pretty well! I didn’t have too many frustrations and everything was super exciting to do. I can’t wait to watch some secret agent movies this weekend to help with creating ideas for our theme! P.S. I now realize that changing the skin of the blog makes it harder to see my links…I might have to change it back.

Weekly Summary Week 1- BootCamp! We made it! This week has been a learning curve for me because this is practically my first ever blog site and first time using some of these platforms such as SoundCloud, Slack, and Domain. This is also my first online class and I know it will take a few weeks to get into a routine and remain on task. I have heard in the past that this class is a lot of work and when I looked at the syllabus this past weekend I almost panicked! But, I know this class will be very useful in the future and I am excited about this semester’s theme! Setting up my web domain was more difficult than I thought it would be. Once I installed it, it was a matter of navigating through the c-panel and making sure my new site was up and able to connect to our class website. I spent several hours playing around with my new domain and for the most part I think I have the basics! The other social media accounts were pretty straightforward to set-up, no real hassle there except maybe having to write down all the new usernames and passwords! Although I have a social media account set-up for Instagram, I chose to create a new one for this class. Social Media: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bubbl3ez007 SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-57292687 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3pURzQoaaupqhG-CyfEi-g?view_as=subscriber Twitter: https://twitter.com/Katie73536604?lang=en I introduced myself with each of these social media platforms and this is my introductions post! Unfortunately I was unable to embed my Instagram post, but I hope to resolve this issue soon! For Instagram , I posted a picture that I took at camp this summer through UMW Psychology, as well as my favorite secret agents Private, Kowalski, Skipper and Rico from the movie Madagascar. In the original movie, they are on a mission to escape the NYC Zoo and act as secret agents in order to do this. My introduction to Twitter was a simple one, I mentioned that I enjoy playing soccer and spending time with friends and family. I also included a relatively humorous gif. For my intro on SoundCloud, although this was my first time using or uploading anything to this site, I found it quite simple! I recorded myself on my laptop and uploaded it. Finally, my last intro on YouTube. When I first uploaded the introduction video I saw that my thumbnail (or first picture you see on the screen) was terrible. I think my eyes were crossed, lol. But I googled how to fix this and sure enough I was able to do so! I learned something new! After posting my introductory posts on social media, I blogged about my thoughts of this semesters theme! This post was a little more difficult to post because I wasn’t too sure about the secret agents theme. Though after reviewing the Wikipedia site I began to realize how often this theme has been in my life and all the things we could do with it. I believe the easiest thing about this week’s assignment was creating the social media accounts because these sites make it so easy to create an account. I simply put in my desired username and password and attach an email to go with it. As I said, the most difficult was setting up my web domain for blogging. Once I was able to find an acceptable domain name (which took me forever because I couldn’t decide on a name and finally decided on bubbl3s.com), I was brought to the c-panel which I knew nothing about! After playing with it for a while I was able to install WordPress and get started with a theme for my blogsite (which also took a while to decide). From there the frustration was trying to figure out how to set up different pages, set up a background, what widgets and plug-ins do?? I think for the most part- I got it… most important is that this weekly blog shows up. (-: Overall I am excited for this semester and the skills that I will gain from this class! I hope to get better at blogging and become more confident with digital studies.