This is the second week of bootcamp for our online ds106 classes at University of Mary Washington; and one of the assignments this week is a challenge. We asked out students to create an animated GIF in response to the Say it Like Peanut Butter assignment– and purposely did not provide explicit instructions. What we are curious to see is how people figure out how to learn something on their own (or if they are clever, they will ask/search). What we want is not for our students to create masterful GIFs (well that’s ok if they do), but to get the hang of creating blog posts that correctly use the tags from the Assignment Collection. Part of our philosophy as teachers is to do the same work we ask our students to do. What should I do? What movie? Hmmm, stay with my dog theme… And I thought of last ...

cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by demandaj One pattern I see repeated in the patterns of new bloggers (and this is aimed at my new batch of ds106 students is that they typically write posts with really general or lackluster titles. “Assignment 1″ “My Introduction” “Week 1″ “Daily Create #345″. It’s not their fault, this is a new space. As students, they are responding as conditioned to writing up assignments, and thus use school language. They have not yet likely grasped the ownership of their own web publication space. I have written before (and will be linking again) to You Fooled Me at The Title, What Magicians Know. But your title is actually, IMHO, one of the most important parts of your blog post- it is what people will see in a link or a syndication feed. It is the first thing a reader usually ...

ds106 is ramping up, and Michael Branson Smith is going deeper in thought with the idea of the animated GIF: I’m a big lover of the animated GIF having created dozens as bits of reflection on cinematic moments, film posters and comic book covers. These animations are all fabulous homages to stories I love. But I’ve also really enjoyed discovering how the animated GIF became an extension of traditional photography using subtle bits of animation. They’re perfect loops of moments in time, animated still lives. Amazing… Watch her hair and dress flow endlessly, while her eyes hold a perfect stare. Don’t blink. Yes it’s an amazing piece of craftsmanship, definitely a smooth Photoshopper behind this animated loop. I credit their ability, but it doesn’t inspire me. This is what I believe the cinem(gram)graph needs to celebrate – this impishness, raucousness. I love the impossible people are discovering in this medium. ...