Two more for the GIF pile of ones made not by downloading video clips, but using my own photos– the ds106 assignment is Photo it Like Peanut Butter: Rather than making animated GIFs from movie scenes, for this assignment, generate one a real world object/place by using your own series of photographs as the source material. Bonus points for minmal amounts of movement, the subtle stuff. See a bunch of examples at http://cogdogblog.com/2012/02/10/photo-gif-peanut-butter/ I found these in my own backyard, a place I have photographed 1000s of things, yet I find two new ones today. The first was noticing the patterns in water dripping out of one of my conduits that transfers runoff from my roof gutters out to my apple tree. I thought it would make a nice photo, but once I got my belly on the ground, I fired off 5 shots in rapid fire mode in my ...

The first time that the Fandom Prince told the Fandom Princess that he loved her, believe it or not, she flipped out (for lack of a better word). The Prince, who had been raised to be very gentlemanly, kind, and passionate, had thought his feelings out thoroughly before addressing the Princess with … Continue reading →

One of the many activities that the Fandom Princess’ scholarly castle liked to do was through bi-monthly dances, in which they would invite neighboring castles’ students to come and join in the festivities (as the Princess’ castle was known for throwing the best get-togethers). It was during these dance periods … Continue reading →

On their third date, the Fandom Prince and Princes were sitting by the lake on the outskirts of the garden, listening to the toads choir croak melodies along with the other insects. Fire flies buzzed by, allowing for romantic lighting and mood. In his lap, the Prince had a pad … Continue reading →

Most of the other postcards could be inappropriate, so I went with something more tame for this assignment. Before I made this, I was chatting with my friends, and we decided that even if someone is attractive, when they have bad grammar–they lose any appeal they had. So I grabbed this cover and got to work in ...

Best Of, a set on Flickr. I’m really a very unskilled photographer/artist when it comes down to it. Nothing has showcased that lack of talent more than this class, so when I saw that I had to make a “best … Continue reading →

animals, a set on Flickr. This is my animals set! I’ll be posting any of my pictures from this course that I can manage to get animals into (hopefully more dogs though!) in it. I made the set the other … Continue reading →

WOW! I love love loved week 5 – visual week!!! {It definitely made up for my hatred dislike of audio week} Throughout the week we had to tell stories through pictures. So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn, and enjoy my...

This week I took a massive amount of photos, but only a few were great enough to save in my photo hall of fame. Ladies and Gentlemen! I give you my best shots of this week! Mah Best Shahts! These … Continue reading →

cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by MyDigitalSLR In what I’d call the semi-porous community (because we have people outside the class who can and do provide feedback to students) of my ds106 class at University of Mary Washington, nurturing a healthy amount of commenting has typically been a struggle against inertia. One might have to make a case that the act of commenting has value; frankly, I start with that as a given. If that is a question for someone, I would guess they’ve not been participating in these spaces. We would lump commenting on others blogs as part of a participating credit. As a teacher, I am pretty much at least scanning all the blogs and have a gut sense of who is being active in commenting. But the last thing I want to be doing, and asking my students to do, is something ...

First open the image you want to edit in GIMP. (File>Open)   In the Layers Dialogue Toolbox on the right side of the screen, right click the picture layer and click “Duplicate Layer.” (What this does is create a copy … Continue reading →

Part of this this week’s ds106 work on Visual Storytelling is the “photoblitz”. We ran this in the in person sections last year as one way of making the class sessions active; we would give students 4 photo assignments to find examples of within the building our class was in. The idea was just to practice looking at details in the places around us, and in bending our creativity in interpretation of the task. In moving to an online activity, we came up with the idea of making this aself directed activity, and taking pictures of a time piece to document your start and stop times. So one part of this is thinking about using a place that has enough variety, though I have read many students who manage to do this in their dorm room. I did mine today, mostly around the outside of my house, and clocked in ...

At first I had very little inspiration for the daily creates this week. I’m not sure what exactly was stopping me, but I just wasn’t feeling it as much as a usually do. But, while looking back at the daily creates from the week I realized that I could do Tuesday’s Daily Create which involved (continue reading...)

This week seemed so grey and rainy that I decided to hold off on my photoblizing project until the sun came out. Finally today was a beautiful sunny day, and my class had gotten cancelled so I had the time … Continue reading →

This tutorial is not really going to tell you how to put makeup on your pet. This is digital storytelling, you should have known that you are going to be creating things, silly goose!! You will need a camera, and...

I was inspired to do the 2 star worthy Visual Assignment Draw It, from the ds106 Assignment Bank,after reading Cole Wyrough’s blog post, Online Sketching. I decided to do a flower set of photos, so first, I chose the pictures I wanted to use. ...

Twenty minute blitz, a set on Flickr. I chose to do my 20 minute photo blitz at Starbucks. I was there studying with a friend and I thought it would be the perfect place to start blitzin’! Above is my...

This week in DS, it was visual week. The assignments and daily creates presented the challenge of taking various pictures of silly things. One thing that I got out of this week that I will always have with me are...

I have a bit of an odd sense of humor which I realized would be perfect for this week’s Valentine’s Day Caption Challenge assignment. As soon as I saw this illustration, I knew what I wanted to do. I decided to make a joke out of the man’s crotch, which the woman in the photo seems to be ...

This 3 star assignment, A-Z photo collage, was SO fun yet SO challenging to do! The goal was the create a collage of themed pictures in alphabetical order. I wanted to do this assignment because I wanted a challenge. Anyone...

Happy visual week!!! I’m in love with taking pictures {and not just because this week contains Valentine’s Day!} so these daily creates were so fun for me! DC 400 - take a picture of someone other than you using your favorite type...

*Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone!* Today I am sharing with you a really fun, but challenging for me, assignment. This is a 3-star A-Z Photo Collage. The purpose of the assignment is to pick a theme- I went with African … Continue reading →

My week has been hectic, to say the least so I was not able to put as much time towards ds106 as I would have liked to. On top of my ds106 work which included cohosting the ds106 show and tests and papers for other classes, Harvey went into tech this week, meaning that the costumes ...

This three star visual assignment really made me think about my story as a college student. I knew right away that I was going to do a picture from freshman year, mainly because I have pictures printed out from then and I also needed the location to be in Fredericksburg since I’m not going to (continue reading...)

Just put the phone away, will ya? cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog This one is for the Valentine’s Day Caption Challenge a rather special one since it was former ds106 student Sara K who sent this out as a challenge last year. It’s only fitting with Valentines Day tomorrow t put it through the ds106 treatment, this assignment is required of all my students for this week in visual storytelling. The task? I was in Urban Outfitters the other day and stumbled across a postcard pack labeled “Unbridled Passion” by Franco Accornero. It’s a collection of 30 different postcards from an artist who has painted more than 5,000 romance novel covers (as well as westerns, thrillers and sci-fi books). The postcards are really ridiculous on their own, but I thought for this Valentine’s day I would make them even funnier but adding my own ...

Instead of hitting the “randomly pick one” button while searching through the ds106 Assignment Bank for a Visual Assignment to complete (like I usually do), I searched through them via their titles.  I came across an interesting 3 star assignment ...

Monday, February 4: Create an acrostic poem that includes item of clothing that you’re currently wearing. My Class Ring Circled around my finger a Large band of white gold. Adorned with a large Stone. White in color Sparkling in the light. Relic of an era gone by I wear my ring with pride. Now that ...

Listening to the Doppelganger episode of This American Life really made me think about how radio is done. The show included an audio clip of SNL’s Weekend Update segment of Actor Fred Armestein impersonating This American Life host Ira Glass. I was not familiar with Ira Glass before listening to this clip so I was ...

Time doesn’t stand still; therefore none of us are the same people we once were. We have sufficiently grown wiser throughout life, starting from the day we spoke our first words, to as recent as the end of last semester. … Continue reading →

While browsing through the ds106 Assignment Bank, I found a 2 star rated Visual Assignment called Picasso Yourself.  It called to create a Picasso-esque portrait of my own face! I didn’t know how to start this one, so I looked through any ...