Digital Storytelling

Hola! I actually for all practical purposes got wrapped up in school and thoughts of my own mind to the point that I forgot I had this site :-P I plan on changing some stuff up and hopefully posting some new stuff soon. Sounds familiar right? Well I hope that this time it will be true.

See Title :-P

My experiences in this class, affectionately called DS106 have been both varied and encouraging. I found that this class not only allowed me to see that I do have some artistic ability(if still somewhat limited) and that I could find a voice for myself on the Internet.

I came into this course just trying to avoid having to do art from my art process general education requirement. I had a very good background in computer science so when I found out that we were going to be creating our own blogs in our own hosting space, I was ecstatic. I had always wanted to get my own domain name be able to access my own space without having to use an IP address. So hosting in our own space made the class for me. I got to try out a side to the technology that I had, up until then, had not been able to.

Now the hosting space I loved, but blogs were really hard for me to do. I have had blogs for a number of other courses but have failed to really plug in to any of them. I found that I was completely limited when I only had to blog for specified assignments because it turned the blogging experience into a chore and a drudgery to complete. This class was very beneficial in challenging me to reach for blogging for myself. If I wasn’t going to blog for myself, it wasn’t going to happen.

This made things really hard for me when it came to our digital story assignment. I wanted to base my project around myself and my interests. I wanted it to be something that was sustainable and personal so that I would not lose motivation to do it. I also want to continue using my blog for myself as I move on from this class. I want it to become a part of my self-expression to the world. Over the course of the semester I realized just how hard this is to do. Most of the time blogs are a personal journal of sorts and so for mine, I found it really hard to remember that I was writing not just for myself but for other people. This made it especially difficult when it came to writing about myself. Who wants to read a bunch of self glorifying fluff. In the end my project was rather small and inconsequential because I did not know how to strike this balance between writing for me and for an audience.

The digital stories that we told were wonderful, however the individual projects that we did really exposed us to a wide range of tools, especially free tools, that we could use to create different types of digital media. These projects were really helpful when it came to our digital stories because it gave us the opportunity to go beyond a blog if we wished. I especially liked the audio project where we took freesound.org files and mashed them up to create a short audio-only story. The plethora of free pieces of sound made it so we could create any story and was really fun to experiment with. The one assignment that was difficult for me to both enjoy and complete was the video project with public domain public service announcements form the 1950′s. While it was difficult to work with the video codecs available, the part that was especially difficult was to place my own narration to the video. Even with partners to help, I am terrible at ad-lib. Through it though I came to develop a new found respect fro script writers and just how hard it is for them to make a line none cheesy.

This class has allowed me to experiment with expressing myself, something I have never been comfortable with. It has honestly been nothing like any class I have ever had and I loved it for that. Really I would continue this class for many years to come so that more people can really learn to enjoy digital media. Thanks to Jim Groom for his leadership and expertise with digital media and his willingness to always help.

For almost the whole past week I have been completely obsessed with fish. At the beginning one of my roommates set up a 20 gallon fish tank in his room and proceeded stock it with some cool looking fish called tiger barbs. For the next two days I decided to research aquariums and proper fish care and was almost instantly hooked on the idea of setting up my own aquarium when I move off campus this summer. On and off for the past few months I have researched almost anything that i can think of when it comes to fish, from different species care requirements, water ph and live plants.. I have found that hiding below the soil of my highly entrenched castle of geekitude, there is budding biologist that is seeking to make his own addition to the infrastructure. I am itching to get out of my current living arrangements in order to begin what I hope can bud into a new hobby. There are so many neat, and at times bizarre things that go into running your own aquarium tank. Some hobbyists or aquarists breed their own brine shrimp to use as a sustainable means of feeding there fish and others go to the even more creepy extent of breeding bloodworm(eww.....). Can't wait to get started...

Yeah so allergies have essentially crippled me for the last two weeks so if you haven't seen me that is why. I tend to stay to my room and avoid anything that may have been exposed to pollen(essentially anywhere but my bed). Major apologies are due to the following people:

• Sam, I am sorry for not responding to your comment made quite some time ago.
• To our leader, Jim Groom for missing his class so many times in the past few weeks that it feels like I do not have an evening class. May he be ever merciful.

I know that the semester is coming to a close and that it has been very stressful for many of us. I have often put this blog to the wayside because of my other commitments and or laziness and I beg for forgiveness from all. I want be able to express myself in such a manner on this blog that reflects who I am and is something that I can continue and develop and that has been hard for me since I am so often caught up in other things or just don't want to write. I have even found myself wasting my time on audio talks done about data center power usage optimization (I am a geek and loved every minute of it), a talk by James Hamilton, in order to avoid doing more immediate and pressing work. I am a procrastinator and am that much more terrible of one when not feeling good. thats said, I am working on getting more regular on here. I did pay for it after all.

P.S. If you feel like you want to hear James' talk it is available here. It is an hour long but very well done and intriguing :-)