Looking back on my write up about Personal Cyber infrastructure, I feel that my grasp of the concept is about the same. I also feel the same way about the “Bag of Gold” analogy as well as the concept of a “digital facelift”. However, I now have more personal experience managing myself and my presence on the internet and I am able to understand the concepts a bit more clearly than I could at the beginning of the semester.
My idea of “storytelling” has changed pretty drastically, however. Before this class, I assumed that a story could be told well through words through mediums such as books, magazines, newspapers, etc. However, I no longer feel this way. Because of this class, I have been unable to grasp the concept that just about everything can be a story, which we did in class. We started off with pictures (visual assignments). This one was slightly obvious as everyone knows the adage of “A picture is worth a thousand words”. A well taken photograph can speak more effectively than a 3 page paper. However, we also learned how to make our own stories with pictures through assignments involving Photoshop and GIMP. The Fat Cat assignment is an example of this. We also learned how to tell stories through mediums such as audio and video. We learned how to take clips and edit them in a way to give the listener a new impression.
I would say that the most valuable things I am taking away from this class would be my experience with Photoshop, Audacity, GIMP, Windows Live Movie Maker, as well as other programs. When I first chose to take this class, it was more of an outlet for me to be creative. However, as time passed, I realized that this class was not only fun for my creative side, but that I was actually learning skills that relate to my Business major. I say this because I recently discovered a subset of careers in business that relate to this course – Social Media Strategist – which required specific knowledge of all programs we used in this course.
We did a ton of work this semester. This being the case, I have a lot to choose from when asked “Which ones are your favorite?”. I found it to be a pretty easy question to answer, as a few of my works immediately popped into my head.
- DNA and Evolution Minimalist Poster. I had a lot fun with this assignment and I am very please with how it came out. It gave me the chance to gain some more experience with GIMP as well as stretch my design muscles. I wanted to make the movie title interesting and now simply splat it above the image, but I also didn’t want to shrink it into the side of the plant. I was glad I came up with the idea of incorporating one of the letters into the image.
- Spying on People. This was my very first completed assignment, which is why I think its funny that it turned out to be one of my favorites. This assignment gave me an excuse to run around campus like a creeper and take pictures of random things. I was finally one of those people. I was also very happy to learn how to do this assignment using Picnik, as I had never done any photo editing before. The response from the completed assignment didn’t hurt my ego either.
- Colorize Your World. This may seem like a silly assignment to think of as one of my favorites, but it is. I like how I was able to take 3 images of Johnny Bravo in different positions and make it look kind of natural. I also start to think of my past every time I look at it, which makes me smile. I think that’s why I like it so much.
- The New Games Trailer Mashup . I liked working with this assignment. Even though the voices dont completely match up with the video, I think I was able to work around it. It gave me experience with working with audio levels and segments to make things more fluid.
- Created assignment – Draw it. This assignment actually came out of what I learned doing the DaVinci Invents the Ham Sandwhich assignment. Being a drawer, I love this affect.
If a future DS106er asked me my opinion about this class, it would get raving reviews. I would make sure to let them know that even though its “100 level course” it has the time requirement of an upper level. I would consider that a good thing though. You will learn how to create and manage your own blog, valuable skills with Audacity, Photoshop, GIMP, and many other programs while having a fun time. My only recommendations to them would be to make sure to set time apart for this course as well as pick good group members for the Radio Show project.
If I were in charge of this class, I would only change a couple things. First, I found the amount of star assignments for the audio and video assignments to be rather difficult to finish. I like the idea of having the star assignments, so I would probably only decrease them a little for those sections. I would also try to give a little more time to prepare for the Radio Show assignment. It wasn’t that time intensive really, but the timing in which the assignment was given made it hard due to Spring Break and everyone leaving the weekend before its due date.
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