Tag: Western106

Go Ahead, Make a Choice

Daily create today is to illustrate a choice. Well, I found myself needing to choose a new profile pic for something work-related (it’s a members only place, can’t tell you any more). I decided to use it for a new Twitter profile pic, too! Two birds, one choice. I looked for cool pics of bikes (I like bikes). I looked for comic book heroes and cowboys. But I decided to go ahead and use words to illustrate myself. So here’s my speech bubble. It represents my willingness to help.

 

What’s the Story with Stories?

No Googling, no cheating. It’s time to just use what’s currently stored and available for recall in this here brain of mine to answer the question: What is Digital Storytelling?

Let’s focus on the first part of the second word: Story. And here’s my brain’s in-depth analysis: Story, is like, what happened. What happened to the thing to get that thing where it is today. And by today I mean whenever the present of the story is, which could be in the past or future. And by what happened I mean that it didn’t necessarily happen for real. Someone might have made it up. Even if it’s a true story there’s probably some embellishing for fun. So yeah, that’s story: the things that happened, are happening, will happen, or will have been happening (ah, you never get to use the future perfect continuous tense!)

The second part: Telling. The telling part is where the magic happens. And by magic I mean effort and enthusiasm. The more oomph you put in your story, the better. A mundane story about picking up your dry cleaning can be made great (or, to be more realistic, listenable) by some ooomph in your telling. How do I oomph, you may ask? Well, oomph it up with details, background, emphasis, passion, whatever. Hey I’m at the early stages of learning about digital storytelling. Someone else is going to tell me how to oomph. I’ll get back to you on that.

That takes us to the fancy part: Digital. We say it first in the term Digital Storytelling, but it’s more logical to describe it last. The digital part is where we get to cheat. A picture is worth a thousand words so other fancy things are worth extra free words too. Sounds (+500 words), GIFS, (+1750), videos (+500-10000). These numbers are approximate. When we tell a story in person with our voice and body, we can add oomph with gestures and intonation and expressions. The digital part, when we want to throw this on the Internet for the whole cosmos to see, is how we can oomph online. So, wish me luck learning to oomph. I’ll need some.

 

Broncos aren’t just for Super Bowls

1915, Oregon. Bonnie McCarroll didn’t have any trouble with the Broncos. Must not have been a Patriot.

Bonnie-McCarroll-thrown-fro

Week 2 Roundup

Week 2 is in the past. It’s now been a fortnight. What did I learn, you may ask? Or you may not. Either way, keep reading to find out.

Well, GIFfing ain’t easy to do as I blindly stumbled through figuring out GIMP and other GIF making things. But the results are fun so I’ll try it again sometime.

A little bit of western kindness was sent out to the Syrian Refugees settling in to our area quite nicely. Almost don’t really need any words to tell that story. Just need to see the smiles on their faces.

smile

A couple of Daily creates involving cows kept me up and running. These are the lifeblood of the experience for me. Baby steps for me.

And the biggest step forward, almost a grown up step, was what I learned about building your own Personal Cyberinfrastructure.  It was a great big realization for me. An epiphany even, if that’s not too strong a word. I work in a place where learners are trying to become more independent, adult learners. Putting the building of their own infrastructure into their own hands is a great big, key idea. The ideas and tools put forth in the lectures and article made a big shift in my thinking about how to achieve this. Thank you for that #Western106!

Let’s see where next week takes us! See you out in the wilds!

 

Western Kindness

Daily create is to tweet some kindness to someone you don’t know. No simpler kindness than to say thanks.

So I’d like to say thanks to some Newcomers to Canada for reminding us that the cold, white stuff bombarding us at this time of year in Canada actually has some simple, fun applications. Look at the smiles on their faces!

 

Approaching things

Just catching up on weaving my web… Yesterday’s daily create was to depict this here life pro tip visually: Never approach a bull from the front, a horse from the rear, or a fool from either side.

That puts Mitch (a noted fool), this bull and this horse in a real sticky situation.

 

Have a Cow, Man

Today, the daily create is to paint a cow. I for one chose not to paint, but instead to spin around 453 times under the instruction of my two year old daughter and see what a cow looks like then. The result is above. This method causes no trauma to or paint on the cow. You may not want to do it to yourself more than zero times though.

 

The Lonesome, Crowded CyberInfrastructure

Full Disclosure: As an Open Participant with full-time work and a lovin’ family, I ain’t got a lot of time to ruminate on this here course. So what I got to give (and get), I got to give and get it quick. Enjoy it, but quick.

Today I watched the lecture and read the article about our Personal Cyberinfrastrcuture. And let me tell you, I dig this stuff. And the Wild West motif fits so well. Progress is messy and we don’t know where to start without a little help. Give me an idea of the equipment I can use and which stuff works and I’ll get started. Without the equipment, I’m just going to lie down in the sun here. Get some rest. Then get some more. With this stuff I’m gonna saddle up and go looking for gold in exciting places. 

This course/not course has given us that equipment by suggesting to us what to go out and get. Now I got a bunch of stuff, some idea how to use some of it, and most importantly, a drive and excitement to see what comes of it. I have a Soundcloud app on my phone. Still don’t know what it’s for exactly but I look at it with fun anticipation rather than thinking of a future chore. That’s because the other things I got and have used for this (like WordPress, Twitter, Digital Comic Museum etc) have been fun, useful and productive. Building a Personal Cyberinfrastrucutre could be a lonesome, overwhelming chore, but with a guide and some  pardners, it’s exciting personal progress. I reckon I’m gonna gonna do some panning for gold. Maybe make some myself (probably the fool’s kind, but it’s shiny, too).

Here’s some gold for ya to brighten your day

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