Writing 304 – Reading and Writing in Digital Environments
Just another Michael J. Cripps, Ph.D. – Sites site
Here is my video of a few of my favorite DS106 assignments. My all time favorite turn out was the last assignment, The Forest Gump Project where I photo shopped my face into an image from Woodstock. I hope you all enjoy, and have a great rest of your summer!
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This assignment was to insert yourself into a photograph from history. I used this photograph from Woodstock in 1969. I used the software Gimp after messing around not wanting to download anything onto my computer. I had a hard time at first, I really didn’t want to clog my laptop with a software that I most likely would not use a lot, but I caved and downloaded Gimp because everything else on the internet is a cheap fail. I chose this image because all of the Woodstock images are extremely busy, but there was this one of this girl and I knew it would be perfect for my face. I always wished I could have attended this music festival, I think it is such a cool part of history. A huge part of me roots for peace and love, I wish the world could be simple enough for things like peace and love. I obviously couldn’t make it to Woodstock, but this image makes it feel like I was ALMOST there.
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Today’s daily create task was to create a text you would want to wear on a t-shirt. I thought this one would be fun to put my educator spin on it. I love this quote from Dr. Seuss. I love the idea that children may be small, but they can make a huge impact on your life. I know this for a fact! I also am a firm believer that we learn a lot from children, whether it be their love for life, their sense of innocence, or they’re spontaneous personalities. I know Dr. Seuss can sometimes be controversial to some people, but this will always be one of my favorite quotes, children truly are the best teachers in this world, we should all step back and see what we can learn from them.
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This assignment was actually kind of fun. I feel like my battery ran out of creative juices by the time I got to it though. I found this record by a little girl who found 166 four leaf clovers in one hour (top image). I then remixed it to try and be funny and act like she broke a record of kneeling in one spot for 23 hours (bottom image). I wanted to find a record by a kid, and when came across this one I thought it was so cute and innocent I couldn’t not choose it. I then kept scrolling and found she broke this record on my birthday, June 23, so I HAD to choose it. I don’t really have a funny story to go along with this but if you look at the image she really does look like she’s bored and kneeling in that one spot for per say 23 hours maybe…
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I wanted to be creative with this daily create. I went through a few days where all I watched was “Naked and Afraid”, so a few weeks ago, my mom, my boyfriend and I had a discussion. On the show you’re allowed to bring one item with you for the 21 days of being naked and afraid. When I saw this daily create I thought of it in a similar way, I get to bring one item to help me survive on the moon. My answer was the same for naked and afraid as it was the moon. Everything but the Bagel Seasoning. I absolutely love this stuff. Being vegetarian, good seasonings are key, I put this on just about everything. I figured since I am a picky eater and this stuff tastes great on vegetables, I could probably survive off of this and some leaves. I figured the moon doesn’t have many options for food so why wouldn’t I bring along my seasoning to make things better?
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For this assignment, we were asked to create a Brady Bunch like collage. Instead of using family members or friends, I wanted to showcase everything I use on a daily basis in the life of a nanny. In order from the top to the right we have:
I took a little spin on this project and I am really happy with how it turned out. I edited these pictures on my phone using the app called “color tone” and then put them onto my computer and made a collage with the website “befunky” linked here.
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This weeks gif assignment was to create a gif that is funny backwards. The original video, the frog obviously jumped forward and in this it looks like it is jumping backwards. I guess the gif itself isn’t all that funny, but the story behind it is. The other day while I was sitting for my other nanny child, we found this cute little frog, she’s nine so of course we played with it and brought it along with us to do fun things. The frogs name was then Todd. While Summer (the little girl) was walking outside, Todd did a jump onto the ground, probably seeing an opportunity to escape. Todd was rudely mistaken when he next found himself inside of Summer’s 11 year old French Bulldog’s mouth. Summer cried, I screamed. I finally did the adult thing, picked up the dog and fortunately she spit Todd out. Todd was very wet after and we let him hop peacefully away while we went inside. I was very unsure about Todd living and I didn’t need Summer to be traumatized even more, so we “let him go home”. We both ended up laughing about it in the end, but the whole experience was a whirlwind of emotions. So, here you have Summer and Todd, Todd is doing a little backwards jump.
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For today’s daily create assignment, it was, what’s your favorite part of the day? Now this seems like a pretty simple question, but I actually put a deep amount of thought into it. I feel like it completely changes with the seasons. In the winter, I love chilly mornings with fresh snow, but in the summer I love nights at a camp fire. So, since it’s summer I responded with “specifically 7-9pm”. I am such a campfire girl, I would love to have one every single night of the summer, just something about it is so relaxing for me. I chose to share this picture of me when I was obviously much younger, because I was wearing a cute little sweater and sitting by a fire one summer. I grew up camping though so maybe that sparked my love for fires… no pun intended. I just find this picture so funny, it’s ironic because I’ve even vegetarian now for about 10 years, but my parents tell me that when I was a kid, my favorite meal was shish ka bobs. I laugh and say this is the only image you’ll see of me eating meat. Well excuse me while I go flood my favorite time of the day with homework.
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For this assignment, I had to create fake social media for aa historical person, for some reason my mind went immediately to Anne Frank. She was a teenager and had a diary, she probably would have loved social media if it was a think in the 1940’s. Now I know this is a super serious topic and I don’t by any means think it isn’t, but I tried to make it silly as if a teenager was actually tweeting and posting on Facebook. I have always loved this part of history, in fact it is probably the only park of history that actually interests me, I think it sparked when I read her diary and went to Washington DC and saw the Holocaust Museum. It has also always been a dream of mine to visit the historical annex in Amsterdam.
I think for Anne to have social media back then, she might have not felt so isolated (I mean I can’t blame her). I mean I think if she did have technology and was actively posting, it probably would blow the cover of where her family was with tracking devices logistically but we don’t have to think like that.
I created Anne to be a little sassy, she is a typical teen on social media, bored, obviously. She used her Facebook account as her diary instead of paper and her Twitter to mock the “fans”. Her username is hidden.af, af as in Anne Frank but interpret it as you wish.
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For this weeks gif assignment it was to create a gif out of a home video, what would a home video be in 2020 if it wasn’t a TikTok? I am featuring the other child I nanny in this, she’s 9 and currently obsessed with TikTok, but let’s be real I am too. She is like my little sister and I’ve known her since she was two years old. We always have so much fun together, but since TikTok came out, we have had a million more times the fun. She is also obviously a better dancer than me seeing I have never stepped foot in a dance class but she’s been dancing since she was three. Sometimes she gets frustrated with me when I don’t “get” the dances quick enough, it cracks me up! Well I wanted to be modern in this home video assignment so here is a leak of my TikTok account. I hope you enjoy.
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Image linked here.
Today’s daily create instruction was to share if you could be any animal what would you be and why? I feel like this is a super cheesy ice breaker question, but I’m here for it. I chose a humpback whale, one of my favorite whales. Since I was born, I have been a full blown ocean lover, I have grown up one mile away from the beach, spent my days in the salty sea and soaking up the sun in the sand. When I was in high school I had to do a research project that grew my love for whales. Since then, I have chosen to do research on whales every chance I get, have been on multiple whale watches and even got a permanent tattoo of a killer whale. I think what I love most about them is that they are so free in the ocean, they are massive but nothing compared to their home. They are adventurous and travel during migration, stay in pods, raise their young and seem so free spirited. So there you have it, if I was any animal, I would be a big blubbery whale swimming in the ocean.
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For today’s daily create, it was assigned to create a word in morse code. I did a little phrase saying “life is love”. I used stars and dashes because I thought it would look cool. I chose that phrase because today, I feel a little down about the world, I feel like I don’t know what I can believe on social media, I don’t know where to go from here. I don’t know what is the “right” thing to do anymore, and I don’t want to disappoint anyone if I do post something on social media or if I don’t. I created this as a reminder to love, love yourself, love others and love the world around you. I used a google slide to create this and a morse code translator.
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For this week’s meme assignment we had to take a photograph from The Big Picture, I decided to create a caption that had a big meaning. With all of the Covid-19 pictures to choose from, I was able to use this one to create a “big” caption. I wrote “In a world full of disappointment, bring out your inner child.” The world right now is kind of crazy, we are in the middle of a pandemic, children are out of school, adults are out of jobs and we aren’t allowed to see our loved ones. Also, we have a huge movement of Black Lives Matter currently, sending the world into protests. I loved this picture because it shows just how resilient children are, the two little girls in this picture are surrounded by doctors with masks on, and machines, but yet they are smiling right away. I think that it is important to be aware of the world’s disappointment right now, but to also take a step back, be as resilient and as happy as a child, appreciate the little things. I have said this before, but we can learn a lot from children.
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
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For this week’s meme assignment we had to take a photograph from The Big Picture, I decided to create a caption that had a big meaning. With all of the Covid-19 pictures to choose from, I was able to use this one to create a “big” caption. I wrote “In a world full of disappointment, bring out your inner child.” The world right now is kind of crazy, we are in the middle of a pandemic, children are out of school, adults are out of jobs and we aren’t allowed to see our loved ones. Also, we have a huge movement of Black Lives Matter currently, sending the world into protests. I loved this picture because it shows just how resilient children are, the two little girls in this picture are surrounded by doctors with masks on, and machines, but yet they are smiling right away. I think that it is important to be aware of the world’s disappointment right now, but to also take a step back, be as resilient and as happy as a child, appreciate the little things. I have said this before, but we can learn a lot from children.
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
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For today’s daily create, the assignment was to create a post modern birdie with an emotional coloring. At first, I wasn’t sure what that meant or what was expected, but I ran with it. What I created is a futuristic bird, a bird body and human head (me). What defines emotional coloring? I chose a bird who was blue. To create this I used the one and only, Snapchat. I found a picture of myself, used the scissor tool to just get my face and some hair, and then pasted it on top of this picture of a bird. Like I have said before I probably could find a more professional photoshop app, but I like to use what makes sense to me and not have to teach myself how to figure something else out. Overall, fun-ish daily create, not my favorite but, I made it work. Hope you enjoy!
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For this assignment, I wasn’t able to create the timeline, I couldn’t figure it out and honestly my walk turned into five minutes. I wish I looked at this assignment before the start of this week so I could have figured it out more. But, I chose the color white. The reason why I chose it was because we just had a huge storm, and the most prominent color I saw was white. At first, I didn’t think I would find a lot of nature things that were colored white, but I found a lot of flowers! This was a fun project to test some of my photography skills. I am happy with how my pictures turned out, especially all together.
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Okay this daily create was difficult for me, I tried to be creative but also involve my theme of children. Unfortunately this isn’t my best one. But, I had to do a daily create because I’ve had an extremely busy week and have barely had the time to do the work due that day. I wish I knew how to edit this better, it’s blurry and the “transparent” bike picture has lines through it, but that’s learning right? I thought this actually came out hilarious, the position Connor is in is perfect, he actually looks like he’s riding a bike, I figured this was the best usage of a bike in a remarkable fashion, a baby riding a bike! I used google slides to create this by just overlapping the pictures and sending them backwards.
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For this assignment I wanted to use my favorite movie, Matilda. This is my all time favorite especially from my childhood, but I still get excited to put it on today. When I was younger, my mom told me, I used to pretend I was moving things with my eyes like Matilda. If you’ve never seen this movie, you’re missing out, but to get this gif, it’s an iconic scene of Matilda getting ahold of her powers of moving things with her eyes. For this gif, I used the website Giphy and took a youtube like of this scene and cut it shorter. I thought this would be way harder than what it was. I am excited to now actually create my own Gifs and brag about it.
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URL for the photograph here.
For this Meme Assignment I thought about the sense of childcare. It’s really hard not to be negative when something doesn’t go right, or get defensive when someone critiques your work. I think that it is important to stay positive in the sense of childcare because the children see how you’re feeling and react to that. If I went into work with a negative attitude because something didn’t go right that morning, than the baby will feed off of my energy, see I’m upset and probably be upset too. This goes the same way for parents also, which can then lead to childhood trauma, which is extremely difficult to fix and overcome. So, try to remain positive especially in the presence of children because they are always learning from us.
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For this daily create I was challenged to come up with a ghostly collage. After some thought, I wanted to connect it to children and teaching since that it was I relate a lot of my creations to for this class. I remembered seeing a lot of families posting on Facebook of their children, quite often children who I have babysat for, in face masks. The sight of it makes me cringe because I can’t help but wonder what this is doing to the minds of the children. Since I didn’t want to use any of the pictures of people I actually know, I looked up google pictures of children wearing face masks (I do not own the rights to any of these pictures). I then used the website called BeFunky to create the collage, I had used it before to mess around so it was easy to figure out. I wanted to make it black and white but I had to pay for that feature on BeFunky, so I just downloaded it to my computer and used the filter tool in my Photos app. I am happy with how this turned out because I think it really gets you thinking and it is definitely a deep meaningful “ghostly” collage. This is very unlike what you usually see from me, but I hope you still enjoy!
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