Tag Archives: internet

Dear Unfortunate DS106 Student:

Posted on 04/23/2011 by Tempy| 4 Comments

Prepare to be frustrated. Prepare to say, “DAMN YOU, JIM GROOM, I HAVE OTHER THINGS TO DO.” Prepare yourself for regret, anger, confusion, and utter depression when you realize that this is a 100-level class. You will work your ass off for this class and every scrap of patience you have will be tested. Late nights and hours trying to get a program to work, or attempting to upload a video, or doing something else that you would never have considered homework while your other studies go neglected will often make you wish you had decided to take a History elective instead.

That is the nature of the beast. It eats students alive.

And you’ll be eager for more. For all the shit that Jim Groom will put you through, every time somebody comments on a post you made will make you look forward to the prospect of creation. Every time you post something you put so much effort into and you get recognized for it will feed the growing craving to send your hard work out, to push yourself harder. This class doesn’t just teach you the tools of the internet, it teaches the essence of internet culture.

Sure, Jim Groom might be the most frustrating teacher you’ll ever meet- you’ll want to hate him but you can’t because he loves this material too much and his goodwill will act like a shield against your ire.

Three things you’ll want to remember if you make the right choice and stay in the class:

1.) Stay calm. Your anger might be good fuel for a blog post, but no assignment you’ll ever do is worth raising your blood pressure. If something’s not working, don’t get upset.

2.) If something’s not working, you can usually find a tutorial for it online. If THAT doesn’t work, tweet Jim Groom or Martha Burtis or one of the other nice people working for their evil organization. They often figure out the problem within a day, if not sooner.

3.) Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there, to expend some energy, to have fun. In the end, you will create so much stuff, so much interesting stuff, you’ll look back and think, “Well, look at that. What do you know, maybe this class wasn’t such a bitch after all.” Then you will think a little harder and think,“Nahhh.” But it wasn’t an insufferable bitch.

In the end, that’s all you can really ask for.

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When I was a much younger college student…

Posted on 03/02/2011 by Tempy| 5 Comments

and by that, I mean last year, I was using StumbleUpon rampantly. It was a compulsion- I couldn’t help pressing that stumble button, even if I was supposed to be doing something for school. Oops! Just navigated away from the article I was reading for my presentation! Oh well, I’ll find it later… much later…

So I thought that I’d show some of the highlights of what I stumbled to. I’m sure plenty of other people have found these sites in the same way, but here it is: a shout out to the artsy-people who have forged an association with stumbling not based on stubbed toes and clumsiness, but on ideas and innovation.

1. Sidewalk Chalk Guy
Blurring the lines of reality, one bit of pavement at a time.

2. The Brick Testament
I’m a lapsed-Catholic, but not overly religious. Still, the Bible in lego form? Awesome!
Also: Moses’s eyebrows are epic.

3. The Size of Our World
Remember when we were kids, we had to make either drawings or models of our solar system? I do. I also remember being astounded at Earth’s relative size to Jupiter and the sun. This takes it just a step further.

4. Stereoviews of Old Japan
This is actually a compilation of some work, but the author of this post does a good job explaining what a stereoview is and the post gives credit where credit is due. Awesome!

5. The Photo Argus
Amazing website. It lists tutorials, downloadable actions for photoshop, and articles. Awesome for people who want to expand their photography knowledge.

Photo by Caleb Charland

6. Maneli Jamal
Love this dude’s guitar style!

7. The Oddmusic Gallery
It’s a list of weird instruments… and it includes what they sound like. I love it!

((I’ve been there! It’s awesome!))

8. Pacxon
God, this game is addictive. My father used to play something like this when I was a kid, but it didn’t involve Pacman and ghosts.
Image attributed to http://unrealitymag.com
Image attributed to Unrealitymag.com ((I needed an image, but was too lazy to printscreen Pacxon))

9. Flame Painter

This is awesome… but then, I’m pretty easily amused by online art generators. But you get to paint. With FLAMES.

Flame Dragon by Peter Blasovic

10. JoyofBaking.com
Finally, because I can’t resist food, here is a site it led me to.

OM NOM NOM.

Maybe I’ll post more links, but ten is enough for now. Thank you, Stumbleupon!

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So, here’s the thing:

Posted on 01/24/2011 by Tempy| 5 Comments

It’s difficult for me to imagine web 1.0 since my parents didn’t let me consistently surf until I was in eighth grade, and I didn’t do that much “surfing” until I got into high school. By then, web 2.0 had been in place for a while.

Web 1.0 sounds like a nightmare, the opposite of what an internet should be. Sure, it paved the way for this very democratic system we’ve got nowadays, but it feels like something that encourages isolation and pedestals. It’s very reminiscent of what written language used to be- a way of separating people: those who could read/write, and those who could not. I’m sure there are more nuances to it than that, but what we have nowadays allows for more complex connections and interconnections.

As Tim O’Reilly put it in his article What is Web 2.0, it now takes on more significant associations, like those created in the brain’s neural network (as a biology major, this is a particularly poignant statement to make). People create the connections and associations. The users define the applications. ((SIDE NOTE: I was totally confused when I reached the final page of that article- it was longer than the other pages…. then I realized that it simply had a kajillion comments))

Anyhow, this all ties into the idea of using the internet as a resource for education and the overall theme of digital storytelling. I, for one, am a huge supporter of using the internet for learning. I’ve always been a better learner if I’m actively applying my knowledge. The internet is the perfect platform for this, and it allows free communication and critique between students and teachers.

For instance: I took a Creative Writing course a couple semesters ago and we were required to blog our work before bringing it in to class. We were expected to revise each piece based off of the comments our fellow students left. That way, only a little more refining would be needed upon the next class period. I thought it was incredibly efficient, and it cut down on embarrassing encounters if we got an idea of how the piece looked to other people before we had to read it to other students.

I also had to blog for a Library Science course and for a Spanish class. Now, I’m not saying that all approaches are going to work out perfectly, or that there won’t be problems. However, the beauty of being a community of online learners, is that we’re also teachers. My knowledge can be used to augment that of another person and their knowledge can augment mine.

With our powers combined…. well, we can find solutions to some of our issues. It’s not Captain Planet, but we can’t have everything.

Library Science mentioned some things about Creative Commons, along with a lengthy discussion of the Internet Archives. I have to admit, I’m both delighted and terrified by Creative Commons. It’s reassuring that somebody’s thinking about the question of ownership and whatnot, but I realized early on in my perusal of that particular website that it could easily open up a can of worms. It, like most things regarding property and rights and stuff, can easily get markedly complicated. I’ll have to look into it more in the future, I think, when I’m feeling less lazy.

Ehhh… I’ll post more on this subject at a later date. Right now, I’m going to take some Theraflu and go to bed.

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Gardner Campbell is Pretty Damn Eloquent

Posted on 01/13/2011 by Tempy| 3 Comments

Where will the next step take us?

Because it was necessary. The remixes of that presentation were amazing.

This is my response to “A Personal Cyberinfrastructure” by Gardner Campbell. Moreover, it’s a response to his presentation on the same subject and two of the other responses to it. If you haven’t heard Tom Woodwar’s remix of the presentation and Grant Potter’s remix of the remix, you should totally go there RIGHT NOW.

The bag of gold thing seemed to be a theme, so I went with it after my take on the article and presentation.

When I think of the internet, it often puts me in awe of how massive and interconnected things can get. I wasn’t using the internet before it got to this point of interactivity and when I was reminded of how things were during the digital facelift, I felt a little like a test subject. That feeling was perpetuated by the knowledge that the digital storytelling class I’m enrolled in is also part of the experimentation.

Errr… does this mean I’ll get internet cancer thirty years from now? (what would internet cancer manifest itself as? Will my online persona become riddled with tumors and have to undergo web-chemo?)

Bah, at least I’ll be able to say that the ride was worth it.

I digress. As I mentioned in my first post on this blog, I love the idea of the interplay between audience and performer. On the internet, everyone (including the audience) is the performer. The changing form of the presentation as it goes through the stages of remixing (there are at least three that I know of), the mutation of memes, the responses and conversations and connections all forged in the fires of the digital universe…

Who’d have thought that we would have ever gotten to this point? Congratulations. You’ve created something great, powerful, terrible, and beautiful and unleashed it. And we found a bag of gold.

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Post One: where no reason applies and no promises are made

Posted on 01/13/2011 by Tempy| Leave a comment

“…for a jingle of coin we can do you a selection of gory romances, full of fine cadence and corpses, pirated from the Italian; and it doesn’t take much to make a jingle- even a single coin has music in it.”

If you came here expecting a point, I suppose you may be sadly disappointed.

The first post of a blog often contains some kind of mission statement, or introduction or something to indicate what said blog is about. I’ve never been keen on introductions. My English professors have often commented on how succinct I can be, how graceless with my words. I have no patience to tell my audience what will come next, particularly if I’m not so sure about that myself.

Therefore, we will move on.

The quote from before comes from Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. I encountered that play in twelfth grade and took an instant liking to it. Over the years, I have grown to love it. The cyclical nature, the constant play with established ideas, the insecurity of the title characters… it speaks to something absolutely profound.

It also deals with the fundamental interplay between a storyteller and the audience. “For some of us it is performance,” says the Player to Rosencrantz, “for others, patronage. They are two sides of the same coin, or, let us say, being as there are so many of us, the same side of two coins.”

We bring our own experiences with us wherever we go. If you listen to a conversation, it often takes the form of anecdotes linked to one another by some common theme, or string of common themes. It is these threads of commonality that make communication and storytelling so powerful. The subconscious act of applying our own lives to the language makes it all the more dear.

Throughout the play, Stoppard reminds us that it is a play. The cyclical speech, the references to having been in this situation before, the inability of the title characters to remember anything that wasn’t mentioned in the script, the play within a play within a play… The characters interact with their script and the subject matter even as the audience draws from what they know about Shakespeare’s work to complete the picture.

I’ll leave you with this thought: I acknowledge your bias (even if you don’t want to) and I encourage it. And since I like cohesion, here’s another quote from the play (taken somewhat out of context):

Rosencrantz: So you’re not–ah– exclusively players, then?

Player: We’re inclusively players, sir.

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