DS106 York Student Mid Term Evaluations

By mbransons in Digital Storytelling No Comments Tags: ,

It’s been great to see all the York students work in DS106 as well as a number of you taking the time to comment on each other’s work.

Week #19: Hard at Work

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo *Kicki*

Below is a link to a spreadsheet with a number of slots for appointments with me for your midterm evaluation. Please put your name in one of the slots over the two days. It’s only ten minutes and you can meet F2F, telephone or online for the day one daytime slots or online for the day two evening slots. To meet online you will have to have a Skype or Oovoo account and ring me at your scheduled time by my username (it’s in the document). You must test your online setup prior to our meeting. No excuses for missing your time slot or that you couldn’t get it to work!

York Midterm Evaluation Conference Signup Form

Week 6 – The Horror, The Educational Horror

By mbransons in Digital Storytelling 1 Comment Tags: , , , ,

The Horror, The Educational Horror

The Horror, The Educational Horror cc licensed in flickr by Michael Branson Smith

This Monday is Halloween which also happens to be the day that my class at York College meets up. I’ve noticed over the past couple weeks that the two sections’ time slots of 10AM-12PM and 2PM-4PM have been Auto DJ on DS106 Radio, so we’re planning an DS106 Radio Educational Horror Show. It’s going to be an open mike bash session of all our worst most terrifyingly bad experiences of teaching gone wrong. We’re also open to any stories of the spooky/creepy sort as well. For some inspiration, below is a video created by Michael Wesch with his students speaking to many of the horrors of higher education.

YouTube Preview Image

If any open participants, particularly Prof. Lockman’s crew from Japan, we’ll leave open the Skype to take calls on my handle, mbransons. Here are a couple things you can do for Monday’s DS106Radio Educational Horror Show and anything you make add the tag ds106horror or tweet the hashtag #ds106horror.

1. Create a DS106Radio Horror Show Bumper for Monday. I made a DS106 Radio is the Thriller bumper yesterday, but there are a ton of examples of bumpers to listen to in the assignment bank.

2. Frankenstein any ds106 assignment into the horror genre.

 

 

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do.

By mbransons in Digital Storytelling 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , ,

I’ve been meaning to do a triple troll after seeing the explosion of triple trolls across ds106. I figured the “last breath” deserved a triple troll. The three characters I chose all fall from the heights of corrupt power. Colonel Kurtz arguably is a corruption out of corruption, but I felt he still figured well in this story.

I’m inspired to envision this as a mashup video assignment moving forward after watching this Compilation of Famous Last Words. Build a mashup of a themed set of quotes.

 

 

DS106 Radio Is The Thriller!

By mbransons in Digital Storytelling 4 Comments Tags: , , , , ,

DS106 Radio Is The Thriller

DS106 Radio is the Thriller cc licensed in flickr by Michael Branson Smith

Preparing for the Monday’s Halloween themed ds106radio event, “The Horrors of Education,” I created this Vincent Priced themed ds106 radio bumper sticker and bumper. Looking forward to here your most scary experiences in education, as well as any other spooky stuff you can think of.

 

DS106 Radio Is The Thriller

I edited this bumper in Audacity using the dry voice recording of Vincent Price posted on Youtube from his session for Michael Jackson’s Thriller. I was searching for Vincent Price audio and when I found this, I just couldn’t believe I found him saying “Can you dig it!” It’s like he made it knowing ds106radio would need this sound on tape some day.

I also added two sound effects found on freesound.org:

rbh thunder storm.wav by RHumphries
suonho_ScaryScape_01.wav by suonho

Week 5 – DS106 What’s that I Hear? – Can You Dig It!

By mbransons in Digital Storytelling, Teaching and Learning 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , ,

ds106 radio boom box

"Radio Star" ds106 mashup cc licensed in flickr by fodt

This week starts our introduction to using sound for digital storytelling. We’re going to be learning some new tools, finding audio samples, recording our own sounds/voice, and use them to work on some projects from the ds106 audio assignment bank. And most awesomely we will consider broadcasting our projects and experiences on ds106 radio.

To kick things off, I was able to broadcast a conversation (archived here by @cogdog) with Alex Polaris, musician, sound engineer, and audio instructor at York College, on ds106 radio about storytelling with sound, particularly foley. Foley is the process of live recording sound effects for film and television. Here is an example of legendary sound designer Ben Burtt creating laser gun sounds by recording a slinky being struck with a stick. He continues to talk about the amazing tools foley artists created for sound effects in classic animations. Here’s a link to a google doc with number of sound design/foley video resources we used in the broadcast. Feel free to add anything you find interesting.

Recording Your Own Sounds

Microphones

microphones cc licensed in flickr by Roadside Guitars

Like all things ds106, it’s bring your own technology to the task. So you are welcome to record with whatever device you’d like. Use the built in mic on a laptop, smart phone, or digital camera in video mode. Just be sure you can get the audio file onto a computer on which you’ve installed an audio editing application like Audacity. If you used video to record audio, you can always use MPEG Streamclip to export the audio from the video.

Finding CC Licensed Audio Samples

Kitchen Tapes

Kitchen Tapes cc licensed in flickr by dorywithserifs

By far my favorite source to download sounds is freesound.org. All sounds in their archive are CC licensed. You can search for and find just about anything you can imagine. Create an account so you can download files, and while your at it, record something and upload it to their archive!

Editing and Publishing your Audio

waveforms, precious little waveforms

waveforms, precious little waveforms cc licensed in flickr by altemark

Often a lot of your time will be spent on sound design and editing in digital audio software. Audacity is free, open source software you can download and install on your personal computer – Mac, PC, or Linux. You can record directly from a microphone attached to your computer, or import a variety of samples and music files to use. Here are links to a couple of tutorials (setup & basic editing) I used to create my first sound project using Audacity. There is also an Audacity manual published as a wiki.

Finally you’ll want to find a way to publish and embed your audio projects to your blog. I’m using Sound Cloud, which is kind of a YouTube for audio. The coolest feature is that people can leave comments inline at any point in the audio track. There are also audio player plugins you can search for and use if you’d like to host the audio files on your own blog.

Week 5 Assignment

Get yourself setup to work on audio projects this week. Complete at least one assignment from the ds106 audio assignment bank (or makeup one of your own) and describe how you created it. Was it the first time you ever did a time based edit? Did you have any frustrations working with Audacity or anything else? What surprised/excited you about what you made?

Vader Answering Machine

By mbransons in Digital Storytelling 10 Comments Tags: , ,

Preparing for the audio portion of ds106, I decided to create a new assignment, “Movie Voice Machines.” This idea was inspired by a Tim Owens blog post, “This American Life Sex Tape,” which talked about an awesome audio riff on the amazing audio storytellers from This American Life. For Movie Voice Machines you are to create a voice machine message for a character of the movies. Here’s an example of a Cheech and Chong answering machine message.

Voice machines are for the most part an obsolete technology today, but people used to work really hard to create imaginative voice machine messages with music, sound effects and of course their message.

Also this was my first time using Audacity to create any sort of sound work. I followed a couple tutorials from here for setup, and here for basic editing. I’ve used professional tools like ProTools for some time a few years ago, but Audacity was really straight forward and don’t mind really using it.

Here is the list of samples I downloaded and used from freesound.org.

am beep.wav by NoiseCollector
Tape Recorder.wav by Pogotron
OutwardBound.flac by acclivity

For Darth Vader’s voice I added a few of the effects you can find in Audacity, including a pitch shifter and a chorus filter. Finally for the Imperial March music, I played back a sample from Youtube and recorded it from my laptop speakers into the microphone using Audacity. This intentionally degraded the quality of the recording so it sounded like Vader was playing back from an old cassette player into the microphone of an answering machine.

I’m planning to make my own tutorial for Audacity, showing how this was created. And looking forward to some ds106 radio later!

 

Smoke, Fuel, Burn

By mbransons in Digital Storytelling 6 Comments Tags: , , ,

Rimi ‘Kookaburra’ Morita posted a cropped sign assignment a couple of days ago giving a unique interpretation of Cogdog’s Assignment. But more importantly Rimi’s post was the first post (tagged correctly) to appear in that assignment’s stream.

So in the spirit of doing a ds106 visual or design assignment not ever done before I’m choosing Cogdog’s sadly neglected, yet awesome “Cropped Signs.” The assignment is inspired by Blackout Newspaper Poetry – tell a story through redaction. I love this idea because it empowers you to sort through the BS of a story and tell an audience what you think the “real message” is.

So here’s my interpretation of this assignment and for Cogdog this under appreciated ds106 assignment post goes to you!

Smoke Fuel Burn

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo – mbransons

from

Fuel Reduction Burn Road Sign

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo – davepaku

and

Ear Crossing

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo – mbransons

from

Bear Crossing Road sign

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo – arthur_chapman

Week Four DS106 Points Everywhere – Including Japan

By mbransons in Digital Storytelling, Teaching and Learning 4 Comments Tags:

M.A.S.H. Sign

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo – iwinatcookie

The fall cohort of ds106 just got a lot bigger this week with the addition of students from Japan in Prof. Scott Lockman’s Cyberspace & Society class. They are now in the ds106 feed, so welcome them by commenting on their work! You can start with this great minimal movie travel poster – The Planet, by Mome. Also it appears that Prof. Lockman’s TA Otto Paertz will be conducting the ds106 portion of the course. I’m not too sure what to think, but it looks like he forcibly asserted control over the class. I guess I’m not the only one dealing with difficult colleagues while co-teaching a class (thankfully Prof. Oliver is still indisposed).

This is going to be the last week of assignments in the visual and design category. We will be moving forward with audio assignments over the next couple of weeks. This is going to include an introduction to the awesomeness of DS106 Radio, a ds106 community internet radio station that you will have the opportunity to broadcast to – you can listen to it here.

For this week, along with doing a couple of assignments, those new to ds106 (and particularly York students) should focus on blog improvements as well as getting into more “conversations.” The ds106 community is strongest when people are focusing as much on engaging others as they are creating work for assignments. So work for the week is as follows:

1. Decorate that locker…

Calaveras High School (1989)

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo – unclebumpy

If you’ve left the “Sample Page” on your blog, get into the dashboard pages and edit it or delete it! You can use the page to create an “about me” page if you’d like, but it’s up to you. Also think about generating your own header images if your still seeing the theme’s default header. You can edit this in the Dashboard > Appearance > Header. Also consider using plugins like Flickr Feed Gallery and Twitter Tools to widgetize your sidebar. I also just found the plugin that let’s you add links in image captions, if you’d like to try it out.

2. Get into conversations…

Conversation - Matisse

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo – ev0ev0

Make sure you moderate your comments, as well as install the plugin Subscribe To Comments to help people follow the discussion with blog post. I think there was an rise in the number comments being posted as people were trying to guess Four Icon Challenges which is awesome. But also stay in touch with the hastag #ds106 on Twitter to follow and contribute to conversation there.

3. Narrate your process…

Construction Tunnel

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo – laffy4k

In addition to posting Animated GIFs, Messing with MacGuffins, or Four Icon Challenges, do your best to describe how and why you made what you made. And if you’re really ambitious make a screencast tutorial that others could use to describe how you work. Some of the most inspired comments come from people responding to this part of the post, not just the work you created.

4. Inspire people to make something…

Inspiration Board~some of my goodies from other artists! (see notes)

cc licensed flickr photo – mejrmom

If you find a cool example of digital storytelling, share it with everyone on Twitter or in a blog post. And better than that, use the DS106 Assignment submission form and turn it into an assignment – then let everyone know. The most satisfying part of ds106 to me is when something catches on and everyone starts making work and posting it like crazy. The people at Dailyshoot.com were able to have over 2700 photographers submit photos across 690 assignments before shutting down (bummer), how amazing is that! But it can also be as simple as doing an assignment because you saw someone else did it and thought it was cool. And let them in your post, that he/she inspired you to make it.

5. Ok here are the assignments…

The first four things are for the most part reminders of things that you can be doing for the remainder of the semester. There are a couple of assignments to do as well.

1. For the past three weeks you’ve been making work and sharing it. Whether this is the kind of work you are used to making, or this is your first time – I want you to consider that you’re making art. And as part of this consideration, please listen to the linked talk, “We Are All Artists,” Tim Owens gave to DS106 students in the Spring of 2011. Please post to your blog your thoughts on his talk and ideas. You’re welcome to make this an audio or video response embedded to post if you’d like, think of it as a jump start to the A/V portion of ds106 to come.

2. Choose one last Visual/Design assignment to do, and make sure it’s one you haven’t done before. Be sure to describe why you’re choosing it as your last one, if you think that it will be your last even though your not expected to do more for the course.

Been enjoying the work so much and will be commenting, commenting, commenting!

- Michael

Fat Chance DS106 Will Ever Stop

By mbransons in Digital Storytelling 4 Comments Tags: , , , ,

Fat Chance – The Rich Pay a Fair Share

As a New York City resident with easy access to the #OccupyWallStreet protest, I felt I’d be stupid to not go and check it out. But I wanted to also force myself to do something more than just troll the protest and take some pictures. So I committed (via tweet) to broadcasting some interviews with protestors on #ds106radio. I really enjoyed talking to the few people I did, and particularly Sharon and her grandson from Michigan. Here’s an archive of the broadcast thanks to Giulia Forsythe.

Sharon and Grandson – Occupy Wall Street

It’s going to be interesting over the coming weeks to see how #occupywallstreet evolves as a movement and/or how will we know it succeeds. It appears this protest is potentially “allowing” a long overdue conversation about the growing economic disparity between the richest 1% and the rest of us. And the fact that just by saying we’re not going to leave until we’re done talking about this issue, means the protest could possibly never end (#protest4life).

I want to thank everyone that sent in questions and listened the morning of the broadcast, but huge shout out to Guilia Forsythe for archiving and posting the audio as well as making a Storify out of the Twitter conversation. This kind of community reaction to work created in #ds106 is what excites and inspires me the most. The collective creative energy of ds106 is definitely more than the sum of its parts. Everyone is always reflecting and building together and I hadn’t previously found a community that was so generous with one another (big Twitter hug for ds106).

So I was inspired to continue the #occupywallstreet conversation by making a set of “Fat Chance” cards reinterpreting the Monopoly Chance cards. There is a set of five so far, and I’m hoping to make a few more. The cards describe issues you might find discussed by people if you spent some time at #occupywallstreet. Most of the people I spoke with were honest with themselves, recognizing that definitive change resulting from the protest might not happen. For example, the demand that big money lose it’s influence over politics seems very unlikely, or “fat chance that’s going to happen.” But the #occupywallstreet crowd answer is, “fat chance we’re stand for the status quo.”

I’m mostly using Photoshop/Illustrator to make these cards, I’ll admit I don’t have the stomach to really stick with GIMP. I’ve been an Adobe user for far to long, and struggle to use other tools. But I’ll force myself to do some more for the sake of supporting open/free tools for ds106.

 

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