Last spring while teaching ds106 with my York students, I was introduced to the ‘blitz assignment’ which asked students to make and share something under the time constraints of the short class. I enjoyed both the spontaneity of this type of assignment as well as the opportunity to watch my students work on a project with little direction.

So for the first day, I concocted a #ds106shadowpuppet assignment which asked students to shoot five shadow puppets and upload them to Flickr (there is a five image minimum for your images to become searchable). They were to tag them and then choose a favorite to Tweet out with the hashtag #ds106shadowpuppet.

It was a great mix of learning – discovering a creative shadow, digital tool futzing, and most importantly showcasing the power of aggregation. The twitter stream and Flickr feed both started to come alive, and thanks to Alan Levine and the awesome ds106 community, others began to jump in as well.

I love some of the stories discovered in shadow:

A couple groovy ones from Mynheer.

And some rockin’ with Yaisy

And Nawas Gafar killed with this beautiful silhouette (ok not a shadow but thematically sound, and ds106 always favors those that creatively discover how to break rules.)

And I’m planning to continue  this semester with GNA Garcia’s advice:

[tweet https://twitter.com/DrGarcia/status/240290942991622145]