The End of the Journey to the Center of the Internet

[youtube width=”580″ height=”470″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Yrway2OCEw[/youtube]

Fellow friends of ds106, I am lucky to be alive. It’s been two weeks since being attacked by Prof. Oliver during the taping of my final reflection on teaching ds106 this semester. It was good fortune that despite all the blood loss, he somehow missed my vital organs.

It was a trying time managing Prof. Oliver’s bumbling Jacques Clouseau-like start to the semester. I’m truly sorry for the confusion that this probably caused as students were trying to first build their blogs. There were a two videos made by Prof. Oliver, one in which Jim Groom did his best to help kick things off, and a second in which Prof. Oliver while trying to demonstrate WordPress tools fell off a cliff. Both were a bit of a disaster and I need to work harder on my live broadcasting skills.

Thankfully Prof. Oliver landed in the hospital, heavily sedated for what seemed like the duration of the course. This gave me the opportunity to take over the live broadcasting and led to some nice discussions about design with Chris Stein, foley artistry with Alex Polaris, and video animation with Daniel Phelps. But probably my favorite effort was the broadcasting of “Educational Horror Stories” live to ds106radio during class with my students. I think it was a real eye opener for them to be able to release live on the radio, and interact with people from around the world. Special thanks goes to Tim Owens for posting three of the early videos, and to Alan Levine and Giulia Forsythe for doing some ds106radio archival work. I really need to step up my broadcasting setup to do archiving already!

Prof Oliver reappeared one last time (before almost killing me), giving a speech on higher educational horrors with him having truly gone off the deep end. But his pre-recorded monologue approach to telling his story seemed more successful than a live broadcast, so I felt good for him about that.

Overall it was quiet a semester teaching ds106 for the first time – exhilarating, stressful, and a truly transforming experience for me as a teacher. I’d only spent the previous summer as an open participant in Jim Groom’s DS106 “Summer of Oblivion.” So, Jim was really gracious and trusting to allow York College/CUNY to host a course this past fall. I know I’ve a long way to go when it comes to hosting an ‘open course.” So I’m excited about improving my teaching next semester with Jim, Alan, and Scottlo.

Finally, great work DTLT on the new ds106 site design, I love the new assignment bin and the new tutorial tagging system. A have a number of tutorials in mind and plan to get cracking at them soon!


Posted

in

, ,

by

Comments

2 responses to “The End of the Journey to the Center of the Internet”

  1. scottlo Avatar

    You are amazing MBS! In addition to being captivating and entertaining, this short video packs a powerful and subversive message.

    I can’t wait to see what you and your CUNY students come up with next semester. I hope Prof. Oliver would reconsider and give the ds106 community one more chance.

  2. […] Washington (UMW). And a year since I took my first York College students through the experience (a crazy humbling one for myself). In the Fall 2011 semester UMW decided not to formally run a ds106 course, but Jim Groom and […]