Month: February 2015

Eastside Audio Blitz Week 1- behind

by

The week went by quickly and I have fallen into the behind category. My week 6, 7, and spring break I have charted a little differently as an open course learner than the path of the UMW cohorts in #noir106. That has proven more challenging. I really have to set up my own markers and targets.

First of all – the #noir106 cohorts are rockin! Wow – so many great creations in design and audio. And a huge surge in community connectedness. Usually about week 6 in an online course the wall hits you in the face – but this cohort saw a wall and said ” We are going over it!”

The instructor led sections have required everyone to comment on at least 10 others blogs, soundclouds, flikr etc. as a requirement this week and next. I have done that already and haven’t been tracking where I go. I did some shout outs in my summary of unit 5. Since I am not tracking points – I am skipping the listing this summary – but you should see me on the comment pages. 🙂 Sometimes I spend more time reading and learning from those than doing my own assignments. 🙂

Special thanks to the UMW students who did check out my work and offered suggestions and comments.

I spent the first part of this week viewing others posts and work (M-Tu). I then got caught up with rooting for everyone to find a group and get going on their team work. Watching the process was interesting and it was great to see the increase in connectedness and sharing. By then it was late in the week and I was ignoring audio and spent time on design for the audio.

Again – I am working through this learning to become better skilled to create family stories. In week 5, I chose my Dad as my character to focus on for assignments. The other side road I am taking is that I am not part of a group for a radio show. I did find a #4life group that was taking on open course 106 participants, but I wasn’t sure if my life and schedules would allow me to carry my weight in a group.  So I have decided to create an “audio event” independently that will follow most of the radio show specifics. I also am building it around my goal of family stories.

This week I created my Personalized Learning Path in writing to see if that would help me stay focused on track. It does – but only if I go back to it and use it!

Some of the assignments I completed during this week are: (you can click on the links to see the assignment specifics and process)

A logo for Eastside.

Eastside Logo

A poster to promote and give a visual design to the audio event. This took some time, but I really enjoyed it and I learned many new things. I did put out a version when I hit the wall and didn’t know what to do or what missing. That is the great thing about the online community. Within an hour I had messages and suggestions which were enough to get me to look at things differently and acted as a huge boost in pushing me to go back and improve. It is that balance of independence and community that creates higher outcomes and makes the learning fun and satisfying.

EastsideRadioPoster

Theme song for Eastside.

This poster is part of the package for the audio event – but was done as part of week 5-design.

Poster: Minimal Design

This puts me behind the cohorts. My rational is I will be working on things while they are on spring break – so I have 1.5 days for every day they have to get things done.

On to the next unit/week!

 

Eastside Theme song……well almost

by

This is v1.0 of the theme song for Eastside and “Jerry”. It is only version 1.0. I still need to find some sounds to add to the music.

I didn’t have a character or person to focus on the unit right before this one. Others who are on the #noir106 journey established their characters in unit 1. The idea of the character or theme from the beginning makes a lot of sense in traveling this ds106 path.

I began with lots of analyzing where in the time of the life of my Dad the story will take place. I have been lost in 1953-56 high school year books, photo albums and memories. The other wall I kept hitting was whether this is an intro bumper, a theme song, or a promo. Because I am not really doing a radio show I get caught up in radio show focus instead of how I will use these. I will probably still use this theme for part of his story. It has brought to light that what I really need is an intro bumper to tell who the story is about. A next audio assignment will be to do something as an intro bumper.

I could have chosen to do something that was from the late 50’s – but that reminded me of Happy Days (the TV Show) and didn’t seem to fit. My Dad loved music – all kinds. His records and CDS and the music channels on cable, the radio he would set up when we would go on vacation in northern Wisconsin each year.

A mix of all his favorites would probably sound like a strange mix. I decided to stay focused on the Eastside story and him as a handsome young man navigating new adulthood in the late 50’s. Determining what that sound would be had me listening to all sorts of things – and boy can you go on a tangents and find some neat things you weren’t looking for – but they eat up your time!

One of his favorites in music was Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. I decided to take one of their songs and remix it.

Taste of Honey was the song I chose. I remember it playing on the record player when I was a kid . It was way too peppy and dance like for a theme. I worked with the speed of the clips and slowed them down to get a different sound. I also cut portions out to keep it under 1.5 minutes. In trying to get it to sound like it was one song and not something chopped up, I used WAH WAH to blend sounds, the envelope and lots of adjusting, and fade in and fade out.

Other tools I used were normalize and noise reduction. After the noise reduction, I had to go back and increase the sound decibel. Normalize got rid of the clipping. Noise reduction softened the recording sounds. Increasing the decibel meant I could hear the product without cranking my sound up all the way.

The UNDO command became my best friend  but still turned on me at times! The part I haven’t done is add some other sounds yet. That will be version 1.x-2.

After a good 5 hours of tweaking  – I called it version one.

As for ds106/noir106 I don’t think this hits the targets others are going towards. But for my learning plan, it did keep me in Audacity, in audio editing, and in building that skill and understanding so I am going to call it a success.

 

 

Hot Man of Eastside

by

 

EastsideRadioPoster

Design work for Unit 6/7 – Create a Poster/Logo for character and radio show

Working on a design poster for announcing the audio creation of learning units 6/7. My audio event will be a part of the story of my character – Jerry. Location of the story is on the Eastside of Milwaukee.  I chose this photo for a few reasons – he looks handsome and alluring – who wouldn’t want to tune in? It helps keep this short chapter of the story somewhat in a #noir theme. Something about cigarettes isn’t it?

I brought the Eastside colors in thru use of orange and gray/black. Enough to add some punch, but still keep the black and white feel of the photo graph. I used the heavier saturation for the large E to balance out the orange block on the other side. The lower edge of the E is eye level with the subject to take the viewer’s eye from title to face. Teh eye then should travel down the arm to the ds106 radio tag. Any feedback on placement effect or tweaks welcome.

jerryposterfilterednoiseThis next shown version I added a noise filter to soften the photo. Playing with filters yet as another extension of PS. May need to go in and brighten the orange again for this to work.

Prior to feedback from others, the poster had a halo effect and still looked a little choppy and should we say – “photoshopped”. Using some input from others I was able to go in and use more tools, broaden my depth into PS and come up with the poster at the beginning of this post.

Here is the first keeper that was put out for feedback.

Hot man of Eastside - ds106 poster

Another version I considered was to make it bold and use a stronger background – but I am leaning towards the above example as more effective. Some edge work needs to be done to clean up if the one below would be used. I abandoned it at this stage and began work on the above option when it didn’t feel like it was working.

ds106 Poster

Now time to start focusing on audio. Intro and exit bumpers and theme song.

#ds106 Personalized Learning Plan Unit 6-7

by
cow
Cow – 2014 by KOnarheim Acrylic

As an open course participant I design my own customized learning plan. Does this mean I create all the assignment requirements and criteria and go willy nilly into learning. NO! What it entails is me reflecting on my strengths and weaknesses and the guidance and framework of the course and community to decide what I need as a learner to advance. The open course (and even the facilitated course #noir106) offer guidance and successful building blocks as a framework for learning practices in new skills in alignment with a final standard or outcome.

My process;

  1. Self reflection and looking at earlier feedback and/or assessment data  on work completed. Self assessment of skills for suggested growth and development to identify needs or wants. I can do this independently or through question and inquiry of community members, facilitators or people who offer to mentor.
  2. Reviewing framework of Headless ds106 and #noir106 facilitated group assignments and goals. How do they align or begin to add a thread or shape to my own personal goals (in this instance – how do I develop skills for being able to use the boxes of photos and artifacts (content) from family to create digital stories of our history as a family that someone might actually view and enjoy as well as not lose what makes us special – This goal is almost a tangent from a post by Alan Levine about old technology access – “It’s 2015. I’m Going to Make a HyperCard Stack.” How do we make sure others know how we got to the present to continue towards a future?
  3. Goal Setting – create my goals for a specified time. In this case Units 6-7 (and a week of spring break)
  4. Put into written form the customized path of tasks and learning practice to meet the goal(s) set.
  5. Use the ds106 Assignment Bank and #noir106 Wk 6-7 requirements for constructed guidance and ideas for learning and creations. (side note – in a K12 classroom this could be the lesson plan data base for students – everyone does not need to do water studies or biographies at the same time. My view of personalized learning as teachers helping students learn how to learn and become their own lesson planners using the resources and guidance of an expert. If K12 gets this right – think of all the adults who will naturally fall into being independent learners instead of UNlearning so much or doing things as they have always been done because they know nothing else. How creative would the be and what would the world look like? Maybe more caring and responsible? I can only hope that we might find out some day)
  6. Customize assignments to fit within my context – such as – I will not create a noir radio bumper, but an intro and ending bumper related to my family member character for use in audio and future video. Another example: not a Noir poster, but a poster/logo for my family member for a specific time in life or in general that will become their visuals out all the stories created.
  7. Document,reflectby posting to this blog as my evidence of learning and process.
    1. Post iterations, task completions, reflections and the final outcomes. It is important for sharing and feedback to post the steps as well as stay on track in my customized path. Otherwise project creep will easily set in. Each learning practice is a piece of a greater whole at this point.
    2. it help others who create their own paths by example and ideas
    3. Sharing thru social networks (ie. Twitter) will give feedback and engagement to push my work farther and greater outcomes.
  8. Share final creations with others outside of “working network” for feedback or examples for others to use in their own learning. (could be as a model or as a what NOT to do. Doesn’t matter for my learning if others can use it in some way to advance on their own in their way. Either way the work makes a difference somehow to someone.)

Struggles:

I am still struggling with the template of my customized learning plan. Academically I know it needs certain sections so that this all holds together. Traditional templates have strong points and value, but also seem to constrain me and send me back to traditional system assumptions and criteria. I am also not far enough along to analyze what is working and what is not as effective. I am leaving open that the learning plan format or frame changes each unit at this point and will summarize and decide later within the ds106 structure what was most helpful and kept me tracked as an independent learner on the learning continuum.

While the #noir106 cohort is busy in group collaboration creating their radio shows and then taking a spring break, I will be busy creating my audio products and pulling them together for my character/family. My group collaboration will be in dropping in on the #noir`106 creations as fresh ears and eyes for critical friend feedback if asked (or not), while learning from the groups design, audio and storytelling techniques.

I have pondered most of my week away along with other life activities – time to get this down on paper and move forward!

 Learning Plan Unit 6-7 

30% – Really? Only 10 wks left?

by

Time is flying by! 30% of the framed structure and suggested timeline of this ds106 course is now history for me. 5 weeks wow!

Unit 5 focused on Design. The topic that resonated with many who are on the path and has generated some awesome creations.

12 Stars total was the goal for the unit – plus 3 daily creates. My daily creates for this week were non #ds106 creating home decor and paint choices as my daughter is closing on a new home at the end of the month. Photoshop came in handy for inserting her belongings and trying out new colors, fabrics and textures. So another perk of an open course participant – altering the daily creates. I ended up doing a few, but late. Better next week is the plan.

Here are the assignments I created in Unit 5:
Design Assignment 313

reverese2Animating a movie poster.  4.5 Stars.
This was creating an animated GIF. In an early unit I created a few animated GIFs. This time I made it more complex and pushed in using features in photo shop that I had never even opened before. I struggled in deciding if I would use GIMP or PS. I settled on PS mostly because I have the software and wanted to make use of it. This poster came up in a search as NOIR, but it is a recent film. For the purposes of this assignment it had elements that made sense to me for animating. Still pushing me to try more, but not so complex that I would suffer learning thru complete failure. this took some time and went through a few iterations before coming to the product above. I don’t think I would have been able to tweak and improve on it without community feedback. No one gave me a specific answer- which is great, but the back and forth conversations, tweets, and idea sharing helped me see things I missed or had not considered as well as prompted me to go beyond input provided as well. I am pretty proud of the last iteration. The hard part is to not keep just making gifs! You get hooked.

I ran into a few issues with getting the gif to run in wordpress- but the community quickly answered and redirected. AWESOME!

Minimalist Movie Poster – Character Inspired 3.5 Stars

Queen Tillie and The Rabbi

Poster: Minimal Design

I am finding wisdom in the themed aspect of the cohorts. The headless course is well structured and provides a great learning experience. The theme aspect, this time period cohort studying Noir Film within a ds106 framework has participants carrying a character they developed throughout some of the assignments. I did not hook up with #noir106 until after they had completed the writing unit and did not create a character. It really became clear how useful a character would be to tackle assignments. Keeping assignments interesting, but also allowing focus on the real skills and not trying to think of context or content from scratch each time.

I decided to develop a character. I am using my Dad. My future #ds106 #4life will be creating stories out of family content of photos, video, artifacts. So I decided I would start with him in this learning process. I will take liberty and embellish the truth at times, but he will be my character.

Jerry as my subject – I created a poster of a book that could be a movie written by the class president and class thug remembering the glory years of growing up and high school on the Eastside of Milwaukee. My Dad was on the football team. The poster came together in thought and design quickly with using my context and content. I think that was easier than trying to think of something new for a movie that already existed.

Learning By Design – Using Design and Visual images to understand content. 3.5 stars as listed – I bumped my version up to 5 stars!

Sketchy Dr. Groom on Assignment

This assignment was a blast! Time consuming, sometimes frustrating, but definitely got the problem solving and creative juices flowing. I wanted to do sketch noting and a RSA on a budget type of creation. I went through some prep in reading, looking into different ways to create and experimented with a few things. That took about a half day overall if added up. I again used Photo shop to use more features available. I also went back to Audacity to continue with more sound editing and features so that I could include in this creation. Using the Groom is missing theme provided some light-hearted and fun content for use as well. I think with the addition of audacity and creating the animation video it is worth the extra boost in stars.

Some of my favorites from others this week:

Most of my favorites from this week came from being able to see them on the Twitter feed. The visuals, the 140 characters or less, the ability to keep a column of the hashtags makes it so efficient to pop around and see great work. I went back to the blog post roll in the Noir106 site. While it is helpful it seems much more tedious and less interesting to find and view work that others have created and posted. Many more clicks, waiting for things to load etc. Besides a title there really isn’t much to draw one in to explore like there is on Twitter.

My plea to other ds106/noir106 participants.

SHOUT OUT YOUR WORK WHEN YOU POST VIA TWITTER AND USE THE HASHTAGS!

You will be amazed how it will connect and help your work when others can engage easily and provide critical friend feedback and support. Don’t be shy! SHOUT OUT!

Groom on Assignment and challenges from Burtis and Bond to use assignments with Groom as a subject seemed to pull the community together around a common topic and showing off their design skills. It was great to begin to see new avatars on the Twitter feed. I am also looking forward to Monday and taking some time to look thru the website feed to see which design assignments others chose and what their creations turned out to be.

This photo shop hack by J. Law was classic! Great job Groom does look a little schizoid here doesn’t he?

GroomShining

Brian Christensen used the Godfather as his Groom poster spoof. I loved these movies when they came out and actually read the books! – maybe that is why I was attracted to this creation.

Check out his soundcloud sitcom song by Brian Goulet – Brilliant!

Mia Boleis has a very sophisticated and elegant poster going on.

Some terrific work by Landon Epperly http://landonepp.com. I think he will be showing us a thing or two of greatness over the next few weeks. Take a look at his work so far.

And I love the wit, humor and intelligence of Emily Bostaph! I am a fan!

Too many others to mention here – but I will stop by your posts if I see them in Twitter. Keep sharing!

My DAILY CREATES: 

Creative Hands

tdc1129 Creative Hands

Super Power tc 1130: Home Design

tdc1130 Super Power

Play with Your Food: tdc1134

tdc1134

Also did a quick animated gif in honor of @mdvfunes birthday Feb. 15.

maridannbd2

It has been a jammed week with design but fun! Closing this week off by dinner on Sunday and relaxing for the evening – at least that is the plan!. Glad to see more participation in the social networks from others and hoping it increases.

What will week 6 bring?

css.php