Life-Long-Learners

As Sunday midnight fast approaches (perhaps on the West Coast), I find myself documenting and, more importantly, reflecting on the various learning opportunities that I have been engaged in during the first few weeks of the DS106 Spring term for 2013.

While the newbies struggled through DS106 “Boot Camp” and established their own domains and WordPress blogs, I verified that my blog category feeds were being received into “The DS106 flow” and continued on my amazing learning journey.

The Daily Creates (TDC)
Each Daily Create is listed below in two lines. The first line indicates the date, TDC number, and link to the item that I created. The second line, in italics, is the prompt that was used on TDC blog site to initiate the task.

• Jan. 7, 2013 – TDC365 – “DS106 – Daily Create – Air”
  “Crank up the music and make a video showing us your best air guitar action.”
• Jan. 8, 2013 – TDC366 – “DS106 – TDC Birthday #1″
  “The Daily Create is one year old! Share a photo of a gift you have for us.”
• Jan. 9, 2013 – TDC367 – “Creative Application To Storytelling (C.A.T.S.)”
  “Write a poem about cats – Make a poem that paints cats in a glamorous light.”
• Jan. 10, 2013 – TDC368 – “TDC368 – A Blur of Speed”
  “Use camera panning to blur the background behind a moving subject.”
• Jan. 11, 2013 – TDC369 – “Blizzard Warning: Be Prepared With An Emergency Kit”
  “Dig into the oldest files on your computer. Write a story based on the strangest file name you find.”
• Jan 12, 2013 – TDC370 – “Adventure To The Future”
  “Create a video about an item you own that has an unusual story attached to it.”
• Jan. 13, 2013 – TDC371 – “Seven in a row makes one ‘weak’”
  “Write an excuse note for why you didn’t do your Daily Create assignment today.”
• Jan. 14, 2013 – TDC372 – “Favourite Workplace”
  “Take a picture of your favorite place to work (desk, comfy chair, etc.)”
  
• Jan. 15, 2013 – TDC373 – “The Trike Tike”
  “Find nearest over-looked everyday object. Fabricate a story about it being a key part of your childhood.”
• Jan. 16, 2013 – TDC374 – “Learning & Sharing”
  “Take a picture of your favorite thing in the world to do, however simple or complex.
• Jan. 17, 2013 – TDC375 – “Whistling Baby”
  “Draw a picture of one of the first memories you have growing up.”
• Jan. 18, 2013 – TDC376 – “Ben’s Banana Banter”
  “List 20 uses for a banana.”
• Jan. 19, 2013 – TDC377 – “Love is holding hands (even at our age ”
  “Capture love in a photograph. Give it a title.”
• Jan. 20, 2013 – TDC378 – “The Clock Torture”
  “Tell us a pun that will cause the biggest groan.”
• Jan. 21, 2013 – TDC379 – “My “PC” – Pepsi & Computer”
  “Take a photo of the ONE thing you MUST see, do, eat, hear, etc. everyday!”
• Jan. 22, 2013 – TDC380 – “2001: A _ Odyssey, HAL _”
  “Submit a favorite monologue from a movie with every third word removed.”
• Jan. 25, 2013 – TDC383 – “Barometer Falling!”
  “Describe the sky in a single sentence without using any color words.”
• Jan. 26, 2013 – TDC384 – “Tree’s a crowd!”
  “Contre-jour it, make a photo where subject is silhouetted by shooting into bright light.”

Assignments
Ds106 participants are encouraged to complete activities from an extensive data bank of assignments. “As of Jan. 28, 2013 this collection includes 521 ds106 assignments and 4116 examples created from them.” With such a wide choice, individual students can meet course outcomes through varied and unique learning journeys. Each assignment has been given a difficulty rating (from 1 to 5 stars). As the course proceeds, students will be challenged to complete, for example, “15 stars worth of assignments in a particular week”.

Although the DS106 course has just started, I have written the following extensive blog posts and have documented my learning journey as I have improved on the process to create animated GIFs from video clips.

Here’s an outline of the assignments and posts that I have shared. Entries beginning with “DS106″ (in bold face) and ending with a star rating, have a link to the actual assignment on the DS106 web site. Entries immediately following (with the date in bold face) provide a link to my post containing my actual assignment submission. The remaining non-bolded dates and entries provide links to DS106 blog posts that I have written in addition to specific assignments.

• Jan. 7, 2013 – “Get Animated in the New Year”
• DS106 – “GIF Me Again About My Eyes”  (2 stars)
  Jan. 11, 2013 – “The eyes are the windows into the soul”
• Jan. 13, 2013 – “Learning – Motivated by MOOC Madness”
• Jan. 16, 2013 – “Are eight-letter words twice as offensive?”
• Jan. 19, 2013 – “Free Motivational Educational Posters”
• DS106 – Visual Assignment – “Say It Like Peanut Butter”  (3 stars)
  Jan. 27, 2013 – “DS106 Tasks: You Snooze – You Lose!”

Value Added
Ben Rimes (@techsavvyed), who has been actively engaged in DS106 since the summer of 2010, mentioned in one of his posts that he was hoping to join the Educational Technology & Media MOOC, known as #ETMOOC. Furthermore, Alan Levine (@cogdog) who is the Spring 2013 instructor for the DS106 course was instrumental in getting the #ETMOOC “Blog Hub” established so that participants could more easily share their posts.  Thanks to the willingness of these two dedicated individuals to share information about #ETMOOC, I signed up as well. For this reason some of my posts may be written in such a way to appeal to both #DS106 and #ETMOOC participants. However, the key issue is this “Value Added” paragraph is to encourage all participants in both learning environments to share ideas, tips and resources to help one’s readers improve and move along their own learning journey.

aTdHvAaNnKcSe to those who care and share.

Take care & keep smiling

I’m having fun learning how to create animated GIFs with frames extracted from digital video. In fact, with practice, and the support and feedback of my DS106 learning community, I think I am getting better!

I created this animated GIF and then chose my title. The message combination resonates with me on two levels: the primary one which I’ll address now and the more subtle, subliminal suggestion (which I hope you can figure out), I’ll share at the end of this post.

DS106 Task Tips
This post’s title warning “You Snooze – You Lose!”, with its animated GIF, is a reminder to both DS106 participants (and me) to begin work early Monday morning on the current week’s “Daily Creates” and/or assignments. Those who wait until Sunday to complete the majority of projects assigned during that week will be not only frustrated but will miss out on many positive support and learning opportunities.

As the Digital Storytelling DS106 course moves into more participant-selected assignments and projects, I’d recommend the following:

1. Plan out your upcoming week’s work early.
2. Select your first weekly assignment carefully. Pick one that you feel you can accomplish in the least amount of time and, if necessary, with little time spent learning new applications or techniques. Once you have completed your first weekly assignment, you will be motivated and inspired to continue with others.
3. In your blog posts, document your learning journey. Where possible, provide hyperlinks to tips and resources that showcase how you “tweaked” or made the assignment “your own”. Indicate, what you might do differently if you were to attempt this assignment again.
4. Choose your “Daily Creates” with care. As an example, if you are instructed, as a minimum, to “do three ‘Daily Creates’ this week”, do not wait until Friday, Saturday and Sunday to tackle this task. Also, if you are weak using Photoshop (as I am), I might be tempted to bypass the Wednesday challenge asking me to “Design a poster of an action movie starring Julia Child” because I know it will require me to spend more than 20 minutes. However, don’t skip a “Daily Create” hoping that the next one will be easier. In reality, the “Daily Creates” are designed to stimulate your creativity and engage you in your learning adventure. No one appreciates this endeavour better than Norm Wright (from the Spring 2012 DS106 course) who shares more than a year’s worth of each days’ creativity in “All My Daily Creates”.
5. Leave some “percolation time”. In order to be innovative in completing or designing your own assignments, you will need “think time” to explore all aspects of the endeavour before jumping into the task at hand.
6. Investigate the DS106 Handbook for ideas and tips to help you progress, with fewer hassles. The associated links have been compiled from previous DS106 courses and represent the best resources.
7. Invoke Google Reader’s RSS feeds in order to keep up-to-date with blog posts and resources shared by the DS106 learning community.
8. Read other student’s blog posts and provide positive, constructive comments.
9. Connect with other DS106 students (face-to-face or online) so that you have an idea of whom you might like to work with should a collaborative project be assigned.
10. Sign up for Twitter so that you can monitor and reply to DS106-related tweets, which can be filtered, using the hashtags like #ds106, #dailycreate or specific iindividuals like #cogdog. I personally like to use TweetDeck, to organize Twitter feeds, as I can setup individual columns for “All Friends”; “Mentions”; “Search: #ds106″; “Search: #dailycreate”; “Favorites”; etc.
11. Take time to send 140 character tweets (with the #ds106 and/or #dailycreate hashtags) to share your accomplishments. You will be surprised how many of your DS106 colleagues will check out your creativity and provide you with motivational comments.
12. Faithfully read CogDog’s Blog posts and Twitter feeds (@cogdog) so that you are kept up-to-date on the many facets of the DS106 course.
13. Always be generous when scheduling each project’s time estimate. Remember that when using technology, Murphy’s Law states that “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” If you have completed a DS106 assignment in less time than you previously estimated, then you are “laughing”
14. If you leave projects to the weekend you will miss out on the valuable aspect of reading colleagues’ blog posts and commenting. This important step helps build a productive and caring learning community.

Creating My Animated GIF
Without repeating myself, I worked through the basic tasks that I have already documented in my post entitled “The eyes are the windows into the soul. In fact, as someone who does not easily internalize processes, I find that if I document the steps in my learning journey, I can go back to that post whenever I need to repeat the process. In summary, I used these steps:

1. I began, by selecting the YouTube movie trailer “The Mask of Zorro – Trailer”
2. Since I am using an older Windows computer running the XP operating system, I used the PWN YouTube bookmarklet process for downloading the trailer and saved it as a High Quality MP4 file. 
3. Next I used MPEG Streamclip to extract only the clip showing Zorro’s “sword play” near the start of the trailer. I was careful determining the “In ” and “Out” points along the timeline by using my arrow keys to move one frame at a time. Ideally, I wanted the final sword slash to end at a position near where the initial slash began. Such positioning would promote a cleaner, cyclic animated GIF. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a video footage where Zorro uses his rapier in repeated, distinctive “Z” slashing moves, so I did the best that I could in selecting the start and end points of this trimmed video clip.
4. I extracted 16 frames that I imported into GIMP as separate layers. I then followed the detailed steps in the DS106 Handbook link “Creating Animated GIFs with (free) Open Source Software”.

I admit that I do not understand the complexities of GIMP and follow the instructions blindly. However,  having a link to these important instructional documents, always helps me in the future. I know that if I enter “animated GIF” (without quotes) into my right-hand “Search L-L-L Blog” field on my blog, I will find posts explaining how to create animated GIFs. I know that if I scan each post for hyperlinks, I’ll find valuable resources to help me create another animated GIF.

I’ll always like to ask myself … “If you were to repeat this assignment/project, what would you do differently?”. For this activity, I’d like to follow up on Alan Levine’s suggestion to try and reduce the size of animated GIFs. To do so, I would like to see if I could delete some of the 16 frames that I extracted without diminishing the visual appeal of the sword play.

Did you find the subliminal message?
At the start of this post, I suggested that the title “You Snooze – You Lose!” and Zorro’s distinctive, three stroke rapier cut “Z mark”, shared a subtle, subliminal message. One might suggest that the animated GIF, that I created, produces a repetitive pattern of “Z Z Z Z …”. In the English language, the symbol of repeated Zs often means that an individual is snoozing or snoring. Thus Zorro, with his distinctive sword-play, is subtly reinforcing the title message that snoozing or snoring during the DS106 term not only causes the individual to lose out, but perhaps equally important, the DS106 learning and support community loses an important contributing component … You!

Take care & keep smiling

What does one do when time is a critical factor and one is challenged to accomplish two different tasks in two different environments? Well … some might get uptight and vent their frustration, by swearing, using profane, “four-letter words”.

In my case, I chose to focus on common elements that satisfy the needs for both entities. Let me explain. I’m currently enrolled in two different massive, open online courses or MOOCs. This year, I am returning to Digital Storytelling – DS106 and thanks to information shared in this learning community, I signed up for Educational Technology & Media. Both of these MOOCs have certain unique expectations.

For example, in today’s  DS106 “The Daily Create” (#374) assignment, I was asked to “Take a picture of your favorite thing in the world to do, however simple or complex.” At the same time, ETMOOC facilitators are asking participants to “Tell us a little bit about yourself – perhaps, where you’re from, what you do, or what you want to be when you grow up – and let us know what you’d like to gain from #etmooc?”

My challenge is to try to meet both of these tasks without uttering any “four-letter words”. Perhaps one might assume that since I have twice the challenges, from the demands of two different MOOCs, my favourite “four-letter words” should increase or double in character length. That is indeed true. In fact, my favourite pastimes can be best described by the “eight-letter word “learning” followed by its slightly shorter, but equally important task of “sharing”. I trust that these two words are demonstrated in the following picture where I glean information from books, magazines and the Internet and share my findings in my educational blog called “Life-Long-Learners”.

[DS106 - TDC #374: My favourite pastime - Learning & Sharing]

Although I am a retired K-12 educator, I’m still passionate about learning. About a year ago, a good friend and innovative educator, Darren Kuropatwa, suggested that I should sign up for the DS106 MOOC. He felt that the innovative learning style, where one can choose his/her own assignments, would challenge and engage me. Darren felt that I would use my blog posts to reflect on what, and how, I learned and share my journey with others. Furthermore, he knew that I would make connections with other like-minded participants and, through mutually supportive blog comments and tweets, extend my Personal Learning Network (PLN).

When I returned to DS106 this year, Ben Rimes (a talented Michigan educator whom I have never met face-to-face) shared in a blog post that he was about to sign up for #ETMOOC. So when another learning opportunity presented itself, be it in a somewhat serendipitous manner, I signed up.

As a former Mathematics/Computer Science teacher, I was always sharing resources with colleagues throughout our school division and our province. When I became an Education Technology Consultant for the Winnipeg School Division, I decided that the best way to help K-12 teachers and their students harness the power of technology was through a monthly educational newsletter. For 23 years I wrote and edited “Bits and Bytes” whose focus was “to provide educators with tips and techniques to help them integrate technology to enhance learning in K-12 classrooms”.

I believe that my philosophy about sharing and the importance of belonging to a PLN can best be summarized in my previous post, and video, entitled “My PLN: A Teacher’s Treasure”.

One of my favourite quotes, that I re-mixed in my first “Teacher Feature” is by Margaret Fuller, who stated “If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.” I think that as professional educators, we should strive to share our knowledge with others. Today, the Internet makes it so much easier.

In closing, I’ll end with the following two, “four-letter words”:

Take care

Larger Images are available on Brian Metcalfe’s Flickr photostream at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/life-long-learners/

My first DS106 video assignment is a “Digital Story Compilation” in which I was challenged to “Create a video compilation of some of your favorite things you’ve made in ds106″. I titled it “DS106: Thanks for the Memories” because while I was creating this video, I was totally engaged in the process of documenting my new-found experiences in my DS106 learning journey.

I must admit though I was so envious of some of my colleagues who assembled a 3-5 minute video of their creative images, added a soundtrack, uploaded it to YouTube, and quickly moved on to their next video assignment. True, their videos represented their accomplishments and other DS106 students, who shared the learning experience, could view the elements without the need for additional commentary to explain the back story.

By comparison, my video, like my blog posts, tend to favour the longer formats. I am jealous of my colleagues who can write effortlessly and share ideas with an economy of words. Some might consider my style to be somewhat “anal”(ytical). This approach might be reinforced if one knew that I initially attempted the relaxed “voice over” narration and rejected it after several “takes”. As an educator, I just felt uncomfortable “winging it” and recording a narration as the video progressed.  Therefore, I created a Word document with an embedded table which contained both the slide images and their respective narrative “sound bites”. Believe me, after matching images and writing appropriate narration to enhance the video, I have a new-found admiration for the work that goes into video production.

Your “Teacher’s Voice”
However, it was my adult son who raised another aspect of video creation that I had not considered. After listening to my “20 Questions & Answers About DS106” radio show, he provided me with some constructive feedback about my sound-track, when he stated:

Dad … in your narration, you pause too much and your speaking is too slow and deliberate. Radio announcers talk quickly and move right along. I think you seem to be lapsing into your “teacher’s voice”.

Certainly my “radio show” narration was somewhat stilted. In fact, I will warn viewers that even the following “DS106: Thanks for the Memories” video appears to have this same deliberate narrative quality that I, as an educator, tend to use in an instructional setting.

It was this feedback and reflection that caused me to finally ask this very important question:

Who is your audience?

While most DS106 students were designing audio-visual creations, their primary audience was their respective instructor and their supportive DS106 colleagues. Each of these audience members were quite familiar with the DS106 massive, open online course (MOOC), the “Daily Create” activities, and its challenging assignments. These individuals were immersed in the ABC’s of “Always Be Creating” and “Always Be Commenting”.

On the other hand, as a former teacher, who has been sharing educational blog posts for more than two years, I write for a primary audience who are K-12 educators, with my DS106 community an important secondary target. Whereas, my colleagues are creating for an audience who knows the complete DS106 back story, I am sharing with many educators who are not even aware of what the MOOC acronym represents let alone understand the mechanics and learning that goes on within this course. For this reason, I feel the need to explain in more detail so that my blog-following educators can better understand the dynamics, the energy, the fun and most importantly the learning that is taking place within this creative DS106 community. As an educator, I am doing my best to share powerful ideas and creative endeavours that I hope can somehow be adapted to work successfully within the K-12 environment. So perhaps, I am using my teacher’s voice but in many ways, I am still teaching.

I trust that readers will find ideas and learning opportunities within my 18 minute Vimeo video entitled “DS106: Thanks for the Memories“:

DS106: Thanks for the Memories from Brian Metcalfe on Vimeo.

In closing, it seems particularly fitting to share with you Solomon Ibn Gabriol’s five step process for learning and acquiring wisdom:

The first step in the acquisition of wisdom is silence,
the second listening,
the third memory,
the fourth practice,
the fifth teaching others.

Take care & keep smiling

Credits:
-   Flickr – Creative Commons image “Thanks for the memory”
by Leo Reynolds – http://www.flickr.com/photos/lwr/4037019936/

The first Daily Create task in Week 6 of the “Audio” section of my Digital Storytelling DS106 course, challenged us to:

“Tell the story of a place in one ambient audio recording.“

In other words, I am to capture a “sound bite” of background noise and share it with the DS106 learning community using the SoundCloud application.

There is an interesting parallel between the types of Daily Create activities that were assigned during the past “Visual” and the current “Audio” sections of the course.

At the start of the “Visual” section, in which participants were encouraged to take at least one photo a day, the Daily Create activities focused on looking at things differently. The examples below demonstrate how the student is encouraged to take photos which sharpened one’s sense of sight:

• Take a photo that emphasizes the detail of a human hand
• Make a creative photo silhouette by aiming the camera into bright light.
• Take a picture of your feet that shows what kind of day you’re having
• Take a photo where movement of the camera creates an interesting blur effect

In a similar way, today’s Daily Create will help me sharpen my sense of hearing.

I captured the following background sound sample as I crossed a rather busy intersection:

Traffic @ Intersection by Brian Metcalfe

It is amazing to me to begin to hear all the ambient noise that takes place in the  background, that our brains “ignore” as we go about our daily activities.

It certainly looks like this DS106 “Audio” section will provide me with a number of “sound” ideas.

Take care & keep smiling

As the Sunday midnight chimes strike, I find myself once again documenting the various learning activities that I have been engaged in during this past week. Our focus for this week has been on “Design”. During the past seven days, I have focused on the “Design” activities as illustrated below:

The Daily Create
Each Daily Create item is listed below in three lines. The first line indicates the date, TDC number, and link to the image that I submitted to Flickr. The second line is the prompt that was used on TDC blog site to initiate the task. The third line displays my caption in the Italics font within [square brackets]. I hope other DS106 participants might consider adding captions to their images. Furthermore, I encourage readers to use the Comments area to submit your caption suggestions, by TDC #, for my photos.

• Feb. 14 – TDC36 -”‘That’s the last straw!”
  “Take a photo of a food being served or eaten in an unconventional way.”
  ["I'm sorry Madame ... the 1811 Château d'Yquem does not come with a straw."]
• Feb. 15 – TDC37 – Three Sixes ???
  “Take a photograph of a toy in action.”
  ["C'mon ...three sixes ... I only need 600 more points to win at Farkle."]
• Feb. 16 – TDC38 – “21 … and it’s all downhill”
  Take a photo of an object that represents how old you feel.”
  [Life may be at uphill battle but skiing is all downhill! ]
• Feb. 17 – TDC39 – “Cool Bird”
  “Take a photo of a bird today.”
  [This cool weather is "for the birds!"]
• Feb. 18 – TDC40 – “California Dreamin’”
  “Take a photo of someone else’s artwork in an interesting way to make it yours”.
  ["They say ... it never rains in Southern California  ..." ]
• Feb. 19 – TDC41 – “My Best Friend”
  “Take a photo of your most prized possession”.
  ["You can't be 'two tired' to continue ... it's all downhill from here!"]
• Feb. 20 – TDC42 – “Tools of the Trade”
  “Take a photo that represents your current job, or a job that you once had.”
  ["Looks like I pull another all-nighter to get ready for tomorrow's workshop!"]

Design Assignments
During Week #5, participants were encouraged to complete assignments under the “Design Assignment” category. In that each assignment has been given a rating from 1 to 5 stars, participants were asked to complete a minimum of 15 stars during the week.

Here’s an outline of the assignments that I have submitted. Entries beginning with “DS106″ have a link to the actual assignment on the DS106 blog. Entries beginning with a date have links to my created blog post that were submitted for credit based on the difficulty level indicated by the number of stars.

• DS106 – Design – Warning
  – Feb. 14 – Are you looking for a career change? (3 stars)
• DS106 – Design – Animated Movie Poster
  – Feb. 16 – DS106 – Now Available on Blu-ray Disc! (4 stars)
• DS106 – Design – The Big Caption
  - Feb. 16 – DS106 – “So you think you can dance!” (1 star)
• DS106 – Design – Create A Movie Poster For Your Web Site
  - Feb. 18 – Greg Kwiatkowski – A Winning Coach (2 stars)
• DS106 – Design – Minimalize Your Philosophy
  - Feb. 19 – ‘Life-Long-Learning’ – What it means to me (1 of 2 stars)
• DS106 – Design – DS106 Bumper Stickers
  - Feb. 19 – Bumper Sticker: “I’m a DS106 FREE Loader” (2 stars)
• DS106 – Design – Minimalize Your Philosophy
  - Feb. 19 – “Life-Long-Learners: My Minimalist Philosophy (1 of 2 stars)

In addition to completing assignments, I did my best to provide feedback to my fellow DS106 participants through comments to their blog posts, Flickr feedback on “Daily Create” images, as well as communication using Twitter.

In brief, this week presented more challenges, more discoveries, more creativity, and more learning!

Take care & keep smiling

Wow … what a rush! Even though I am retired, I must have invested 30 hours or more this week learning, creating, and sharing as I progressed along my Digital Storytelling DS106 journey. I am “pumped” by the learning opportunities, however my wife says that perhaps “addicted” might be a more appropriate adjective.

Teachable Moment

The Daily Create” (TDC) this week, focused on photography. Following up on Alan Levine’s tip, I have decided to create a mini-story about each of my photos by adding a caption.In past, I have taken cartoon images and cropped out the captions. I have then projected just the cartoon image, asking pairs of students to create new captions. After discussion of class captions, the original cartoon and its caption are revealed. Class members then vote on the best student captions and they are often amazed at how innovative their captions can be. Remember, cartoons tell stories in a very creative and economical manner.

The Daily Create
Each Daily Create item is listed below in three lines. The first line indicates the date, TDC number, and link to the image that I submitted to Flickr. The second line is the prompt that was used on TDC blog site to initiate the task. The third line displays my caption in the Italics font within [square brackets]. I hope other DS106 participants might consider adding captions to their images. Furthermore, I encourage readers to use the Comments area to submit your caption suggestions, by TDC #, for my photos.

• Feb. 6 – TDC29 – Upside-Down Windows
  “Make a photo of something upside down that is never seen this way”.
  ["Yes ... Customer Service ... It just booted up this way ... honestly!"]
• Feb. 7 – TDC30 – Buried Treasure
  “Share an image of a place that you lose things in your house”.
  [Some silver ... but not exactly "pieces of eight"!]
• Feb. 8 – TDC31 – “High” on Adventure
  “Create a photograph that represents the happiest or most memorable moment in your life”.
  [This rarefied air puts a smile on everyone's face.]
• Feb. 9 – TDC32 – “Grandparent & Good Times”
  “Make a photo that represents something you aspire to do or be one day.”
  [Know that you are important ... in the life of a child!]
• Feb. 10 – TDC33 – “Confusion Corner”
  “Confusion – Take a picture of confusion”.
  [Officer ... Are you sure I'm going the wrong way on a one-way street?]
• Feb. 11 – TDC34 – “Hand-i-Work”
  “Take a photo that emphasizes the detail of a human hand”.
  [Can I give you a hand?]
• Feb. 12 – TDC35 – “Tat’s Fake”
  “Photograph your own or someone else’s cool tattoo”
  [No Dear ... it is NOT permanent ... really ... really!]

Visual Assignments
During Week #4, participants were encouraged to complete assignments under the “Visual Assignment” category. In that each assignment has been given a rating from 1 to 5 stars, participants were asked to complete a minimum of 10 stars in the week.

Here’s an outline of the assignments that I have both created and submitted. Entries beginning with “DS106″ have a link to the actual assignment of the DS106 blog. Entries beginning with a date have links to my created blog post that were submitted for credit based on the difficulty level indicated by the number of stars.

• DS106 – Yam Yarn
  – Jan. 17 – I ‘yam’ having so much fun learning! (2 stars)
• DS106 – Image With A Message
  I created this assignment and shared it with the Ds106 organizers. Interestingly, when it was approved for others to complete, I took on a certain sense of ownership. As such, I try to provide comment feedback to all whose submit creations under this “Image With A Message” assignment.
  - Jan. 25 - Teacher Feature #15 – The Daily Create (1 star)
  - Feb. 10 – What do I aspire to do or be one day … (1star)
• DS106 – Splash the Color
  - Feb. 8 – Splash the Color – It’s all downhill from here (2 stars)
• DS106 – ReCaptcha Illustrated
  - Feb. 11 – ‘ReCaptcha Illustrated’: A Unique Assignment (2 stars)
• DS106 – The Four Icon Challenge
  - Feb. 12 – Puzzle: What book, movie or historical event? (3 stars)

All of this engaged learning was reinforced by motivating and constructive criticism that was shared through Twitter and blog post comments.

All in all … a very satisfying week of learning.

Take care &  keep smiling