For week 14 our main objective was our video project. Below I have attached a link to view our final video project. For my project I decided to work with Andrew Johnson and Jackson Beale. We incorporated our created AI characters as well as Dr. Oblivion. Our video explains the pros and cons of using AIs from the perspective of Leo Storm, Himothy, Johnathan, and Dr. Oblivion. Alongside our pros and cons, we also include our overall opinion on AIs and the usage of them. To create our video, we used iMovie. Our first step was to find pictures to incorporate into our video. Once we found our pictures, we laid out the sequence of when each picture would appear. After we had all of our pictures laid out, we recorded our audio in iMovie talking about our opinions and pros and cons of using AIs. We did have some trouble when making our video. One main issue was overlapping of audio, to solve this we had to go back and space out each different audio piece, so that there was no overlapping. Another issue was uploading our video to WordPress. The file was too large to upload, hence why we had to revert to using a link to display our video. However, despite this trouble I think our finished product came out great in the end. Overall, this project was a great learning experience. I got to use all the different skills I’ve learned throughout the course of DS106 such as working with audio, images, and many more. I hope y’all enjoy the video as we worked really hard to create this. Until next time!
What a crazy last 6 hours it’s been. I just finished my final project and it definitely did not go as I expected. Last week for my weekly summary, I detailed how I was going to do a commentary video on some aspect of AI and the advantages / disadvantages. While doing the rest of my piled work for the week before finals, I thought about topics that I wanted to hone in on, and it was definitely the use of ChatGPT and other forms of AI assistance in assignments. I did not have any time until today to knock it all out, so I prepared myself to finish my creation in one sitting starting at noon today. Not the greatest decision, but it has been a trend during my DS106 career, and I have made some of my best works with this last minute sprint towards the finish line, so I was expecting the same here (spoiler, it did not go as expected).
While watching some YouTube this morning, I stumbled upon an edited video full of jump cuts and memes that I used to enjoy watching back in high school. I drew some inspiration from this blessing from the YouTube algorithm and decided to make one of my own. My intent was to create a POV story about a student who doesn’t have a job lined up, and is looking for his first opportunity. However, he stumbles upon ChatGPT and uses it throughout his schoolwork and his interview prep, which leaves him with no actual knowledge and coding ability. It was meant to be a commentary on harmful AI use in computer science students. At the end, I was going to add 3-4 minutes of recorded commentary answering the question of whether or not AI is beneficial or harmful to students.
Around 8pm, I started to write up a script for this 3 minute commentary at the end of my video that would tie all of the knots up and bring the audience to a good conclusion. By 9:30pm, I’d written up a solid few pages on this topic to be read into my mic, recorded, and then overlaid with some various clips that relate to the topic.
This was when I messed up.
I was writing on my Windows Notepad, the default one that is preloaded on every Windows computer. I usually never do this and write all of my documents on Google Docs, but since I had so many tabs open for ClipChamp, OBS, downloading music and clips, along with other programs, I didn’t want to open another tab for Google Docs, and thought that since I’d just be reading off of it and discarding it, I would just write it on the Notepad.
Of course, my computer gave me the blue screen of pain and suffering for the first time in my ownership of this PC, and wiped all of my tabs, and most importantly, my script. My edited video was saved into the Cloud via Clipchamp, but the script for my commentary was completely wiped.
I tried various methods to restore the lost text file, but it seemed as though the system cache was already wiped due to the reset. I tried to rewrite all of it, but with my 4 hours of sleep and the deadline fast approaching, I had no willpower left to recreate a script that I’ve been writing for almost 2 hours, and I didn’t want to give the SparkNotes version in my final video, either.
Completely demoralized, I came to the conclusion to publish my video as is, and detail these events in my summary post instead. I think that narratively, my project is missing a conclusive answer and purpose due to not having the commentary at the end. I was going over some DS106 examples of how a few of my daily creates were AI generated, and how many aspects of DS106’s topic of the semester being AI contradicted the entire essence of the class, as well as going over some other computer science examples of how AI is used in classes as a distraction to student learning.
While I cannot share these insights anymore with the limited time that I have remaining, I will go more in depth about the video and audio editing that I that made me jog my creative digital skills that I accumulated throughout the semester.
I used OBS to record myself going through a scripted sequence of searching on Reddit for advice and using ChatGPT to solve a LeetCode problem, which is just a practice website for coding interviews. I made sure that each click towards the next phase wasn’t too hasty, as I needed some time to overlay memes and audio clips to create the edit.
I then added this clip as the main background, and searched up various small videos and images that would add comedic effect to the story. A lot of the memes are from the mid 2010s, and the background music choice was also free music from Kevin Macleod that dominated YouTube for a long time.
The most difficult part about this was layering each clip and audio file to match the timing of each sequence. Also, having to track all of the different files in my arsenal became a bit of a hassle when the end product became almost 30 different files put together.
Most of the apps I used throughout the semester were used for this project. Without all of the experience I gained throughout DS106, this video probably wouldn’t have been possible.
I’m a little jumbled in the head right now from all of the stuff going on right now, but hopefully this was a comprehensive enough summary about my process. Looking forward to my conclusion to DS106 next week.
For week 14, my group’s main goal was to complete the Final Video Project incorporating our AI Characters from ds106. It was a very exciting project and we are happy to have it done for our viewers. In this process, my classmates Andrew Poon and Jackson Beale helped formulate a script as well as questions that we used to put together all the pieces. Throughout the video, we wanted to share the pros and cons of AI in the work environment. That said, we used Dr. Oblivion to answer questions regarding the pros and cons to see if he had any input on the case at hand. Our group used iMovie to create the video as well as the voice-over feature to records our words. We did have some issues along the way such as uploading it to my blog page, but we figure it would be best to just link the video so that y’all could tune in. Overall, it was great working with my peers and to finish the semester off strong with our final project.
I am so glad I took this class. Editing and creating videos were always in the back of my mind, but nothing really pushed me to do it until I joined this class. This final project made me do more research and put more effort than I thought I could’ve. I used multiple software to make this video a reality. I recommend ElevenLabs to everyone, since their AI voices are very close to real-life, since you can alter to range and emotion of the voices. I used OpenShot to edit the entire video and it was easy to use for beginners. I had practice with it when doing previous projects. The audio was created with free sfx and my voice through Audacity. Overall, I recommend this class to anyone who wants to enter the digital space.
I put a lot of thought, planning, and effort in making this video, so I hope you all enjoyed it and learned something from it as well!
My thought process:
I wanted to incorporate and highlights parts of my character, myself, and the AI theme of this course. My character and I both love coffee, therefore, the setting of this video is in a cafe. I also snuck in my favorite iced latte recommendation in there. Additionally, I have background music that’s playing nonstop in the back, giving it more of a coffee shop vibe. Lastly, the topic of discussion is AI, in particularly some pros and cons and examples of each as well to make it a more informative video. I wanted to make this interactive as well so I created a GoogleForm where at the end viewers can visit the form and list of their pros and cons based off of their experiences with AI.
I incorporated audio, text, videos, sound, AI, my character, editing, and an interactive aspect throughout my project. I cut the text to fit the clip where the audio was spoken. However, I wanted to to generate the text as the audio played, but I could not get that to align properly and work. Besides that, there isn’t anything that I wish I could change or do better, I am pretty happy with how it all came out together!
To wrap up this week, I opted out of the daily creates just to give myself more time to focus on this final project. Now I’m off to view all of my classmates projects!
I ended up making my project update on Tuesday, I think, as I ended up getting a lot of work done that night that I wasn’t anticipating doing. There’s not really a lot to say about this, just that I was really happy to have gotten so much done so soon, and my group had also gotten most of their work done as well! We were doing great!!
I talk about it much more in the actual post, but I was very pleased with this. I used so much of what I learned to do my parts in this, and my groupmates did an amazing job as well, and we really made something really cool!!
I’m grateful to have finished this in the time that I did. I was nervous that I’d be really late with mine due to having the flu last week, but I managed! And it’s not even 4 pm on Friday and we’re done, so I get to call it a day early. I’m so happy about that.
Very happy with my results, and I hope you all are too!
Overall, this week was fun!! I didn’t think I had much difficulty with my parts in the projects, and I was able to create good and interesting parts for our AI uprising video using what I have learned throughout the semester. I’m very grateful!!
I fear this may be my final weekly summary, or maybe there is one next week, so this is a little sad . . . but I’m grateful for all that I have learned!!
The final project is complete!! Rishi and I spent the entire week wrapping up and perfecting our final project. Unfortunately, I have been quite busy finishing my honors capstone project, so I was unable to provide a progress report earlier this week. Because we wrote the script last week, we spent the most of this week putting together the actual audio show. Rishi and I used eleven labs to develop the AI voiceover for our course characters based on the script we prepared last week. We experimented with numerous voices to see which one best suited our characters; Rishi ended up utilizing a customized voice, while I utilized Callum’s. After placing our scripts into eleven labs with the voices we chose, we imported those audio files into Audacity. After that, we added bumpers, commercials, and music to various parts of the show, resulting in a radio show lasting around 10 minutes. I’m quite delighted with our final project! We completed the project by uploading it to SoundCloud. Give it a listen below and let me know your thoughts.
How does this project represent what I have learnt this semester, you may ask? Because AI was central to so much of this course, Rishi and I wanted this project to be as well. We put together a script underlining the benefits and cons of AI, and then added AI voiceover (who were our course characters) to the already AI-themed show. I knew very little about digital, audio, and video technologies before taking this class, therefore I learned a lot. It’s quite cool to me because I uploaded several audios to SoundCloud and multiple videos to YouTube, demonstrating the variety of things I conducted throughout the semester. Using audacity, eleven labs, soundcloud, and developing a script combines a lot of what I’ve learned throughout this semester. I have learned that when you’re given an assignment, look for tools and devices that can help you do it better. I want to thank digital storytelling for educating me so much about the digital world!
My favorite part of the week was completing the final project. I must admit that completing the last assignment for a class always feels great. Now that I’m nearing the end of my academic career, with just one week remaining, it’s kind of sad that I’m finishing up all of my classes for the last time at UMW. Nonetheless, it felt fantastic to finish this final project, knowing I didn’t have much work remaining.
Honestly, I would not change anything at all. I believe I accomplished each task to the best of my abilities. I do not have any questions right now. Right now, everything is completed correctly, thus my work is not facing any serious challenges.
This week we were asked to complete our final project which I did complete on time. I was worried that I would not be able to get it in on time because I am currently driving from Virginia to California; however, it was done a day early!
I made sure to do my updates along the way of this two-week project and I am glad that I did not wait until the last minute to complete it. It took a lot of effort and time to create my show.
I did six different posts working up until my completion. If you would like to view or read about my experience, please click on the button below to view.
I chose not to do any day creates because I have been busy driving and packing that I barely had time to sleep. I am excited that I was able to take my work on the go and still experience my adventures.
I can’t believe it, we’ve reached the final weekly summary. As you can imagine, the workload for my project took a decent amount of time. I do think my project did a good job of adding in different elements throughout the course while still being creative. In particular, my project included audio editing, video editing, and a little bit of graphic design. As always, the final week of class is the most work intensive, so juggling this project while managing all of my other assignments was a bit difficult. I am glad, however, that I was able to get this done a day early because I couldn’t have been able to finish all of the time needed if I had started tomorrow. You can find my final project here. While writing the script and the story for this assignment was the most difficult, I am always surprised by how this class unleashes my inner creativity. I am still surprised by how crazy my story ended up being and how each of the different endings are so different. I hope that all of the different endings give people incentive to finish each of the different storylines.
