I decided to watch the AI-related movie Iron Man. The artificial intelligence (AI) in the Iron Man film is J.A.R.V.I.S. (Just A Rather Very Intelligent System). Although I have already seen this Marvel film, it seems to get better and better every time I see it. This movie holds a particular place in my heart because I was just a kid when I first saw Iron Man with my dad and was in awe of everything that he was capable of. I think part of the reason I love Marvel so much now is because this was the first Marvel movie I ever watched! It never gets old seeing him construct his first Iron Man suit while under terrorist captivity. Needless to say, this was only the first of his several recognizable Iron Man outfits that the world has grown to love. Growing older has made me even more of an admirer of Robert Downey Jr.’s portrayal of Iron Man; nobody plays the character more clever and witty than him. This particular film has a significant part in the Iron Man series and a bigger part in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
As previously mentioned, J.A.R.V.I.S. is the primary artificial intelligence system utilized in Iron Man. To put it briefly, Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, developed J.A.R.V.I.S. as a tool to assist him in a variety of duties. All of the data and information that Tony Stark can observe in real time while wearing his suit is referred to as artificial intelligence. Iron Man can fly, fire weapons, and defend against attacks without the need for manual intervention thanks to the AI built into his armor. Throughout the film, it is also demonstrated that J.A.R.V.I.S. can develop from Iron Man’s experiences and change in response to feedback. Tony Stark communicates with J.A.R.V.I.S. through voice command, which is essentially AI as well. Finally, one application of AI is the way J.A.R.V.I.S. protects Tony Stark’s technologies and suit. Overall, J.A.R.V.I.S. offered a wide variety of AI throughout the film, which is particularly impressive considering that, at the time the film was released in 2008, not much of this technology was existent. The Iron Man character was able to realize his full potential as a superhero thanks to J.A.R.V.I.S.
The first scene of Saturn 3 (1980) shows a man in uniform and helmet going into a locker room setting. He secures himself into a seat with seatbelt and pulls the emergency lever. The ceiling opens up and the other man in room, Captain James, is sucked out and broken into pieces. The bad guy that did this was Captain Benson, because he wanted to be the lead man going to Saturn 3, instead of his colleague. He took a long cylinder, that contained empty brain matter, in a sealed case with him on his trip to Saturn 3.
On Saturn 3 lived a couple of scientists, Adam (Kirk Douglas) and his female partner, Alex (Farrah Fawcett). Benson (Harvey Keitel) arrived and immediately began making overtures to Alex, who made it clear that she was with Adam and was not interested. Benson got to work on programming the brain that he brought with him and on assembling the robot called Hector. Hector was able to mimic the thoughts and moves of Benson, who had a control portal at the top of his spine. He would insert a pen shaped tool into the opening to make adjustments that directly affected the robot. Intelligence was the first thing observed in Hector, but as time passed the negative aspects of the programmer began to surface. He started to lust after Alex and also showed aggressive tendencies. Robot Hector killed Alex’s and Adam’s dog, Sally, who had full rein to go about as she pleased on Saturn 3. Hector lifted Alex up by her wrists and would have harmed her, but he obeyed her command to please put her down, then he made a piece of equipment fall on Benson. Hector needed to be recharged, but that was thwarted, and Benson disassembled him limb by limb and took his brain out. It looked like danger was out of the way, but Hector had enough juice in his mind to take control of the robots in the command center to put him back together again.
Benson tried to take Alex back to earth with him. She did not want to be with him. There was some fighting and terrorizing by Hector and Benson. Hector broke Benson’s hand off and later Benson’s severed head was on top of Hector, making his appearance more human. Adam knocked Hector into the ice water by using an arm mechanism that swung out 5′ or 6′. Benson had put one of the small control portals at the base of Adam’s spine when Adam was unconscious, due to taking a sleeping pill, in order to take over his thoughts and life. Adam was not going to accept that fate and hid two grenades in his belt. He said, “It’s everybody’s fault” and then pushed Hector into the ice water again, but this time he went with him and blew both himself and Hector up. At the end, Alex was in a space craft heading to earth and eager to see all that it offers., as she always wanted to visit earth.
The line “It’s everybody’s fault” reveals the impact of AI in our lives and the collective responsibility to handle it with caution. Let us be careful what we create!
The movie that I chose to watch in relation to the field of Artificial Intelligence was the Marvel Studios’ Iron Man. I really enjoyed watching this movie again, as I enjoy all of the Marvel movies and so it was nice to have another one to watch for this assignment. I find the storyline pretty interesting on how Stark is kidnapped and it really changed the way he was as a human and changed his outlook on life. He was pretty self-absorbed before but after the kidnapping situation, he decided that his weapons were too dangerous and so he had to stop manufacturing those kinds of weapons. Overall, it was really interesting and enjoyable to watch this movie.
Although I have already watched this movie on multiple other occasions, it was interesting to watch it while trying to see how AI was being incorporated into the movie. Other times, I just watched the movie just to enjoy it, but this time I was able to determine that Jarvis, the automated system that is incorporated into Tony Stark’s suit, plays a big role in the functionality and usage of the suit. With simple commands spoken to it by the user, Stark was able to accomplish many tasks while trying to accomplish the various tasks he was trying to do.
One of the questions that we are trying to explore is “How can we use AI applications to enhance human creativity in storytelling and making art on the web?” and so this movie help inspire some thoughts about this question. Although it is not exactly the same situation, the use of the Iron Man suit and its ability to integrate an AI agent into the suit so that the tasks become more automated helps enhance what humans can do with the assistance of AI. Using AI, humans can discover new ideas and go through with creating new works of art so that the field can be expanded over time. The Iron Man suit is an example of this situation because Stark was able to make a suit of armor that is able to protect the user from almost all weapons and danger which allows the user to be able to do acts of good while also being protected. In a sense, the suit itself is a work of art created by Stark. Overall, I think that AI should definitely be used in the human life and be used to come up with new ideas and works of art, but should also be sure to not to overuse the capabilities of AI so that the sense of creativity can manifest in humans.
As we kick off the start of ds106, I am excited and eager to learn the aspects of digital media. Bitwarden is a perfect example, a tool that has brightened my use for security among various platforms. The free password extension allows for numerous options that bring security and safety together. The vault is easy and accessible for me to use and helps me come up with different passwords and usernames for my accounts across all platforms in which I use. Bitwarden also brings me a list of special characters, numbers, and ambiguous letters that help me create strong passwords so that no hacker can bypass them. I did not have any trouble with logging in and maneuvering through Bitwarden, although the Youtube Video did provide a lot of helpful instructions.
I have also learned how to navigate through Mastodon as I have never used the website before, introducing a new field for me to post blogs. Mastodon is a platform that has introduced me to new horizons and brought me to the thought of Discord and Twitter (X) combined into one platform. There are different options to explore such as Live Feeds and Trends within the Mastodon environment, which are interesting. The platform also gives you the latest trends which allows me to explore new posts and comments by those who use it. However, one problem that I did encounter was the the email confirming my verification for Mastodon, as it took a few attempts for the approval to come through.
Throughout this course, I tend to achieve goals and accomplishments that will help me in the future with the use of digital media. I want to learn how to use AI for knowledge outside of my profession and future employment opportunities. As our world becomes more complex, the understanding of digital media and AI generation will be conclusive, allowing for innovations to emerge. Incorporating digital media will co-exist with my major of Philosophy: Pre-Law so that I can come up with more advanced and complex arguments in which I can challenge AI with these theories and perhaps come up with my own conclusions. Lastly, I would like to receive a high grade in this course so that I can raise my gpa and represent UMW is a respectable manner.
WALL-E is a film set in the future where robots are tasked to take care of the remaining humans left from Earth up on a ship in space and humans killed the Earth due to their polluting the environment.
I have loved this movie since it came out when I was a child. Primarily because of the cute robots but also because of the message it spreads. It is important that we take care of our home, and I think this film really shows how important Earth is to us and how, no matter what, we will always go back to our Mother Earth.
Reactions
This was a very impactful movie that showed the possible future of humans if we keep living the wasteful and selfish life we are living now. If we keep taking advantage of the home we have, we will no longer be free, and we will no longer have a home. This film does show a life that seems full of luxury, but it is purely based on entertainment and that is all. What kind of life would that be worth living if we couldn’t run free and breathe in fresh air and fall in love? The lives these people are living are being controlled by robots, so they stay happy and immobilized so that when the time comes, they can not stop the AI from eventually taking over.
When I first watched this movie, I didn’t understand the whole meaning of it because I was so young. But now that I am older, I can appreciate the message it is giving more, and I can integrate it into my everyday life. I often find myself thinking about waste and how I can better help the planet and be less wasteful, and I think a big part of that came from how I was raised but also because of this movie and how much I have loved it throughout my life as a child and as a young adult.
Reflections
This film really shows how AI can evolve over time and how they may become conscious and aware. WALL-E is a robot that was made to clean up the Earth so humans could eventually come back from space, but WALL-E becomes self-aware and is seen longing to be/see humans and collects things from when they were around, he even pretends to be a human and dances along with an old film he found and finds himself also longing for love as he is in complete solitude because all of the other clean up robots have died, he ends up befriending a cockroach and WALL-E shows physical emotion towards his little friend and even feeds him to keep him alive.
This film shows a possible future where humans can no longer live on Earth and depend on robots to keep them alive and thriving. We need to take better care of the Earth we were given so we do not kill everything good that we have and have to leave due to our selfish actions.
As the first week of DS106 begins, I am introduced to many things I’m unfamiliar with. For starters the use of Bitwareden, I have never heard of this platform before and after setting up my account I’ve learned this platform can be used to store all your passwords. It’s almost like a safe but for my storing passwords for anything. Not only does it serve the purpose of storing your passwords, but it can also generate random and complex safe passwords for your use. I find Bitwarden very useful when it comes to keeping passwords safe and generating passwords. I highly recommend others to sign up for Bitwarden. It’s free to sign up and if you would like you can upgrade to a premium version for a low cost of 10 dollars a year.
Next, I learned how to create my own domain. This was my first time creating my own domain. After creating my own domain, I was amazed how easy it was to set up and how it can be used in diverse ways. I found this super useful as it can be used in different ways such as promoting yourself, a business, or writing blogs like I am right now. I’m excited to see what is in store for using my domain in the future in this class and beyond this class.
Discord is also fairly new to me. I have heard of it but never used it. After joining the class server, I began to familiarize myself with the application and how to use all of its features. I am amazed how much you can do with it. You can have discussion with classmates and other friends, have calls with friends, and even create your own personal server for others to join. I look forward to using discord this semester and potential for other activities outside of the class.
DS106 Goals
As far as goals for this class I want to gain more knowledge about digital storytelling itself as well as the background behind it. I’m curious as to how digital stories came to be and how it is used in our everyday lives. I want to learn how digital storytelling can be applied to my major and other aspects outside of the class. I also want to learn more about the usage of AIs. AIs are being utilized more and more in today’s society. I also would like to get an A in this class. I know this seems like a generic goal but a 4.0 GPA is a goal of mine for the semester. I believe as the class progress there will be more goals that arise.
Welcome to Here’s The Thing, my website to share, discuss, and manage all the various things in my life. As of now, this blog will primarily discuss my work in the class Digital Storytelling 106, aka ds106.
My goal in this class is to become semi-acceptable at using the internet. I’ve always been passable with everyday tech but lost with anything more difficult than the Google Suite. I know technology will be important to the future and it’s high time I get on the bandwagon. I want to learn how to operate this website, understand how the internet works in conjunction with everyday life, and how I can make the internet work for me.
Outside of technology, I hope to improve my reflection skills. I have trouble being honest about myself and my own work. I will be constantly evaluating myself and writing about my process and experiences.
For an AI-related movie, I watched the anime version of Ghost in the Shell, a late 20th century vision of five years from now. I hadn’t watched or read it before, so it was about time. I noticed echoes of Bladerunner, RoboCop and The Matrix. The film was based on a manga which seems to unwittingly comment on our current situation.
Beyond the thematic references, I was interested in the philosophical musings on evolution, life and humanity. The hero of the story is a cyborg, essentially a robot with a human brain. Is she then human? She’s not so sure:
Major Motoko Kusanagi: Well, I guess cyborgs like myself have a tendency to be paranoid about our origins. Sometimes I suspect I am not who I think I am, like maybe I died a long time ago and somebody took my brain and stuck it in this body. Maybe there never was a real me in the first place, and I’m completely synthetic like that thing.
Batou: You’ve got human brain cells in that titanium shell of yours. You’re treated like other humans, so stop with the angst.
Major Motoko Kusanagi: But that’s just it, that’s the only thing that makes me feel human. The way I’m treated. I mean, who knows what’s inside our heads? Have you ever seen your own brain?
Batou: It sounds to me like you’re doubting your own ghost.
Major Motoko Kusanagi: What if a cyber brain could possibly generate its own ghost, create a soul all by itself? And if it did, just what would be the importance of being human then?
And that refers to the AI in the film, the Puppet Master
Puppet Master: It can also be argued that DNA is nothing more than a program designed to preserve itself. Life has become more complex in the overwhelming sea of information. And life, when organized into species, relies upon genes to be its memory system. So man is an individual only because of his intangible memory. But memory cannot be defined, yet it defines mankind. The advent of computers and the subsequent accumulation of incalculable data has given rise to a new system of memory and thought, parallel to your own. Humanity has underestimated the consequences of computerization.
Could we draw a parallel between GPT and DNA? I’m out of my element here of course, but I see in both an encoding of the existing and the production of something new. The issue of memory is significant too. We used to preserve memories with film photography. This had imperfections, but was based on physical reality. The photos I take with my phone are mediated through algorithms, and have been known reinterpret reality.
So I asked our teach-mech Dr. Oblivion, “How does the vision of artificial intelligence presented in Ghost in the Shell hold up in the present day?”
includes sample of Ghosthack from Ghost In The Shell (1995) OST
I think if I asked a better question, I might have gotten a better response. AI apps aren’t known for insight, and sometimes give us the most obvious string of words. Will our AI future be dystopian, or just disappointing?
The doctor does touch on an important point. We built the internet in order to augment human intelligence. Around the time of Ghost in the Shell, we opened it up to commercial exploitation, and a few people became unimaginably wealthy. For the past couple decades, more and more it’s been developed as a tool for social control. So who is the web for? Who is AI for? In ds106 we all have our own little pieces of the web, as it was meant to be. Entities like Alphabet and Amazon and Meta and Microsoft come along like Columbus and plant a flag in it and claim it for their own. Do we go along with that, or do we want open, public infrastructure? The easy path may not be the most rewarding.
Welcome to ds106! This first week is dedicated to getting set up: set up your domain and Web hosting; install your WordPress site; and create other social media accounts such as Mastodon, and Discord. The sooner you get started, the better. If you run into trouble after looking through the supporting links, the Digital Knowledge Center is a great place to go for help.
This course will run on the open web. Some people may not be comfortable putting themselves online. You are welcome to create personae and pseudonyms, and you are not required to put any personal information online. You may find it useful to use your web presence as an online portfolio though.
We will be using a general theme of artificial intelligence this semester. The purpose of working with a theme is to give us some common ground for collaboration and interaction. Where we go with this theme will be determined largely by you. We see the topic and tools as offering many options for creative investigation, interaction and expression. As part of our storytelling adventure you will be creating characters which you can use to engage with the course, and to build stories around. More on this next week.
Here is a detailed list of what to do this week:
1. Review the Syllabus
You should carefully read through the syllabus. This course is different from most. The syllabus will help you understand the work and activities of the course. If you have any questions on the content, send them to me via email.
2. Schedule a meeting We want to meet online with everyone in the class during the first two weeks. Sign up for a noon time slot on this form. If none of the times work for you any day, give us some alternate times and we’ll work something out.
3. Password management One skill that will prove critical to keeping up with the various services and accounts you setup over the semester (and life online in general) is a password management tool. There are many, 1Password and LastPass are two of the more popular, but they cost money. So if you are new to password management and don’t want to go out of pocket before you explore the approach, Bitwarden is an excellent, open solution for managing passwords and other keys safely. Managing your logins and passwords effectively will change your online life! This Youtuber will take you through the setup in detail, and trust us, it is worth the time invested
4. Set Up Your Accounts
This course runs on the open web and in various social media venues. I am assuming everyone knows how to be safe online. How you choose to present yourself, or what you choose to present as yourself, is entirely up to you. You will be creating a persona for the course in coming weeks, so you may want to start with a pseudonym here.
a. Domain Sign up for your own domain name and web site (free through UMW’s Domain of One’s Own project). Detailed instructions can be found here. Don’t skip the domain verification step! If you already have a domain through Domain of One’s Own, then you are one step ahead.
b. Mastodon https://social.ds106.us/home Mastodon will be one of our channels for communication in ds106. Send your first message of greeting and be sure to use #ds106 hashtag in your tweets. Follow the #ds106 hashtag.
c. Discord Join the class Discord server. You should have received an invitation email.
5. Install WordPress
You’ll be using this installation of WordPress to share your work every week, all semester. So you’ll want to get this installed and get comfortable with it ASAP. You should install it either at the root of your domain (www.yourdomain.com) or on a subdomain (ds106.yourdomain.com, for example). If you already have WordPress installed on your UMW Domain from another course, you can use your existing site (and just tag or categorize your ds106 work accordingly) or choose to create a new WordPress site in a separate subdomain.
We have three online guides that I recommend you review as you tackle this task:
Brief Introduction to cPanel: This guide will help you learn to navigate cPanel (the control panel for Web hosting on Domain of One’s Own).
Creating Subdomains and Subdirectories (optional): If you want to install WordPress somewhere other than at the root of your domain, check out this guide.
NOTE: Do not use wordpress.com or wix or weebly or tumblr or whatever other third-party services are out there. You have to set up your own domain, or use a domain you already have (see Step 2, above), and you have to install WordPress on it (this step).
6. Register Your Blog at the Main ds106 Web Site
Once your blog is available on the web (it should be almost immediate) register yourself and your new blog on the DS106 site. We will add your blog feed to the course site. You MUST do this in order for everyone to see the posts you’ll be writing for the class.
7. Watch. We will be working with a theme of artificial intelligence this semester, exploring questions like: How can we use AI applications to enhance human creativity in storytelling and making art on the web? Should we use AI at all? What is our role in preventing the apocalypse? Can we save the world from oblivion? In order to inspire our thinking around these questions, we’re asking you to watch an AI related film of your choice. There is a list here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_intelligence_films), and also an overview of AI in fiction here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence_in_fiction). Some can be found through various online services, and some, like Bladerunner, may be available through the Simpson Library. Pick one of the films, watch it and write your thoughts, reactions and reflections in a blog post and tag it film review. Need to know how to add tags in WordPress? There’s a help page for that.
8. What do you want to get out of this course?
This course involves a high degree of self-evaluation, so you should think about your goals at the beginning in order to consider how well you have achieved them down the road. You will have opportunities to re-evaluate your goals along the way, because they may change as we journey through the course.
Many people take this course to fulfill a Gen Ed requirement. This is the official language for the ALPP outcome:
General Education Requirements Learning Outcomes
ARTS, LITERATURE, AND PERFORMANCE –PROCESS
Students will be able to speak about work critically, both process and product.
Students will be able to evaluate the work’s effectiveness in conveying the student’s message or intent and/or achieving the student’s goals.
Students will reflect or explain how they created a work of substance and value.
Students will identify the process to achieve the goals of the creative project,and how successful the process was.
Students will reflect on the value of the creative process.
That is what the University says you have to get out of this course. You will gain experience in producing digital media and discussing your creative processes, and through that discussion, meet these outcomes. You will learn about digital media by producing creative works. You have a great deal of freedom for creative expression in this course though, so I hope that you take advantage of that freedom to achieve something more.
Write a brief blog post on what you think you would like to accomplish with this course. Tag this post ds106goals
9. Write your Weekly Summary
You’ll be completing these summary posts on your blog every week. This week, write a post that shares your reflections on the first week. Tag this post WeeklySummary. Submit the URL for this post to Canvas by Friday at midnight. These posts are REALLY important. We use them to grade you every week, so you need to link to other posts you’ve written, embed media you’ve created, and narrate the process of learning that you went through this week. What did you learn? What was harder than you thought it would be? What was easier? What drove you crazy? Why? What did you really enjoy? Why? NO EXCEPTIONS. NO LATE WORK ACCEPTED.
Welcome to ds106! This first week is dedicated to getting set up: set up your domain and Web hosting; install your WordPress site; and create other social media accounts such as Mastodon, and Discord. The sooner you get started, the better. If you run into trouble after looking through the supporting links, the Digital Knowledge Center is a great place to go for help.
This course will run on the open web. Some people may not be comfortable putting themselves online. You are welcome to create personae and pseudonyms, and you are not required to put any personal information online. You may find it useful to use your web presence as an online portfolio though.
We will be using a general theme of artificial intelligence this semester. The purpose of working with a theme is to give us some common ground for collaboration and interaction. Where we go with this theme will be determined largely by you. We see the topic and tools as offering many options for creative investigation, interaction and expression. As part of our storytelling adventure you will be creating characters which you can use to engage with the course, and to build stories around. More on this next week.
Here is a detailed list of what to do this week:
1. Review the Syllabus
You should carefully read through the syllabus. This course is different from most. The syllabus will help you understand the work and activities of the course. If you have any questions on the content, send them to me via email.
2. Schedule a meeting We want to meet online with everyone in the class during the first two weeks. Sign up for a noon time slot on this form. If none of the times work for you any day, give us some alternate times and we’ll work something out.
3. Password management One skill that will prove critical to keeping up with the various services and accounts you setup over the semester (and life online in general) is a password management tool. There are many, 1Password and LastPass are two of the more popular, but they cost money. So if you are new to password management and don’t want to go out of pocket before you explore the approach, Bitwarden is an excellent, open solution for managing passwords and other keys safely. Managing your logins and passwords effectively will change your online life! This Youtuber will take you through the setup in detail, and trust us, it is worth the time invested
4. Set Up Your Accounts
This course runs on the open web and in various social media venues. I am assuming everyone knows how to be safe online. How you choose to present yourself, or what you choose to present as yourself, is entirely up to you. You will be creating a persona for the course in coming weeks, so you may want to start with a pseudonym here.
a. Domain Sign up for your own domain name and web site (free through UMW’s Domain of One’s Own project). Detailed instructions can be found here. Don’t skip the domain verification step! If you already have a domain through Domain of One’s Own, then you are one step ahead.
b. Mastodon https://social.ds106.us/home Mastodon will be one of our channels for communication in ds106. Send your first message of greeting and be sure to use #ds106 hashtag in your tweets. Follow the #ds106 hashtag.
c. Discord Join the class Discord server. You should have received an invitation email.
5. Install WordPress
You’ll be using this installation of WordPress to share your work every week, all semester. So you’ll want to get this installed and get comfortable with it ASAP. You should install it either at the root of your domain (www.yourdomain.com) or on a subdomain (ds106.yourdomain.com, for example). If you already have WordPress installed on your UMW Domain from another course, you can use your existing site (and just tag or categorize your ds106 work accordingly) or choose to create a new WordPress site in a separate subdomain.
We have three online guides that I recommend you review as you tackle this task:
Brief Introduction to cPanel: This guide will help you learn to navigate cPanel (the control panel for Web hosting on Domain of One’s Own).
Creating Subdomains and Subdirectories (optional): If you want to install WordPress somewhere other than at the root of your domain, check out this guide.
NOTE: Do not use wordpress.com or wix or weebly or tumblr or whatever other third-party services are out there. You have to set up your own domain, or use a domain you already have (see Step 2, above), and you have to install WordPress on it (this step).
6. Register Your Blog at the Main ds106 Web Site
Once your blog is available on the web (it should be almost immediate) register yourself and your new blog on the DS106 site. We will add your blog feed to the course site. You MUST do this in order for everyone to see the posts you’ll be writing for the class.
7. Watch. We will be working with a theme of artificial intelligence this semester, exploring questions like: How can we use AI applications to enhance human creativity in storytelling and making art on the web? Should we use AI at all? What is our role in preventing the apocalypse? Can we save the world from oblivion? In order to inspire our thinking around these questions, we’re asking you to watch an AI related film of your choice. There is a list here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_intelligence_films), and also an overview of AI in fiction here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence_in_fiction). Some can be found through various online services, and some, like Bladerunner, may be available through the Simpson Library. Pick one of the films, watch it and write your thoughts, reactions and reflections in a blog post and tag it film review. Need to know how to add tags in WordPress? There’s a help page for that.
8. What do you want to get out of this course?
This course involves a high degree of self-evaluation, so you should think about your goals at the beginning in order to consider how well you have achieved them down the road. You will have opportunities to re-evaluate your goals along the way, because they may change as we journey through the course.
Many people take this course to fulfill a Gen Ed requirement. This is the official language for the ALPP outcome:
General Education Requirements Learning Outcomes
ARTS, LITERATURE, AND PERFORMANCE –PROCESS
Students will be able to speak about work critically, both process and product.
Students will be able to evaluate the work’s effectiveness in conveying the student’s message or intent and/or achieving the student’s goals.
Students will reflect or explain how they created a work of substance and value.
Students will identify the process to achieve the goals of the creative project,and how successful the process was.
Students will reflect on the value of the creative process.
That is what the University says you have to get out of this course. You will gain experience in producing digital media and discussing your creative processes, and through that discussion, meet these outcomes. You will learn about digital media by producing creative works. You have a great deal of freedom for creative expression in this course though, so I hope that you take advantage of that freedom to achieve something more.
Write a brief blog post on what you think you would like to accomplish with this course. Tag this post ds106goals
9. Write your Weekly Summary
You’ll be completing these summary posts on your blog every week. This week, write a post that shares your reflections on the first week. Tag this post WeeklySummary. Submit the URL for this post to Canvas by Friday at midnight. These posts are REALLY important. We use them to grade you every week, so you need to link to other posts you’ve written, embed media you’ve created, and narrate the process of learning that you went through this week. What did you learn? What was harder than you thought it would be? What was easier? What drove you crazy? Why? What did you really enjoy? Why? NO EXCEPTIONS. NO LATE WORK ACCEPTED.
Hello and welcome to the online, Spring version of Digital Storytelling (CPSC 106). If you are receiving this email, it means you are currently enrolled to take this course in Spring 2024.
Please read this post in its entirety!
The purpose of this post is to orient you to how this course will be run, and to make you aware of the commitment that this course demands.
In short, you will be required to:
set up and manage your own web domain
create digital works in a variety of media
work collaboratively with your classmates on projects
narrate the process of all work – blogging several times per week
comment on classmates’ work – several times per week
do all of this on the open web
All of this work will require a significant commitment of time and effort, but it is easily manageable with good time management. Procrastinate at your peril.
This course is somewhat different from most online classes in that you will be required to narrate your process of learning over the course of the semester. You will be required to setup and manage your own domain and web hosting space (details forthcoming). We plan to experiment with various fediverse services, potentially including Mastodon, PeerTube, etc., so be prepared to create accounts there as well. Note that even though we are running this course on the open web, you are not required to expose any personal information there. Feel free to use a pseudonym if you want. You will be expected to regularly update your own web spaces where you will be installing, designing, and customizing your own site. More specifically, you will be asked to use these spaces to create digital narratives both individually and collaboratively over the course of the semester—so please be prepared to work together.
Also, it is very important to keep in mind that a lion’s share of the course work, and by extension your grade, will be focused around the regular updating of your own site as well as commenting on those of your classmates. We cannot stress strongly enough how essential both posting and commenting are to your success in this course.
Another issue that comes up again and again with this course is the time commitment. We will be creating a variety of narratives across a wide range of media, experimenting with everything from digital photography to digital audio to web video. These forms are often quite complicated and time consuming, and while the students who have taken this class in previous semesters enjoyed the process tremendously, they almost all noted it demands a significant amount of time. If you took this class as a 100-level filler and expect to get by with minimal work or engagement, you will quickly realize that it’s far more than that—and the dangerous part of the course is you will greatly enjoy the work. Don’t be seduced!
The main sites for the course are located at http://ds106.us and https://ds106.ai/. Please go there and take a look around to get a sense of the chaos. The syllabus is online in Canvas. If you have any questions let us know.
Something to keep in mind about that course site is that it may not only include the posts of students from UMW, but also from others beyond the boundaries of our school. ds106 may be taken by people from outside UMW as well as at UMW. Your work as a class will happen alongside other people with a wide experience and interests—some of whom have no association with UMW whatsoever. This serves as a microcosm of the web, we will not be working within a siloed learning management system for this class, rather we will be doing our business out on the open web.
This course is designed to get you to both think about and interact within the digital landscapes and networks that everywhere surround us. Narratives and storytelling provide the frame we need for exploring and experimenting with emerging forms of creative expression in the digital realm as well as means for interrogating the digital environments we are increasingly dependent upon. To this end you will be asked to steward your own website, and one of your first assignments will be to setup your own domain —and by extension your own digital identity.
Before the semester begins you will receive another missive with a link to instructions for getting your own web host, domain, and installing a couple of open source applications. You will also be expected to get accounts on some other sites (details forthcoming) as soon as possible. (Note: we think we all know there are problematic people on the web and on social media. While we haven’t had a problem with them in ds106 in the past, you are perfectly welcome to use pseudonyms for this course if you have privacy concerns.) Additionally, we will be explaining more specifically how this particular version of ds106 will work.
Finally, if you have significant issues with any of the above listed points—which we’re sure some of you do— feel free to reach out to us at [email protected] and/or [email protected].
