ds106 Week 6: Bitch ‘n Design, Audio, and Conferences

ds106ers,

Welcome to week 6, we have a few things to cover as we make the transition from visual/design to audio and I have outlined them below. Please take care to read this email/post through in its entirety, and do the various assignments as they are laid out below. Also, if you are not on twitter following announcements and the #ds106 hashtag, then you are missing valuable course information that may or may not be reproduced in assignment emails/posts like this one—it is your responsibility to get in the habit of checking Twitter regularly for updates.

Credit seeking students: Not seeing announcements and assignments on Twitter is no excuse for not having done them!

1) Visual/Design Features
As we finish up the formal part of the visual/design portion of this course—though it will most certainly be come up again and again—it might make sense to take a look back on the work both you and your classmates have done in terms of photography and design. So, to that end, I would ask you all to highlight particular photos and design assignments you enjoyed that others have done in the course. What’s more, take another, separate post to highlight your favorite work that you have done so far. Be sure to provide context and reflection for your choices. These blog posts are due by Friday, 2/18.

2) Bitch n Design
Tomorrow night’s class will actually be held, once again, on ds106radio. I will be in Washington DC for a conference, and will be broadcasting live tomorrow, 2/15/11, from the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative from 6:00 PM to 7:15 PM EST. This class period will require all of you to not only listen in on ds106 radio (to do so open this link http://208.82.115.69:8010/stream.m3u in iTunes, WinAmp, VLC, etc.) but be prepared to call in via Skype for a talk radio hour in which I’m inviting students from all sections to engage in some freeform radio. The topic will be “Bitch about ds106” and it is where I take live callers—and tweeters—concerns, ideas, and general impressions about ds106 thus far. I’ll ask you to consider what’s working, what’s not, what do you like, what should we kill, keep, etc. It’s no holds barred radio. I have done this every semester so far at about week 6, and doing it via the radio station is not only expedient, but could be very fun. I expect you all to play along. My Skype id is jimgroom, add me as a contact. And if you don’t have Skype, download it and get it up and running ASAP.

If no one has anything to bitch about—which better not be the case—then we will talk about the visual and design assignments we liked to get a jump on assignment 1. Also, should the audio be impossible from the conference–which sometimes happens with cheap ass hotel wireless—we will abandon the class and post our gripes and bitches via audio—see the third assignment 😉

3) Audio: Up and Running with Audacity
As I asked of you last week, you should all have audacity installed and running on your computer. In the event you don’t, please see this tutorial for installing and setting up Audacity to rectify that immediately. What’s more I would like you all to start playing with audacity in preparation for out in-class audio workshop on Thursday (online students will get the same assignment on Thursday as well). You can consult the Audacity wiki for some excellent tutorials to get you started http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Tutorials. What’s more, if I don’t hear from you on the ds106 radio Bitch session tomorrow on ds106radio (see above), I would like you to record your gripes in audacity (no longer than 2 minutes and make it listenable—bad recordings will be subject to public ridicule!!!) and upload it to ds106 radio by no later than Wednesday at midnight. Keep in min d it has to be in mp3 format and you upload it here: http://www.dropitto.me/ds106 (password is “wejamecono” (no quotes)). Also, be sure to using the following naming convention for your audio upload: ds106bitch_yourlastname.mp3

4) Conferences
All for-credit students in my ds106 classes need to sign-up for a face-to-face meeting with me during week 6 or 7. We will be discussing your progress (assignments, comfort level with class, and your idea for an ongoing digital story). Please sign up for this on the ds106 wiki here: http://ds106.us/wiki/index.php?title=Week_7_Meeting_Sign-Up (make sure you are logged into ds106 before you try and edit the wiki page). The available time slots are from Friday 2/18-Wednesday2/23—the wiki is first come first serve, and you need to meet with me no later than Wednesday, 2/23/11.

That is all 😛

Image credit: The great Andrew Allingham created this ds106 radio logo for his desing assignment, and it rocks.