As part of the ds106 weekly process, students are expected to blog all their various assignments and then link to everything they have done and narrate their work what we call a “weekly summary post.” There is the expectation they narrate where they are in their thinking, creative process, problems they had, extenuating circumstances, etc. It’s their way of framing the context of their week as well as linking to everything they have done to get credit. We encourage students to be creative, thorough, and honest. This past Sunday, Emily Bostaph’s may have read the most creative, thorough, and honest weekly summary to date. She used a combination of terse sentences and GIFs to create a truly compelling—albeit sad 🙁 —story of her week. Here is a little taste. And I quote:
To start the week off, I got some ungodly virus from one of the kids I nanny…little shit
Then my girlfriend, whom I am madly in love with, decided to end things
What made it even worse is we were suppose to go on a ski trip together this weekend
So, I invited my two best friends to come along thinking that would cheer me up…
Nope. I told them what happened and their response was, “Just don’t think about it, and try to have fun!” So I had to spend the whole weekend bottling up all the feels.
Find the final six GIFs, and the rest of the story here.
Emily has one of the strongest blog voice’s of just about anyone I read online. Full stop. Period. She is funny as hell, unbelievably observant, and can write like nobody’s business. Not to mention she has some of the most insane post titles ever, how can you not read posts title “JOIN MY NUDIST COLONY!” or “Did someone order a large cup of depressing with a shot of feels?!” or “I now realize how rapey this sounds.” So much of her work is on a very uncomfortable edge, and that’s why I love it so much. Making art, dammit!
I completely agree with you here. I’ve told her multiple times that one of the most enjoyable parts of my week is going through her blog posts.
She has such a fluid, captivating presentation style, including gifs as ellipsis and, and really personal material.
Spencer, You are no slouch yourself, doctor. You are killing #ds106!
Hey Jim: I think this blog post is pretty cool, too. I also like the idea of having students report about their week including where and how they participated. It certainly helps to see a strategy for how to manage (grade) how students are active on the web. Question, how do students react at your requirement that they post this thorough of a summary of their week and do you allocate points toward the weekly summaries? Sorry, I know… these are boring questions amidst the awesome stuff this student has going on.
Jamie,
We send out a few scare emails before the semester starts warning them how much work ds106 is. This often helps to prepare students for the workload, although there are always the few who don’t believe us. We try and be as honest as possible that this course is a very heavy workload, and that allows us to keep our standards very high, and also weed out the students that are simply taking it for the credit.
This makes me so happy :3