Learn to love yourself, grab a picture of yourself in which your body language, actions, gestures, etc. suggest one thing and then play off that using a speech bubble. Ideally the result would make people laugh—but I must acknowledge there are other possible emotional responses that may be just as acceptable. Think of it as lolcat, save it’s a human (namely you) and there is nothing compelling anyone to abuse the letter z in the speech bubble text. Picnik.com or Aviary.com would make this assignment dead simple.
Inspired by Cogdog’s ds106 image compulsion, I decided to have some fun with a recent gem “You Cant Exit ds106.” I basically used that image as a backdrop for my own sign slighting riffing off his sign. I’m still mucking around in GIMP, but I have to admit sometimes I miss Photoshop. Importing fonts into GIMP to get the right roadside fonts failed for me, so I had to approximate. Actually, scratch that, I found these road these Road Geek fonts as a free download. After copying them into my Mac fonts folder in the Library directory and restarting GIMP I could use them no problem. Much happier with this than I am the first go around—I have to learn to stick with design, it doesn’t come easy and maybe that is why i like it so much.
This assignment falls under the Visual category, more specifically “Illustrate 106.” I never get tired of the significance this number has taken on beyond a course number.
I’m not sure if you have been noticing, but Michael Branson Smith and the CUNY Yorkians have been tearing up ds106. The work there has been amazing, and MBS’s latest work “Fat Chance” which is a series of Monopoly cards that frame some of the concerns and deep structural issues of the wave of discontent that might be emerging. They are magic!
Then add to the insane work MBS is doing in ds106 and marry that to his brilliant street reporting from Wall Street on Wednesday and you have some greatness. I was extremely taken with the interview with Sharon and her grandson who had come from Michigan to let the financial industry know they were fed up. Wow, that is weird for me to thing about as a position people in the US come around together, and it really excites me. So, below is the audio from the interview as well as an image. Some of the best radio I have yet to hear on the mighty ds106radio.
I want to thank @ottonomy (Nate Otto) for the link to this article by Douglas Rushkoff that really helped me understand #occupywallstreet, particularly the following quote.
That’s because, unlike a political campaign designed to get some person in office and then close up shop (as in the election of Obama), this is not a movement with a traditional narrative arc. As the product of the decentralized networked-era culture, it is less about victory than sustainability. It is not about one-pointedness, but inclusion and groping toward consensus. It is not like a book; it is like the Internet.
I love this sense that the very arc and narrative of protests and demonstrations have changed, and the means by which they are currently being reported by mianstream media is a vestige of an industry that has everything to gain by dismissing a headless approach. So many of the questions about leadership and power (and a general disappointment with Obama) finds articulation in Rushkoff’s piece. And it is not surprising that Brian Lamb turned me on to Rushkoff’s Program or be Programmed video at SXSW when trying to make sense of the sustainability of the web—an intervention to make it a green space rather than a corporate cuddle coach.
And while we are talking about #occupywallstreet, special shout out to Michael Branson Smith who took #ds106radio to the streets of Lower Manhattan to capture the vibe and broadcast stories of the occupants. You can catch it all here thanks to Giulia Forsythe —the ds106radio archivist extraordinaire. So mint!
I was fortunate enough to visit the great folks at Penn State University last week. And it is amazingly to me that we found time between #drunkcasts on #ds106radio to sit down with the E-Portfolio crew, the Digital Commons crew, as well as an interview with Jamie Oberdick for a Daily Buzz episode.
The trip was a total blast and I have to thank both Cole Campelese and Brad Kozlek for making the trip so smooth. What’s more, I have to acknowledge how locked and inspired the PSU edtech community truly is. For almost 8 hours in a variety of forms (i.e., interview, open discussions, presentation, etc.) we talked everything from eportfolios, ds106, WordPress, blogging platforms, as well as a few other things. Brad Kozlek has been ruminating on those discussions and I totally agree with him that frame an infrastructure at PSU (one of, if not the, biggest research university in the country) to crack the nut of enabling students to control their own space for learning, archiving, and reflection but feeding it out cleanly to a community or network effects is huge. We haven’t fully got our heads around this, but I have no doubt that will change once PSU puts some it’s seemingly boundless talent behind this issue.
I’ll check in with the PSU folks to see if there is a link to the presentation video/audio, but in the meantime if you are interested in some of the conversations we had at PSU, check out Jamie Oberdick’s interview below:
Starting Thursday, September 29th and running through October 3rd there will be a 5 day ds106 hippie extravaganza affectionately known as #bavastock. You wanna play, leave a comment. It will be aired on ds106radio, ds106tv, and on a blog near you. I am opening up my house, so if you are in the Frederickburg, VA area and interested let me know in the comments and I’ll get you all the details. And if you are coming in person or participating online, via radio, etc., leave your name in the comments, let us know in the comments/guest book 😉 And if you are a PST cretin, I will break you!!!
is an ongoing conversation about media of all kinds ...
Testimonials:
Generations from now, they won't call it the Internet anymore. They'll just say, "I logged on to the Jim Groom this morning.
-Joe McMahon
Everything Jim Groom touches is gold. He's like King Midas, but with the Internet.
-Serena Epstein
My understanding is that an essential requirement of the internet is to do whatever Jim Groom asks of you while you're online.
-James D. Calder
@jimgroom is the Billy Martin of edtech.
-Luke Waltzer
My 3yr old son is VERY intrigued by @jimgroom's avatar. "Is he a superhero?" "Well, yes, son, to many he is."
-Clint Lalonde
Jim Groom is a fiery man.
-Antonella Dalla Torre
“Reverend” Jim “The Bava” Groom, alias “Snake Pliskin” is a charlatan and a fraud, a self-confessed “used car salesman” clawing his way into the glamour of the education technology keynote circuit via the efforts of his oppressed minions at the University of Mary Washington’s DTLT and beyond. The monster behind educational time-sink ds106 and still recovering from his bid for hipster stardom with “Edupunk”, Jim spends his days using his dwindling credibility to sell cheap webhosting to gullible undergraduates and getting banned from YouTube for gross piracy.
