Saturday, December 4, 2010

DS106 Reflections

DS106 was probably my favorite non-major elective that I've taken.  I didn't need it for an art credit or anything like that, but I was intrigued especially because it was a computer science course. I had already taken CPSC 110 (because the rest of my family are computer geeks, I needed to take intro to comp sci in order to understand dinner conversation), and I thought another comp sci class would look good on grad school applications. I was kind of hoping to learn some more coding and programming skills, so maybe the fact that this class is classified as a computer science course is somewhat misleading.

Leading up to the semester, Amy and I had been trying to figure out what we would be doing in this class. Well, looking back I'd say we were completely wrong. The class got off to a somewhat slow and frustrating start.  The two articles we read were interesting, but I think I would have appreciated them more at the end of the semester. Setting up my blog was slightly difficult for me, but after a meeting or two with Prof Groom, I got it all worked out.

I think my soccer theme worked out really well.  My teammates loved being featured and I would post the article onto their facebook pages. I would actually get comments from my other friends saying how they saw my blog and thought it was really cool.  Getting feedback from non classmates was probably the best because they weren't getting graded for reading and commenting! My mom also commented here and there... but I'm not sure if that counts. Unfortunately our season didn't go quite as long as we had hoped for, so that kind of cut my blog short. Last year we had a thriller of a tournament, upsetting the first seeded team in penatly kicks, coming back to tie the championship game with less than 2 mins left, and going to TN for the NCAA tournament. I was hoping to be able to share an awesome story like that, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. At least I have a crazy ankle injury to share, although I'm not sure how interesting that is to anyone else lol.

As for the assignments, I definitely had some frustration producing some of them! The videos were especially hard for me. I remember downloading tons of different converters, and I finally got it right after several hours of struggling with it. Meanwhile, I kept getting a pop up saying that I'm running out of disk space on my computer.  My computer was running so slowly, and It was nearly impossible to edit the video.  Immediately after I finished the first video project, I deleted everything I had downloaded in hopes of freeing up some space and having my computer run at a normal speed again.  I'm sure you could imagine my frustration when I heard we had yet another video project.

Despite my frustration with the video, I really liked adding the commentary.  I thought that project was a lot of fun.  The Mash Up was pretty challenging for me. I had so many ideas that I wanted to do, but didn't quite have to right technology to make it all happen.  If I had unlimited amounts of time to complete that project, I would have been very meticulous and worked for perfection. After struggling with the converters, I was slightly fed up and started to become unmotivated. I really liked making the google map project, even if it was boring for other people to watch. I liked Wes' idea of exploring somewhere new, instead of discussing somewhere familiar. The audio stories were pretty cool, along with the image stories.  I think the best part about the image stories is that they are short and sweet.  Anything that is longer than 5 minutes looked a little daunting to watch, and I know half of my stuff was longer than that. Maybe if they were shorter more people would have read and commented.

As for reading other peoples blogs, I really enjoyed many of my classmate's projects. I REALLY wish I knew who everyone was in person though! There were times where I would get caught up in checking out everyone's new posts, that I would stay up really late reading and commenting. I loved doing it!  I think if I had taken this as a summer course when I had a lot more free time, I would have been able to read and comment more often. This course along with several upper level bio and chem classes is maybe a little bit of a time crunch.  Also, after spending hours fighting video converters, the last thing I want to do is read someone's blog or even think about ds106...

Overall, I really enjoyed this class and producing my blog. I'm glad that I was exposed to flickr, twitter, audacity, and windows moviemaker. What other class would require you to make a twitter account?? I already have and will continue to recommend this class to my friends.  I think one aspect of this class which made it so successful was Professor Groom's enthusiasm. I think it was because of his excitement that we were able to produce some pretty sweet projects. So, thank you for pushing us and setting the bar high.  As for the fate of my blog, I'm going to continue to update it over the next month while at my physical therapy internship in Reston.  This is so my faculty advisor can keep up with what I am doing to give me credit for the volunteer work.

Peace out ds106, it's been quite a ride!

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