How it’s going…

What was your favorite topic, article or video? Why?

My favorite area of work thus far was week two: The Hero’s Journey. I loved getting into the structure of that story arch again. It has been a number of years since I was a creative writing major at The University of Central Florida and it’s amazing how many of these things that I learned in the past, in one way or another, have faded from my memory. The Hero’s Journey as an arch, as proven in our work from week two, is universal and it was a lot of fun to see my classmates breakdowns and understandings of these ideas as well as my own revisitation. Additionally, as I got into on Hypothesis, I LOVE Dan Harmon and getting to see his ideas and breakdown of the universal story was a lot of fun for me personally. Everyone should watch Season Two of Community for it’s storytelling. It’s simply fantastic. PLUS, all of my students watch Rick and Morty (his new show) which is also great.

What was the best hypothes.is discussion? Why? Provide quotes.

My favorite Hypothes.is discussion came from one of our weekly watchlist videos.

I think this discussion became one of my favorites as the video was so enjoyable to watch. Vonnegut is effortlessly funny in this video and, though this video is older, the ideas presented in the video are still hold some water today and brought out an abundance of points of view from our group.

Thread Below: (some of these responses have been edited)

• anastasiaellis: Although this is an older lecture, I do think he is right in that a computer cannot conceive story or culture. What makes a story good is the human element, the ability to relate to it, to see yourself or some semblance of your life in that story- your ability to empathize or sympathize.
• BriannaG40: I agree. Vonnegut was born in 1922 so he may have a completely different perspective of technology than we do today.
• hunter_freiburg: I think that I am torn on this stance to be completely honest. I believe that computers surely can create a “decent” story. What they lack, and what Vonnegut may be getting at, is that factor of empathy and the undeniable “human” element that writers can put into a story that pulls at the readers heart strings.
• swilsonmoses: Have you seen the computer generated Harry Potter content? Let me just say that we’re definitely not there yet (although it’s good for a laugh). I do think that AI will be able to generate basic stories pretty well, although the “great” stories are great for their nuance…
• Mandy_Silverstone: First of all, I loved this video. He is a very good lecturer. I think computers could possible generate some stories, as Vonnegut mentioned, there are simpler curves. But the more in depth ones I think are too much for a computer to generate.

For the most part it seems like we were all really enjoying the video itself but we each took something slightly different from the conversation taking place. Some people thought it could not happen. Others skirted the line and some had qualifiers in their explanation. Either way I think this is a great example of what Hypothes.is can be, an open discussion on almost and page on the internet. It’s an exciting medium to be working in.

What was your favorite creation from a classmate? Who impressed you? Why?

My favorite creation came from the last few weeks came from my classmate Sam with his superhero creation (See Below)…

I was really impressed by a lot of the classes creativity, we really have a creative bunch which is exciting for the semester, but this one got me laughing and ultimately ended up being my favorite from the first few weeks we have to work with. The idea to turn something like a “hipster” into a superhero by highlighting real things millennials are doing is pretty smart.

I also really enjoyed Kyle Smokers Presidential poster for Hasselhoff and Bieber (See Below…)

Populism has never felt so good!

Overall, the whole class, and I am not sure how many are facing the same anxiety I am about these technological issues, have really been killing it in these first few weeks. I am impressed by all and looking forward to more!

What did you make and what tools did you use? (challenges, dialogs, weekly-thing)?

For my first weekly-thing, the superhero, I created The Storyteller (See Above). This was my first go at using something along the lines of paint. I originally tried to use LunaPic which was very frustrating for me and deleted my work multiple times. After some searching I came across the online tool called Sketch which was very easy to use and I would highly recommend. I found a picture of Vonnegut that I loved and repurposed into something immature but fun.

After my go using Sketch, I wanted to make something more polished for my first weekly challenge (See Above). I decided on the “artifact from the near future” and let my imagination run wild. I love reading and I recently had been watching some Black Mirror so I decided to combine these two ideas into a poster. I am oddly proud of this creation, I have never made anything like it before and I think it turned out pretty well. I also think this will be a reality in the not to distant further so it will worked well together. I used a combination of tools to create the poster. I edited and used some graphics from Illustrio and used Canva to put it all together. Since I have no background in graphic design this product is a real testament to the user friendliness of these tools. I am very happy how these turned out.

Lastly, I made this digital exploration:

• I would love to explore how Homer’s The Odyssey plays out in a transmedia world… I would love to tackle this in a group setting allowing students to break up the story into different media’s to convey three different tales of the story. 1) Polyphemus the Cyclops told through an Instagram story. Students will be asked create a bullet point overview of the tale in a series of pictures and descriptions. Each member will also record a short Instagram story in which they discuss a theme they found in the story and cite evidence from the text. 2) The Journey to the Underworld told through twitter. Each member of the group would retell a portion of the journey into underworld using the hashtag #underworldadventure providing pictures and reactions to the text in a variety of tweets. In these tweets students will be asked find syntax and diction from the text to show how Homer builds the tone of the piece. 3) The last group will work from The Sirens through the form of a Soundcloud playlist and podcast. In this portion of the learning students will create a modern “Siren” playlist. In between the songs on the playlist students will be asked to record podcast in which they read a portion of the book and use their own “siren” song choice to build a backstory for their siren of choice and why they’re trying to lure Odysseus to his death.

The goal was to have multiple digital storytelling tools in play with this exercise and have students show their learning through a variety of mediums which may or may not be familiar to them. This one was fun. Looking for a story that would adapt well to the transmedia world was interesting and let me, and the others i’ve seen on Slack, get pretty creative in the process.

How did you challenge yourself? What was your biggest stretch?

I think the option to take this class was my first real challenge. Going into my last semester in this Grad program and deciding to take a class that I knew very little about and use a variety of mediums that I have never used (this is only my second online class ever) was a little daunting. Knowing that I would be dedicating so much time to the classroom at my practice school while also learning to do a lot of new things in the online classroom was challenge for me, but one I am happy to have taken thus far as this has been a great experience to date and a class that I am actively looking forward to each week now.

My biggest stretch was definitely the “Artifact from the Near Future” challenge. I am a bit of a perfectionist, not in the sense that what I create has to be perfect but rather that it needs to be pretty close to what I envision when thinking things over. If I decided to do something, and I have a picture in my head of what that is supposed to look like, I have a very hard time turning in something that doesn’t quite capture that vision. I had a picture in my head of the final product and it took a while, and a bunch of failed attempts in a variety of websites, to get something that I was proud of and happy to share with my classmates.