From Internet Happiness to My Expectations of this class, it has been a very exciting and informing experience. To me, Digital Storytelling is a very useful tool in the media world today, and more surprisingly, it involves many aspects of media that I didn’t know about before now.

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First, the concept of memes was a very big revelation to me on how much engagement and communication one can achieve using memes. This possibly inspired one of our assignments – Are Memes Art? Obviously, I learned a lot from this exercise that memes can evoke certain emotions or feelings like love, anger, happiness or excitement. The process of blogging my response to this question could not have been complete without some of these resources – Make a Meme and  Giphy. From these resources I got the memes that reflected my response. This is a link to my completed project.

 

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Second, we also explored GIFs and their relation to the digital world. Similarly, GIFs are like memes in terms of expressing a particular feeling. However, it involves moving images like short videos. It can be used to express happiness, excitement or disappointment. Whether memes and gifs will completely dominate media communication, only time will tell. I also used Giphy for the resources. This is a link to my completed project.

 

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Third, we were introduced to DS106 Assignments, a repository from where we chose two different assignments to replicate. I went for “Pop Star Out of Place.” I used Photopea to accomplish this. Photopea is like an online photoshop that allows image manipulations. My second DS10 project was to choose an unregistered company and brand their logo. I also achieved this using Photopea and Publisher. Below are the completed works.

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Fourth, the Internet Own’s Boy was another good revelation about Aaron Swartz.  His primary intention to make public many contents on the internet considered private publications got him into trouble but he did not quit, he was resilient until it led to his arrest and unending litigation. According to Aaron, “On the internet, everyone can have a channel, everyone can have a blog, or myspace page, everyone has a way of expressing themselves. And so what you see now is not a question of who gets access to the air waves, it is a question of who get control of the ways you find people.” This is a strong reflection of his passion. The documentary is very informing.

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Fifth, we were introduced to the real situation of creating website where most of our works will be published. The first process was to choose a domain name and sign up with Reclaim Hosting. From here I acquired my domain name and went on to install the WordPress Application that will enable me to start working on my website. It was very fun experience as I was able to understand the backend activities of creating a website. Generally, I believe that WordPress simplifies the whole process of creating website for people with little or no knowledge of coding. The ability to choose and edit the themes give one absolute control of the contents. So far, I have been able to change my site title, color, images and few other functionalities. Here is a link to my site – www.selladsonline.com

 

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Generally, the class has been thrilling and more importantly, my knowledge and about digital storytelling has significantly grown. When next I receive a gif or meme on my phone, I will not only see images but read beyond the power of the communication. When next I see a website, I look beyond the physical designs but the backend architecture of of what went on before it’s completion. So far, I am having fun and learning in this class.