Its Mid-Semester Re-Cap Time!

Wow, here we are at the midpoint of our CT101 semester! Time… goes by waaaaaay too fast.. Lets take a minute to reflect, lets take a minute to regroup, lets induce a class reflection!

**Video tutorial / suggested process :

https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/IWB3mZJLXg_0OyXYNk7PrbrBvsAo10wfPx2m1C2O5W4xJb8ccgdq9aT9vtIK9MXz.I1MGDZVLtLtqaNqz 

Passcode: FfB93c^e

 

Let us ask ourselves the following questions, and reflect:

“How am I doing in CT101?  What have I learned? What new skills have I developed, cultivated and displayed regularly? How does this contribute to my weekly progress? How do I assess my performance through a self-reflection in this class?”

The assessment part is very tangible and clear as we have been producing results over the last 6.5 weeks in the form of blogging, commenting, creating visual imagery and class participation. Lets take stock, follow me below,

The CT 101 Course Schedule page is where everything is – this is the CT 101 HUB – this is the space where all the assignments and learning details take form each week – (just in case you forgot) – this is where you can recap and catch up on all assignments –  https://ct101.commons.gc.cuny.edu/course-schedule/

In fact, before we move into the next phase of our course, I want to take a week and reflect upon what has already been accomplished, as well take accountability for what might be missing and in need of improvement.

Let’s title this: Assignment #6 – The Mid-Semester Assessment Post

Assignment Details:

In a new blog post titled:

“Assignment #6 – The Mid-Semester Assessment Post”, please assess and reflect upon your last 6.5 weeks here in CT 101. Please answer and address the following questions below, and also provide hyperlinks back to all of your previous completed blog posts. This will help illustrate some of the questions below as you tell a compelling story here in the CT 101 blog space: (of course, the use of imagery is helpful and needed but please don’t default to using too many GIFs or memes to fill in the gaps, the emphasis should be on the written word.) 

How am I doing in CT101?

How many points have I earned so far and what grade do I believe I am maintaining? 

What have I learned and retained the most?

What new skills have I developed , cultivated and displayed regularly in my weekly posts?

How do I assess my performance through self-reflection in this class?

What do I know now that I did not know before taking this class?

Do I see my weekly blogging work expanding creatively? If so, please explain –  or am I stuck in a loop where my posts seem to look the same most of the time, how will I change that?

Are there any assignments that you are missing? If so, list them. Are you commenting regularly on your classmates posts? Are you responding back to comments given to you by the professor & your classmates? Are you participating during the class time? If not, explain why. This is the time to be accountable. How will you make needed improvements?

Have fun with this!

Feel free to include useful relatedness in the form of links, images, video or Make Something New to express how you feel about this post! (a technique from the dS106 assignment bank perhaps?)

 

I really do enjoy the flexibility of this class, I really wish all classes were like this. Not only do I have fun but I get to really be creative, unlike my other classes. I also really enjoy telling stories or even creating something that makes people wonder. I had this idea and at first, I didn’t really know how to put it together, I wanted to create something that had a little bit of a different meaning for everyone. It took me a while because I had to draw it myself then put things together. 

It is not the best but I am hoping when I express myself I learn from it, even if its not the best. In this class, I don’t feel negatively judged about my ideas wherein other classes I do feel that way

 

Creativity is making something that has never existed before or even thinking of an idea that no one has thought of before. It’s basically thinking outside of the box.

Intuition is basically being able to know something without any evidence or specific reasoning, sort of like a gut feeling is an example of intuition.

Immediacy is the action of getting close to someone whether physically or psychologically.

Working with mmm.page was a bit difficult at first since I had difficulty deciding what I wanted to add to it.  I was compelled to create a website that would stand out and grab people’s attention, and one that people could relate to and find something in common. For my website, I decided to make the page about things that I enjoy in life which included my cats, music, going to concerts, family, etc.

What I love about this course is the creative freedom and visiting the ds106 assignment repository there are so many options to express yourself through these projects. One of the projects I would choose is from the design assignments. I’ve always liked being creative and designing allows me to express myself whether it is by hand or using some type of software. What I like about designing is that I own whatever I am doing, I get add my personal touch every time whether it is the theme, color scheme, drawing, photos, etc… An assignment I would choose from this section is the one to make an “Event Poster”.

The purpose is to design a poster for any event. And I feel like this assignment goes perfectly with what I want to do post-graduation. Currently I am a supervisor at a banquet hall for events such as wedding receptions, birthday parties, baby showers, concerts, any type of event. Later down the line once I feel like I have gained enough experience I want to start an event planning business. One thing I will have to focus on is advertising my events. One of those ways can be through a poster. Many things go into designing a poster for example if I want to design a poster for the next wedding that will be held at the banquet hall I work at. I would have to know the culture, theme, date, names of the people getting married, a picture of the couple and the vibe they want to go for. I believe this assignment would be fun for me and gives me experience learning to design and advertise different events.  

Here is a poster I made for future event bookings where I work. Using a picture I took from the rooftop and information about the location as well as our slogan. Free advertising for my boss lol.

 Another project that interests me are video assignments. I have always preferred watching something rather than reading it. I also like seeing what I read come to life visually through video. Different emotions can be expressed, tones can be set from different setting, music, character expressions. And when it comes to making videos, the ideas are endless for storytelling. Once again, I feel like making a video and being properly able to express what I want through it is important. What is going to draw people to events I work at are good reviews which often are pictures or videos. And those videos express the different emotions from the event and must be convincing enough to intrigue people to be interested in booking my service.  One assignment from the section that interests me is the “30 second memory” which involves creating a 30-45 second film with clips from a memory.

Many people have different preferences when it comes to recording or taking pictures to remember certain moments in life to remember. Some do and others don’t and prefer living in the moment. Choosing a memory would be difficult but it would probably be a core memory from when I was younger, and times were simpler.  

Hmmmmmmmmmm. This seems interesting I thought to myself browsing through the DS106 website. I wasn’t paying too much attention to the rating and more so the assignment itself. I started with writing assignments since I felt like I had the skills to do that given the fact I am an English major and enjoy writing in my free time regardless of suffering from writers’ block 84% of the time. It didn’t take long to find one that piqued my interest that being writing the terms and conditions of an apocalypse. I thought this assignment would be cool for two reasons. Reason one being no one ever reads the terms and conditions but since our lives depend on this, it would be a great way to get my creativity going. Reason two was that I recently started watching the walking dead which for those of you who don’t know is about a zombie apocalypse so I thought that doing this assignment would be fun.

The second assignment I chose which I will be demonstrating on how I completed it in my blog today was a “This Doesn’t Belong Here” Assignment. Basically, I had to take two different movie scenes and incorporate one into the other very subtly. For this assignment, I think I just had to learn the basics of photoshop that being its tools, functions, and certain rules. I chose this assignment because I love movies so I had a whole bunch of scenes and characters in mind. I also chose this assignment to practice my photo editing skills. I took a couple of classes regarding photoshop in high school and although I wasn’t the best, I still enjoyed it but unfortunately gave up and haven’t practiced since but this assignment caught my eye for that exact reason. Instead of using photoshop, I used photo pea which is similar. The two movies I decided to use are the last scene from Someone Great and Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street. 

The Assignment:

Step 1:

The first thing I did in order to complete this assignment was to gather my materials that were a picture of Freddy Krueger and the final scene of someone great. After that, I opened up photo pea in a new tab on my browser, inserted my first photo from someone great, and added a new layer that way the original did not get messed up. 

step 2: 

After including my first photo and adding its layer, I inserted the picture of Freddy Krueger. As you can see, this picture contains a white background which is no good for the final product. In order to get rid of this, I used the magic wand tool and selected the areas I wished to remove (all of the white) where you can see with the dotted lines.

 

 

Step 3: 

After selecting the unwanted areas, I had to rasterize the layer in order to delete them. I rasterized the layer by right-clicking the layer with Freddy on it and selected “rasterize”. After that, I hit the delete button and all white space was gone. 

Step 4:

Now that all of the white space is gone, I moved Freddy and changed the fill and opacity percentage so that he could blend better into the scene. 

final Product:

In order to build both emergent storytelling skills and use new tools to create them, I think we should be completing at least one project a week. I say once a week so we have time to go back, reflect, and add things on without the pressure of a tight deadline. You can also go back to prior weeks and compare your works whether they were writing, visual, or audio assignments this way we can expand our horizon and see how we can incorporate one area of interest in another. For example, what if we did writing one week, visual another, and combined both on the third week? I think these skills are important because, in a world where we are heavily dependent on technology and it is consistently evolving, I believe we should be able to utilize more than the basics. In addition, this could be something fun to do in free time or a side hustle, and when has learning anything extra ever hurt anyone?

I would say that out of all websites. I use Youtube the most. Youtube isn’t only known as a platform for entertainment, and I would say that it helps us find information about a topic that we want to research or learn about. Youtube enables you to discover what things you enjoy by just looking up what you like and the community you want to be in (content creators).

Another website I use daily is a meme generator site called Imgflip. It lets you make your memes, and it gives you many templates for you to use to put your text and photos to make your memes how you like them. It’s good to explore different templates to see what you like best!!!

What did you think on the first day of the CT101?

Before we had our first class meeting, I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect. I’ve read the class description of course, however, I was still curious to see what the class would actual entail in terms of assignments, lectures, etc. After the first class meeting, I became a lot more intrigued in the subject matter but definitely still a bit skeptical since I wasn’t quite sure how I’d fare in content creation.

Did you like hearing about the course and its creative content? How did it make you feel?

Again, definitely was a bit more on the skeptical side of things since I am not very confident in my ability to be creatively capable. However, I did also feel a sense of excitement. Its been a pretty long time since I’ve created any form of digital media. I want to see what it is I can do creatively in a digital space.

 

How does CT101 compare to some of your other classes?

CT101 has definitely been a nice buffer between my many computer classes this semester. I know I’m in the process of catching up on work, however, it hasn’t been stressful in the least bit. I would go as far to say that it’s actual pretty therapeutic.

 

What are the potentials of this class?

I think a potential of this class is to possibly discover a new hobby while at the same time learn about new accessible tools on the internet. One of my favorite parts of the internet is that of meme/gif culture and to find out it’s actually really easy to be apart of and contribute too has been a real eye opener. Definitely will continue to create more even after/outside this class.

 

How do you feel abut learning new skills that use Internet tools?

To be able to learn new internet skills is the most exciting part! Definitely a favorite topic of mine. So much so that I’ve recently began to teach myself the programming languages necessary to program the front end of an entire website. I absolutely love tech and the internet, so if I can learn the tools that allows me to contribute to this space then I’ll take the opportunity to do so.

I would say that out of all the websites I visit daily, YouTube has to be the one I am on 80% of the time. I mean, it has practically everything you’re looking for. If you need to touch up on a lecture topic for class and your professor’s notes are a bit too confusing…boom! Hundreds of other videos explaining the same topic. Maybe you would like to re-watch some clips from your favorite movies? You can watch it a million times if you’d like thanks to YouTube. You may even come to find a bunch of different content creators whom you’d like to subscribe to because of how their videos appeal to you. Personally, tech is my favorite topic to keep up on. My favorite videos consist of reviews/benchmarks of the latest computer parts such as processors and graphics cards .

On the complete other side of the spectrum, one of my other favorite things to do is re-watch past UFC/boxing highlights. It wasn’t until about two years ago I became a really huge mixed martial arts fan. Since then, it takes up a good chunk of the content I watch online. I did wrestling back in high school, so when I watch these pro-fighters compete, it reminds me of that rush you feel when you’re standing in front of your opponent prepared to see if all that training is about to pay off or not. Not only that, to watch your favorite fighters come out on top over their competition is also just really exciting to see.

 

 

Yes, memes can be simply just a form of self-expression. Indeed, they’re more. Well, because they provide in-depth details of how fulfilling it can make a person.

Yes, memes can be used for storytelling.

I will craft a narrative between using memes and my own personal experiences are by attributing the significance of how it impacts me.

 

Are memes art?

When I heard this question, I was so surprised because I never really think that way. In fact, I took it in a sarcastic way. But from this video, I just learned that there was actually an exhibition of memes held in LA in 2017!! The organizer of the exhibition said in an interview that they did this because he wants to bring more legitimacy to memes as an art form.

Whenever I see memes, I ignore most of them because I do not find them funny or don’t really understand their meanings. Sometimes they make me laugh, and if I feel related to the memes, I might share them with my friends. That’s all about it. I never really pay attention to the fact that “Can Meme be art?”

However, while doing research for this assignment, I just realized that it’s a form of art indeed!  Although Google did not classify it as art yet. As per today’s internet culture, it’s a form of art, because memes contain stories through visual representation, just like an art piece. Another direct connection would be arts are often used as subjects for memes.

I consider memes are a good form of communication.  In this fast-moving world, nobody has time for reading a joke or post, but memes are really great in this case. They are really fun and eye-catchy.  I don’t think all memes are simply just a form of self-expression. Creating a good meme requires a great sense of humor as well as creativity. Otherwise, people don’t find those memes funny.

Besides that, memes are widely used as forms of storytelling and those are my personal favorite types of memes. Here one of the storytelling memes that I find funny:

For this week’s assignment, we will use the DS106 Assignment Bank

WOW! this looks cool we have the option to work on 11 different  assignments that involve the likes of “project prompts that are categorized by a variety of media types (visual, design, audio, video, mashup, writing, fanfic, and animated gifs”.)

I have chosen the code assignments even though I still struggle with the coding languages. With the experience of taking a C++ class before maybe it’s time to showcase what I can do.  The project assignment I will work on and show the steps to is the “Make A Simple Program”

 

Coding, also known as computer programming, is the method by which we communicate with computers. Code instructs a computer on what actions to take, and writing code is analogous to writing a set of instructions. You can tell computers what to do or how to behave much more quickly if you learn to write code. You can use this skill to create websites and apps, process data, and do a variety of other interesting things.

Why do we need coding? For the future, we all have hopes, dreams, and plans. Whether you’re looking for a new job, want to improve your current one, or simply want to try something new, coding can help you get there. And keep in mind that anyone can learn to code!

To learn to code we can visit Codecademy, Youtube, Udemy 

 

For my assignment, I chose to use Dev-C++ is a full-featured C and C++ Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Windows platforms. Millions of developers, students, and researchers use Dev-C++ since the first version was released in 1998. It has been featured in dozens of C++ and scientific books and remains one of the favorite learning tools among universities & schools worldwide.

I created a simple program game called “Guess My Number”. My screenshots will display the code of lines and the result of the finished product. 

 

The project assignment from the  DS106 Assignment Bank that I would like to try and learn, is the Design Assignments specifically the Sports Poster.  Posters serve several purposes in the promotion of your sporting event. You can intrigue people’s interest with large, eye-catching posters before the game and raise player awareness with posters at the event. Posters can also alert people to concessions during the game. Your idol may have these posters of their favorite players on their room walls and admire them. It creates a motivational connection between the players and the people.

I feel like we are very limited of time but two projects at most for me will be fine to do. As you can see, I have displayed some coding programs for which I am still struggling as a coder. For me, it’s a hate and love situation with coding because if there comes an error then you must spend hours on it to get it to work which is the annoying part. As for the designing assignment creating a digital poster looks to be a slight challenge and also seems to be fine.

 

Similar to how art does, Memes may provide a cultural perspective as well as a feeling of critique. Because memes are an expression of thoughts and feelings, they should be classified as art.Most are you stumbled across one while going through Facebook, Twitter, or other social media platforms a minute or an hour ago. Memes have long ago permeated the mainstream, becoming a common sight on social media feeds and, more recently, on the walls of art gallery displays.

Meme makes our live more easy to express our thought on social media, we easily can show our funny excitement on virtual media by using memes. I think this pandemic make memes most popular than ever before.   The latest and greatest spin off in the meme art world has been the viral Bernie Sander glove photo. Everyone start making meme with Bernie Sander viral glove photo. It so easy to make meme. Just we all need a funny photo and add some few words.

The meme style attracts our eyes in a world where we surf through news feeds for hours at a time, and most of them can be read and comprehended in seconds. It would be insane for me to suggest that memes can’t be used for storytelling after using memes to explain this entire piece. Using memes to communicate a tale makes no difference to me. All you have to do now is create or locate the proper memes to tell your narrative the way you want it to be told.

 

 

One task for which I believe I already possess the necessary abilities is the design assignment.This assignment wants us to Design a poster for an upcoming event, it could be a concert, a car show, really anything you want, the event can even be made up. THIS ASSIGNMENT WAS SELECTED BECAUSE I ENJOY BEING CREATIVE WHEN MAKING POSTERS. Making posters and developing new designs has always been a hobby of mine since I was in middle school.

Posters are one of the most cost-effective advertising mediums available. Posters allow you to reach a large audience for a fraction of the cost of radio, newspaper, or television advertising in a simple, straightforward, and cost-effective manner. When you combine your design skills with it, it becomes even better. Design, whether we realize it or not, is one of the most powerful factors in our life, and it can also be motivating, uplifting, and illuminating.” It takes a lot more than just making a nice-looking product to be a competent designer. It’s all about giving them a great experience at every touchpoint and with every interaction.

 

This is an assignment I’ll be doing more of this semester to help me learn and develop both emergent storytelling talents. I’ll be utilizing the website cavas. It’s a fantastic website for integrating design, picture editing, and layout to assist instructors and students in producing stunning completed projects. Teachers may use Canva to create posters, guides, and projects, but students can also use it to complete homework.

This project required us to create an interactive software with 100-200 lines of code and a viewer-interactive component. I believe the code assignment is the only one for which I believe I require further expertise. Yes, I am familiar with HTML and CSS, but coding need more experience.

There are several sites for learning programming languages. Codecademy is one of the most well-known online code-teaching websites. I could learn Javascript, jQuery, Python, Ruby, and PHP, among other languages, at Codecademy. Once I’ve learned the essential languages, I may move on to more advanced tasks like building a website, establishing a Rails app, utilizing APIs to create apps, and other fascinating ambitions. In addition, I can learn these abilities via Youtube, Khan Academy, Udemy, and Coursera. 

Programming skills are vital because they assist young pupils acquire problem-solving talents, such as the capacity to solve a problem both rationally and creatively. Coding increases a person’s cognitive talents by helping them to think more clearly, strategically, and analytically. I will be learning more programming language this semester and applying this skills to real life world. I want to build an app using c programing this semesters. Hoping to use more of my design skills 

 

 

 

There are many things I want to try in this class. I am not the best of the best but when it comes down to trying, I try to give it my all.

When visiting DS106 Assignment Repository I found many options of what two projects to choose audio, web, video and many more. I found all these options a bit over whelming but confident enough to find projects that inspire me. When surfing around I found myself drawn to the video, web and mashup sections.

It was hard to only pick two but I settled on an assignment from the web section called “Guess The Story“. Which in summation is about using gifs to tell a story but only using fives images. Which I found interesting because I like to find memes and gifs and I know for a fact I can use them to tell a story which you the reader could guess at least I hope.

A second assignment I think I could possibly due but not 100 percent sure is from the Mashup section. It’s titled “Music and Imagery“. Like any person I like a good mashup but do not have the sufficient knowledge to do it fully well. For this assignment you have two take images from your favorite movie or show and blend them together. While also layering on top the sheet music of a song you like from your favorite show or movie.

I haven’t learned a lot of skills when it comes to editing apps. Not in any other class have I been asked to edit so first I feel I need to get comfortable with editing to first successfully do these projects in a good easy. A way I feel I am becoming more understanding of editing is creating gifs on Giphy. I uploaded the gifs or memes I created for this class on giphy on the channel called juanc4rlos.

I think we should do three major projects in this class. I think three is fair because the first one should show how you are as a creator and how far you can go from a beginner. The second one is to show how you improved over the work you did the first time. Lastly, the third is to show how far you progressed as a newbie to a more understanding student creator. Three is good because it allows students to use many different skills to become better. It also allows for students to not do many projects that can stress students and cause them to not want to do it.

Now let us get started with Project Number 1. I am a very visual person and can find any gif to convey emotions so let’s see if you can guess the story.

(HINT IS IT’S A CARTOON SHOW FROM THE 2000’S)

FAMILY BEING TOGETHER

HAMBURGERS

IT’S A FUNNY SHOW

A NETWORK

REAL LIFE STUFF IN CARTOON FORM

Ok that’s it. If you can guess comment below I feel it’s very obvious.

 

After scrolling through the ds106 assignment bank, I saw a couple of interesting assignments to look through but ultimately chose this one as one of the those I had the resources and skills to do:

As a huge movie fanatic myself, I figured this one would be fun to do and it’d be great practice to learn how to make my own gifs. It took some thought to choose which iconic movie scene would fit best as a gif and what better scene than the infamous stair dance in Joker.

After doing some quick research on how find video and make my gif, I headed to Youtube to find the actual movie scene. I decided to use Giphy as it’s quick and easy to use.

Giphy allows any videos or clips to be used from multiple websites, such as Youtube or Vimeo. So, I simply pasted my Youtube URL in and got to work!

I trimmed down the video to 4 seconds and chose the time slot I wanted for the gif. After making some simple adjustments, I posted and saved. Here’s how it turned out:

One thing that I’d like to learn how to do is to photoshop any image onto another. For example, this assignment asks for you to photoshop yourself into a historical event like in the movie Forrest Gump.

Photoshop, overall, seems like a great skill to have in graphic design and becomes really useful when it comes to creating eye-catching media or content. These skills can be implemented into so many different work fields like marketing, web design, photography, etc. and it enhances career opportunities.