Welcome to CT101 – Digital Storytelling! Spring 2021

an old TV from the 1980s hosts the Digital Storytelling course title program

Welcome Everyone!

I hope that you are safe and healthy! Here we are:

CT101 – Digital Storytelling! The Spring Semester of 2021

Ok, this blog post is a lot things, but first and foremost it is a welcoming! Im excited to meet everyone and share our 1st class session to connect and learn about each other. That’s Nyle DiMarco below, he’s a Deaf Actor and Artist, he is showing us how to say: “Nice to Meet You” in American Sign Language. Im also Deaf and Hard of Hearing, so you can expect to learn some ASL and see more ASL GIFs this semester! I hope that you like animated GIFS, we are going use a lot of them here, and make them too! We are going to spend a lot of time discussing ways that we communicate.

an animated GIF of Nyle DiMarco signing "Nice to Meet You" in American Sign Language

There is a lot of compelling content to cover, which will happen in many ways! Lets start this week with a real time Zoom class at 10AM (the zoom link and PW is already posted on our Blackboard course page and sent as an announcement to your CUNY e-mail address.) Keep in mind, there are two individual sections of this course that both follow the same assignment criteria and also uses the same class website. You are only required to follow the day and section that you registered for, but if you wish, you can join in more. I will explain all of this as we go forward with our first week or two of classes.

**This is the direct URL / Link to our class Website – https://ct101.commons.gc.cuny.edu/

That link above, that is where EVERYTHING is happening for CT101. 

kermit the frog rigorously typing - animated GIF

The Class Structure – CT101 will be taught both synchronously and asynchronously and you will decide what method works best for you. I am here to help you be the best that you can be in our course. And we are all here to do the same for each other. Our class is a community! The nature of our course is already acquainted with the structure that you see here. (This Internet thing…) A big part of our class is exploring your creativity and being experimental with the Internet! Plus, we will learn about the evolving array of digital tools that are available to us. We do quite a bit of the creative work from our own personal work spaces as we integrate the class work into our lives. Please know, I will screen-record each and every assignment’s description, how-to’s and tutorials and share those videos here on our website. Please think of this website as a repository of information, energy and inspiration for the course (and beyond!)

The Class Website – Our class website takes place on the CUNY Academic Commons! You will soon discover that the Commons is a huge resource and regular source of inspiration and community! Im excited to share this with you all.

**This Week’s Assignment – In the comments section below (scroll down to the bottom of the page) Lets leave our first Comment. Introduce yourself! Tell us a bit about yourself, What is your name? What you are studying here at York College and anything else that you wish to share (favorite movies, activities, ice cream flavor perhaps? Favorite place to visit on the web? What are you most interested in at this moment? Etc..) Feel free to add links too!

**PS -I moderate all the comments to make sure that spam bots don’t spam us into oblivion! If may take a few minutes before your comment shows up, no need to submit it twice if you don’t see it appear right away :))

Also, please explore this website, read through the syllabus and some of the course resources, it will be super helpful in the next coming weeks.

 

Final Blog Post

Here We Are!!!

This was rollercoaster of a semester, there was twists and turns all along.

 

It was very different than the last semesters I had in college. Everything is online and a bit hectic.

I thought I wasn’t going to make it to the end. But it is what it is, and I am grateful. I enjoyed this class very much, it was interesting and challenging. Throughout the semester, I learned a lot. I learned about different types of creative tools such as photopea and giphy. I learned how to create my own gifs and vaporwaves. I also learned about Aaron Swartz and his fight for free and open internet.

My siblings were amazed about the materials that I was learning in class. Specifically, the DS106 – Visual Assignment- combo photo assignment caught their eyes.

I think I deserve an A- or B+. Thankfully, I completed all assignments and enjoyed completing them. After learning creative techniques and materials, I am looking forward to using them in my website and future purposes. I will continue to use my website to upload recipes and techniques on baking.

Overall, I had an amazing experience in class. Stay Safe Everyone !

 

 

Final Post- FIN

About Course and Skillsets

Taking Ct101 has been a fun and exciting journey. I initially thought this class would have been a lot of work but I was totally wrong. I thought I would’ve had to be computer savvy and be able to have prior experience of using the internet and different software. But boy was I WRONG! This course is very user friendly! Professor Seslow is so great at his class course tutorials; that even if you missed a week of work you would still know how to do the assignment.

There were a lot of times where I missed a set in a live class session and the zoom recording saved me. Lol

I have learned so many skill sets like gif and meme-making, hyperlinking, embedding videos, creating my very own domain, and challenging myself to learn how to create logos. The CT101 website was set up in a way where every week we were learning a new skill set and were encouraged to recreate content containing all we learned. These assignments were never too difficult in my opinion, seeing that I am a millennial and the content was familiar to me. 

 

It’s a bittersweet feeling to know that this course has come to an end.

Website Information 

Because I enjoyed how we were able to pick and choose how we wanted to do things and we had most of the creative authority. Especially when it came to our websites! (Heres the link to mine)

I thought I would have had more time to develop my website. I created my website with the intent to self journal. So, I would blog about my self-care ideas, quarantine-safe fun activities, and/or my every day-to-day struggle as a young adult. One major success is that I was able to follow the step thoroughly to develop my website. It wasn’t hard to customize it to my liking because I had a visual in mind already. I was going for a stylish but simple look because I am girly but not too extreme. One of my biggest frustration during this process was TIME. Between my other demanding classes and CT101, I didn’t get a chance to post as much on my website as I wanted to. But seeing that I’ll be done with classes this week, I will definitely keep up with posting. I feel as though writing can be very therapeutic and so this is why I will upkeep my site.  

My website is set up pretty much like the tutorials the only thing is that I have included an about me page and a gallery. The about me page is just a little summary of me and what the website will entail. The gallery is just there for all the logos and/or pictures I make upload in my blog post. 

Grade

I feel as though I deserve an A, A-, 

HERE ME OUT! Lml 

I have managed to complete all of the week’s assignments. Also, I have put my best effort into creating content that was completely thought out and structured. I was always taught when you do something make sure you give it a 100% and that’s what I did in this course!

Louannie N. Smith

DS 106 Assignment

Today I am going to choose two categories from the DS106 Assignment Bank

For the first part, I chose visual assignments- combo photo

This assignment was fun to do, I had to combine two photos in to one creative one. I did two combo photos for fun.

 

An Elephant combined with a tornado storm

 

chili pepper combined with a red hot flame

 

 

For Part 2, I participated in creating my logo under design assignments .

This is what I created.

 

I enjoyed doing this, It was bit challenging and fun.

 

GIFS

This is my first time creating a GIF ! Can’t wait to show you mine! When I enrolled in this class I was a bit nervous and curious on how to use digital features. I knew that we need to use specific digital tools to complete our assignments.

My friend recommended this class to me, saying the class is fun and I will learn so much. So here I am.

Attending the first two weeks of class was amazing! Professor Seslow is passionate about what he’s doing. I am loving this class already, it is full positive vibes.

This is the GIF I created

STAY SAFE EVERYONE !

Assignment#1- Internet Happiness

 

The Internet nowadays is everyone’s right hand. It has become a helpful and reliable resource over the years. Especially this year, with all the challenges we are facing such as the coronavirus pandemic, transitioning from in person-classes to online classes and working from home. It’s been a crazy year!

Internet happiness to me is watching You Tube videos and Netflix. I also love reading articles based on science and other non-fictional books. On You Tube, I mostly watch baking tutorials. I love baking!

Recently I binged watched The Crown, a series drama on Netflix.

I watched all four seasons and let me tell you something, It was AMAZING!!!

The Crown is a historical drama about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II and the British Royal Family. It’s worth watching it !!!

 

 

Final Blog Post: Reflecting on the Semester!

Hi everyone!

Wow, it’s already the end of the semester huh? I’m both excited and sad to be graduating from York this semester; it’s really been a long ride.

I remember coming into CT 101 on the first day, nervous because I hadn’t had any sort of experience with blogging, website design or anything really relating to the back-end side of the internet. (It makes me feel so much cooler using tech terminology like that :D)

However, my fears were soon put out because all of our assignments have been fun learning experiences. I got to try creating so many different types of digital media like GIFs, memes, typography and (now) my personal favorite, Vaporwave!

My website, https://strawberriesandcream.net/ , is a personal blog where I share my art and cake designs!

I got off to a very slow start with my website development, mostly because I kept on making minor changes, and going back and forth between the back and front end of the website. I initially had some technical difficulties signing up for the website, but the ReclaimHosting support team came to the rescue in under 15 minutes!

I wish that I had taken this class earlier in my academic career, because these skills would have helped me in so many other club projects and art assignments I did. I would have also liked to take more classes in CT to get a better feel of what web design and coding are like. I’d like to do a course in this sometime in the future. I also hope I can get a job in graphic design so I can further develop my skills!

I really hope that I earned an ‘A’ in this course, because I tried to apply as much of what I learned into each one of my posts, and I had so much fun creating them along the way. I tried to make my posts more fun to read by using a lot of images, and typed as if I was just having a normal conversation 🙂

Overall, this was a very fun semester for me, and I’m glad I got to meet and interact with so many other talented individuals. I hope that you have a wonderful holiday everyone! Stay safe 😀

Assignment #12: Copyright!

Hi everyone!

You know, when I opened Larry Lessig’s TED talk, I wondered for a moment why he had a picture of Andy Warhol in the background, then it clicked. Yeah, there’s gonna be a LOT of legal grey area here.

So for those of you who don’t know, Andy Warhol was a 20th century pop artist, famous for his silkscreened images of famous people. You may have seen his work around the internet:

 

Warhol was very careful/lucky when it came to copyright infringement. He did the Marilyn Munroe silkscreens after her death so it was regarded as a tribute. In the case of Campbell Soup, he was insanely lucky. They literally wrote him a letter thanking him for promoting their product AND sent him free soup!

Keep in mind, Warhol was making money off of this, none of which went to Campbell Soup. I literally can’t imagine any company today doing the same. There was a very interesting case brought up against his foundation on whether his work with the Prince series was considered “fair use” or not after the photographer sued the foundation. The decision was ruled in favor of the Andy Warhol Foundation.

 

“I’m talking about people taking and recreating using other people’s content, using digital technologies to say things differently.”

– Larry Lessig

But in today’s society, it’s really hard to determine what constitutes “fair use”, because it heavily varies from case to case. Can I sue Andy Warhol for using my photograph in his work? That’s about as effective as trying to sue Picasso for appropriating African art and culture.

Yup, copyright is a double-edged sword. However, I don’t think that this should discourage us from creating art. Everyone has a right to express how they think and feel through art, and maybe your creativity is stimulated by seeing the things in your environment. No harm in looking for inspiration from the things around you.

Assignment #11: Vaporwave!

Hi everyone!

It’s official: I’m in love with Vaporwave art <3

I love everything from the retro aesthetic to the vibrant, neon colors. Here’s two versions of a Vaporwave artwork I made with the character L from Death Note.

If you’ve watched the show, you know that apples and potato chips are significant to the plot, and it wasn’t until I finished both of the versions that I realized how much it reminded me of the second opening theme.

I had so much fun recoloring the chips and adjusting the sizes and orientations of the apples. The kanji over L’s eyes in the second version translates to “genius” in Japanese, and the chips I chose are a very popular brand that I personally enjoy eating. If you haven’t tried seaweed-flavored Calbee potato chips, now is the time! 😀

Assignment #10: Visiting A Classmate’s Website!

Hi everyone!

I was looking through all of the awesome websites that my classmates created. Everyone did such a good job with the design and layout of their webpages so far.

I visited Claudia’s website, ClaudiaBakes, and wow! I really enjoyed reading through her recipes, and the pictures were absolutely mouth-watering. The recipes were laid out in a very neat, easy-to-read format, and her instructions were clear to follow. As a fellow baker, I hope I can try out some of these new recipes! I think I’ll begin with the homemade carrot cake 😀

I also visited Brandon’s site, NBABrandon. As someone who knows little to nothing about basketball, I thought that his site was very informative. It was mostly image-based and kept you up-to-date with whatever’s happening in the NBA currently without overloading the reader with too much information. I look forward to seeing the new content when the NBA season starts!

Final Blog Post

So this is really goodbye…

The end of the semester…

CT101 has been a tremendous all around fun ,learning, unique experience.

I can honestly say I enjoyed this course.

For the most part, I feel so much more comfortable being able to express myself through a blog.

I learned how to support my feelings and emotions using GIFS, videos, images and text that are super short and simple.

One thing that I REALLY REALLLYYY, I mean reallyyyyy enjoyed about this course was the freedom to blog about my own interest!

Throughout the semester, I frequently blogged about my favorite athlete, there was simply no better feeling being able to just blog about something that I actually enjoyed.

No seriously, I literally blogged about Lebron James multiple times throughout out the semester, here’s a quick recap of previous blog posts.

In addition to this, I was able to create my very own Website for the first time!

and GUESS WHAT?

My website is strictly NBA CONTENT!

like whatttttt

I literally own a website where I can publish what I want!

CT101 allowed me to learn, create, edit, publish and allow me to post! This was a great experience! Also, I had peers who commented and gave feedback on my website! That was really awesome! I appreciated it a lot.

 



I appreciate Professor Seslow’s clear instructions and guidance as well. Being able to look back a Zoom sessions, really helped me a lot in learning how to create my website.

Now, after many many weeks of building knowledge and learning how to create and publish. I finally got to complete my website!

Overall, the only thing that I can say was a bit stressful, was me not wanting to miss a step. I viewed Zoom sessions carefully, so I didn’t have to miss any important steps.

But it was all part of the process!

Now… what grade do I believe I earned…

I have to admit… I believe I earned nothing less than a A-!

I say this because I completed all assignments, in addition I tried my best to include everything I learned over the semester in my work!

Overall, every good thing must come to an end!

And the semester is upon completion!

I appreciate you all! and everything I learned in CT101!!

HAVE A SAFE AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

 

CT101 Final Blog Post

What I’ve learned in CT101? Well…what haven’t I learned in this course!

I’m taking a whole lot of digital knowledge I never experienced before. CT101 has truly been a delightful class to take and keep up with. Every week, we learned new and exciting things about the digital tech world.

I’ve learned to use and make memes and GIFs. I’ve learned to blog and post, which I have never done in my entire life before this course!!!

My first ever post was about one of the wonders of the digital world. I love NETFLIX! I mean, it’s a great way of distracting yourself during the pandemic (and from it as well…). One of my all-time favorites is The Office. They are hysterical, and without the internet, nearly impossible to keep up with!

I’ve also learned to complete assignments through the DS106 Assignment Repository website. The first one was a visual assignment about a Pop Star Out of Place.

I really enjoyed placing Ariana Grande in some random place. She was naturally in sync with the wolves!

For the second part of that assignment, I had an awesome time summarizing a movie with animated GIFs. For this assignment, I chose to recreate a family favorite, The Little Mermaid. This was one of my favorite posts because I had a lot of fun creating the following:

I had a great laugh going through the motions, something I could only get in this course, of course!

The next step in our journey through CT101 was creating our own websites!

I had a wonderful time creating my brand new website claudiabakes.com. At first, I was very anxious. The thought of creating a website freaked me out! But being in class and listening to the explanations of the process made me eased into peace.

Proceeding with the website, I added a home page, an about page, a contact page, and a recipe page with categories! I began blogging and adding recipes to my new website. It was exciting, and honestly, very therapeutic. I felt like I was talking to someone like I do when we’re in person, but this is online! It’s amazing what the digital world can provide you with social skills like no other.

Back to the process, I’m not going to lie; it was hard keeping up with all the steps, especially for a beginner user like myself. But once I got through them, I realized it wasn’t so bad after all. I am eternally grateful for all the step-by-step instructions because, without them, I would be completely lost!!!

Now that I’ve learned so much from CT101, I will conquer the internet with all these new blogging skills! I am having all these great ideas about my brand new website. I will continue to build my blogging website, post my new ideas, and spread the inspiration! In the future, I hope to open a business of my own. Thanks to the skills I learned in this course about website building, I now know how to make a website for my future business.

I’ve learned to become my own critic and I can honestly say that I deserve a well earned A+. Like my fellow classmate Clark, I also believe in thinking positively. I aspire to be a successful student of knowledge, and indeed, I can say I have become very knowledgeable of the digital world through CT101. This was possible through working hard week after week, which I can truthfully admit I did. I tried very hard to keep up and I have completed all the assignments I needed to complete. I’m thankful for all the hard-working students who inspire me to keep at it too!

Admittedly, I can also say this has been one of the most wonderful courses I’ve taken this semester. Although a liberal course choice, an amazing choice nonetheless! I had a lot of fun blogging and creating new content every week. I will miss reading everyone’s posts and the ideas they share. I’ll miss having this much fun while learning something new in CT101!

CT101 Final Blog Post

So this is going to be my last post Professor said.

All emotions aside, it was a great experience! I enjoyed exploring the internet. Especially giphy, if you haven’t already noticed^^

There were 3 things that I learned, which  I am considering using in the future. GIFs, vaporwaves and how to create my own website. I am planning to add more things in my website to expose my creativity. I feel that keeping up with my website will allow me to explore myself as well. I dont know how much potential I have honestly, but I believe that starting with something like this can really help me become an open minded student.

My grade

I believe my effort matches a grade that has the letter A and a plus right next to it. Trying to be funny here! I dont know why I found it hard to save images and removing pictures from one place to another. Because of that, I think I should get an A+ because that was by far the most difficullt thing I did throughout this semester and I managed to do it! Good Job for me! I also believe that nobody should be judged by their creatiivity, so a bad grade shouldn’t exist. Am I right?!

Website

My website will consist of traditional recipes from my mother who is from a place called Yemen. It’s in the Middle East.

Unfortunately, as of right now my wesite does not have alot of content  because I have been busy with school. But, I hope I will continue and make it better when I have a break so that I can share my culture with the people out there. I share food because I believe that just like how food brings people together, sharing food recipes can do the same thing as well. This website does not discriminate!

Speaking about my website, I struggled in the begining with buliding it. I wasn’t use to the features the website offered, so I would get frustrated. I had so many things happening, from school work to home work. It was frustrating for me to complete my work , especially with other classes in mind. But, I managed to do it! This was a fun class and I wanted to enjoy it without having to think about other things. I mean, it wasn’t awful because Profesor Seslow is an amazing teacher! But, I wanted to show more! I wanted to go out and put in!

Heres my attempts for making a vaporwave. Im getting there!

This class allowed to open up to the arts of the world! It was a pleasure being in this class. It was fun and exciting being a student in CT101!

Stay safe everybody!

 

 

Final Course Reflection Blog Post

Finally!

The end of this semester, man what an interesting one indeed.

Man.. to recap from the beginning there is so much to say. To begin, when we first got introduced to ct101 commons website

I was honestly nervous because I didn’t know what to expect but it really felt like a social media online forum where we can post our creative ideas. When we started learning about memes that was really fun.

When I heard that in a college course we were making memes I found that hard to believe because why would any course teach that. Since that point on I knew this class was going to be really fun.

Moving away from memes… we were introduced to the

DS106 assignment bank    where it consists of many community submissions of works to do like photo mashups, video edits and even audio assignments. I was assigned to pick one from the photo assignment and I did a cool photo mashup of Dunkin Donuts and Mc Donald’s combined together!

We were then introduced to the concept of vapor waves which was honestly amazing because vapor waves is a true form of art and gives out this amazing aesthetic retro vibe which many celebrities get influenced by today. It is very chill and brings out calm vibes whenever you see any retro gif.

We were then told to create our very own website, being honest I was very nervous because this is something I always wanted to learn how to do but I felt that it was really complicated.

After we signed up for the word press account it was similar to the ct101 website we were already using and so then I started working right away. We created our own domain name and a theme for the type of content we wanted for our site.

this is my website > click here

The website is called SlimShakey because that is the persona I have on youtube and so it would resonate well if it was my own site. This website as you go through it consists of floors like a hotel and each floor you explore has a creepy element. The website is horror theme because I love horror movies and always had a fascination of creepy conspiracy theories and so I included creepy stories, unsolved conspiracies and creepy photos. If your into horror this website is for you. After the class ends I do plan on maintaining this website and expanding it to reddit users because it has many popular horror forums and so people can discover my website.

Overall this class was really fun, it was unfortunate due to COVID I couldn’t take this class in person but the zoom meetings were funny and interactive. I think I deserve an A because I was always on time with my assignments and I had a lot of fun working on the assignments. This class out of my other classes make me feel like I can be myself and do something I love.