If you’re reading this and have no idea what the Daily Create is, you can thank me later.
Essentially it’s the brain child love child of Alan Levine and company. It’s filled with creative goodness both from a consumption aspect but mostly as a community of participation. I’ve made small contributions over the past few months but have been faithful introducing many to its awesomeness. My belief about creativity is that it’s a muscle and this is as good an exercise plan as there is.
Given the upcoming term I’ll be teaching starting in January, I began planning and Alan has been gracious to participate and share in every one of the 10+ sections I’ve taught over the past 7 years. This time it came with a price.
@cogdog@courosa done http://www.flickr.com/photos/shareski/11227587494/ …#ds106#tdc697 Also can you teach my class on Feb 24th?
@shareski Yep. If you do the next 3 daily creates in this series ;-) #theStakesGetHigher#IdRatherHaveHighSteaks
Fine. I needed the kick in the pants.
Unlike most Daily Creates, Alan set up 3 that built upon each other beginning with this one:
Create a visual that might accompany one of the mashed up headlines from @twoheadlines
So I did.
I don’t know if this looks that good or not. I realize I’m no photoshop expert and in fact couldn’t remember the last time I really tried to mix and layer two or more images. I realized I don’t think I have any software on my machine that does that so I used Pixlr to create this. The biggest issue I had was resizing the layer. In fact I couldn’t figure it out so I resized the baby outside of pixlr and imported it so I wouldn’t have to fiddle with the size. Anyway, it’s a bit hacky but as a tweet/image combo is decent.
Of course this was only assignment #1. The next assignment was to write a story to go with the headline. No technical no how but took some time trying to make it work. This was the result:
The once feared Raider Nation is trying something new. In an effort to deflect the focus on their ineptness as a football team, the Oakland Raiders have begun a new initiative, adopting and caring for children. The goal is to have other teams see the Raiders as soft and caring and thus have other teams take them even more lightly than they currently are.
The first adoption is baby Katie. Plans are to bring her out with the team captains during the coin flip. Their opponents will be encouraged to tickle and say “Koochie Koo” to the infant instead of the usual handshake. While this method is not based on any research, the team is desperate. The Vikings, Texans and Jaguars are currently looking into a similar program, only with puppies and kittens.
Finally I had to complete the trifecta for Alan with an audio assignment and using some clips from YouTube and bringing them into Audacity to mix them, I uploaded it to Soundcloud:
So while all this was someone coercive on Alan’s part, I’m thankful he did it. I know I use time as an excuse. Sometimes assignments don’t interest me but I really don’t think there’s a better way to practice and improve creativity with media than the Daily Create. Maybe you have another method or maybe you think the Daily Create is useless. I’ll continue to support and encourage others and participate more.
Also I can now book Alan for February 24th.
cross-posted at http://ideasandthoughts.org/
Dean Shareski is a Digital Learning Consultant with the Prairie South School Division in Moose Jaw, SK, Canada, specializing in the use of technology in the classroom. He lectures for the University of Regina and is the Community Manager of the Canadian DEN or Discovery Educators Network.
