Unit 2

STEP 1- Making our blogs look pretty

I decided to make my blog relevant to DS106 in general, I did this by thinking what DS106 is. We a lot of back and forth thoughts and ideas with myself I came to the conclusion DS106 is like a journey in a way. Slowly building up a portfolio about your ideas and yourself. So to male my blog theme look like this I looked through the many different themes. They had many options and after a lot of scrolling *finger now in excruciating pain* I found one suitable. This theme was called “travel” matching well with my thought. It has a mini bus in the background driving off into the sunset…hopefully living happily ever after J. I also decided to add a picture of myself so everyone knows straight away who it is, this picture is one that I used for my one of my daily creates. I think it is a cute picture and represents me well. Leading on from that me being cute I added a pole to my blog too, just in case people are getting bored which they shouldn't be but just in case. I think me doing all these changes were really needed. As this blog being my personal space it was I think essential that I put a personal feel to it. It also looks more intriguing and captivating then how it was before thus making the reader want to read it. 

STEP 2- Say it like peanut butter

When reading over this task I was very skeptical. I have never thought about or even tempted to make a Gif. When thinking about it I thought this was going to be a difficult task. So in that case when in doubt I turn to my best friend Google. Google has helped me over the past years and I’m sure he will in years to come. I simply typed in “how to make a gif on Google” and funny enough Google pulled through once again and supplied me with loads of different websites to make a gif. I chose the first link I saw which was titled “makeagif.com”. To my surprise making a gif was an easy task. Simple couple of steps and the website would produce the gif for you. As you may guess I was a happy chap as what I thought would be a tricky task became quite easy and enjoyable. (Ended up messing around with the website for a while). With getting the hang of the website I had to decide on my favorite/least favorite film to make the gif of. After a short think I quickly decided…..it was only going to ever be Monsters.Inc. After watching a few funny videos of the best film in the world I chose a suitable funny scene inserted the URL into the tab,bish bash bosh the gif was ready to be downloaded and inserted. I found this task surprising interesting as I thought it would be hard but tables turned and became fun enjoyable quite simple task.

STEP 3- Digital face lift

We were provided a video by the speaker Gardner Campbell. In this video Gardner goes into speaking about temporary cures instead of sustainable ones. To help describe what he spoke about a women in Brazil who has a face altered. It is only a temporary cure but she still loves it. It’s simply an illusion where her face was being stretched making her look younger. Gardener in doing so goes into the way of moving forward curating, sharing and narrating. Gardener speaks about the educational systems floors and how it’s not helping the kids of today. He says it has been forced upon us and not being urged to think out of the box. Students are being too safe, he says a metaphor “bag of gold”. Students are being given gold but don’t know how to use/spend it on. I agree with Gardener to an extent, from young 90% of the things we learnt in school were facts. We were told to read and read and after a while learnt that essentially the more you are able to cram the “smarter” you are. But on the other hand at this crucial ages is best time to concentrate on factual items. I find there are pros and cons to his argument but I’m more leaning with him all together. I feel its great shame that we aren't pushed to be more creative. I think cause of this reason there are more people not knowing what/where they want to go in life because they have been pushed down a generic route including myself.

Overall In general I have thoroughly enjoyed this unit. The reason being the most was making the gif. I feel in future for both work and fun purposes. I’m going into unit 3 very pleased and confident. On the other hand if I was going to do this unit again I would have also made a poster. I used be quite artistic when I was younger and would have been nice get the old pencil skills again.