From Mona Lisa holding a cat to altered World War II slogans relevant to modern times, there was something unique about what was going on. I wasn’t quite sure exactly what was going on just yet…
The website is an open classroom available to everyone where they can either participate as a student, teacher, or observer.
Upon looking through the courses I noticed something peculiar between the assignments. Each assignment starts with a product and the students are challenged to create something completely unique within set guidelines. Such as this assignment where students use copyrighted material or intellectual property and “remix” them or create a reflection of the piece. The completed product is displayed openly to the public and others are urged to participate.
If you aren’t sure exactly how to proceed or hitting a mental wall… Have no fear as ds106 offers a big remix button next to each assignment that offers you a theme to incorporate your assignment with.
Ds106 allows those with technical skills to create something original based on existing ideas. Those without technical skills are offered tutorials and a community of like-minded pupils to communicate and educate one another. The entire idea of being an open course and an education tool allows the use of sensitive material to promote creativity.
Any and all walls of a digital commons is broken and swept aside as all material is available and open to each other. Users can even remix another student’s work. Ideas and information is shared and archived available for anyone to view.
Upon first entering DS106 I was immediately struck by its header, which read, “Digital Storytelling – We Jam Econo.” We Jam Econo is the name of a 2005 documentary which tells the story of seminal California-punk band The Minutemen. The band operated on a streamlined, “by any means necesary”, economic system. This system reflected heavily on their insistence on playing affordable shows, as well as releasing their music at a fair price. Ds106 certainly reflects the same sentiments through its open source approach to real, honest online participation.
It seems evident that the community believes strongly in their right to operate and create material within the context of a more “free” internet. As participants in the never-ending experiment of the World Wide Web, DS106 seems to prove, alongside countless other contemporaries, that “another internet is possible.” The most impressive display of the importance of the site lies beyond the walls of the initial assignments page, Mission: DS106. After exploring each tab, I was most interested in the work being done through the audio, visual, and mash-up assignments. Where many classes might stay clear of any possible grey-area regarding copyright, DS106 does not allow any roadblocks on their path to honest digital storytelling.
My experience with DS106 was very interesting once I had a chance to explore it. I really like how the users are extremely creative, it is very interesting how something that is an online course and its at free will can have such a positive outcome. One thing that really caught my attention is in the INSPIRE part of the website, “We have knitted together an intimate community that is not only participating in its structure but also creating it”, it really reminded me of the objective for our class. As far as intellectual property and fair use, DS106 participants would probably agree that when using someone else work to create something new or in better words, remixing, it just gives more opportunity for someone to express themselves easier. The class understanding of the commons is demonstrated by the freedom of sharing their ideas and work of art where it can potentially be viewed by anyone. Overall, my experience with DS106 was positive and I think our professors are doing a good job at making our small class as interesting as DOS106.
There is a very prominent DIY (do it yourself) approach to this online community. Our society treats education as a “you must”; whereas in reality, it should be an act of free will. It’s an innate ability humans have to want to learn more about the world surrounding them. Due to the stifling neglect of creativity in the school space,young students find the most joy during their playtime with friends. This is because of their ability to create their own space with like minded people. As we get older we simply don’t lose that creative exuberance towards the world. Its a combination of academia and our surrounding world, that expects the rules and procedures to be followed in such a way it deters us from being creative.
With communities such as DS106 emerging, and becoming increasingly popular; the idea of ‘taking back’ education begins to come into fruition. The pace at which our society operates, and how effectively we can work remotely, lay the foundation for our future. Massive open online courses that are free and open to the public lay the framework for the taking back of education. In this specific case, the community strives to produce new media through collabration. All collaborating is down on items that can be successfully manipulated and “re-mixed”, under creative commons licensing. The idea of being able to take someone else’s work and adding your own personal touch visualizes the power That fair use can have. Adding your own touch to someone else’s work could prove successful in building on new ideas and being able to gain perspective of the picture from an entirely different viewpoint.
After exploring DS106 website, I think it’s a great platform that allows people to be creative and inventive while freely sharing their new type of art with internet community.
Intellectual property. With the emergence of the Internet people start to rethink and change the ways intellectual property should be used in a modern inter-connected society. Members of the DS106 community do their best to recognize the rights of the owners of intellectual property such as images, video, music and other digital content. However, they feel that they have the right to create new media by using elements of intellectual property and this makes important additions to original contributions.
Fair use. Allows to maintain a balance between the free flow of information over the Internet while still protecting intellectual property rights. It is a shared opinion among the members of the ds106 community that the role of fair use is to prevent copyright from limiting the creativity, and from imposing other challenges that would prevent the creation and spread of knowledge and learning. Since DS106 is online teaching and learning site, it permits limited use of copyrighted material.
Network ethics. Everyday technologies like the Internet, and digital media affects how we work, play and communicate, and challenges us to think about ethical problems in new ways. Few users of DS106 site would argue that legal downloading and distributing copies of copyright-protected material is stealing, and thus ethically wrong. However, using pieces of others’ digital work like mash-up and remix allows for the emergence of new forms of creativity.
Commons. After browsing through DS106 site, I came to realize that site users understand Commons as being able to collaborate, explore, share, mix and re-use digital content in new creative ways.
When professors Waltzer and Harbison first mentioned ds106, it didn’t sound like something I would want to explore in my free time. Upon entering the website, however, my attention was quickly grabbed by the unique design centered around the constantly switching images. Those images are created by users, or rather the students of this online course. Aside from artistic element, the images are based on works of other people, and that is the reason for this post and for ds106 itself. Every assignment for ds106 requires students to make use of the Commons and everything it offers. All of the materials used by the participants are available under Creative Commons licensing, which allows for unrestricted sharing of intellectual property.
The eye-catching design of the page was not the only thing that impressed me. The content of each post shows the high level of research done and reflects the commitment of students. They accomplish a serious amount of work for an online course with optional participation. One way or another, each student specifies the way he/she used the works of others in a legal way. Like others have mentioned already, that is something we are learning to do in Digital History as well.
Upon entering the DS106 site, I found it a bit overwhelming with so many different options and aspects of the site to explore. But after some use with it I became comfortable. The participants view the commons as a shared space that we can all use and which better us in the advancement of learning and sharing digital pieces. The site is like the center of a web that branches out and displays information and art from all over. There were many mashups and the underlying theme was ART. In terms of entering these pieces of art onto the site, http://ds106.us/handbook/blogging/ ,seemed to be of great use and help for participants. It grazes over the importance of including a url back to where you attained certain pieces, which is important in regard to fair-use. As Phillip mentioned in his post, I did find it a bit similar to our Digital History site in the sense that we are both collaborating with each other in a digital way to explore the web, share art, and at the same time take a class! In the future we will be seeing many more sites and networks similar to this.
Recent Comments