DS106 IS ………awesome?
By leedanger from gifsoup.com
This gif was my initial reaction when I first visited the ds106 website. From the very first moment when I click on the ds106 link from the assignment page, I was confuse and dumbfounded because I didn’t know where to start and how off. I thought to myself, here is this website with a vast amount of information, how can I gather the information I needed to for my assignment.
After doing some searches around the site, I found out that ds106 is a digital storytelling online class open to all people. The design of ds106 goal is to help participants establish an online identity, while documenting their process on blogs and sharing ideas and engaging in discussion with their peers.
After I got familiar with the ds106, I feel like the approach the ds106 community takes on intellectual property, fair use, and network ethics is pretty much nonexistent, where the only guideline i found was the “Honor Code“.
“Students are expected to conduct themselves in a manner consistent with the letter and spirit of the Honor Code. A violation of the Honor Code is a very serious matter.”
Which to me is a very broad statements, in which I felt participant are expect to know “better”. I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing because I believe that where there are less rules and guideline in place, user are able to express more freely and creatively. In which I think ds106 community has achieve. For instance, when I was browsing through the site, I found the content created for participant, unique and distinctive. One example is the visual remix of Grant Wood’s painting American Gothic with Twight charcter Edward and Bella created by Darren Crovitz.
By Darren Crovitz (Visual Remix)
To answering the second part of the question, ” How does this community understand the “Commons”?”, I took to twitter and found some interesting tweets by Jim Groom and Alan Levine , which I think could be apply to the community understanding of the common. In which I came to the conclusion that the ds106 community understanding of the common is to experience it first hand and get involve, through weekly or daily assignment and assignment bank. By having user creating content and sharing it with anyone who can access it, its enhance the idea of “a shared storehouse of human creations” as Daniel J Cohen and Coy Rosenzweig talk about in Digital History “Owning The Past”.
Overall I think ds106 is a great site for people to learn and establish themselves on the web through blogging, making gifs, visual remixes , mash up and etc. As well as making the web a collective tool to educate the masses.
Final words, I would like to thank Mr. Groom, Mr.Levin, Mrs.Burtis and Mr.Branson for taking out to response to my tweets and my classmate tweets.
Sources:
- http://ds106.us/fall-2012-umw-syllabus/
- http://7741f12.wordpress.com/2012/09/18/remix-1-visual-twilight-gothic/
- http://assignments.ds106.us/
- http://ds106.us/handbook/success-the-ds106-way/open-participant/
- http://www.gifsoup.com/view/604678/overwhelmed.html
- http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/copyright/
The initial .gif really draws you into your story.
I agree with your statement on DS106 contributing, along with many others, to “making the web a collective tool to educate the masses.” This idea reinforces the site’s focus on active participation.
I agree Auang, however, I found that de106 are quite concerned about fair use network ethics particularly because they still had a licensed logo at the bottomof they website just like the one our professor has for his site. It might be a more open approach but it still shows concern of those issues.
Great post, Guang. Your use of the animated gif and still image are quite effective, and you have done a good job of crediting the source and linking to that source.
Good idea to use the voices of Jim Groom and Alan Levine (via Twitter) as evidence of the the community’s understanding of the Commons. The emphasis they place on active engagement with content in the Commons is extremely important.
You say, “I feel like the approach the ds106 community takes on intellectual property, fair use, and network ethics is pretty much nonexistent,” and note that the Honor Code is the only formal text the site points to as a guide. But, does the lack of formal documentation in this case represent the absence of an approach? For example, isn’t there a prevalent set of network ethics–such a cohesive set I would argue it qualifies as a network *ethic* at play in the work that goes on in the ds106 universe?
I think the lack of formal document doesn’t mean a lack of approach, I felt like the lack of formal document encourages an approach of experiment and creativity. I felt like the network ethic is more a general sense of what you should and shouldn’t do. Like a unwritten rule of code/law or common ethics.
Great post. Very informative and provides additional resources for us to delve further into.
I felt the same way when I was browsing the ds106 website. They did not explicitly list out a strict guideline for their students or users to follow but they stated that they must follow the “Honor Code”. I completely agree that this is very broad but you’re right in the sense that it does encourage creativity!