DesignAssignments358 – Assignment Bank

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The One Story/Four Icons challenge for an unspecified episode of The Twilight Zone.

Ever since I heard about the One Story/Four Icons design assignment I wanted to try it out. For this week, I’m taking a stab at it. I learned about the Noun Project from @IamTalkyTina via her blog post of the same design assignment. I learned about the site/community, registered for an account and started searchin’ for just the right images, resolved to make my own icons if I couldn’t quite get what I needed. After some give and take, between discovering icons and reconsidering how to capture the essence of The Twilight Zone episode I wanted to represent, I got what I needed. I do not have and SVG viewing/editing tool so I simply captured the icon images from the browser using the Microsoft Windows 7 Snipping Tool and pasting them into a canvas in Microsoft Publisher. I removed the gray background by dialing up the contrast to +40% and then — just to be different — shifted from all black icons to progressively darker gray icons, the last being black. I offset the whole mess with accent lines above and below.

You may leave your guess as a comment below… but you only get 11 tries.

Gratefully acknowledging use of the following icons:

“Surgery” is an “unknown designer” collaboration byJack Biesek, Gladys Brenner, Margaret Faye, Healther Merrifield, Kate Keating, Wendy Olmstead, Todd Pierce, Jamie Cowgill & Jim Bolek. (Public Domain Mark 1.0)
“Stress” is designed by Shreya Chakravarty. (CC BY 3.0)
“Opening Day” is designed by Joel Burke. (CC BY 3.0)
“Panic” is designed by Cédric Villain. (CC0 1.0)

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One Story / Four Icon Twilight Zone #2

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Here is another challenge for Design Assignment 358: One Story / Four Icon assignment. See if you can get this Twilight Zone episode:

One Story / Four Icon Twilight Zone Episode Challenge #2

Again, I found my icons on thenounproject.com where I have an account and so the SVG files are free.

I used icons by these people, but I won’t say what the icons are called because that takes away all the guessing fun!!!

Can you guess my challenge? I hope it is not too hard for you! Please put your answers in the comments below. If you are right, I will say “You Got It!” but I will remove your answer so it does not give away the fun for my other friends. Remember, to get ALL of the POINTS, you need to correctly say the Season, the Episode, the Title, and who was the star of the episode.

Winners will be happier for having played along with my challenge. See yesterday’s One Story / Four Icon Twilight Zone challenge. Can you figure out BOTH of them for double points?

Bye!

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1 story / 4 icons

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Last year I recommended Zone One for the upper school’s 2012-13 summer reading list.

Zone One cover

It did not reappear on the 2013-14 reading list.

“The kids didn’t like it,” I heard. “Not enough zombies,” they said. “It’s a thinking wo/man’s zombie novel.”

Srsly?

I don’t know what to say. Kids these days.

I’ve been thinking about Zone One even before I realized it was pulled from the summer reading list. I’ll probably buy my own copy to have on hand just because it’s full of things I want to consider again. I’d like to have time to study it and annotate it. To call Colson Whitehead’s Zone One a zombie novel, is a disservice to this book, which beautifully captures a trifecta of nostalgia, wanting, and loss.

Zone One is set a few years after the outbreak of a plague that turns the majority of the world’s population into flesh-eating zombies. Time has passed, survivors reside in camps with names like “Happy Acres” and “Bubbling Brooks,” militaries have regrouped, and provisional governments have seeded themselves through the world.

“Mark Spitz,” a character who prides himself on his mediocracy, guides readers through his memories of Last Night, his experiences in the wasteland, the rebranding of survival, and the rebooting of Lower Manhattan. It’s an insightful, witty, heartbreaking novel. It’s an existential kick in the ~~balls~~ guts.

To honor Zone One, I created this 4 icon challenge.

Zone One in 4 icons

The iPod (designer unknown) plays prominently (I think) into Mark Spitz’s Last Night story. The zombie (by designer Stephen Peluso)…. well, that’s obvious. The city (by designer Juan Pablo Bravo) represents the primary setting–Manhattan. The swimmer (designer unknown) is Mark Spitz.

All images are from The Noun Project.

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1 story / 4 icons

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Last year I recommended Zone One for the upper school’s 2012-13 summer reading list.

Zone One cover

It did not reappear on the 2013-14 reading list.

“The kids didn’t like it,” I heard. “Not enough zombies,” they said. “It’s a thinking wo/man’s zombie novel.”

Srsly?

I don’t know what to say. Kids these days.

To honor Zone One, I created this 4 icon challenge.

Zone One in 4 icons

All images are from The Noun Project.

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Guess the Twilight Zone Episode

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This week in DS106 we’re supposed to be creating audio and design assignment based around three particular episodes from the famous series. I choose to create an assignment around none of them, because I like to rock the boat in seemingly harmless and inconsequential ways like that. We all have learners like this in our classrooms, right? Besides, if I had created the 4 Icon Challenge assignment around one of the three episodes suggested, it would have been too easy. As it is, for fans of the Twilight Zone, this should be easy enough; guess the episode based on these four icons representing four of the main elements from the show.

Was this particularly difficult to do? No, I went over to the Noun Project (a website every serious digital storyteller in K-12 should have bookmarked), and grabbed the four Public Domain images above, lined them up in Photoshop (although GIMP would work just as well), and “bam!” Instant visual assignment that would be useful for anyone to help summarize a story.

I’ve done this assignment a number of times, including having a group of elementary students use Google Image search to assemble their own 4 image stories. Come to think of it, the students had a blast doing the assignment, and it would be an excellent way for students to practice some proper image and web citation repetition. Not that I’m a fan of drill and kill rote-learning, but for me it’s ok when you get to have so much fun trying to craft the perfect visual puzzle that isn’t too difficult, yet requires viewers to stretch their imaginations for them to be solved. The first icon is obviously death, but does the little girl represent an actual girl, or just a child, or perhaps youthfulness? Does the tie represent some emotional connection to the other images, or does it merely represent an article of men’s clothing? If it is just a tie, what element of the story does it represent? A character’s costume, a “macguffin” to move the story along, or a visual cue from a scene?

The paths you can take this assignment down in the K-12 classroom are endless, with students using 4 icon challenges to express their current understanding of a piece of informational text, or process new vocabulary words. Students could even use them as a storyboard for a comic or graphic novel review of a novel being read in small groups. I’ve harped about this assignment enough in other posts, so I’ll stop here. The potential for tapping learners’ visual areas of learning is reaching an untold peak of pedagogical “gold” with the advent of so many devices, connections, and tools present in many classrooms today. With new whiteboarding apps appearing in “app stores” almost daily, there’s an overabundance for students to create visual literacy processing assignments like this with just their finger and a screen if need be.

Sure, it might be more fun to do it with crayons and paper (cheaper too), but there’s nothing quite like searching for an icon of “death” on a Wednesday night as part of homework for an online course

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A Short Story of Most Unfortunate Circumstances

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We all need time to do things we love. But, time is not always on our side. Neither are the people around us. Henry Bemis lived a life in which he found solace in books, and contempt from everyone around him. In Time Enough at Last, he is given an opportunity to forget the world and live in his books, but the Twilight Zone had other ideas.

I tackled the One Story/Four Icons design assignment to get the juices flowing. I had a lot of great ideas after watching Tim Owens and Jim on the ds106.tv show about design yesterday. One I had known about was The Noun Project, but I had forgotten about it until the show. So, I hopped over there to grab some images and get going.

I started with 5 icons (full disclosure here) and then combined the man’s head with the mustache to make myself a Bemis. So, in the end, I still ended up with four icons (I’m not a cheater.)

A story, decomposed to elements.

To get the broken lens, I simply used the circle selector and chose the space inside the glasses icon. Then, I grew the selection (Selection > Grow) by 3px to grab some of the edge. Then, I used the Transform tool to skew the lens (we’re getting deep here (yes, that is a terrible pun)) to show some depth. Filled in some lines, and you’ve got yourself a cracked lens. This didn’t take me too long, so I decided to beef it up a little and give myself another star in the process.

Rather than a still image, I decided to GIF this into something a little more interesting.

When things go wrong, they really go wrong.

(I played with the timing a lot. I’m happy with what I came up with).

Just like Mr. Bemis, he thought things would turn out one way, only to find that circumstances often get the best of us, no matter how much we plan.

— CC Attributions —
Person designed by Antonis Makriyannis from The Noun Project
Mustache designed by Fernando Vasconcelos from The Noun Project
Book designed by Diego Naive from The Noun Project
Explosion designed by Bohdan Burmich from The Noun Project
Glasses designed by Thomas Hirter from The Noun Project

On a side note, this episode makes me really, really sad.
3 Design Stars

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The Invaders in 4 Icons

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In today’s “Introduction to Design” session Tim Owens and I demonstrated how to approach a few design assignments. One in particular was how you could use The Noun Project and GIMP to do a 4 Icon Challenge. A number of folks already got out the gate quick on this one, such as Talky Tina, Paul Bond, Arlana McAndrew, and Andrew Thomas. I have to admit, I love this assignment, it is quick, fun, and addictive. I am not alone, and I think without question it has been the most popular assignment outside the GIF, with more than 126 people having registered their work on the assignment page to date. Usually it’s funner to make people guess what movie, tv show, Twilight Zone episode, etc., but given we all have seen “The Invaders” during week 1 I will forego the formalities for this one

2 Stars

Icon Credits:

House icon designed by OCHA AVMU 2012

Woman icon in public domain

Flying Saucer designed byHeather Walls

Knife designed byUnknown Designer

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One Story / Four Icon Twilight Zone Episode

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Hello, Friends! (New Friends, True Friends, and Open Friends — and any other friends, too!)

I think it would be fun to do the Design Assignment 358: One Story / Four Icon assignment, but with episodes from The Twilight Zone, instead of movies. Don’t you think that would be fun?

Can you tell what episode of The Twilight Zone this is? You have to say the season, the episode, AND the title of the episode, AND who was the star of the episode to get all the points.

Well? Can you do it? Can you? If you can, say so in the comments. If you get it right I will say “You Got IT!” in your comment and say how many points you got out of 4 you got, but I will I will delete your right answers so that you do not spoil the fun for my other Friends.

Here is the first one!

One Story / Four Icon Twilight Zone Episode Challenge #1

To make this, I found some great icons on thenounproject.com website. I have an account there so I can download the icons for free. I edited some of the icons a bit using Adobe Illustrator (you need to use an editor that lets you edit .SVG files, here is an online one you can try, called SVG-edit) so that they would work better for this One Story Four Icon challenge. I made the man bald and I made the girl sad and I made a down arrow on the stairs and I made RIP on the grave. Although I should have just put RI, if you know what I mean.

Without telling you the name of the icons (that might make it too easy for people), I will say that the attributions (who made stuff) for the four icons are here, and I have told you the exact CC kind of license for each one, with a link to the licenses. Neat, eh? I am a good Friend.

by Icons 8 (CC0 1.0),
Toni Cami (CC BY 3.0),
Unknown Designer Collaboration by Roger Cook & Don Shanosky United States 1974 (Public Domain Mark 1.0)
Alex Fuller (CC BY 3.0)

Well, so that was fun! See if you can guess my episode! Tune in another day for another One Story / Four Icon Twilight Zone episode challenge. The next one will be harder! And maybe you want to do this assignment yourself and challenge us?

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One Story / Four Icon Twilight Zone Episode

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Hello, Friends! (New Friends, True Friends, and Open Friends — and any other friends, too!)

I think it would be fun to do the Design Assignment 358: One Story / Four Icon assignment, but with episodes from The Twilight Zone, instead of movies. Don’t you think that would be fun?

Can you tell what episode of The Twilight Zone this is? You have to say the season, the episode, AND the title of the episode, AND who was the star of the episode to get all the points.

Here is the first one!

One Story / Four Icon Twilight Zone Episode Challenge #1

by Icons 8 (CC0 1.0),
Toni Cami (CC BY 3.0),
Unknown Designer Collaboration by Roger Cook & Don Shanosky United States 1974 (Public Domain Mark 1.0)
Alex Fuller (CC BY 3.0)

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Friendly four icon challenge

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I just happened to catch some of the ds106 show this afternoon and it gave me an idea. So I thought I’d try a four icon challenge. Maybe you know which episode it is.

Image credits:
lollipop Benoît Charpentier
vise jon trillana
trash can Björn Wisnewski
saw Scott Lewis
hand Marc Andre Rath