The overwhelming majority of individuals who are engaged in the DS106 course are doing so remotely. Today’s statistics indicate that there are 596 active DS106 members whereas less than a total 80 are in attendance in the two sections facilitated by Jim Groom and Alan Levine at the University of Mary Washington.

However, if you are part of the vast majority of off-campus DS106 participants, imagine if you could acquire a Blu-ray Disc which contained the following:

• all DS106 lectures of both Jim Groom & Alan Levine
• guest lecturers including Gardner Campbell & Zack Dowell (“the Noise Professor)
• featured student reflections from past DS106 courses including the talented artist Giuila Forsythe, two of Saskatchewan’s most influential educators Dean Shareski & Alec Couros, and inspirational designer and DS106 facilitator Tim Owens
• tips on how to acquire a personal domain and quick-start steps to setting up a WordPress blog & theme
• time-saving tips on how to use GIMP and Photoshop
• sample student and instructor progress conferences
• top three assignments (voted by peers) for each of the eight assignment categories from past DS106 courses

How much would you be willing to pay for such a Blu-ray resource? I know that as a non-credit online “freeloader”, I may not have paid money to enroll in the DS106 course, but I would certainly pay handsomely for such a DVD if it saved me time and provided me with additional resources to improve my learning experience.

When I was considering enrolling in this course, I was impressed by what Jim Groom stated in his welcoming post entitled “ds106: We’re open and you’re invited“.

… what made it amazing was that anyone can do as much or as little as they wanted as part of the open, online section and leave the rest. We don’t accept apologies and we don’t believe in guilt, there is no sorry in ds106. Simply come prepared to make some art, have some fun, give some feedback, and leave when you want.

This important statement “there is no sorry in ds106” resonated with me. True, it provided me with a guilt-free opportunity to learn. However, this quote was also quite similar to an important line and theme from the 1970 movie “Love Story” staring Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal. In fact, it was this quote that motivated me to consider designing the following Blu-ray Disc cover as part of the “Animated Movie Poster“.

In that most participants in this DS106 course were likely born after 1970, and may not be familiar with the original movie, I thought that I would share the following original image:

I realize that my attempt to animate this image is somewhat elementary when compared with my colleagues’ more sophisticated submissions. However, I am just learning to use Photoshop Elements and I hope, in time, to eventually improve on the animation process using this application.

In the meantime, I chose to use a free, Windows tool called Ulead’s Gif Animator Lite (GALE). I concentrated on the word “STORY” because the focus of DS106 should be on the STORY (and not the software). Unfortunately for me, I am spending many hours becoming familiar with the intricacies of the Photoshop Elements software and I can assure you that I do have a story to tell about my learning experiences.

To animate a word, I knew that I would need to save several copies of this Blu-ray Disc cover, each with the word “STORY” in a different color. I began by changing the black “STORY” in the original “Love Story” font to red and learned that one does not want to have to change the letter colors pixel by pixel. This discovery only took me 2 hours! I then decided to replace the original black “STORY” with a similar font in Photoshop Elements where I could highlight all 5 letters and select a new color. Since only .BMP and .JPG images can be loaded into GALE, each Blu-ray image, with its own “STORY” color, was saved in a .JPG format.

In GALE, one selects the “Layer > Add Images” menu items which allows selection of the prepared colored “STORY” .JPG images using this important technique. Each of the individual color images were then set to display for half a second. By clicking the “Start Preview” button, one can determine if there needs to be any changes in the respective color time delays. Once the animation test looks reasonable, one can click the “File > Save As” menu items and save the result as an animated GIF.

In summary, there is no doubt in my mind that my engaged learning within the DS106 community is indeed a “Love Story” of sorts. My only concern, is that I have not added too much friction, with this Blu-ray fiction.

Take care & keep smiling

Fair Use Educational Image Credits:

• “Love Story” Blu-ray Disc cover -
  http://www.starpulse.com/news/Paramount/2011/12/26/love_story_debuts_on_bluray_february_7
• Alan Levine photo – http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/6318291537/
• Jim Groom photo –

  http://www.colecamplese.com/2008/11/the-revolution-is-in-full-swing/