To complete Storytelling within the web, I chose to intervene in the design of a post from Craigslist.  Before even searching on Craigslist, I chose to take the easier Hackasaurus approach instead of altering raw code.  I downloaded the X-Ray Goggles into my bookmark bar, which allowed me to change the text, format, and images of any web page.

I went searching on Craigslist for any headline that caught my eye that I could make a story about.  I stumbled across a listing of a fairy pin for sale.  I immediately knew what I could turn this posting in to. The original listing is for a winged fairy pin for $5, made of  crystal insets and silver metal.  I activated my X-Ray Goggles and started altering the page.

First, I made the pin listed by “Fairies R Us” and changed the price from $5 to “Priceless”.  I then spruced up the description by saying it was made of Diamonds, Platinum, and Swarovski crystals. Finally, I created the illusion that wearing this pin would allow you to fly and would protect you from air planes.  I added a twist by doing a spin-off of an alcohol commercial when they say, “Please fly responsibly.”  Also, you have to go to the sky to buy the pin according to the location.

My edited site can be found here.

I wanted to make this page in my own site, but I couldn’t get it to work.  The NotePad program wouldn’t let me save my code.  There were no error messages, but whenever I hit “save”, nothing happened, so I just published the site and obtained a URL (found above).

Google Map Trip, worth 2 stars, called for me to tell a story of a trip I’d taken using Google Maps.  I chose this web assignment to increase the challenge on web storytelling and because I had just taken a trip today!

My team at UMW traveled to Poolesville, MD today to play American University.  We left the University (A) at 8am and stopped at WaWa (B) to get breakfast (tradition).  Once we got food and drinks, we got on 95 N and drove for 1.5 hours until we reached Poolesville (C).  Unfortunately, once we got there, we discovered there were no toilets at the field (WHAT), so we quickly piled back into the vans and found the closest place with a bathroom…A church (D)…AWKWARD!! We then went back to the pitch (E) and played our games. On a side note, both our A & B sides won!  On our way back home, we zipped to a McDonald’s (F) before sitting in traffic on 95 before we got back to Uni (G).

To dabble in some web storytelling, I completed the web assignment Google Translate Fail, worth 1 star, from the ds106 assignment bank. I chose this assignment because as a French minor, I know how google translate can interpret another language into English.  First, I went to the website for the Le Monde newspaper, a famous paper in France, and then found the sports section.  I thought sports would be an interesting topic to translate. There was a cool article on The X Games (ou Les X Games) that I took the summary of and translated it in Google Translate.

“the Winter X Games Europe Tignes is open” actually translates to “the European Winter X Games opened Wed. in Tignes.” Then “Story in pictures” is more closely translated to “the images depict/show”. Finally, the last part is better meant as “which leaves those extreme skiing junkies very hungry.”

As a History major, I just had to do this web assignment from the assignment bank called “What They Might Have Done In Social Media.” Now, I was disappointed that the example was Lincoln, mostly because I know a lot about him now that I’m taking Civil War in American Memory. But oh well!

I went out of my history comfort zone for this one: I went all the way back into European history for Henry VIII. I figured he would have a VERY interesting Twitter/Facebook if he had access to it back then. He, of all people, would have cared very little about his status as a political leader and would have posted whatever he wanted–or that’s how my limited knowledge of him portrays him.

First, I created a Tweet from him.

Then I moved onto Facebook.

This one took a lot longer to finish. I did a project once on Anne Boleyn, but I don’t really remember an enormous amount about Henry VIII. So I used his Wikipedia article to find some events, especially about his marriages.

You can check out the full Facebook page here.

Teaching Tool

This is a teaching tool I’ve used before in classrooms, and I love it. It requires thought and evaluation of all the information that is out there on a particular historical figure–but it’s also a lot of fun. Most students have at least heard of Facebook and Twitter so having them utilize a tool that they know so well for something educational? Sounds like a good idea to me!

It’s Tricky – Run DMC

There was one web design assignment that all of us DS106ers had to do. It was called Storytelling within the Web. For this assignment, we had to recreate an already existing web page.

First, I had to download Mozilla Firefox because I didn’t have it and the Hackasaurus didn’t want to work without it. Unlike my previous downloads in this class, this download was very easy and fast. {That was a nice change!! I feel like I always have a problem with the downloads in this class}. This goggle tool made it super easy to complete this assignment! I had way too much fun doing it, so much so that I thought “there’s no way this is an actual assignment…like for a grade?!”

Here is a picture of the original page:

Here is the TRUTH to the DS106 website:

You can see it on it’s own site too.

For this assignment, I went for “the truth”. What people would want to see when signing up to take this class. Like I said before, I had a lot of fun doing this assignment. I can see myself using this tool again later to trick people. Hmm April Fool’s Day is coming up…. {muahahahaha <– evil laugh}