So this week I chose my first video assignment from the ds106 assignment bank. The one that caught my eye was called: “Name that Book”. It seemed like a fun challenge. The assignment was to use the Vine app to visually create a book title. I hadn’t used the Vine app before, so I thought it was a good opportunity to try it out.
I’d certainly heard of and seen Vine videos before, but I hadn’t really understood why I would want to do a 7 second video. Well, here’s a great reason!
I began trying to download the app. This turned out to be a project in itself, as it seemed that my son had logged into Google on my Android phone a while ago and so it was failing to allow me to log myself back in. It took me and both of my sons fidgeting with it, but we finally got him logged out and me logged back in and we were in business. So my next hurdle was trying to figure out how to work the darned thing. What was funny was the simplicity of it was what was throwing me. I was looking for features, controls, how do you work this thing? I must admit I finally broke down and looked at a YouTube video on it. It’s brilliantly simple in that all you do is press on the screen to begin, stop pressing to pause, and then press again to resume. The other thing I found on YouTube were so many really fun and very sophisticated things that people have created with it by finding new ways to push Vine to it’s limits. Since Vine is so crazy simple and convenient to use and capture moments, people have taken some amazing videos there. They’ve also created a lot of funny, silly, and pretty amazing stop motion videos.
This was a fun assignment and it was great to learn about a fun new DIY media app. I kept thinking about the class reading and how fascinating it is to peer a little into the Vine culture and see what people are learning, making with it, sharing, and creating culture.
So here is my first Vine video. Can you guess which book title I was illustrating? Here’s a clue, I live near Seattle.
Happy Guessing!
Adventures in Digital Storytelling 