Wire106 Week 2: My Kingdom for a Comment

Image Credit: “The Green Canoe”

Getting locked into the warp speed that is ds106 quickly reminded me why this the best class in the world. Ever ;) We are starting to ramp up the course by getting more familiar with we post and connect across various social media spaces, such as the personal blog, Twitter, Flickr, and Known. This week also saw the introduction to the Daily Create, which UMW internauts have taken to like moths to the flame. I really love the work folks did so far for just about prompt, such as the logo create, the well-known story as transit map, drawing your internet, and Calvin Ball. There is no shortage of creativity in this crew. And despite the fact I said if you took 10 minutes to do the assignment you took too long, most folks invested themselves in what they were making.  I can’t thank Mariana Funes enough for keep things rolling so smoothly on this front.

I only did three out of four of the Daily Creates this week, so I stumbled a bit.  I did the Calvin Ball, Protest Blocker Book, and today’s Techfession. They’re all embedded below:

TDC #1 Calvin Ball:

Foosketball is a sport that has ds106 roots

Foosketball:
A sport created by and for the Gods, combining football, basketball, and ultimate frisbee. Like in ultimate frisbee, a player cannot move with the ball. However, instead of a frisbee, foosketball is played with a football and instead of crossing an endline, a team must shoot the football into a basketball hoop in order to score a point.

It must be noted that in foosketball there are no guarantees. This refers to the difficulty of the game, most notably that even the easiest of shots can rim out due to the sport’s epic and intense nature. – www.UrbanDictionary.com definition

Actually, Fooseketball is an interesting mashup because it was actually dreamed up by Wesley Clark, a student who took ds106 back in the Fall of 2010. He did a video on the game his friends created in Falls Church for ds106, and it got picked up by ESPN that semester. Crazy of the implications of creating and sharing. Here is the full video:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSAkXJgvBk4

And here is Wes Clark’s original post on the sport from his 2010 blog post: ds106.umwblogs.org/2010/12/03/foosketball-there-are-no-gu…

TDC #2: What book would protect you in a protest?

Bomb Book

I went to Noun Project for this one, because I needed quick and easy, and I also want to start getting this site out there for folks because it is so awesome, and starts to get at the idea of using other people’s work but attributing in kind. So here is my bomb book, bang on that fascists!

This is my quick creation for today’s Daily Create: “What book would protect you in a protest?” I took this assignment literally. I dare you to hit the bomb book :)

I did this in GIMP, it was pretty easy. Opened up the book as one layer, the bomb as another, and invert the color on the bomb and voila!

I used the Noun Project, which rules, and the two icons in this image to be credit are as follows: Book designed by Charles Riccardi from the Noun Project. Bomb designed by Thomas Hirter from the Noun Project

TDC #3: My #Techfession

Y U NO SMARTPHONE
I guess my techfession would be the fact I have no owned a cell phone or smartphone outside a burner I use on occasion when I travel. My partner and I have had three kids and lived in NYC and Freddy and have never had a ,mobile device besides a laptop—if that even qualifies. It was mainly for lack of money throughout grad school, but recently has become a defining personal characteristic. People can;t fathom I don;t have one, and I find that equally as unfathomable. I amy get one at some point, I have flirted with it recently, but for now I find it’s the new black not to have a smartphone. I am free, at least when I am not teaching #ds106 #4life :)

Summarize an episode of The Wire using GIFs
My six seven GIFs below, and here is my write-up.

This is my attempt at the “Summarize A Wire Episode In GIFs.” I chose to pull six (actually seven) animated GIFs from episode 5 of Season 1 of The Wire: “The Pager.” It’s one of my favorite episodes because the theme of being watched and a more generalized sense of paranoia creeps into the episode constantly. The cops are finally up on the wire, and Avon Barksdale seems to have a sixth sense about it. In the opening scene he reminds Wee-Bay of their reality given they control the drug trade in West Baltimore.

wires01e05_1 01

And the cops aren’t the only reason they should be paranoid. This is one of the earlier, if not earliest, episode where we hear the refrain: “Omar’s coming!” As we all know, “the cheese stands alone!” —and he’ll be coming for Avon soon.

cheese_stands_alone 01

There’s a lot of warnings in this episode, and I found an interesting parallel between Omar’s raid on the East Side stash, and the young hopper’s in the pit calling the warning for “5-0″ that Stringer Bell and D’Angelo hear while talking about there being a snitch in D’s ranks. Again, this constant sense of being watched, betrayed, and generally under someone else’s control.

5-0-5-0_coming_up 01

I love this seemingly throw away scene when McNulty says “School’s out” as he sees the kids heading home while staking out Omar’s pad. He then remembers to call his ex-wife about his kids’ weekend visitation, while one of the neighborhood kids picks up on the cops presence and reports back to Omar. So many small, perfect details to reinforce the theme of being watched without driving them down your throat.

schools_out 01

Possibly one of my favorite scenes in The Wire is when D’Angelo goes out to dinner with his baby’s momma, to use the parlance of our times. She notes he didn’t push hard enough to get a better table away from the kitchen door, and as she finishes he’s spooked by the waiter behind him. Not only demonstrating D’Angelo’s “soft,” but also suggesting his discomfort, bordering on paranoia (although not seemingly misplaced), with the race/class-driven logic of the system.

shoulda_pushed_him_d 01

I love this one between Sergeant Jay Landsman and McNulty because it’s an allusion to Sidney Lumet‘s 1981 NYC cop film Prince of the City. Interestingly enough, the “protagonist” of that film, Danny Ciello, turns state’s evidence on his fellow cops because of his guilt over the institutional corruption. Ultimately he’s torn apart by his choices and can’t trust anyone—in effect becoming paranoid. The tagline of the film: “A cop is turning. Nobody’s safe.” Also, it was Lumet’s attempt to make up for his two-dimensional portrayal of cop corruption in his 1973 film Serpico—so much potentially layered into a throw away line.

princes_of_the_city 01

Finally, as a bonus GIF, D’Angelo relays the whereabouts of Omar’s partner Brandon to Stringer Bell. This is a moment that leads to a whole series of events that reverberate throughout Season 1.

d_payphone 01

Known
I’ve been playing a bit with my Known this week, trying to get feedback from people how they are liking it thus far. There is some duplicated effort given we are so WordPress-centric, but I have a more extended post I’ll be writing about Known shortly, as well as more specific directions of how we can use it this week. I appreciate Lauren’s candid feedback about the application in the comments on her Known, and I’m looking forward to more from the rest of the wire106ers. This is early days for this application, and we need to figure out how it might work more seamlessly in the workflow of this course.

WordPress
Got all my plugins set and Jetpack fine-tuned. I am actually going to work on getting folks to install their own feedreader this week too. More on that soon. I want the dipping into the open source applications to be a regular thing in #ds106 this semester.

Commenting/Community
“This is the job,” to quote Lester Freamon. Reading and feeding back on other people’s work is what makes this class worth anything. If you’re reading and commenting on posts, engaging on Twitter, and generally present across the various spaces—then you’re doing your job. If you aren’t, well, then you aren’t. I spent much of this weekend reading and commenting on just about everything in wire106, as well as some of the other section’s work taught by professor Jen Polack.

Also, I’m moderating my comments, replying to folks who were kind enough to comment on my work, and generally being a good citizen in this course on the web. You need to be doing this too. That’s the job, and all the details matter. If you’re present in this class across the web then you’re bringing your A-game. What’s great about #ds106, at least for me, is that your contributions are everywhere present online. On the other hand, your absence is equally present. There is no hiding in ds106, your kingdom for a comment.

The Red Queen

Colors

05redqueenWhen I saw this shot, I thought of The Manchurian Candidate. It’s probably something I’m reading into it rather than something the makers of The Wire intended, but there is a parallel in that they both feature a mother convincing her son to sacrifice himself for some alleged greater good – the family or the party. The red is the same as in the hat Bubs used with the Barksdale crew. Here it’s telling us, the viewers, that she’s an important player in the organization. That fence in front of the camera sort of makes it feel like we’re spying on them too.

06dangelo 07orange 09couch 01garage

Last time around, D stuck out like a sore thumb in the visiting room. Here he blends right in, like he’s resigned to being in jail. Then there’s that telltale orange again, in her little folder that’s plea bargaining everyone into prison. And then everything is different. The orange couch, empty at the end of the last episode, is gone and replaced by a black one. I just like that shot of the garage – the almost monochrome feel, the lines of the ceiling, the sense of perspective. It sets a sense of atmosphere.

04avon  02levy 03string

And then there’s the conversation – Avon is all about family, and Levy and String, internally, are having none of it. But it’s all in the game…

omar

Summarizing Bubbles

The assignment was to summarize an episode in 6 gifs, but part of ds106 is making assignments your own. If you just follow the rules of the Game, you’ll be stuck playing the part of a pawn. You got to make the rules your own if you’re going to step up. So I’m going to attempt to summarize Bubbles in 6 gifs instead.

1bubsblowingbubbles 2reflections 3bubsafterfishing 4bubs 5bubsclean 6bubsno

He’s a dope fiend. His life revolves around his addiction. Early on, we see him on the nod, Bubbles blowing bubbles. He’s also been around the block a few times, so he can reflect on his situation a bit. Sometimes it’s really bad. He thinks about it; he needs to change. So he gets clean and sees life from another angle. Life can be good, but life can be rough too, so he falls back into his old ways.

The last episode of the first season emphasizes that never-ending cycle. Bubs is like a personification of it – he gets knocked down, but he gets up again…

Wire 106: S01E12 “Cleaning Up”

For this video discussion of Season 1 Episode 12 of The Wire, “Cleaning Up,” Paul Bond and I were joined by UMW #wire106 internauts Maggie Stough and Imran Ahmed. This discussion was generative because I realized it might be useful to coordinate discussion details with students before we go live. I tend to fly by the seat of my pants in all things, but a bit of structure for these discussions makes sense. I’ll be working on sharing an ongoing video discussions document wherein folks can share the particular things they want to talk about for each episode. Iteration 4life!

Another thing about this discussion, and why I am learning to hate Google more and more, is that they threatened to stop the discussion midstream if we shared another clip from the show. We were sharing a couple of minute long clips from The Wire to contextualize the discussion we were having and they threatened to shut us down. Total bullshit. This is an excellent example of how out of control the media lockdown on our culture has become, and how our convenience-driven dependence on third party services reinforces that reality. I have to get our own video setup together for these wire106 discussions soon, because I am so tired of having advertising companies dictate how we interact with the media culture defines us.

Also, I keep calling this episode “The Clean-Up,” but it’s Cleaning Up.” So much for exactitude.

Scenes from the Wire

Scenes from the Wire screenshot

Last week Zach Whalen reminded me of a tumblr site Ryan Brazell turned me onto last year: “Scenes from the Wire”. The tumblr is run by a bot—an art form Zach turned me onto yesterday—that automatically creates GIFs with subtitles numerous times a day until it has giffed every moment of dialogue from the entire first season. I’m actually finding it a great resource for refreshing my memory about particular episodes. I wonder how much more dialogue it has to GIF before it’s done?

It got me thinking, while talking with Zach about bots yesterday, what a wire106 bot might look like. So I think I might have bigger project for this class—above and beyond the assignments—figured out. I want to create a wire106-inspired bot through something like Tumblr, Twitter, or some other application—although Twitter seems like popular choice. Here’s to ds106 for making me feel creative again. I love this course!

What’s up with that boy?

The first part was the key scene for me – where String gives Bodie the order to kill Wallace. It’s all there, but it’s almost entirely unsaid. “What’s up with that boy?” They don’t even use his name. And just a stare and a nod in response to “You ready to put the work in?” They know, from the rule of The Game, what they’re talking about. We know from the context of the show. But nothing is explicit. Similarly, in the discussion with Avon and Stringer, it’s clear that Levy is recommending this course of action with regards to anyone who might talk. “You can replace product and currency” he said. People weren’t worth a mention.

The second part is two parallel stair scenes. We’ve seen stairs used as a metaphor before. We see it again with Poot. He has to think about going up the stairs. Does he want to step up in the game, or step off? We see it repeated after Avon is arrested. McNulty thinks there is unfinished business, but Daniels motions for him to come down. The case is over.

Colors

02wallace 10rhonda 09string 06d'angelo

Wallace comes back, dressed in orange to match the couch, symbolic of wanting back in the game. We see something like that, though a little more subtle, in other scenes. Pearlman blends with the background in Daniels’ office, like Stringer blends with the color in the office in the club. There was a shot in the previous episode where Prez matched the room like he belonged there. Maybe that’s the message. In contrast, there’s the shot of D in the visiting room in jail. String and Levy blend, as does the officer off camera, but D sticks out like a sore thumb. A couple other things about the shot: One is the angle – we’re looking at the scene from the position of a surveillance camera. The other is the composition, with that strong dividing line between D and the other two. Every picture tells a story…

Sounds

D is called into the office to give up Wallace. The tension is heightened by the drums in the background, coming from the club downstairs. The sound is reminiscent of a rapid heartbeat, charged by fear – a subtle but powerful effect.

First Wire 106 Lunch

After returning to teach ds106 as an online course at UMW for the first time in over a year, I decided to experiment with an idea Mike Wesch mentioned while in Irvine this summer preparing for Connected Courses. He noted that he goes out to lunch with a different student of his every day. I loved this idea. And given that most of the students taking the wire106 version of ds106 this Fall are residential students, I decided to organize group lunches for anyone interested. Today was the first one, and it was pretty awesome.

Maggie, John, Ien, and Meredith joined me at a local eating establishment to get to know each other over lunch. After working through the expected initial awkwardness, we sat down, ordered food and started talking about The Wire. And, interestingly enough, we all got into it. They confessed to binge watching, admitted using ds106 to procrastinate doing other class work (a badge of honor), and generally acknowledged they were hooked on the series. Needless to say, I was fired up. We talked about Wee-Bey’s exotic fish fetish, the tragedy of Wallace, the existential angst of D’Angelo, Greggs as natural police and much more. It was fun.

On top of that, we came away with some idea for class activities, assignments, and projects that Meredith was kind enough to capture at lunch before they slipped away.

Live Tweeting Episodes
It even produced some ideas for both wire106-themed assignments and possibilities for coordinating activities for the class to come together. For example, watching episode 1 of Season 2 together by starting it at a predetermined time and live tweeting out our reactions. This is something we need to make happen.

Opening Scene Episode
Take all the opening scenes from the 13 episodes of season 1 and edit them into a video wherein they play one after the other chronologically to see how it would flow as it’s own episode.

Beginnings and Endings
Juxtapose the opening and closing scenes of each episode in season 1, noting how much they play off each other in a number of episodes. One good example to start with is episode 10, “The Cost.”

Wire Colors
Another assignment that came up was doing an analysis of the use of color in the series. And we’re still thinking about how we would frame that as a compelling visual assignment. Ideas?

Wire 106: Messing with the Macguffin
John suggested an assignment that would have a character saying something that changed the nature of the episode, if not the series, all together. Like, for instance, Deputy of Ops suggesting a Bust and Buy on a case with a wire would be out of the question. Poor Kima. Kinda like a Wire 106-themed “Messing with the MacGuffin” assignment.

OG Technology
If you were to change the technology in a scene, how it would be different today. Could there be a season 1 Wire without pay phones?

Where are they now?
Playing off the fact many of the actors in The Wire have gone on to successful careers, do a where are they now assignment that plays with the before and after. Perhaps even creating a fiction story around the changes. This could be very interesting for Wallace, Stringer Bell, Snoop and more.

Clothing Change Ups
A design assignment that has you photoshopping one character’s set of clothing onto another character.

Putting Words In Their Mouth
Giving a quote that one character said to another character.

Wire on the Twitter
Create a twitter account for each character in an episode then tweet the dialogue of that episode. This might be a group project later in the semester, it would take some interesting coordination, and the tweets might be an awesome subtitle to a live projected episode at the end of the semester.

Audio Commentary
Provide a polished, rehearsed audio commentary to an episode. Make it a special feature anyone can download and play as part of their watching of the series.

The idea of coming up with fun assignments over lunch is a really appealing focus for these sessions, at least for me. And it could be one approach we take to these get togethers. But the real goal is to simply get to know each other. The idea of residential online learning that Mike Caulfield has written about is still very appealing to me. An hour and a half lunch with four different students twice a week, over 13 weeks, means I could spend almost 5 hours with every student for focused, relaxed, and  personalized time to get to know them, have a good meal, and get creative about what we can do with the class. That to me is what online makes available for a community like UMW. More time to get to know each other, have fun, and re-imagine how we learn together. And what better venue that #ds106!

First Wire 106 Lunch

After returning to teach ds106 as an online course at UMW for the first time in over a year, I decided to experiment with an idea Mike Wesch mentioned while in Irvine this summer preparing for Connected Courses. He noted that he goes out to lunch with a different student of his every day. I loved this idea. And given that most of the students taking the wire106 version of ds106 this Fall are residential students, I decided to organize group lunches for anyone interested. Today was the first one, and it was pretty awesome.

Maggie, John, Ien, and Meredith joined me at a local eating establishment to get to know each other over lunch. After working through the expected initial awkwardness, we sat down, ordered food and started talking about The Wire. And, interestingly enough, we all got into it. They confessed to binge watching, admitted using ds106 to procrastinate doing other class work (a badge of honor), and generally acknowledged they were hooked on the series. Needless to say, I was fired up. We talked about Wee-Bey’s exotic fish fetish, the tragedy of Wallace, the existential angst of D’Angelo, Greggs as natural police and much more. It was fun.

On top of that, we came away with some idea for class activities, assignments, and projects that Meredith was kind enough to capture at lunch before they slipped away.

Live Tweeting Episodes
It even produced some ideas for both wire106-themed assignments and possibilities for coordinating activities for the class to come together. For example, watching episode 1 of Season 2 together by starting it at a predetermined time and live tweeting out our reactions. This is something we need to make happen.

Opening Scene Episode
Take all the opening scenes from the 13 episodes of season 1 and edit them into a video wherein they play one after the other chronologically to see how it would flow as it’s own episode.

Beginnings and Endings
Juxtapose the opening and closing scenes of each episode in season 1, noting how much they play off each other in a number of episodes. One good example to start with is episode 10, “The Cost.”

Wire Colors
Another assignment that came up was doing an analysis of the use of color in the series. And we’re still thinking about how we would frame that as a compelling visual assignment. Ideas?

Wire 106: Messing with the Macguffin
John suggested an assignment that would have a character saying something that changed the nature of the episode, if not the series, all together. Like, for instance, Deputy of Ops suggesting a Bust and Buy on a case with a wire would be out of the question. Poor Kima. Kinda like a Wire 106-themed “Messing with the MacGuffin” assignment.

OG Technology
If you were to change the technology in a scene, how it would be different today. Could there be a season 1 Wire without pay phones?

Where are they now?
Playing off the fact many of the actors in The Wire have gone on to successful careers, do a where are they now assignment that plays with the before and after. Perhaps even creating a fiction story around the changes. This could be very interesting for Wallace, Stringer Bell, Snoop and more.

Clothing Change Ups
A design assignment that has you photoshopping one character’s set of clothing onto another character.

Putting Words In Their Mouth
Giving a quote that one character said to another character.

Wire on the Twitter
Create a twitter account for each character in an episode then tweet the dialogue of that episode. This might be a group project later in the semester, it would take some interesting coordination, and the tweets might be an awesome subtitle to a live projected episode at the end of the semester.

Audio Commentary
Provide a polished, rehearsed audio commentary to an episode. Make it a special feature anyone can download and play as part of their watching of the series.

The idea of coming up with fun assignments over lunch is a really appealing focus for these sessions, at least for me. And it could be one approach we take to these get togethers. But the real goal is to simply get to know each other. The idea of residential online learning that Mike Caulfield has written about is still very appealing to me. An hour and a half lunch with four different students twice a week, over 13 weeks, means I could spend almost 5 hours with every student for focused, relaxed, and  personalized time to get to know them, have a good meal, and get creative about what we can do with the class. That to me is what online makes available for a community like UMW. More time to get to know each other, have fun, and re-imagine how we learn together. And what better venue that #ds106!

Wire 106: S01E11 “The Hunt”

Meredith Fierro, Jessica Reingold, Paul Bond and I discussed Episode 11 of Season 1 of The Wire: “The Hunt.” This was special for me because it’s the first time we had UMW students enrolled in ds106 join the discussions about the show. This will now be a regular, ongoing component of these video discussions, and based on this one it’s going to be a lot of fun to start featuring everyone’s readings of the series. If you’re interested in being part of tomorrow’s discussion of episode 12, “Cleaning Up,” you can sign-up here to join in.