Three sweet digital assignments

Over the course of several semesters, Jim Groom’s digital storytelling MOOC, DS 106, has produced a treasure trove of new media projects that can be adapted for courses that are not computer-themed. Rather than simply encouraging you to check out the DS 106 anthology yourselves. I thought I’d share three digital assignments. They are not presented as models to copy verbatim, rather as ideas to help you think about creative ways to incorporate a digital media assignment into one of your courses. I would never ask you do do something I wouldn’t do, so I created some examples.

1. Alternative Book Covers – Pick the title of a well-known book and use PhotoShop, Illustrator, or other software to design a cover that suggests something entirely different from the content of the actual book. This can be done to illustrate irony or historical ignorance – or just to have fun! My example is above at left.
2. May I take your order – Make a sound recording of your voice using Audacity or other software. Pretend you are at McDondalds, put on your best accent (Australian, southern,etc.), and order something. Be picky – ask for extra mustard, for example. A variation of this would be to order in a foreign language. My example (below) is in Spanish, using my best radio announcer voice.
   
3. Movie Trailer Mashup – Download a movie trailer you like and mash it up with the audio or video of a second trailer to change its meaning. You could start with a funny movie and give it the sound of a terrifying one, for example. I used iMovie and Audacity to extract and mix audio and video tracks to produce my example (below).

Related articles:

• How to design a digital media assignment
  
• A daily dose of digital creativity