This is an intense course, with an incredible amount of work. I have worked very hard daily, and still feel behind in the coursework. I am worried that I am doing so much work that I am unable to retain the information, because I am just finishing and then moving on to the next thing. I have learned a lot, and really enjoy the concept of an open classroom focused on digital storytelling and creativity. I have done a great job of staying vigilant about my blog postings, working out the kinks in my hypothesis analysis and posting my daily creates. My favorite daily create took a long time but was well worth it in my eyes. I was able to use my film making tools to mash together different animal sounds, to a spanish club dance song my brother in law introduced me to years ago. It was overkill and tool valuable time, but I really enjoyed creating it. The trouble I have had is with the huge workload of this course. I have brought this up before, but I honestly feel I would retain more if we had to do less in this class, I know the goal is to push us and get us out of our comfort zone, but I don’t feel I have any time to sit with my learnings, as I am needing to get to the next thing right away. I watched a great digital story and read an additional reading on why it is important to have open courses where teachers are not the holders of all knowledge. This new way of looking at education in a digital world makes so much sense to me as the students have so much to bring to the table. I am excited to be able to focus more on the work I want to do with using digital storytelling to report information from our school to the parents of our students. I want to learn more about what other schools have used this medium and their results. I would love feedback from my peers with suggestions and ideas. I believe my work met expectations this week in most areas and exceeded expectations with my daily creates. I believe meeting expectations in this class with the overwhelming amount of work equals exceeds expectations in life and school. It is just week one and I know we signed up for it, but I need to keep pushing forward and checking things off the list. The problem is I don’t want to be looking at this class as checking things off of a list, I am incredibly excited to learn more about digital story telling, and I feel that the overwhelming nature of this course is making it so that I just am grinding away.
dcucdenver 
Hi, Dan.
I wanted to reach out and say: hang in there. It gets easier.
What is wonderful to read here is that you would like to spend more time deepening what you are learning. This is always the tension with qualifications – you have to meet requirements to get your credits. I am on the other side of that in my life, I teach; and grading is my least favourite activity also.
One of my students once told he created a digital shelf where he put stuff he wanted to come back to but could not go into right now. I thought it a lovely idea, so passing it on.
I have been around DS106 for a long time now. When I did my first full time run, I ended up with RSI and exhausted. It can be that all consuming. The up side of that is that it connects you to the joy of digital storytelling with others. The up side of continuing afterwards as an open participant with no weekly modules is that you can go back to that shelf and explore what you want in your own time. The time will come to take a breath soon, I promise.
Meantime, use the #ds106 Hashtag classroom on Twitter! Ask for help. Someone will be around and do what they can to help you. Welcome to the madness and joy that is #DS106 🙂
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Thank you so much for taking the time and the words of encouragement. I appreciate them and you!
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