Try a regular or occasional dose of a fun, no stakes creative opportunity offered every day via the DS106 Daily Create. Each one ideally is something you can complete in 15-20 minutes. One day it’s generating fake book covers, another its writing acrostic poems, another, its sharing a photo of your shoes.
You can follow the instructions precisely or do the opposite, there are no rules. What it does provide is a window to exercise your creative mind and many times to explore an interesting web-based tool or an obscure media collection. We hope that many MYFest participants will dip in when they can or set a goal to do maybe a week’s? a month’s worth, ideally share their responses in our Discord community space, which will automatically publish each days’s challenge directly. Have some fun, enjoy the creativity of your peers.
And join is on July 14 for a live session where we will create together and as well brainstorm ideas on how to incorporate brief creative activities and daily challenges into teaching and learning.
More About the Daily Create (if you love a story)
The Daily Create has published every day, without missing a beat, since January 8, 2012 as part of the DS106 Digital Storytelling Open Course/Community. It was provided as an activity both for specific iterations of the digital storytelling course and at the same time, an open community of people who just enjoy doing it. See more information at https://daily.ds106.us/about.
Until a few years ago, the Daily Create operated elegantly in the space I will only ever call Twitter. Each day, the web site published a “TDC” (The Daily Create) as a new post and automatically send it out as a tweet. Anyone wishing to respond, simply replied and included a hashtag unique for that TDC. Those responses would then show up on the web site and we even had the ability to create a leaderboard, with some participants having thousands of contributions.
Alas, Twitter. That part no longer works — The Daily Create now publishes to Mastodon – if you are in that space, search for the profile creating@daily.ds106.us If you reply to a TDC there, it will appear on the site. See the first Daily Create published June 1 welcoming MYFest25 (it also involves dinosaurs).
Note that Mastodon is not required for being part of the Daily Create!
If you have joined the MYFest25 Discord server, look for the Daily Create channel and participate there.
This is All Fine, But How Do I Actually Do This?
Just start! Do one today.
You can see the latest (or any) Daily Create on its web site or as mentioned, in Discord.
Again, there is no right or wrong way to do Daily Creates. You are welcome to respond in a different form of media, or even do the opposite of what it asks for. You might respond with your own photos, videos, or create graphics, use online tools to make media, let GenAI create things, or just submit written responses. You might use your search skills to find images, videos, or GIFs that are suitable for a response.
Note: If you use someone else’s media, please try, if possible, to cite the source and also provide alternative descriptions for media. And also, wherever you share, look for the places to add alternative text descriptions for media.
Do not overthink Daily Creates. I use different strategies:
- I go with my first response when reading the TDC. I try to look in the morning, and I can think up a response in say, the time it takes to finish breakfast or commute to work, I do it.
- Or let the prompt simmer in my mind, and come back to it later after maybe working though possible responses.
If you find yourself spending more than those 20 or 30 minutes creating something, that is your choice too (I can get carried away at remixing old posters or editing video)… the most important thing is making it happen, having fun, trying things you have not done before, and sharing it.
Responding is Fun But Creating Daily Creates is Where It’s At!
This is more tan true. The Daily Creates are not generated by machines, but contributed by participants. Anyone and everyone casn create a new challenge, and send it in via https://daily.ds106.us/make. Then keep your eye for it being published in the next few days or weeks. It’s a thrill to see other people take on your challenge (and for classes, it makes for a great assignment).
Daily Creating is Fun and More
There’s a lot to be said for a daily habit, both personally and in teaching. The same web site and format was used outside of DS106 (see examples). Look as well at the OneHE activity created by Mia Zamora and Maha Bali for more insightful ideas.
Alan Levine has blogged about the web site and idea behind the Daily Create but also presented on the power of “Doing It Daily”.
Do you have daily creative habits that provide you joy, fulfilment? We’d love to hear about them. Do you teach with these kinds of activities/assignments? We’d love to hear about that, too, either in Discord or in our July session.
Try one or all Daily Creates during MyFest! See what comes from it. It can be habit forming 😉
Please click on the facilitators’ name in the info section to view their bio.
