Week 3 Review

This week started with looking back by reviewing the Week 2 class blog post.  It included images of the posters we produced on origins of social media.  We had some discussion on the main points of characteristics of early social media and how it developed.  We considered types and numbers of users, the types of services being offered and the nature of the user interface (eg from text based controlled by keyboard commands to graphical interface using menus controlled by a mouse).  

We also noted that as the internet infrastructure grew and spread around the world AND computer technology became cheaper AND more people had computer skills that social media grew faster and faster.  Today we have an explosion of different social media that we can use.

This week's activity was to use Google docs to carry out a collaborative task to find examples of social media for collaboration, sharing pictures and videos and networks.  A presentation containing instructions and a worked example was sent to one member of each group.  They uploaded this to their Google drive and shared this with others in the group.  This allowed the group to work together to carry out the activity.  Finally, all of the group presenations were shared with our tutor - do check to see what I commented!

We looked at the video 'Social networking' and discussed characteristics of social media,  Main points to remember are that it connects people, users create the content and share this.  Put more simply - we join online communities and share what we do, think, like or dislike with a wide network.

Social media allows users 

• to communicate 'many to many' but not always in 'real time' 
• to carry out collaborative work
• create and share content
• to feedback views by reviewing, commenting and liking
• to tag content they upload or view - that is add keywords to identify and describe the content 

For example music sites like LastFM

will allow users to tag songs as country and western, indy, rock etc.  This means that you can search for songs by category even if you don't know a song's title - it also helps you discover new music and artists!  LastFM also keeps a track of what different users are listening to and makes recommendations for you to try.  They gather content from a wide range of sources including Spotify and Youtube so it can be accessed from one website.  Users create profiles which include the bands and music they like.

Don't forget the changes brought about by mobile platforms - smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices means that your social media is always at your finger-tips!

Finally, we were set a homework task to draft our first assessment.

 

See you on Wednesday for more active (and social) learning!

Week 2 Review

This week we were considering the origins and history of social media.  Groups worked together and produced posters of their findings.  I've posted them up here:

Well done guys!  We agreed that early social media started in the 1970's with email, bbs and forums.  It was very text based and looked quite difficult to use as computers didn't have graphic user interface that we are used to today.  At that time fewer people had pc's in the home and even fewer had internet access so the user base was much smaller.  It also tended to be technology 'geeks' :-)  As computers and internet services developed (and became more affordable) the number of users grew strongly and through the 1980's companies like Compuserve brought a better range of social media services to a larger number of people of all kinds.  The USA led the way with better networks, more users were able to connect to each other.  It still tended to attract groups with special interests like computer gamers.  In the 1990's things really took off with AOL ('the internet before the internet') and became more recognisable to us today.  It was much more interactive and media rich and many more users came on board to social media.

Today we have a very wide range of social media:  blogs, micro-blogs, social networking, social sharing, gaming, messaging and..........

We also access social media in different ways - using pc's, laptops, tablets and smart phones.

Social media is very important part of how people connect, share and interact with each other.  However, that's next week's lesson.

Reply to first week

I think active learning is great as I don't get bored and I prefer learning socially.


I thought the activity was collaborative - we shared ideas and helped each other. 


I like the video as it is simple yet clear - relating social media to ice-cream seemed strange at first but then I got it!

Our first week......

We started at the beginning (always the best place to start :-)) and discussed what was involved in the unit.

I introduced some ideas on learning and explained why it's important to be active learners.  I wonder if you remember why?

We completed an activity to find out what social social software everyone in the class uses and what they use it for.

This was done in a collaborative manner -

• work in groups to identify a range of social software that individuals use
• then each group moved to another table to review what that group had come up with and added any ideas that were missing
•  groups then answered the question 'How and where do you access social media and when do you use it?' for each example of social software.
• each groups then returned to their original table - reviewed what the other group had put and then came up with a definition of social media.
•  lastly, the posters created by each group were displayed on the classroom wall for the whole class to view and left to allow other students and lecturers to read.  

I enjoyed my first class with you - how did you feel about it?  Do you think it was active?  Was it collaborative?

Here's a short YouTube about social media from Common Craft you might enjoy.  If you like the format we might try making our own video like this.  What do you think? Could we do this if we worked together?