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!