Virtual Environments: Is one life enough?

CLASS SUMMARY:

We welcomed some new participants to the class this week and there is still a little settling in as we all familiarize ourselves with the environment. There was feedback that the sound quality was not so good which may have made it difficult to hear all the content. We will see if this can be rectified for next week and it would be useful to get feedback on the Facebook group.

The discussion on personal branding ranged over questions such as what does it mean? and why do it? ignited by the recommended reading. We talked about the difference between personal and professional branding for your own online presence and the importance of digital and media literacy. Social networks such as Facebook, twitter, linked in, google plus etc were considered and the importance of establishing trust emphasized. We concluded the discussion by introducing the Consumer > Prosumer > Produser paradigm posited by Bruns.

ASSESSMENT REQUIREMENTS:

The assessment requirements were explained. Each participant will be assessed on their blog. You must post to it at least once a week and you must also write the required posts given in the ‘Activities for next week’s class’ section of each Class Summary here. The blogs will be assessed in weeks 4, 8 and 12 of the module to ensure that you don’t have too much work to do at the end.

ACTIVITIES FOR NEXT WEEK’S CLASS:

1. Working in your groups, go outsidethe class group into the wider SL community, make contact with at least two people relevant to your interests (could be more). Write a blog post about your experience and articulate the value of these contacts with an explanation of why you contacted to them.

2. Look at ATypI Facebook page http://on.fb.me/aaaFOW, student blog http://dolcemerda.com, professional blog http://www.krishnade.com, artists’ community site http://deviantart.com

3. READING: “From Prosumer to Produser: Understanding User-Led Content Creation” by Prof Axel Bruns (Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland Institute of Technology) who explains his theory of user-led collaborative content creation. http://slidesha.re/cqQ0LQ

4. Write a post in your blog discussing the ideas proposed by Dr Bruns in his lecture.