Archive for December, 2016

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Class 12: Group projects

December 15, 2016

The final class presentations were made by all six groups of students and were impressive. Everything proceeded as planned without any technical issues arising and it was clear that each team had prepared and rehearsed sufficiently. Special guests Sitearm Madonna and Gentle Heron remarked favourably on the quality of the presentations and complimented the work. Two of the groups also provided YouTube videos for the record.

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The first group got the class off to a good start.

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The class sat in rapt attention for each presentation.

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Each group made use of supporting visual material.

John concluded the class by thanking the participants for their attendance, attention, engagement and lively participation throughout the module.

 

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Class 11: Hashtags

December 8, 2016

We had short class meeting this week because everyone is engaged with end of semester assessments. There was a discussion around the use of social media in major events such as disaster relief and the Arab Spring. John and Locks were surprised to hear that none of the participants was aware of the Arab Spring so the example went down like a lead balloon! Locks provided a link to Wael Ghonim’s Ted Talk Let’s Design Social Media that Drives Real Change where he talks about touching off the Arab Spring in Egypt by setting up a Facebook page.

Everyone was familiar with the use of hashtags and one of you shared a link to We Declare a #HASHTAG War! which demonstrates the proliferation of hashtags in all forms of social media.

THINGS TO DO BEFORE THE NEXT CLASS:

Complete group project for presentation at next week’s class.

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Class 10: Building

December 1, 2016

This week John is in Florence at the ELIA Biennial Conference so he logged into SL from his hotel room. It seems the wifi signal was good enough to support voice, apart from some reported background hissing, so the class was able to proceed as usual.

John reminded everyone that the student feedback form Q6A should be completed online by everyone (many of you have already done so) and it is completely anonymous so you may be brutally honest!

The class tried their hands at building simple shapes in SL during class. Starting with basic cubes which we positioned on the balcony wall we stretched them into flat panels and then placed images on them. This will serve as a basic slide presentation screen for delivering your group projects in two weeks. Create your images in Photoshop (512 x 512 pixels) and save in jpg format. Upload the jpgs to SL from the menubar Build>Upload>Image. This will cost L$10 (contact John if you have spent all of your allowance!).

Video is not very reliable in SL so John recommended posting to YoTube and providing a link if you want to use moving images.

There will be six groups presenting on Thursday 15th December and no matter how well prepared we all are technical issues inevitably arise which leads to delays. So please aim to remain in class until 9.30 pm to give everybody enough time to present comfortably.

John closed with a reference to this week’s reading list. It addresses the use of social media in disaster relief and business and the power of hashtags. We will discuss the implications next week.

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Poilination created an elegant archway into the classroom from the balcony.

THINGS TO DO BEFORE THE NEXT CLASS:

  1. Read: Technology’s Impact on Disaster Relief which talks about the use of Twitter, Google and other apps for coordination between relief teams.
  2. Look at: The History and Power of Hashtags in Social Media Marketing an infographic.
  3. Read: Five brilliant ways to use hashtags in social media marketing.