Week 5 Summary

On Monday 27th February, the following was covered
The presentation and reading is available in the Blackboard


Digital Distribution
Of music, television and news.


Streaming, Downloading and Podcasts
Considering the benefits and issues with digital distribution of media


An introduction to the term: Citizen Journalism


Creating your own Twitter Newspaper
All students created or updated their Twitter accounts, by 'following' 15 new people on Twitter. And 'tweeting' or 're-tweeting' their first tweet. Students then created a newspaper of their Twitter feeds using http://paper.li 


Creating a tag-cloud of a blog post
All students created a tag cloud, by copying and pasting one of their blog posts into www.wordle.net and then saving and uploading the image into their blog.


Homework
To complete all of the tasks in the handout (available in blackboard)


To do the reading for the next class. The class will be split into two. See below to see which class you will be in and the links to the reading.

Preparation for Social Media Revolution class

This class will take place on 5th and 19th March. Students with surnames A - K will be in this class on 19th March. Students with surnames L - W will be in this class on 5th March. 


READING 
Please read the following before this session.


BBC news article:
"Internet Role in Egypt's protests" by Anne Alexander:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12400319
To get an overview of the topic we will be looking at in detail in this class.


Blog: 
Citizen Journalism: Global Perspectives
http://citizenjournalism.me 
To gain an understanding on what Citizen Journalism is, who writes about it, what it's power can be.


Have a look at the preview of the book: Citizen Journalism: Global Perspectives, Edited by Stuart Allan and Einar Thorsen, published in 2009: http://citizenjournalism.me/blog/preview-book

Preparation for Virtual Identity: Second Life class

This class will take place on 5th and 19th March. Students with surnames A - K will be in this class on 5th March. Students with surnames L - W will be in this class on 19th March. 

Before the session in Second Life with Tim Johnson, you will need to create your avatar and have entered Second Life, to familiarise yourselves with this virtual environment and your avatars - also known as 'avi's'.

You will need to have:

• Registered your SecondLife name: (Please consider what personality you want your avatar to have before doing this) https://join.secondlife.com 

• Emailed your avatar name to r.gamble@worc.ac.uk and k.johnson@worc.ac.uk

• Downloaded Second Life viewer on to your computer: http://www.phoenixviewer.com/downloads.php 

• Entered and explored SecondLife at least once.

• Accept or request the friendship request of Bluesky Larkam and Mariela Eyre.

• Accept the ‘teleport’ offer to the University of Worcester island (sent by Bluesky)

• Finally you will need to make this island you ‘home'.

READING

Before this class, you will need to have read the reading Tim has suggested:

"Rebecca and I mentioned some reading we would like you to do. The first of these is Reinventing Ourselves: Contemporary Concepts of Identity in Virtual Worlds By Anna Peachey, Mark Childs. This can be found in Google Books and you should read pages 13-21. The second piece to read is at http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/66555 Virtual Worlds: A Performative Perspective on Globally Distributed, Immersive Work, from MIT, released on a Creative Commons License. Please read all of this if you wish but it is a little long so concentrate on pages 12-15. This article is from the Sloane School of Management at MIT and, besides providing an insight into identity in virtual worlds also demonstrates just how widely, and increasingly, used virtual worlds are in business. You might also like to read part of an excellent book by Jim Blascovich and Jeremy Bailinson called Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life, New Worlds and the Dawn of the Virtual Revolution. This book can also be found on Google Books; you should read the section called The Virtual Laboratory but be careful you could get hooked into reading the rest of the book 

Remember if you have any problems with either your avatars or these readings please get in touch with me by email (k.johnson@worc.ac.uk)."

http://digitalliteracyuow.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/getting-a-bit-late