What is social media NOW?

A great intro to social media today:

Video: Hello & Welcome!

Pick Your Preferred Chat Time

We’ll be getting together for an hour each week to chat about all things course related. In week 1, we’re meeting on Wednesday, September 8 at 20:00 Eastern (follow the link in the header to get to the chat room and login with the password I sent out in my first email message). Even though the weekly chat is optional, I’d still like to pick a day & time that works for most/all of you, so I’ve set up a quick poll where you can vote for your preferred weekly chat time.

Please cast your vote this week so we can pick the best time for everyone and schedule our chats accordingly starting with week 2!

Screencast: Setting Up Your Course Blog

Once you have set up your blog, it will appear on the Student Blogs page (linked above).

If you are brand new to blogging and WordPress, here are some help pages to get you started once you’ve set up your blog:

• Introduction to blogging
• Introduction to WordPress Terminology
• First steps with WordPress
• Understanding the WordPress administration panel
• Writing posts
• Understanding WordPress feeds
• Using WordPress links manager (the Blogroll)

Embedding Video & Audio in Your Blog Posts

I’ve installed a plugin on the site that allows you to easily embed videos from various online sources in your blog posts. Here’s how you do it:

• Login to your blog and go to the dashboard
• Click the “New Post” link
• You should see 11 icons below the main row of edit buttons on the edit screen (see screenshot below). Each icon represents an online video site from which you can embed videos (YouTude, Google Video, DailyMotion, Vimeo, Veoh, Viddler, Metacafe, Blip.tv, Flickr, Spike.com, and MySpace).
• Choose the icon pertinent to the video you want to embed (e.g. if you are embedding a YouTube video, click the YouTube icon) and follow the instructions.

Audio

Embedding audio is a little bit trickier. If you would like to point to an audio clip on Blip.tv, Odeo, or any other site (either your own audio posts or other clips), your best bet is to simply link to the clip in your post rather than try to embed it.

Weekly Blogging/Commenting Guidelines

In the interest of clarity, here are a few guidelines to keep in mind as you blog for this course:

Multimedia Blogging

If you’d like to experiment with different blogging formats, and if you have access to audio/video recording equipment (such as a built-in camera and microphone on your computer), feel free to go ahead and create video or audio posts as an alternative to text posts. The content of an audio or video post should be the same as what you would publish in a text post, just delivered over audio/video instead. Video, audio and text blog posts will all be treated the same in terms of grading — I’ll be looking at the content rather than the format. The multimedia option just allows you to get creative, if you’re so inclined!

If you do decide to create video or audio blog posts, there are a number of hosting options from which to choose. Vimeo and YouTube are great for hosting your videos. Blip.tv and Odeo are good hosting options for your audio clips. You can set up free accounts on all of these services, upload your videos/audio clips there, and embed them in your blog posts. You can find instructions on how to embed video & audio in this post.

Reactions Not Summaries

Please fight the urge to summarize the readings for the week in your blog posts! Instead, tell us what you think about the readings. I’d like to read your impressions, reactions, and opinions on the readings, rather than a summary of what they covered. Also, while I do expect you to do all the readings, I don’t expect you to blog about every article every week. Pick a couple that resonate with you and blog about those.

Commenting is Key

An important part of your weekly blogging grade is the commenting you do on your classmates’ blogs (using the blog commenting feature). Since blogs stand in for class discussion, I’d really like to see you use your blogs as your discussion board, where you engage and challenge each other and continue the conversation started in your posts. Since blogging/commenting is our main mode of interaction, this is a crucial component of the course. I expect everyone to post at least a couple of comments per week to keep the conversation going.

Quality not Quantity

Don’t feel like you need to post 10 times a week; it’s more important for you to spend your time doing the readings, completing the week’s exercises, exploring the case studies, and engaging in a discussion with your classmates (via comments to their blogs). Your blog posts should reflect upon all of these activities, but it makes no difference to me whether it’s all in a single post or if it’s broken up into multiple posts. The choice is yours! Also, I prefer not to provide a word-count requirement for your weekly posts because I find word-counts force artificial limits on such an informal medium. You are free to write as much or as little as you want, but keep in mind that this is a graduate course, so I do expect a certain level of engagement with the readings. Also, if I think you’re not on the right track with your blog posts (regarding content and/or length), I’ll let you know early on.

Blogs are Informal (and that’s OK)

Those of you who are familiar with blogs are well aware that they tend to be less formal, and that’s fine for this course. I don’t expect you to formulate complete essays, and I certainly don’t expect lists of works cited at the end of your posts (simple in-text links to online references will be fine). Having said that, if you are uncomfortable with less formal writing, please feel free to use the tone and structure that works for you. The blogging we’re doing in this class is an attempt to get you thinking about and responding to the ideas we’re being introduced to. I am far less concerned with traditional assignment formalities.

Case Studies

The weekly case studies are intended to provide real-life library examples of the technologies we’re exploring. Spend some time on each of the case studies (beyond the main page) and blog your thoughts & response. Honest evaluations and constructive criticism are encouraged.

Feedback From Me

Each of you will receive a blogging “progress report” from me early in the term (during week 6). The report is simply intended to provide some helpful feedback on how you’re doing with your blogging and will include a grade for your blogging thus far in the term (weeks 2-5).

Blog Holidays

You will soon come to realize that this is a busy course – there’s a lot to learn, many tools to try, case studies to explore, and articles to read. I realize that you all have lives beyond school, and many of you are working full-time on co-op as well, therefore I’m allowing a 2-week “blog holiday”. The blog holiday allows you to take 2 weeks off of blogging/commenting during term, which means that your grade for this weekly assignment (which accounts for 30% of your final mark) will be based on 10 weeks of blogging and commenting rather than 12 weeks (week 1′s post is not graded and there is no weekly blogging during Reading Week). As grad students, I’m sure you realize the importance of keeping up with the course content for your own personal edification, so I won’t preach about the difference between not blogging versus not doing the work (sorry, I think I just preached). But I do acknowledge the rigourous pace of the course, which is the reason why I’m offering this 2-week blog holiday. You are free to take your 2 weeks off in succession or split them up over term. For the 2 weeks that you do decide to take off, please put up a post on your blog letting us know that you plan to be off that week.

If you have any questions, leave a comment!

An Intro to the World of 2.0 and Social Media

New to the world of 2.0? This video by Michael Wesch at Kansas State University is a great place to start! It’s called “The Machine is Us/ing Us”.