Reflection: Internet culture presentation

Please remember to write a blog post reflecting on the experience of preparing, delivering, listening and commenting about the Internet culture presentation. I will assign your grades for this presentation after I’ve read your reflection.

Please reflect on the following three topics:

1. collaboration - What was the collaboration experience like this time? What worked well, what did not? What could you have done differently? What do you wish others had done differently?
2. Internet culture – The presentations helped you get a glance into some aspects of Internet culture. How is knowing about Internet culture relevant to you and your scholarly work? How is this information useful to you? Make it yours.
3. backchannel – Reflect on the experience of having a live backchannel during the presentations. What was it like for you as an audience member? What was it like for you as a presenter? Did it enhance the experience of the presentations or distract from it? If both, how so? When would you use a backchannel and when not? What research questions do you have about backchannels?

Many conferences use backchannels. It is important to be familiar with this experience. It will help you connect with many people on Twitter at conferences. In my experience, there have been times when the backchannel was more interesting than the presentation!

Also, please remember to:

• blog about your topic for the final project.
• watch the Radian6 and Visible Technologies demos

Questions? Comments? Other thoughts? Please let me know, or at least let me know you’ve read this post by rating, liking, disliking, etc.

Class notes: Craft of research

Besides literature reviews, rick-rolling, epistemology, Kant, ceiling cat, and Hello Kitty superman costumes, here’s what we talked about in class tonight:

1. Interacting on Twitter and blogs – remember to post your advice on how to find interesting people and blogs, and how to interact. Remember to read, comment, and archive your blog comments.
2. The craft of research – please find slides below for the second part of the conversation:

You’re in charge of next class about Internet culture, but that information is in the next blog post.

 

Class notes: Week 1

Whether you realized it or not, we learned a lot during the first week of class.

If you need some help or reminders with:

• using Google Reader
• understanding blog terms (post, page, permalink, and more: comment, trackback)
• an overview of the WordPress dashboard as it looked like some time back, and/or
• help creating a new blog post in WordPress

Please see these tutorials I created for students just like you. Of course, you can also learn how to get started directly from WordPress – and here is a good Twitter guide book from Mashable (a social media blog you should be following).

If you need help with Twitter, please see these posts I wrote for students just like you You can browse the posts tagged “Twitter” by clicking the word “twitter” in the cloud tag on the left side bar.

We ended class with a to do list for you. I am sure you have everything in your notes, but just in case, here it is again:

1. Set up your blog. You can use your real name or a pseudonym. Post your blog’s URL in a comment on this first post about class.
2. Set up your Twitter account. Write your bio, customize your picture (avatar). Say hi to me on Twitter by sending a tweet that begins with @mihaela_v. Include the characters #TECH621 in your tweet. So, you can type a tweet such as: “@mihaela_v Hi, I’m on Twitter now. #TECH621″
3. Do the readings and assignment for next week. See the syllabus. Readings are on Blackboard. You can collect the 20 social media sites on your blog. Just have them available in class. Print the list out or bring your computer. Each item on the list should include a brief description of the site. For example: Reddit.com – social news; Spotify.com – music listening/sharing.
4. Subscribe to this blog. You can start by email, but I recommend you figure out Google Reader. Also, you may look into making iGoogle your home page. Here is what mine looks like, after I customized it with the widgets I need most:

Questions? Please let me know in the comments below.

Social Media Adoption & User Behavior Presentations

Last class was all about getting a grasp of social media use,  both in the U.S. and worldwide, both at the individual and enterprise levels. Here are the students’ presentations, note the references on the last slide in each deck, they may come in handy later when you write your papers.

Social Media Adoption: Worldwide, Individual Level

Social Media Adoption: Worldwide, Enterprise Level

Social Media Adoption: U.S., Individual Level

Why Social Media

Social Media & Education

User Behavior: Safety & Security

User Behavior: Online Dating

I think I’m missing one slide deck, I will update the post as soon as I find it. If you want to embed your presentation in your blog post, you can grab it from my slideshare account.

[Update]: All presentations added.

Class notes: Social media definitions

Here is a quick list of the key ideas we covered in class today, followed by some tips and reminders for you:

1. O’Reilly’s 7 defining principles of Web 2.0
2. Some important concepts to remember from the O’Reilly reading: long tail, perpetual beta, software as service, cloud computing, architecture of participation.
3. McAfee’s definitions of Enterprise 2.0: SLATES and ESSP
4. Important distinction from McAfee reading: communication channels vs. communication platforms.
5. boyd & Ellison’s 3 defining criteria for social network sites (remember also point about network vs networking)

We ended class with the following questions, which I invite you to address in a blog post:

• Which definition makes more sense to you, and why?
• What relationships do you see among the 3 definitions? Are they complementary, contradictory? Can you integrate all 3 definitions in one framework? – Or create your own definition?
• What do you take away from all these efforts to define Web 2.0  and social media? Why do you think most authors define them by listing characteristics rather than stating what they are?

I also gave you another idea/homework for a blog post. Take a few minutes to look over the list of social media sites submitted by students (if you haven’t pasted yours in this list, please do so NOW).

Then, think about how you would categorize them and write a blog post about it. Create a classification scheme (taxonomy) and briefly explain each category. You don’t actually have to go through the trouble of populating the categories, just define them. For example, you could decide most sites fit into one of three major categories: red, white, or blue. Briefly explain what you mean by the red category, and give a couple of examples of sites that would fit in that category. Then, move on to the white category and repeat. And so on.

IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU:

• Set up your Twitter account and blog, connect with me, so I can connect you to the rest of the class – NOW
• Always do the class readings. Now, you wouldn’t want your surgeon or aircraft engineer to be the type who didn’t do readings in college, would you? Do know that teachers do know when you didn’t do the readings, even if they don’t throw a fit.