Social Media Training

Digital Communicators will be taking advantage of the HootSuite Training over the weekend as they work towards professional certification.

They will review the Introduction to HootSuite here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg1BcNDXBi4 

• They have already begun to optimize the look and feel of their social media accounts by building a header for each platform that reflects their brand guidelines and style sheets.
• They have connected their social media accounts to HootSuite and organized their dashboards.

They will all begin (in class) the HootSuite Platform Training in the HootSuite Academy.

Over the weekend, they will complete  the training and take the certification exam in the module.

Drinking from the Digital Firehose: Aggregating and Curating

Talk about META...

Read Lanham HERE.

Students in Digital Literacies will be developing tactics to handle the constant deluge that is our modern digital reality. They will read: an Interview with Richard Lanham, and "Untangling the Web Through Digital Aggregation and Curation."

In order to TAKE BACK CONTROL, (i.e. exercise their agency,) they will apply their knowledge into developing a strategy for handling the daily flood of digital information. They will set up Flipboard to aggregate research from contemporary sources, choosing the topics and sources they want to read about - and making the internet serve their intentional information demands, rather than letting the internet control their reading habits.

Tutorials for Flipboard

They will use the aggregated articles in Flipboard to CREATE A MAGAZINE in Flipboard on the topic of SOCIAL MEDIA, and will post a widget to their magazine on their blogs.  You can get tips on using Flipboard here: https://about.flipboard.com/tutorials/

Here are directions on how to create a widget to your magazine.
I've attached a sample of a widget to my magazine on AR/VR below:

View my Flipboard Magazine.

 

You Miss 100% of the Shots You Don't Take! (and Weekend Reading)

In class, we learned some key principles of photographic composition. (See class website for Composition Tutorials - Parts 1 &2.) Students have gathered examples of photographic composition from "freegal" photo sites, and will explore other photographic resources on the site - including a couple of short videos: 7 Powerful Photography Tips and 9 Photo Composition Tips.

 Then students will shoot a number of photos based on the composition rules and tips from class and the course website. Students will post at least SIX photos and discuss the composition principles displayed in each shot.

 

ALSO - students will read Nicholas Carr's seminal article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"and will

write a reflective blog on their observations, including discussions on issues like:

• Difficulty reading printed pages
• The explosion of available information
• Nietzsche's typewriter
• The clock
• Memory
• The growth and evolution and influence of Google
• How will YOUR kids "read?"

Look at This (freegal) Photograph

This image is a single frame from the video "Photograph" performed by Nickleback, copyright holder SMG 2007. This image is used for educational purposes in a class that examines copyright issues, and its use will have no bearing on the value or commercial use of the work from which it was taken.

Students in the Digital Literacies Class at Limestone are exploring computer-assisted design, digital publishing, intellectual property licenses, and more. They are finding "freegal" (free and legal-to-use) images, and identifying the licenses from a range of CC, Copyleft, and Public Domain permissions.
**(They are accessing a treasure trove of images via Dr. Nichols' Pinterest Board)

They will also be drafting a "Fair Use Statement" for their use of an image in a class project.

What's next? Hmmm... well, students will will explore semiotics in imagery and color, write a sample "Fair Use Statement,"  - and try their hands at Re-making a Magazine ad with "freegal" images.

Anthropological Look at YouTube & Cover of the Rolling Stone

Our first few classes have involved a little time travel to see just how significant were some of the shifts facilitated (or caused) by New Media. We have explored artifacts, (including memes and viral videos,) as a way to see how the elements of remediation, meta-generativity, and agency have shaped our 21st-century media landscape.

Students will complete viewing Michael Wesch's lecture "An Anthropological Look at YouTube" and will post their reflections, reactions, and take-aways.

Additionally, student will explicate an assigned song from a playlist - researching the hisory of the song, examining the lyrics, and deriving an interpretation of how the song speaks about the state (or history) of the Music Industry. Students will post their reflections, along with lyrics, links, or video in their blogs.

(Cheat: I did one of the songs a couple years ago - you can get the idea of what I'm looking for here.)