A really interesting idea from ING Direct that I’ve just come across, opening itself with “Welcome to the ING Direct Feel Good site dedicated to bringing you news that will make you feel good. Here you can find the latest good news press articles, comment on these stories and share your own feel good stories and images. We hope you enjoy the site.” It looks like it’s been there for a while, but I’ve not noticed it before… and although, clearly, it’s about saving, there’s some interesting non-saving stuff there… only 200 Twitter followers at the moment, but a really interesting idea…

Today, Facebook feels the way Google, Intel, and Microsoft likely did at similar stages in their own life cycles — still agile enough to invent the future, but sufficiently stable to handle some real turbulence. In fact, Zuckerberg has been studying those companies, and their histories, closely. “There are advantages to being both bigger and smaller,” he tells me. “But the cool thing is, we’re in our sweet spot now.”

Read full story.

Dreams and Nightmares

In Dreams and Nightmares, I suggested that the students set up a WordPress blog to write their thoughts about their lectures, seminars, and presentations they observed from others. Due to Validation requirements, I couldn’t set this as a compulsory exercise, so I wasn’t sure if anyone would take me up on the idea, but Phil did, and you can see what is already turning into a very impressive exercise here.

Media Studies Dissertation

In talking to Helen, one of my FYP/Dissertation students, it became clear that she loves experimenting with making YouTube videos, and also wanted to conduct research into the values evident in Sainsbury’s advertising, and whether these resonated with viewers. This therefore seemed a great point at which to USE YouTube to help her conduct her research, so please do help her if you can.

Well, for me at least. Today I was offered the post of “Blended Learning Fellow” at the University of Winchester, on a 0.2 contract (i.e. 1 day per week). So far as I can see, Blended Learning is something that is growing in importance and therefore it is likely that the role will grow, but for now I am very much looking forward to identifying potential uses in social media, and other software (the University is already signed up to Wimba and uses a Moodle-based VLE) and where those uses can add real value to the student experience.

Incredibly grateful to all those on my Twitter feed who offered ideas (whether intentional or not) and encouragement, which helped to make my presentation sing this morning! I have just experimented with uploading my presentation to Slideshare, and it should be below.

Interesting experiment, and inspiration for ideas for a fully convergent social/educational life. Everything throught the iPhone… wonder if that would work elsewhere?

• Pages already existed for the R&I Centre, but there was no structure to the site, information was out of date, and many links were broken.
• These pages were designed for use by staff and students concerned with research and funding in order to help them make the best use of the facilities and information available within the College.
• Once the basic site was complete, editing privileges were given to others, and documentation was prepared explaining the structure, styles and ‘how to’ tips for the site to ensure a consistent look for the future.

The front page is different to the remaining pages on the site, although the buttons are the same to give consistency.

• The pages were designed to be ‘fixed width’, suitable for smaller screens, again losing the flexibility of tables (although aesthetic sacrifices have to be made with tables).
• Narrow versions of pages were given for the front page of each section (to encourage the use of succinct text), and a wider version prepared for when necessary.
• In a later reconsideration of the site, it was decided that the narrow page versions (which fitted other College sites), did not allow enough space, leaving information looking ‘squashed’, and all pages became wide.
• Time constraints on other members of R&I staff mean that most of the structure and content of the site is my idea. I have been careful to ensure usability, e.g. with file sizes provided to users.

This screendump illustrates the ‘Who’s Who’ section provided for the staff within the R&I Centre (information is provided on postgraduate students, but no such ‘Who’s Who’ information).

• Key fields were provided, and ‘editable areas’ were provided to ensure that the titles remain the same, whilst the relevant information can change.
• Instructions were left as to the width that the image could be to fit within the fixed width space (with the height largely irrelevant), with this ‘Image Not Yet Available’ JPEG provided whilst awaiting appropriate photos.

The information is only available internally, although with the development of the new portal, relavant information will be extracted for the external site.

• Using a CMS (content management system), I was given responsibility for the section content ‘About Us’, ‘Research’ (illustrated here) and ‘Business’.
• I collected material from sources already available, and, after meetings with appropriate personnel, a structure devised, and new data was requested and re-edited.
• I also worked on other sections as requested.

I was asked to do the work as a result of working on previous internet projects for the College.

Ensured good data transfer from original site to Joomla-managed site, downloading/uploading data, link-checking, error-checking, reporting issues to Rechord.

Positive feedback on my contribution to this project means I was called back to do the same for another site.

More information to come.

I was called in again, to transfer data from the old site to the new Joomla-CMS based site, checking for ‘good data’ and link-consistency, whilst providing good records to Rechord of areas which were not working.

More information to come.

The starter question we were provided with was “If Dr Who travelled through time to the media world of 2027, what would he find? How would God be working in and through the media?”. The web stream’s specific brief was to design a simple site, to include articles, host the audio and video stream output, and provide some interactivity.

As the most ‘web-experienced’ member of the group, I took editorial responsibility for the site. We worked on many areas of the site together. Specific areas of the site that I wrote include:

• The Future?
• Andrew Graystone: being a Christian in the Media
• Online & New Media
• Religious Broadcasting
• Virtual Exhibition

With Frances Murphy I presented an overview of the site to conference delegates, to encouraging feedback.

We were trained by Rachel Collinson of Rechord.

Visit Site: http://medianetacademy.wetpaint.com