Week 16: Adventure in Second Life

Hi all! We'll be meeting in Second Life today, so be sure to put on your best clothes (or fur, or armor, or whatever it is you young avatars are into these days) and practice your six or seven favorite dance moves.

I found an interesting multi-media art and poetry installation, Maemi Gardens, that might be a good place to start. My SL name is Lethe Lebed (extra credit for anyone who can figure out what it means!); if you have trouble using the link above, invite me to be your "friend" and I'll send you a teleport invitation to where we are.

***Sorry for the abrupt disappearance! I got spit out of SL and am having trouble getting back in and unlagged. I trust everyone saw the installations and got the short assignment; please post to your blog by Friday evening. I hope you enjoyed your brief dalliance in the virtual realm — maybe some of you enjoyed it a bit too much, ahem — and perhaps we'll meet again!

Thanks for a fun afternoon and a fun semester. Have a great summer!

Week 15: Guest Star James Lee

PLEASE NOTE: There is no problem with the Drupal forums. Remember, it's not under "Create Content". You need to choose "Administer", then "Content Management" and then "Forums". So forum away!

Today James Lee visited and talked about his work in the online marketing world. Here's a list of the links he shared:

• James' personal video work on YouTube, including Dry Squid Cowboy
  
• Mekanism, the company James works for
  
• Tostitos/NOLAF campaign
• Toyota "Your Other You" friend-pranking site
• SoBe "Thrillicious" site

Did I leave anything out? If I did, remind me and I'll get the link.

This coming Thursday will be our last class. We'll talk about how to leave the BECA Community Online site and how things might resume next semester; we'll also do class evaluations (extremely important!) and pick a time for our Second Life meeting. Please be on time!

HOMEWORK:

1. Finish up your Drupal stuff.
2. Make your Second Life avatar and practice moving around, etc.
3. Get a start on any Writing Lab or other extra work I asked for in my last feedback e-mail.
   

Week 14: Drupal Intensive

*ANNOUNCEMENT: I forgot to say in class today that I will not have office hours next Monday 4-5, but I will have a substitute hour Monday 12-1. I will have normal office hours Tuesday 4-6.

Today we had a lovely, informative visit from grad student Adam Greenfield, who gave us a tour of the BECA Digital Lounge and talked about his experience in building, maintaining and growing an online community. It's a tough job, and he gave us a lot to think about in terms of decisions about the one we're building.

We also had Alex with us to help get started using Drupal to build our site. Reid, Mike and Amanda: you'll need to get in touch with someone from class and probably meet in the lab to learn how to do the building required in this week's homework.

ALSO: Check out the Ning community Jesse built!

HOMEWORK:

1. 1. Create a poll on the BECA Community Online site. The question can be anything relevant to gathering input on the goals, functions, design and use of the site.
   2. Create a calendar event on the site. This event should be an example of something you'd really like to make happen. It's a fictional example at this point, so don't worry too much about the month and how you'd organize it, etc. Make it an event occurring in September 2008.
      
   3. Create a blog entry on the site. Discuss one or more of the following: community management and "policing" (it's fine to refer to Adam's talk, but you don't have to); issues of copyright and DRM; ideas for growing the community and encouraging participation, including thoughts about possible obstacles to participation; or another topic relevant to building the community. Please use this blog post wisely — it's a chance to get everyone's ideas in one place so we can start making decisions. We don't have much time left!
   4. Create a page on the site. You have several options for topics: (1) Readings — describe and review 3 blogs, articles, books or other readings that you think would benefit BECA students; do not use readings that get assigned in classes. (2) Tools —describe and review 3 tools for building/displaying/accessing online content. Blogger, Jottit, Wikia, Ning, Drupal, and readers such as GoogleReader are examples of tools, but you can only use one of these; the other 2 have to be ones we haven't used in class. Please don't use Myspace, Facebook, or YouTube; other social-media and media-sharing/distribution sites are fine. Shopping/review/opinion/gossip sites, etc., are not tools. (3) Communities — similar to the presentations we had in the first part of the semester; present 3 communities that you think BECA students would benefit from participating in. VERY IMPORTANT: When you create your page, make sure you tag it with your topic: readings, tools, communities (no caps, correct spelling).
   
   
2. Read this NewTeeVee post about Hulu's new presence within YouTube. Follow all the links, and pay particular attention to the linked L.A. Times post. Follow all of those links, and pay special attention to the "Jason Kilar totally ripped on YouTube" link (leads to a C-Net post). Be ready for a quiz.
3. Get started with Second Life if you want to take the extra-credit option. Make an avatar and go through Orientation Island if possible. We'll try to sort out any major technical obstacles or problems next week, but the more you can get done on your own, the better off you'll be, really!