All posts by jeremybowtell

Get codin’

For those of you who are interested in learning more about code (beyond what this course requires), check out Code Academy which takes you through tutorials, exercises and quizzes on HTML, HTML5, CSS, CSS3, PHP, Javascript and more.  It’s great to do just a couple of these at a basic level, to gain a better understanding of what’s going on ‘behind the scenes’, help you troubleshoot issues and perhaps broaden your scope of what online writing allows you to do.

If you’re feeling really nerdy, you can take this a step further and check out Lynda.com for tutorials on PHP, Javascript and more.  You can set up a profile using your RMIT email, follow the steps here.

Lynda is an excellent resource that you have access to as part of your enrolment at RMIT.  It features entire courses, so while this would be a lot of extra work, it could be a great challenge to set yourself for Netmed – learn to code and try to make something with your new found skills.

Copyright & Creative Commons

Some good discussion came up in the workshops last week about the complications that arise around the issues of copyright online.  Some good perspective is offered in this article from Artslaw about Australia’s stance on the issue.

By now we should all have an understanding of what Creative Commons is, and how it is applicable to the work we’re creating on our blogs.

Continue reading Copyright & Creative Commons

Free WordPress blog accounts: Dashboard, pages, categories & links

As I’ve mentioned, we’re putting some effort into working with 2 different blogging platforms – the Mediafactory (MF) blogs for Media students, and the free WordPress (WP) blogs for everyone else.

If you have a free WP account and want to use the same dashboard as the MF, here’s a quick little hack: once logged into your blog, type in your blog home page address (should be there already) then add the following: /wp-admin .  So the URL in your browser bar should look like this:

Browser bar

with your blog name in place of netmed2016testblog, obvs.  This will take you to the same dashboard as the MF blogs, and while there are a lot more options, it’s all there in front of you.  A few students had trouble adding links, so if you want to do that, check out WP support here.

I would recommend this way of doing things, so we all have a common experience.  However, if that all sounds like too much, read on…

Continue reading Free WordPress blog accounts: Dashboard, pages, categories & links

What you’re writing – Week 2

Bronte with some great reflection on her experience of network literacy in practice.  Personal experience and theoretical uncertainties are perfectly fine at this point (in fact, if everything was certain, there would be no need for theory!)

Abbey has chosen to create a stand-along Netmed blog, and another for her personal use.  While I would recommend managing only one blog at a time, this means her Netmed blog can be for exploring, reflecting and prototyping, which leaves her with a ‘clean’ blog for her online profile.  More work, but a good experiment.

Shannon already has a blogroll list going with some great bloggy resources (if the links have been deleted form this post then check out the blogroll list on her homepage).

Ben has added a category into his default menu; not much posted yet but a good technique for sorting content going forward.

Shantelle is  showing that she has a strong blogging voice emerging already, listing several great approaches to what her blog might end up being.

Looking forward to continuing to read these (and more) throughout the semester.

Quick overview of RSS

A succinct little clip that explains what RSS is, and how to use it.  If you’d like a way to organise and present your resources in an easy to manage fashion, this will be good for you – but you’ll need to put a bit of work in to let it sink in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn1QXC0Yevc

(source: http://www.staynalive.com/2011/05/twitter-and-facebook-both-quietly-kill.html)

Six word stories

I’ve mentioned ‘six word stories‘ a couple of times already, they can be incredibly powerful, but of particular interest here is the way they demonstrate succinct (yet emotive) storytelling.

While there isn’t anything that ‘networky’ about them, they are well suited to the short-form medium; easy to share, emotionally charged, kind of poetic headlines.  Also a great example of ‘microblogging’ at work. Check them out, and see if you can find one that speaks to you.

Note: There are a couple of different Twitter accounts using the name sixwordstories – I’ve linked to my preferred option above, but see what suits you.

 

Week 2 Workshop

Firstly, we’ll do a quick follow up from last week and address any questions, then take a look at Assessment Task 1.

Next, we’ll discuss: What are some ways we can demonstrate network literacy on our blog?  You should back up your discussion with a reference (quote or other) to this week’s reading.

This week’s exercises are below.  Similar to last week, these will make up part of your blog checklist to be completed in the Week 3 workshop.

Differently to last week, you will notice a lot less detail in this task.  This is deliberate, all the information you need to know is out there, so go find it!  Of course you can always ask your tutor for help in the workshop.

If you had an existing blog before this course, you may have completed some of these steps already, but make sure to check.  If so, you should focus on the optional tasks, suggested blog entries, finding/reading other student’s blogs, analysing the reading and any other ideas that you can write about and use in your first assessment task.

Exercises:

  • Expand your Blogroll (links): 5 student blogs, 5 ‘other’ blogs.  In dashboard, you need to add a link, then set the link category to something that is on your sidebar
  • Add a widget to your blog sidebar (can be anything you like)
  • Select a Creative commons license and add it to your blog sidebar:  http://creativecommons.org.au/

There are also a few optional things you can do, depending on your level of interest:

  • Learn about RSS and see how you can use it on your blog
  • Add twitter feed to blog sidebar (your own, or #netmed2016 …?)
  • Start a Codeacademy course https://www.codecademy.com/

For next week:

Bring some photos, or audio, or video (or all 3).  Phone quality is fine, but you will be uploading it to your blog, so make sure it’s something that you’re comfortable with being public.

Suggested blog entries:

  • Standard stuff; notes on the reading, lecture, class discussion
  • Write about the widget you have chosen, what it does and why you chose it
  • Read other student’s blogs and link to one of their posts