And don’t forget, folks: the social media progress report is due on Friday!

I know, a pretty crazy week, but here’s how the schedule for the class describes it:

Due Friday:  Semester of Social Media Project First Progress Report! By Friday, everyone needs to post to their English 444 Portfolio a progress report on this project.  As a part of this 500-750 word update, be sure to name and describe the Social Media(s?) you are participating in.

Three things about this:

  • I’m running a little behind myself, so if these brief progress reports aren’t posted until Saturday or so, that’s okay with me.  But I do think it’s important to keep up with it all, so make sure these are in very soon, certainly before the end of the weekend.
  • Remember that these can be very short– 500-750 words is 2-3 pages, which is really nothing as far as I’m concerned– and you simply need to explain what social medias you are following and why.
  • You need to post these on your wordpress.org site, and that means that pretty soon, you are going to need to figure out a way to organize your site to be a “good” one for the purposes of our class.
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For those of you seeking FileZilla help

FileZilla is always one of those things that gives some people hiccups in the process of this work.  But to be honest, it has always worked for me without a hitch, so I am always a little fuzzy on the advice to give to people who get stuck at home.

I will offer though three links to consider:

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Progress and tips on the XHTML/CSS exercises so far….

Take a look at this video where I give a bit of a pep-talk about the XHTML/CSS exercises. Here’s who has gotten through the first four exercises so far:

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Discussing Adams’ “The Real Life Social Network”

This is where we’ll talk about “The Real Life Social Network v 2″ by Paul Adams. First off, don’t be intimidated by the length because even though it is over 200 slides, it really does move along pretty quick.  I read/reviewed it in about 30 or so minutes.  Second, I can’t remember exactly how I came across this piece, but I swear it was something that someone posted on Facebook.  More after the break. Continue reading

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Doh! My bad about missing the hangout– try now if you can!

Hi everyone–

I’m really sorry about missing the hangouts I said I was going to be at tonight. Long story short: I’m chairing a search committee for a new faculty position in our department, I got completely swamped today, and after I got home late and sat down for dinner, I completely forgot about all of this. Again, not a very good excuse, but my only explanation. Sorry about all that.

So, I tell you what I am going to suggest:

* I will log in now (about 9:40 on Tuesday night), so if you happen to get this message in the next 20 or so minutes, let’s give the hangout thing a shot.

* Tomorrow should work better at least for me, and I have a lot more time when I am going to be around my house and catching up on lost work. So if you email me tomorrow (Wednesday, 1/25) individually between about 10 am and about 5 pm and you want to try to hangout just to see what it is all like, we can make that work. Give me a little bit of time, but I should be able to get online and work with you individually or in small groups.

* I’ll try again to do the group hangout tomorrow night at 9 pm and 10 pm to try and catch anyone who might be missing.

The key thing is I want everyone to try to experience this to see what it’s like and to see how it can work with collaborating with your group, and I also want people to take advantage of this technology to collaborate with your group.

Seem like a deal?

Sorry again about missing this tonight,

–Steve

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Google Plus Hangouts tomorrow at 8 and 9

I’ll be hosting two Google Plus Hangouts tonight tomorrow night, one at 8 pm and one at 9 pm.  What you want to do is connect with me first on Google Plus– do a search for me or try clicking this link here– and do this before tomorrow night.  Then I’ll add you to a circle and you should get a notice from me to join my Hangout.  That might not be as clear as is ideal, but hopefully, it’s clear enough to get you started.

Our “hanging out time” tomorrow will be short, so if you can only make it for 15 or so minutes, that’s fine.  And if you can’t make it at these times, let me know and I’ll try to set up another time yet this week.  The important thing here is I want to make sure that everyone tries this out and gets kind of familiar with it because this is how I think you and your group members should meet!  Or at least some of your group members should meet.  I think trying to coordinate a face to face meeting with everyone is going to be difficult and really unnecessary especially with tools like Google Plus.

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Discussing Chapter 1 of Shirky’s “Here Comes Everybody”

This is where we’ll talk about the first chapter of Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody:  The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. When I decided to change the emphasis of the class a bit away from things like blogging specifically and more toward social media more generally, I was kind of undecided about what to assign in terms of reading.  I could have assigned a bunch of academic-like articles I suppose, and we might get to some of those kinds of pieces yet (remember, a lot of the schedule is still TBA!).  And I probably could have assigned something more recent– the hardback for this book came out in 2008.  But I think Shirky is a really interesting writer and thinker, both accessible and smart, so I decided to take this route.

More after the break.

Continue reading

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Three “heading into the weekend” announcements

I’ll probably email this to everyone too, but it never hurts to pass along announcements in multiple places, right?

  • I’ll be out of town this weekend (as a tangent– free wifi at the Wendy’s in terminal B at the Detroit airport– sweet!) and with pretty sketchy internet access until Sunday night.  That shouldn’t be a big deal, but I thought I’d tell you all anyway.
  • The make-up of the different content strategy groups are likely to change in the next week!  This is because, basically, students often reconsider taking an online class like this once the realities of it start to sink in.  And that’s fine, by the way– I know it’s nothing personal one way or the other.  But what it means is I might have to shift some of the collaborative teams around since it wouldn’t be very fair for a group of two or three to do the same as a group of five or six.
  • It looks like I’ll try to host another Google Plus Hangout on Monday, January 23, at 11 am and then another one or two on Tuesday night.  I originally was going to do this based on group, but that really doesn’t matter much– the idea here is to give it a try so you and your collaborators can use this amongst yourselves.

I have my iPhone so if you want to email me about something, go ahead and I’ll try to get back with you.  Otherwise, keep posting here about this week’s readings, start reading Shirky, and keep working on those exercises.

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About participation and impromptu google plus tonight

I emailed this to everyone, but I thought I’d post it here too:

(more under the read more break):

Continue reading

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Discussing some initial readings on Content Strategy (and the assignment)

This is where we’ll talk about this “Content Strategy” knolRachel Lovinger’s “Content Strategy: The Philosophy of Data,” at boxesandarrows and the first part of Kristina Halvorson’s Content Strategy for the Web. I think these readings are all very “skimmable,” which is something we’ll be talking about as part of developing a good content strategy.  I thought I’d go ahead and share this video of Halvorson talking about both “content strategy” and her book:

Kristina Halvorson talks content strategy from Andy Santamaria on Vimeo.

As you can imagine, the way I have to teach a class called “Writing for the World Wide Web” has changed a lot over the years, and this idea of “content strategy” is pretty new to me– as of last year or so.  You’ll do the reading and watch the video, but I think what it boils down to is a change in emphasis from “design” and “functionality” to what is actually on the site– you know, content.  For me, it was kind of a light-bulb moment in that I think a lot of what I was teaching in this class previously functioned too much on the “architecture” of the web at the expense of what was actually published on the site.

Now, I am somewhat skeptical of the claim of “content strategy” being something radically different from “writing,” as I wrote about on my own blog back in November 2010 when I first started thinking about this.  And, as the readings make very clear, content strategy is not completely divorced from design and layout– far from it.  But I think it basically represents a shift in emphasis in this class away from coding and some of the more computer geeky stuff and closer to more writerly kinds of work.

This is also a good place to have a little more conversation about the Content Strategy Portfolio assignment.  Surly there must be some questions; let’s see what folks think about all this here.

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