ModuleMate

Over the time of the course we had to design an app or a mash up with our group. We decided on a app that would be module review app for students. We came up  with this idea as we all said we had trouble with picking different module and electives. We wanted a student perspective on the module we were picking. We wanted a less formal and more informal review.

So we designed our app on MITappinventor. This was very difficult as we did not understand the different rules that applied to different blocks. Thankfully Shane put on three extra classes that myself and some of my team members attended. We eventually had created our app.

Following this I put together the Prezi for our app. In this Prezi we had concluded a powtoon video, which shane had showed us in previous class and then also a screencast of us demonstrating how to use the app.

Here is a link to the prezi https://prezi.com/0vrgy-mvg-qo/modulemate/

At the start of this module I was hesitant about making the app as involved many things that I had never done before. I was delighted with my group, We all were committed to doing our work, and splitting the workload up evenly. We worked really well together from the get go. Thankfully we had brainstormed our idea quickly so this gave us time to make the app. We did have a few issues along the way. The designing of the app being the hardest, as the blocks were very complex steps. There was a tutorial on MITappinventor called pizza party which greatly assisted us on designing the app.

Overall I really enjoyed this experience of making the app and seeing it all come together. I had never done anything like this before so this really was different for me.T

Quiz and Interesting readings - Week 11

This week we had our midterm. The midterm was worth 20% of our grade for this module. Thankfully after studying over the notes, looking over past wikis and doing the readings, I managed to obtain 21/23. I was very happy with my results and I felt I had learned a lot  over the past 11 weeks for this module.

There are some readings that stood out to me when I was preparing for this exam. The first was the truth in the age of social media; A social Computing and Big Data Challenge.http://irevolution.net/2012/07/26/truth-and-social-media/. This article was interesting to me as the main topic throughout the article was about the development of social computing and the challenges that we face due to this development, From doing research on various topics adapting to change and development is one of the biggest challenges any individual or organisation can face. This article looks into to different areas of the industry such as journalism, photography and news. For journalism the challenges they face are all about how easy it easy now a days for anyone to check information or facts up online, it has never been so easy for the public to check up on anything that a journalist is saying. They must now be careful and use solid information to back up their article. Then photography it is now so easy to create a false image or to modify an image. The photograph now must ensure that their images are authentic and not a false image. Then the final topic discussed was the news and how easy it is to spread rumours. Everything is spread so quickly through social media .
It was an interesting article they must come into our minds when we read or see the things online we must consider is this a credible source or an authentic photo.

Then the following reading was called the pros and cons of internal user-generated content /http://www.contentrules.com/blog/the-pros-and-cons-of-internal-user-generated-content/. This was about how now that social media is so easy accessible for so many people, we don't need experts anymore for example with companies we do not need to hire a technical person or a web designer most of the time now companies just create groups wikis and people from various areas in work just write a piece on it 

There are pros and cons to this user generated information.

PROS	CONS
The content is by people who are actually doing the work, more accuracy.	Person may not know how to write exactly what the customers want to see even though they create the product.
Collaborative Environment everyone is getting involved, can lead to good work morale as people show interest.	Difficult to maintain a good communicated flow on the page, due to different writers.
Updated very quickly	Creators may leave out information, because they know it they assume others do to.
	Can be disorganized and hard to follow.

Screen Casting

This is myself and a group member presenting one of our projects with the use of screencast. I found that my increased knowledge on social computing and media has not only help with this module but also with other modules.

Our screencast  is on a project that we had to do for one of our module on a research topic, we chose to research what role do managers play in the well being of employees. We had to do a video presentation and I thought screen casting would be our best option. The above video is our final presentation.

ScreenCast

http://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cofnbpe8Ju

During week 6 , in the tools of the trade part we learned how to screen cast our work. This means we were able to record on screen what we were doing.

To demonstrate the use of  screencast, I recorded myself typing out my to do list for college for the week. As it is simple data to follow and I type it up each week. At the top of the post is where you can find the link to my recording.

I have found this tool of great use to me especially for college work, in one particular module Contemporary Issues inside an organisation.I have to do a video presentation now with the help of screencast I will be able to do this with no difficulty.

Users of the world, unite! Challenges and Opportunities of Social Media

After reading the assigned reading for week 1, I thought I would write a brief overview of my thoughts on the reading about the challenges and opportunities of social media.

There was one statement made in the reading 'Today everything is about Social Media'. This statement could not be more true. Following reading this piece you see how social media is element in almost everyone's life. From college student who use a blog to track there academic progress, or even Facebook for social purposes and also college work, From an organisation who use social media in more ways than one from using it as marketing platform for example the movie Fred Claus created their own Facebook page to create some media buzz for the release of the movie, or they use it as a social forum, for instance Nokia have an internal wiki which updates employees on various project status.

We really see the full extent to the beneficial use of social media, especially for companies it is a high impact and low cost media coverage , which seem to be very popular recently. In this reading they have included ten tips for companies using social media for their firm. They are useful simple tips, yet very insightful , for example ensure activity alignment, companies must ensure that if they are using various social media applications such as twitter and Facebook, the information on these pages must be the same. Communication between company and consumer is so important and it must be clear, the company must eliminate any uncertainty.

Yet there is downfalls with social media, you must be careful not to spread your wings to far. There is constantly new social media applications being introduce, the company must choose one app and a specific target and focus on that. They should want to be the best on that app rather that have bad quality information on numerous apps. Another challenge of social media is in most cases is that it is very accessible from employees have access to social media pages and consumers have a place to express there thoughts.Companies must ensure they are constantly keeping track of the credibility of their social media devices.

Here an attached a link to the reading
http://michaelhaenlein.com/Publications/Kaplan,%20Andreas%20-%20Users%20of%20the%20world,%20unite.pdf

A small reflection..

As we have just finished the two week semester I would like to discuss the benefits I have seen in my knowledge of social media over the past semester.

Before I took this elective, I would have said that I would have had an average knowledge of different social media outlets from Facebook, twitter and instagram. Yet this three mention are just the standard websites. I was amazed to discover that there is actually so much more out there.

Pinterest- This an online site to like and share different things you have an interest but also see what other people are posting . I have found some really interesting things on this website from different make-up ideas, nail ideas and cooking recipes. It has really been useful there has been so much accessible information on it.

Google Maps- Even though this is such a commonly used thing I never knew how to design and create an map. As I am travelling this summer along the west coast of america, when I finish my exams, I plan to create a map for our journey. I intend to include images and locations of different hotels that we plan on staying in.

Diigo-  Yet the social media device I have found most helpful is Diigo. As I am a final year student,I have an endless amount of readings. As I like to print my readings out and highlight them it was becoming infeasible to print them all with the load I had. I started then saving all my files in pdf form so I could work in that way but this was starting to take up my memory. After we had the elab on Diigo, I have been using this website to save, bookmark and highlight all my readings. It has been so useful. I am able to group my readings by modules, I am able to bookmark readings that I find interesting and most importantly to me, I am able to highlight readings. All this useful tools will stand to be in the next coming weeks.

Not only have I found out about more websites to use but also, I have gained a greater knowledge on privacy issues. Before taking this lecture I would have known to be careful about what I post up online. Yet I never would have thought not to post a passport like photo online incase of fraud. On each website we use there are different privacy settings that we should all check before setting up our page, even on blogger.com we can see who has access to our page or not.

I know the above is a small minority of what else is out there, but so far the above have been so useful to me and cant wait to explore more.

Flickr Week 8

As the time is flying by this semester, it is great to see things in the early weeks still appearing now. Today's e-lab was all about Flickr, from being on social media websites I had seen the icon but never knew exactly what it was. Flickr is an image and video platform page, where people can go on and look at each others images and collections. I was actually surprised when reading this because I actually collect a lot of photos and love doing scrap books. This useful on-line tool will help keep all my photos together and I will be able to access them anywhere as long as I have WiFi.

So quite easy and simple to follow, I set up my yahoo account and then I signed into Flickr. I selected photos from a Basketball Trip, as you can see in the first photo. I then described each photo and also added in different tags that I wanted to include for each photo which is shown in the second image below. Following that I uploaded the photos and also shared an image on my Pinterest Account, here is a link to that image  https://www.pinterest.com/pin/293508100691543675/ .

It is great that you can combine websites together from Flickr to Pinterest. Another aspect that I will find very useful with Flickr is being able to store my images online, as I do love to collect and take phots this is a great storage option. It will also allow me to be able to access my photos from any where and from any computer assuming I have WiFi.

Mash Up Week 7

This week in our face to face tutorial we learned how to create a map.This to me was very interesting as I use the maps app on my phone daily and never once thought about how it was created. Creating this map also showed us the collaboration on two sets of data it was a mash up. This was putting theory from this weeks lecture into practice. We had data on excel from the book Heritage Trees of Ireland and then we combined this with Google maps so we could actually see the locations of all these heritage trees. The process of making the map was quite simple, thanks to the step by step guides. Firstly we created our map then we made a layer based on the Oak heritage trees of Ireland, this appear on the map after the data was downloaded.

Then following that we downloaded more data , which then also appeared on the map but with this data we learned how to change the style of the data. So to distinguish between the different types of data we changed the icon and the colour, to make the difference more visible to the user.

Then finally we were able to left click on the different icons on the map and see the unique data each icon had,such as the place, the county and the species.

I have embedded my map to this post. I hope in the future I will be able to create a more detailed map.

Elab Week 5 Prezi

This week in our elab we created prezi acccount. This website will be very useful for this module and also other modules. We can use it for different presentations in class and also for personal use when we want to create slideshow of personal experiences. I found this website very easy to use, as it was my first time it was very straight forward. Firstly I decided on a template, I chose the worldmap as I have travelled to many places and think its an interesting topic. Then I created the layout. I decided on different photos I would add in. I also included different arrows pointing to places I had been and youtube video of one of the tourist spots in vancouver.

Diigo Week 4 Elab

Diigo

Another assignment from our elab this week was to setup an account with Diigo. Until the lectures this week I had never heard of social bookmarking, I found this all very interesting. I think it will be very beneficial to me and my college studies at the moment, because unfortunately I fractured my radius and writing is very difficult. Now that I have a website where I can read different readings and articles online and then save them to it in different categories is so essential. It is also great that it is all on the cloud so no matter what laptop I sign into I can still access the different information I want. This website is really going to be a useful studying aid.

I have included three screen grabs of my process of setting up my Diigo account. In the first screen grab this is an image of my home page of my account after signing it up. At this stage I was testing out the water and seeing what all the different features were. Then the second image was a reading that Shane (lecturer) had assigned to us to read. He wanted us to mark this and save it to our diigo account. In the following picture you can see that I have tagged the reading and is now saved to my Diigo account where I can access from any computer as long as there is internet.

Pinterest Week 4 Elab

Pinterest

Before this elab I had heard about Pinterest. I actually stumbled across it last Halloween when I was looking up ideas for different costumes. It was helpful as it gave you gathered information about similar area. For example I was looking up makeup ideas for a scary nun and so many images and also methods of how to do the make came up. The website was so convenient and easy to use. The image above is my home page without any boards made.

After signing in, I created my first board and followed the instructions that were given to us in our step by step guide. I find these really helpful otherwise I would be lost without them, because before I didn’t know there was such a thing as a board. The image above shows the boards I made and hopefully will start to use more frequently in the future.

The last part of the instructions was to go on and like someone else post and start following them. So I now officially follow someone else. The image above shows the post that I liked. I think with anyway social website the more you use it the better your understanding of it. I like Pinterest and I find it quite helpful and caters to many different people and hope to become a more active user.

Magic 8 Ball week 3

In our second tutorial in newstead, we were asked to design an app, on app inventor, of a magic 8 ball. As with the Hello Purr app before we had to go online and download an image of a magic 8 ball and also mp3 sound for the creation of the app. The step by step guide was very helpful. It was detailed and very easy to follow.

The same as last time we started with the design view and created a front page for the app with the magic 8 ball image. A problem I ran into on this part was that my image only came up small so I had to change the height and the width measurements so it would be aligned with the app design. Then I also included the mp3 sound into the design view. Above is a picture of design  view before any modifications to image were made.

Then following the design view, I went onto the block view. At this part of the app inventor is where you set up different settings for the app, for example when a noise should be played or when you touch a button the noise should play. We set up a few different blocks with the magic 8 ball. It was set up that when button was clicked, the app would make a noise and a random item from the list would appear on the screen.The image above is a block view image with the different settings being made.

Each week we use the app inventor I feel I am becoming more knowledgeable with the different tools and settings.  

Hello Purr week 2

HelloPurr

Today we had our first lecture down in Newstead. After three years of being in UCD this was my first time venturing down to this building. We were set up in one of the computer labs. In this lab we had to follow instructions about how to set up an app for mobile device. It was called hello purr.

We first had to download an image of a cat and a sound of cat. These downloads would later be put into our app for use. I found this all very interesting because usually I would be the end user of an app, when I download one onto my phone but now I was making one. There is a huge difference. We had to focus on the designer view and the block view. The block view was connecting different parts of the app ensuring that if you clicked a certain button that would make a cat noise.

As you can see in the above screen grab from the appinventor page, I had put together in the design view a cat image and a button for that when you clicked the noise I had previously downloaded would play.

I enjoyed my first experience with the appinventor and look forward to learning more about the different tools and techniques involved when making apps.

A Day without social media....

A day without social media, this was an exercise given to us by Shane (lecturer). He had asked for students to try and attempt one whole day without the use of social media. So that means no whatsapp, facebook, or snapchat etc,this thought seemed very daunting, yet I was intrigued. I wanted to know could I last a day without using any of these devices. 

I accepted this challenge to go day without the use of my phone, I chose Saturday the 31st of January, as I would find it impossible to give up the use of these applications during a college week due to the fact that group work and information would be posted up on Facebook during the week and also due to my constant use of whatsapp during college hours when trying to arrange to meet up with people.

The day started off well I decided to turn off my internet so I wouldn’t be tempted to look on my social devices. I decided I would go shopping with my mum so I wasn’t sitting around just waiting for time to pass. I lasted the whole shopping trip without really using my phone bar a text or two. It was a great feeling not using my phone; I felt it was a great break from the social media world. I didn’t have numerous Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp post.

Sadly after returning home from shopping with my mum I cracked. I was waiting on the dinner and I was bored. I completely forgot about the task at hand and went onto my Instagram. The realisation that I couldn’t last a day with social media is so sad. As a child I would never have use a mobile device and now I can’t last 24 hours without.

Technology has really changed the world we live in !

The World of Social Computing

Week 1

As this is my first post, I am excited yet nervous as I want to post interesting and different things. As I am commerce student taking this module social computing and media, I have branched out of my comfort zone in hope of gaining experience in a new area.

In the first  lecture we discussed  mainly the course outline and what will be asked of us during this 12 week module. We have three main tasks week working on our blog, our app and also different readings assigned to us and that we have discovered.

I most looking forward to create a new app that can be used by customers, this is really interesting to me because I have never done anything like this. To get the ball rolling on our app design, we were assigned groups, I am part of group 2. My group decide to make a facebook page and have a whatsapp group where we can discuss, brainstorm and make decisions about our project.

Following the lecture we also had an eonline quiz about Wikipedia and how to create a blog on the friday. This was interesting and helpful as I was able to take notes on the online slides and also was able to attempt the quiz a few times till I got all the answers correct.

I am looking forward to learning more about social media and computing.