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.