More About Blogging

This week we have been asking you, our students, to dive right into blogging. But what is a blog? Well, this site is one for example. But how do we define it?

Here on the site, you can see some of the key elements. First, it is primarily about delivering text content. Note that the first page, where you are reading now, is all full of content, like a series of articles or stories. These articles are called, in blog terms, "posts."

Note, too, they run far longer than, say, a Facebook status update. Note that they are primarily content created by the blog's authors, rather than content from some other place that is shared with little or no commentary.

Watch this video: Blogs in Plain English

Also, consider the introduction and the history history segment of this article on Wikipedia:  Blogs.

As for Microblogging? Think a blog, but smaller: a few sentences, or a short burst of words. In some ways, Facebook's status updates are almost microblogging, but the classic example is Twitter.

Welcome to Week Three! (With Assignments)

It's been a great week everyone, but now it's time for week three of our class! Congratulate yourselves, we put a lot on you. As you learn about social media, take a short break and enjoy the above comic from Calvin & Hobbes. While it's a bit snarky, it's also true about social media: you get what you put into it.

Our theme this week is blogging and micro blogging. Names that may be familiar to you are platforms like Wordpress, Blogger (which is what the course blog uses,) and Tumblr, as well as leading micro blogging service Twitter.

This week we will ask you all to roll up your sleeves and get a bit more into doing things. That starts here, on the blog, with assignment one:

1. Register to join the blog as an author.
Step one, use the Moodle course mail system to send your e-mail to myself and Joanne. Please do this ASAP, no later than Tuesday, April 17 at midnight Pacific Time.
Step two, you will receive an invitation to join the blog at that email address by no later than Wednesday morning.
Step three, follow the instructions that Blogger emails to you.
2. As with last week, find a story, blog post, video, podcast, or any other digital media that relates to this week's topic, in this case blogging and micro blogging. If it relates to a subject being discussed by your classmates on Moodle, or if it relates to your class project, all the better. The only real requirement though is that the subject is related to blogging or micro blogging and that you think it is worth sharing with the class.
3. Complete the course browsings for this week:
Read this: What is a blog?
Read this: Twitter, "Truthiness" and breaking news
Watch this: Twitter founder gives talk about what Twitter is, how it was originally intended, and how it has changed.
Read this: Some practical advice about using Twitter.
4. Go to Blogger and click on the little orange pencil button next to the course blog title. Put a headline in at the top, and then in the body section, write a short post about the link you found for item two in the assignment list here. Describe in 1-3 paragraphs what the story is, why you want to share it, and what your thoughts or reactions to the link are. Do this by the end of the week on Sunday night; we will talk about the experience next week.
5. Go to Moodle and complete your answers to the three discussion questions there. Because we are asking you to join the blog this week, we will keep the discussion questions a bit light this time, but don't forget to reply to at least two other students' posts on Moodle!
6. Look at the earlier post here on the blog that describes the assignment for the midterm/final project. Then contact your instructors via the Moodle Course Mail before the end of Friday, April 20th to tell us:
a.) Are you contracting for an A grade, a B grade, or a C grade. To repeat what the syllabus says, if you are contracting for an A, you must participate in the midterm/final project and write a 5-6 page reflection for the final. If you are contracting for a B, you must participate in the midterm/final, but no 5-6 page paper will be required at the end of class. Those contracting for a C are not required to participate in the midterm/final, but must still participate in the Moodle discussions for those assignments by interacting with their fellow students.
b.) If you are contracting for an A or B grade, tell us what your project will be. If this is not fully formed yet, contact us ASAP and we will work with you to finalize the form. Do not start the project until you have an approval from one of your instructors.


I will be back in Portland tonight, Monday the 16th if anyone has technical problems!


Happy week three!

Class Assignment for Midterm/Final

Hello Class!

This week, one of the course discussions is to share your ideas for your project for the class. As stated in the syllabus, the course's midterm and final are both related to a social media project of your choice. This week, we want you to consider your options and share some ideas with the class on Moodle. Then, next week, we will ask you to pick one of them and begin the project.

This is not as hard as it may at first sound. The assignment was based upon one from a smaller, simpler introductory class. The difference is that with this class you will have the opportunity to spend about 8 weeks on the project instead of 3, giving you more time to observe and learn.

Further, you have more freedom to adapt the project to something you want to accomplish. Consider this an opportunity to try out a social media project for your personal, professional, or educational interests. This is a participatory project track where you get to explore social media in a directly applied purpose relevant to you.

So for this week, ask yourself, what would you like to explore, and how far you want to participate. Then share your thoughts with us.

The full project assignment is in the course syllabus, however, I have included it below. Please note that we have modified the start date a bit to give you more time to consider your alternatives.

Questions? Ask in Moodle in the discussion question for this assignment in Week Two.

From the Syllabus:

Students will also engage in a social media research project. This project will require them to choose from one of the following two options:

Project Track A: Choose a pre-existing social media community to join and engage in. This should be a community you are not already involved in. This may include one of the following: 

• Follow and engage with a blog that has a robust comments section 
• Join and engage a Facebook page or group
• Join and engage a LinkedIn group 
• Join and engage others on Twitter 
• Propose to the instructors another social media site that you think is worth exploring.

Project Track B: Plan, create, and implement your own social media community, which may include one of the following: 

• Plan and create a blog for a specific purpose 
• Plan and create a Facebook page or group for a specific purpose
• Plan and create a LinkedIn page or group for a specific purpose 
• Plan and create a YouTube channel for a specific purpose 
• Plan and create a Twitter account for a specific purpose
• Combination of some or all of the above 
• Propose something else to the instructors that will best meet your needs for learning and using social media.

Please note: regardless of which track is chosen, students will be graded by their observations and learning from these experiences, as demonstrated in the discussion areas of the course’s Moodle site and/or in the final reflection paper, not on the content the student has created outside of Moodle. Further, we understand that some students will have privacy concerns regarding participation in social media; we encourage but do not require students to utilize their real names in their social media projects. If you have specific privacy concerns, please contact the course instructors and accommodations will be made.

The social media community chosen may be for personal, professional, and/or educational purposes. Students should expect to choose and begin to engage in their social media community in week two, and be prepared to discuss initial observations during week six. Interaction will continue throughout the class. Those contracting for an A grade also need to submit a 5-6 page reflection paper on their learning and observations by the last day of the class, Sunday, 6/5/11. Students will not be graded on the content or extent of their engagement in their chosen social media communities, but rather by demonstration in their reflection papers of their observations and learning during the engagement process.

Week Two Assignments

Here are the assignments for Week 2 of Intermediate Social Media, which runs April 9th - April 15th. These all need to be completed by Sunday evening, April 15th.

This week we're looking at:
Facebook
LinkedIn
Social Profiles: Personal vs. ProfessionalThere are 4 questions posed in this week’s discussion forum on our Moodle course site. Please read the questions and respond to them and other students’ responses throughout the week. For maximum learning, the discussion should occur throughout the course of the week.

LEARNING ACTIVITIES & ASSIGNMENTS:

1) Read this: How to pimp your LinkedIn profile
2) Read this: What is a FB "friend" and how do they relate to your "real" friends?
3) Watch this: The Social Network
4) Watch this: What is LinkedIn?
6) In your industry or area of interest, find a news story or blog post about Facebook or LinkedIn and how it is used in that field. Suggested sources include: Alltop, RWW, Mashable. Share it with the group on Moodle. 
7) Go to Facebook and look up two profiles: the first, that of Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder, and the second being a profile of anyone well known whom you wish to choose. What can you tell about Mark and about your chosen well known person from looking at their profiles? Make some notes for your own reference about anything you learn from the profiles that is interesting, surprising, or shocking to you.
8) If you haven't already done so, go to Facebook and friend Alexander Craghead and Joanne McCall (McCall is my business name, Joanne Wright is my personal name and Marylhurst likes to use the latter. Sorry if it caused confusion). We will then bring you into our private FB group for Marlhurst Intermediate Social Media group. We can "unfriend" at the end of class if we choose to.
9) Go to Moodle, read, and answer the discussion questions found in the Week 2 Section.

See you on the discussion forum!

Joanne & Alex

Alex & Joanne at Marylhurst Social Media Event

Hi Everyone,

One Tuesday, April 3rd, Marylhurst's Career Services Program sponsored an event featuring Social Media expert Joshua Waldman.

The event, called 7 Top Mistakes Job Seekers Make Online is geared toward students who are actively getting into the job market and want to understand how social media is being used in hiring practices.

Joshua is the author of of "Job Searching with Social Media for Dummies" and after his presentation, Alex and I took the opportunity for a photo op.

Here are the 7 Mistakes Job Seekers Make Online according to Waldman:

1. Not having a well defined brand across platforms (Align your values)
2. Using your job title in your professional headlines (You are not your job.)
3. Rambling on and on in your profile summary (5 lines or less)
4. Not using LinkedIn's applications (Show what it important to you.)
5. Not having 100% LinkedIn profile (Dress it up and fill it out completely.)
6. Looking like an axe murderer (Your photo matters!)
7. Leaving your online relationships online. (Get the meeting or phone call as quickly as you can.)

Social Media is quickly becoming a part of all our lives--including the job search.

All the best,
Joanne

Week One, CCM367E

Here are the assignments for Week 1 of our course (April 2nd – April 8th) — these all need to be completed in Week 1 (so by Sunday April 8th). We have posted the assignments in this blog so that you can see how blog posts work, and become familiar with navigating a basic blog structure.

Click on the linked items below to complete. We recommend you complete them in the order listed below.

FIRST: Please introduce yourself in our Introduction Discussion Folder in the Week 1 Section on our Moodle course site.

NEXT: There are 3 questions posed in this week’s discussion forum on our Moodle course site. Please read the questions and respond to them and other students’ responses throughout the week. The assignments below will help inform our discussion, but you do not need to complete the assignments first. For maximum learning, the discussion should occur throughout the course of the week. Thanks!

LEARNING ACTIVITIES & ASSIGNMENTS:

1) Watch this Common Craft video about the definition of Social Media
2) Watch the latest in a series of videos by Eric Qualman on "socialnomics."
3) Watch this TED Talk from Clay Shirky.
4) Read this blog post from Brian Solis.
5) Join Facebook (if you haven’t already) and then “Friend” Alex and Joanne there. (After the course is over, we may all “un-friend” each other as desired.)

Optional: Become friends on Facebook with other people in our course (again, this is totally optional and up to each member of the course whom to accept Friend Requests from.)

Optional: Become a “Fan” of Marylhurst University’s Facebook page and the Shoen Library Facebook page.

6) Go to Moodle, read, and answer the discussion questions found in the Week 1 Section.

Welcome to Social Media Learning @ Marylhurst!

Hello and welcome to Social Media Learning @ Marylhurst! This blog is maintained by Alex Craghead (me) and Joanne McCall to support our social media education courses at Marylhurst University. Here can be found assignments relating to various classes, as well as resources, links, and ideas about social media.

You will find posts tagged with a number of terms, including the following:

Announcements. Pretty straightforward.

CCM367E Spring 2012. Posts containing assignments for CCM 367E Intermediate Social Media, a class run in Spring 2012 at Marylhurst. All of our assignments can be found here, so anyone who would like to follow along may see what we are studying.

CCM366E. These are outdated posts, including assignments from "Introduction to Social Media," a class run from 2009-2011. While these posts are now about two years old, we have left them as they may provide useful information, and a snapshot of how social media is ever-changing.

In addition, we will post many other snippets that may prove of interest to students, faculty, or anyone interested in social media.