HEA Escalate blog

Visual Communication module

It's not a PhD related idea, but who knows, it might becomes useful... It is still about using social media in teaching. Another idea during my long train journey back home last night: to incorporate Flickr in the Visual Comm module. I'll set up a group in Flickr, upload some pics for students to annotate and analyse in a Flickr discussion; students could also/preferably upload similar images for the group. Would be good for 'semiotics' task. I would need to do a quick Jing demo, to show students what I have in mind. In turn, that Jing demo could be used as discussion point (video demos would certainly interest the tech comm students).

Wordle for content analysis?

Nice application of Wordle to liven up a potentially dry subject! The interface is interesting, and the application of Wordle would show interesting different different between the different US President addresses. An intro to content analysis perhaps... Could even see an application in my PhD as instant concordance... just to break up the heaps of text :-)

Virtual reflexive ethnography?

Recording thoughts about the first steps of a socia media journey is a bit like conducting a virtual reflexive ethnography. An ethnographer is always connected to the object of their research, which is why reflexivity is important. But let's not get all 'postmodern'... I am just thinking about Hine's book on Virtual Ethnography . In the ELSS course, we're asked to reflect on learning, with some of the learning also achieved 'by doing' (using SM) as well as by the traditional reading and online discussions. The course isn't about research, but having to maintain a blog reminds me strongly of my MEd project where I did something similar (but without public access). The 'field site' is the distributed environment (to use R&M's phrase) offering a rich social media ecology (Blogger, Flickr, Blackboard, Twitter and probably other platforms in future). Instead of going to a specific field site (eg Bb), I also followed field connections, eg links...

Fin de la nuit

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