Notes from the first week of community meetings.
In the first week of the 'changing the learning landscapes' online identities project there were three meeting, (unfortunately the meeting at LCF was poposed to the following week). These meeting took place at LCC, with the COPYourself community, CSM, with the CSM ; Press Play community and CCW, chelsea college of art, with the CCW ON POINT community.
Here are some of my notes as project coordinator, to see individual feedback from the community developers please click on the links.
The first question asked in this meeting was what do you use online? there were a number of different things people used, by the most common were facebook, twitter, instagram, snapchat, website builders, and blogs. The most common regular usage was through apps, and other common apps used included things such as tube and bus maps/times apps, banking apps, phone company apps, i-tunes, i-store, weather apps and spotify.
Twitter was regarded as better than facebook in that the user can update more regularly with less regard for content. Flickr was consisted a good site for amateur photographers. most people used tumblr / blogger / wordpress as blogging sites. However the group members agreed that most students only use blogging sites when it is coming close to hand in and they need to product a research basis. most of the students felt that they were not professional enough yet to have a website.
Intellectual copyright was a worry for some students, and they would like more information on how to manage this, and what steps they need to take in order to safe guard themselves.
There were a number of website builders talked about, such as wix and moonfruit, and we discussed the prices that they charge. We also talked about places you could buy your domain names, such as godaddy.com and 123-reg
The students felt that the university needs to provide more information on being safe online, making things public and how to go about doing that, and online etiquette. They also felt that students should be encouraged to post things online from first year and would like this to be part of there course.
We talked about what happens if you google your name and what it brings up. When we tried it there were a number of different things including things you have liked, pages you have appeared on, or pages relating to pages you have appeared on, links from pages you are related to, photos of yourself from however long you have had an online presence.
The group was asked whether they had ever made a film, to which the answer was no, and then asked to consider whether making a short video about their work would help to promote themselves, and to explain your practice, giving people a more personal connection to you.
What sort of ways things should be showcased was consider; facebook is the most accessible and easily sharable, it also allows for conversation and feedback. google handouts and google+ was something the group felt they didn't really know about. websites and blogs were the most usual way people thought about presenting themselves online.
I wasn't able to attain the meeting for this group, but I was able to catch up with Kim afterwards to discuss issues and topics that the group brought up. From her notes, which you can see by clicking here, the main issues raised were similar to the ones brought up in CCW ON POINT. The group felt that an online presence was vital to their practice, but they didn't feel that they had enough support from the university to get this. Similar website builders were mentioned such as moonfruit, wordpress and wix, also squarespace.
The things noted by Kim that the group most wanted help with when it came to website building were; buying a domain name, whether you need a web provider and which one, design and google analytics.
The group brought up in particular that they didn't like using moodle, as they did not find it user friendly.
Myself and Kim discussed gathering together people for a seminar that could talk about issues raised in this meeting, such as someone to talk about website building, intellectual copyright, app developing, branding etc. This is a proposal that Kim will be working on for future funding.
I will be presenting at Kim next session on Thursday the 7th of June, to explain what the university already provides so that they can discuss what else they feel they need.
I also wasn't able to attain Filip's meeting at LCC, but i did catch up with Filip afterwards as well to discus issues and topics brought up. Filip's write up from his first meeting can be found here. Filips group identitified a number of topics that they would like the college to provide help with such as; CV drop in and interview workshops by someone different to one's own tutor, more industry networking, more collaborations, portfolio workshops and workshops to help build websites etc. They group agreed that there was a certain level of help from the tutors when establishing their online presence, but it varied from course to course. The group agreed that 1 to 1 sessions, and a staff drop in Centre to help with online presence etc would be useful.
Myself and Filip discuss whether it would be useful to target the students at Freshers, to get them interested in their professional online presence and how the university and their peers could help one another. Filip suggested setting up a stall at the Freshers fayre to get new studetns involved in these community of practice and get them interested in develop their online presence. Filip will be developing as a proposal for future work.
To the extent possible under law, all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this Work, Notes from the first week of community meetings., by Joe Easeman are Reserved.
