Nearing the end...

Well, these last couple of weeks in Writing & Computers, we watched people present their PowerPoint slides about the different topics we were asked to research (user-generated content, participatory culture). In addition to that, Professor Jennings had us finish our class blogs and wiki entries, and sent us a link to what may be an interesting video.

Week of "Presents"

We have been working on our presentations for Writing & Computers. The presentations are based on the research essays we did about a month ago. My presentation is going to be on user-generated content. When I have the PowerPoint finished, I'm going to try to figure out a way to convert the file to embed on my blog.

Writing & Computers: TED, Diigo WebSlides, Animoto

In Writing and Computers, we talked about open-source (collaborative) content and user-generated content, and how these two technologies work together to form the mold for Web 2.0. We viewed these three Web sites below to inform us more about these technologies and what we need to do for our final presentations. The first Web site, TED, shows us different videos and Web mashups of presentations for differing ideas in the fields of technology, communication/design, and business among others (http://www.ted.com/). We viewed a video about the what and the how behind remixing one content form with another content form.

The second Web site (http://slides.diigo.com/) gives us a platform to put together our own remixed mashup presentations (for example, using a popular song and dubbing it over a popular television or movie clip and adding graphics/slides between different clips).

The third and final Web site, Animoto (https://bl2prd0101.exchangelabs.com/owa/redir.aspx?C=b5c0f9e7358e45069a297e37cd27359c&URL=http%3a%2f%2fanimoto.com%2f), serves the same kind of purpose that Diigo WebSlides does-having your images analyzed, your videos customized, and your music "felt".

I think these three Web sites will prove to be quite helpful to me for my final presentation on user-generated content.

Writing & Computers: "Creative Commons", Mashups

This week in English 318, also known as Writing & Computers, we took most of the week off so Professor Jennings could go to a technology conference. In place of Wednesday's and Friday's classes we had to review three different Web sites. They all dealt with copyright issues, the sharing of content, and building Web mashups (combining different types of data or content, such as videos or photos with music). For example, Web site and television channel Current (http://www.current.com/) uses mashups that developers created for stories featured on their Web pages as well as in their many news and commentary programs. The Web site Creative Commons dealt with content developers who want to find a middle-ground between having copyrighted work (no one can access his/her content) and having public-domain content (anyone can access, manipulate, and alter content for different, and possibly disagreeable, purposes). Looking at these three sites were helpful to me, and I know I will want to use the knowledge I gained from them in my future in communications and/or technology. You have to be careful about who you are dealing with, what you are doing/how you play with someone else's content, and who was in charge of hiring you. If you are not, many people may merely ask you to remove their content (or take it down themselves). Some people may sue you for piracy and/or other reasons. Those are just some things you may want to think about when creating your own content using another's. I cannot answer all of the questions about this, so the links to these three sites are listed below this post.

http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Review/DrMashuporWhyEducatorsSho/44592

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122367645363324303.html?mod=googlenews_wsj#articleTabs_comments%26articleTabs%3Dcomments

Creative Commons

Writing & Computers: "The Dickens Web"

Hey all. In Writing & Computers we finished that wiki video this past Monday. We then started talking about these two assignments that we have to complete by this Friday and next Monday. One of them is an essay that asks us to define certain topics (phrases) in the writing and computers world, such as digital citizenship, digital writing, and participatory culture. The other is an assignment where we have to research, view, and critique a choice Web site. This week we also looked up different Web pages that include social bookmarking and blogging. One I discovered is called The Dickens Web (http://www.eastgate.com/catalog/Dickens.html). That is all for this week!