UPDATE: 7th Nov OK, we're going mobile. One of the things about media studies is you're studying a live subject. That's not just that news, information and comment are everywhere but that news, information and comment about news, information and comment are everywhere. What is more, you are part of that. Your Google Reader enables you to keep up-to-date with this and by sharing your posts you can see what the rest of the class are sharing when you boot up your reader. By sharing your del.icio.us and evernote spaces, you're also adding information to the cloud we're building. But the next stage is to find a way to share that information anywhere and everywhere and also to share your thoughts, comments and questions. Of course you can do that here. Just create pages or add comments, links etc but let's make it easier. Let's use the ubiquitous technology - your phone. We're going to set up our birkbeckmedia cloud so we can add to it, build it and discuss it from our phones. We're going to use Twitter. I've bookmarked quite a few items about Twitter and journalism on del.icio.us as have others. Essentially Twitter is a service that enable you to send a short (140 character) message from your phone by SMS to your Twitter page (you can also send it from your PC. This message sits on your Twitter stream where anyone can see it. People can choose to 'follow' you. They can then choose to receive your Tweets on their phone by SMS (they don't pay for this and neither do you). see update above Utterli does the same but when you have set up your free account you can upload text, audio or video through a web browser or an application you can download. You can also send them as MMS messages from your phone or email them to a special address. People are using Twitter and Utterli to 'lifestream', letting others know what they are doing or what they are thinking. News organisations are using it as a rolling newsfeed , conferences are using it as a way of enabling realtime feedback and government is even using it as a way of keeping people up-to-date with policy and annoucements. We're going to use it share links but also to share thoughts, ideas and questions. You may want to Tweet:
You may be reading something online and share the link. You may be reading the paper at work and have an idea. You may be passing a billboard on the Bus and want to share a short semiotic analysis. All will go out to the network and if you choose to follow people, their questions, ideas, comments and responses to your's will come back to you. You can choose whether they come to your phone or just read them on your PC> Twitter and Utterli are informal and easy. You send a question or an idea and someone will respond... So, step-by-step:
As usual, any problems... talk to me here, via IM or in the real world. |