Study guide week 1: Topic 1

The study guide tells that for Topic 1 for this week we need to familiarise ourselves with the different forms of online communication that we are going to need for this unit.

The two main points highlighted in topic 1 are:

a) What are the characteristics (in terms of the kinds of communication they allow) of the following?:


b) How do you use them if you do; what for; what’s your experience of using them?


Email and email lists

Usenet and Bulletin board systems

IRL’s chat rooms, messenger services

MUDs + MOOs – merging with online gaming

Websites

Intend to start reading today on the subject and respond to the questions as soon as I've finished reading/researching/thinking about it.

Lecture 20/01/2009

Today's lecture, which for our particular group happened to be after our first tutorial-thingy, was a basic introduction for this unit.

We need to keep up with out blogs on a week-by-week basis as they really will be assessed per week. In our blog entries we are required to address the findings of our research and our own opinions of it. Then fellow group members can respond to it, hopefully turning the whole thing into a bit of the discussion about the whole thing. After 10 weeks we'll drop this method in favour of an essay.

We were told that even the whole title of the unit "new media" is one that can be questioned as every form is media can be regarded "new" when they were first introduced.

We also got told some stuff about "netiquette" (how you're supposed to behave in our online communications) and the meaning of the term "RINCY" (Read it, no comments yet.)

Also, we were asked to post blog entires about this weeks reading/lecture as found on MC home.

So, here is where the whole thing starts...

Right... it's still early here at the first ever digital-thingy tutorial, so far we've...

• Been introduced to the forums
• Set up our blogs (As you probably would've guessed)
• Made our groups

My group consists of my good self, Jason New (for as long as he's here, anyway), Sam Jarvis and Pete Byrne. And one of today's skyvers will probably be added to our group next week.

Oh, would you look at that? It's an actual, factual picture!!