Creating your Tag Cloud:

As an appendix to your essay, you will need to produce a Tag Cloud to visualise your essay.

Creating your Tag Cloud:

1. Copy and paste part or all of your essay into a separate word document on your computer.
2. Open a web browser and go to the Wordle website:  http://www.wordle.net/create
3. Copy and paste your text into the box
4. Click 'Go'

You should be able to see your tag cloud.

Editing your Tag Cloud:

1. Click Language' and select 'Remove common English Language'
2. Click 'Layout' and select 'Maximum Words...' change to '50'
3. Play around to edit the font, layout and colour of your tag cloud


Publish and SAVE your Tag Cloud

Add it to your essay

When you add it to your essay it needs to be an appendix at the back of the essay, before your referencing.

It is important you include the following information under the tag cloud in your essay.
- A tag cloud visualisation of "  " part of this essay. (Is it the whole essay, beginning, case study or conclusion?)
- created online using wordle.net

ASSIGNMENT TWO: 60% ESSAY: HOW DOES NEW MEDIA SHAPE SOCIETY?

Requirements: Assignment Two

A) 1300 word written essay
You are required to write an academic essay of 1300 words to critically reflect on your understanding and experience of new media. Your essay will focus on the question ‘How does new media shape society?’
You are required to include one detailed ‘case study’ of one ‘new media’ to support your argument. The new media you select to use as a case study is your choice, but you will need to check the relevance of it in Week 11 with tutor support.

You are allowed to use two case studies, only in the event of wanting to present a counter-argument of two cases.
You are expected to reference both primary and secondary sources and use a Harvard style of academic referencing.

B) ‘Tag Cloud’: visualisation of your essay
You are required to create a ‘Tag Cloud’ to visualise your essay. This will be created with tutor support and using ‘wordle’. You will be required to include this as an appendix to your written essay.


DEADLINES: Assignment Two

Friday 6th May at 3pm

You are required to hand in a printed copy with a tracking sheet to the assignments box in the Bredon building by 3.00pm on Friday 6th March 2011.

You are expected to read section 6 of the Media and Cultural Studies Student Handbook ‘Guidance for Study’ to help you plan, present and reference your written assignment. A printed copy is available from your tutor.

(5 days late grade=D) (5+ days late grade=0) Tutors are unable to alter these and cannot grant extensions.
If you need extra time, or cannot submit an assignment, you will have to apply for mitigating circumstances with evidence.
If you do not submit an assignment there will be no opportunity for re-assessment

You will get your grades returned by Friday 3rd June.
You are permitted to write 10% more than the targeted number of words, but do not write more than that as markers are unlikely to read or take into account anything beyond that additional 10%.

Please include a word count at the end of the report.
Appendices and References will not be included in the word count.

ONLINE LEARNING JOURNAL COMPLETION

Congratulations on completing your Online Learning Journals!

You should have all handed in a hard copy print of your Online Learning Journal at 3.00pm today (Monday 4th April) to the assignments box in Bredon with a tracking sheet. If you haven't already done so, please do this as soon as possible, so we have a recorded time and date of your hand in.

Your Online Learning Journals have also each been saved as a PDF document at 3.00pm today to record the finished journal.

You are not allowed to make any changes to your Online Learning Journals now.

Once you have been given your marks back by 29th April 2011 you will be allowed to continue using your Online Learning Journals to keep your notes and reflections.

ASSIGNMENT ONE: 40%: Online Learning Journal

ONLINE LEARNING JOURNAL

Requirements: Assignment One

A) Five Written ‘Posts’: 

You are required to write a minimum of five ‘posts’ between weeks 1 – 9. These ‘posts’ will be a minimum of 150 words each and be related to the module, suggestions of what to write about will be provided by the module leader and these ‘posts’ may include; 

reviews of key texts given as handouts in seminars,

reflections on practical tasks using new media platforms or exploring websites,

reflection on discussion or debate,

responses to questions set in the seminars. 

By week 10 you will have completed five written ‘posts’ (150 words each), which will become 750 written words in total in your Online Learning Journal.

B) Twenty Website ‘Links’:

You are required to save ‘links’ to all new media platforms, websites and online discussions that interest you and that are discussed in the seminars; these should be added each week and become a minimum of 20 links in total by week 10. These are added to Link Lists not inside posts.

DEADLINES: Assignment One

Your Online Learning Journals are monitored regularly and you are expected to complete the weekly tasks given to you on time. 

All weekly tasks to write a ‘blog post’ should be completed on your blog at 5.00pm every Monday. This is monitored each week.

Both A and B requirements of Assignment One will contribute to the assessment

The deadline for your completed Online Learning Journal is: 

Monday 4^th April at 3pm

You must hand in a printed copy of your Online Learning Journal with a tracking sheet to the Assignments box in Breedon by 3.00pm on Monday 4^th April. 

The print out must be on A4 paper. It can be either black and white or colour and the text of the blog posts needs to be readable. 
The print out must be from the webpage, NOT by copying and pasting it into word.
The print out of the blog will not look attractive, it just must be readable text.

This print out will be an archive to ensure that you make no more changes to your Online Learning Journal after the deadline.

“(5 days late grade=D) (5+ days late grade=0) Tutors are unable to alter these and cannot grant extensions.

If you need extra time, or cannot submit an assignment, you will have to apply for mitigating circumstances with evidence.

If you do not submit an assignment there will be no opportunity for re-assessment”

You will get your grades returned by Friday 29^th April.

At week 10 your Online Learning Journals should include: 

Posts:

1. Old Media vs. New Media  

2. Your Glossary term with Harvard Referencing  

3. What effects has the Internet had on journalism? 

4. Critical Review of The Social Network and Facebook 

5. Virtual Identity (including an image of your avatar) 

6. Exploration of mobile media and public space 

Links:

Your twitter page

Your paper.li newspaper

The MECS1008 Blog

At least 20 links to what we have discussed in Weeks 1 - 9


For more information and to read the learning outcomes, grading criteria read the 'MECS1008 Online Learning Journal Assignment.ppt.pdf' document in Blackboard

Referencing Guides

Here is a great YouTube video on referencing and research methods with Mike Webb and Barbara Mitra from University of Worcester.


If you want to see written examples of Harvard Referenced books, journals and websites then click here 

Task 6: Mobile Media and Public Space

This is a creative writing post in which to write a reflection about topics discussed in week 9, or to design your own Flash or Smart Mob.

How are mobile technologies shaping modern culture?

Mobile privatisation: (Raymond Williams 1997)

What private actions do you perform in public by using mobile media?

Private mobilization: (Matt Hills 2009)

How do you use your wireless and mobile media day-to-day at home? How has wireless access changed the functionality of how we use our home?

Exploring your mobile technologies, everyday communications on campus:

As you sit in the canteen, cafe, library or elsewhere on campus, look around you and document how many people are on their phones – what do they seem to be using them for?

If you were to organise a flash or smart mob on campus at the University of Worcester what would you do and why? How would you go about organising it and what do you think the reactions might be?

This is one of your blog posts for your Online Learning Journal so it will need to be a minimum of 150 words. Check referencing, spelling and grammar. 

Deadline: Completed and added as a blog post to your blog: 3.00pm Monday 4th April 2011.

Week 9: Mobile Media and Public Space

Mobile Media

Traditionally ‘mobile’ media have been thought of in a specific way as devices which offer mobility outside of the home, rather than forming part of a domestic media set-up. Indeed in this sense, ‘mobile’ media can be said to be about taking a sense of the home(ly) out into the cultural world.

Raymond Williams (1997) coined the phrase ‘mobile privatization’ to describe a ‘shell you take with you’ (mobile device) which is centered on the home but not necessarily in the home, it takes the familiar or seemingly protective layer out into the unfamiliar public space.

It’s reverse is the ‘private mobilization’ where public spaces are brought into the home wirelessly. Matt Hills (2009)

Instant Communities of Practice

An important communicative practice observed by Castells et al. (2007) is the emergence of unplanned, largely spontaneous communities of practice in instant time. By transforming an initiative to do something together into a message that is responded to from multiple sources and by convergent wills in order to share practice and have a collective voice. An example of this is Flash Mobs and Smart Mobs.

Users as Producers

We invent new uses, and even a new language, circumvent regulations, quickly find better cheaper available pricing schemes and build networks of communication for purposes and uses that were never in the cards of technologists and business strategists. This fully replicates the experience of the internet. 

Mobile Communication and The Network Society

The mobile communication society deepens and diffuses the network society, which came into existence in the past two decades, first on the basis of networks of electronic exchange, next with the development of networks of computers, then with the Internet, powered and extended by the World Wide Web. 

Wireless communication technologies diffuse the networking logic of social organisation and social practice everywhere, to all contexts, - on the condition of being on the mobile Net. 

More notes on Week 9's topic of Mobile Media and Public Space can be found in the presentation in Blackboard.