Week 4 Social Media and Computing

 In week 4 the lecture was primarily focused on the Wisdom of Crowd and Social Bookmarking. Social Bookmarking enables us to add, manage and share bookmarks of different documents. The primary goal is to share content with others. Examples of social bookmarking are Delicious and Diigolet I had heard of these sites before but never really knew what they were about so it was interesting to finally understand what they were about. In that lecture it was clear that a lot of groups seemed to have chosen a diet app which was illustrated clearly when all the answers were put up on the screen. 

In week 4 I watched videos about social bookmarking in preparation for class.I learnt that through social bookmarking you can improve your web page ranking significantly. I also learnt that for this to be successful you must update it very regularly.

We had an eLab in Week 4 which concentrated on Diigo and Pinterest. My first post on Pinterest was about Ireland's Six Nations campaign and the return of Outhalf Johnny Sexton after a spout of concussion. Here is a screenshot of my first Pinterest. I found Pinterest interesting as it was different to twitter and facebook which i both enjoy but if I wast o spend as much time on Pinterest as I do on those two social media sites I feel that I might develop a strong interest in Pinterest.

 

 The second part of the eLab was Diigo. Diigo is a social bookmarking site to make it easier to take notes and provides a network to share and discover information. All this information is then saved online as you bookmark it. I wasn't overly enthused by Diigo and much preferred Pinterest to it as I found it more useful and interesting.

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Week 3:Social Media and Computing

In week 3 I learnt about how many people write reviews online for products that they are happy/unhappy about. I had never written a review even when I wasn't happy with the product that I had bought. This may affect my decision in the future if I am unsatisfied with a product. The following questions and answers were given in the lecture that week

Question 1:  He sold an iphone on adverts.ie. He met up with the buyer and the transaction went smoothly. 

He went back on the webbsite and posted that the buyer paid the price agreed.

Question 2: He said that he had to review it as it was part of the websites policy and that if he didn't he may have lost potential future income from selling more products on this website.

Question 3: He said that a book he got as a Christmas present had an error in it and he was going to post a review indicating the error but decided not to as there was already several other reviews of the book and thought that there was no point adding to them. 

In week 3 I also read about the pros and cons of Internet User Generated Content. I saw that the pros involved in this were that Content is written by people who are creating the product, which should lead to more technical accuracy. Content is also updated very quickly.
The Cons involved that It is difficult to maintain the same voice and tone from writer to writer and also that the content can end up being very disorganized and hard to follow.

On Friday 6th of February we had our second face to face tutorial in Newstead which was again focused on creating an app. I found this tutorial easier than the first tutorial due to developing a good knowledge with creating apps because of the first face to face tutorial. The instructions given were also quite simple to follow. This app was called the "Magic8Ball". It involved similar instructions to the "HelloPurr" app. The toughest part was linking all the "Blocks" sounds together to create the sound for the app. Here is a link to my Magic8Ball app  http://ai2.appinventor.mit.edu/   
Here is also a screenshot of the Magic8Ball app that I made

Week 2 Social Media and Computing

Week 2's lecture focused on communication- traditional, semi-traditional and social media communication.Traditional communication is considered as telephone communication, semi-traditional focuses on e-mail and mobile phone communication and social media communication is regarded as newer sources of communication such as web conferencing. In preparation of week 2's class I read the article "Truth in the Age of Social Media: A Social Computing and Big Data Challenge". I found this article interesting as it had brought up things that I had never known about social media. This week helped me learn about the different types of communication that currently exist in Social Media.

We had our first face2face lad that week as well where we created the HelloPurr App. Finding Newstead was a bit of a challenge but I got there eventually. It was a bit tricky at first to create the app as it was my first time doing something like this and as the class carried on I got more used to it and http://ai2.appinventor.mit.edu/#4749539715055616 found it easier. There is a link to of my HelloPurr App, Here is also a screenshot of it.

Week 1 Social Media and Computing

This week was our first lecture where we met our lecturer Shane McLoughlin. At the beginning of the class Shane told us about our group project. We were told we had our first eLab that week also. In this eLab I completely the two tools of the trade assessments that were given:How to Collaborate Effectively and How to Create a Wiki on Blackboard. These two tools of the trade helped me understand how to interact with team members and the do's and don'ts when working on a team. How to Create a Wiki on BB helped me understand the types of things that were expected in the module and was a good way to start the Social Media and Computing module. I also watched videos which were linked in the preparation of the first week of lectures. They helped distinguish between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. They also discussed what and how Web 3.0 will evolve in the future.