About the course, assessment and all that

This is all preliminary information because the course does not begin until Aug 21, but to allow many of you to get going on some activities now, the following will help.

There are three assignments: 1. a practical task to produce a short movie (PhotoStory 3 for example) that tells a story (20%); 2. online activities using a blog, social bookmarking, wiki, web authoring, social networking, etc (40%); 3. Mutimedia Review - an 'essay' using an online notebook to report on the overall topic (40%). Full details on these soon. The second part involves you in being very active in using the tools we are talking about. No. 2 depends on you really taking the initiative and actively being engaged in contributing.

The first of these is the blog. While many of you have found that it is quite easy to create a nice looking blog, the problem is, what to put in it. The situation that I have created for you is a quite artificial one. Ideally you should be choosing to create a blog for a particular purpose. I'm bullying you into it. So to become familiar with blogland and to have enough experience to discuss its merits and shortcomings, I will provide some stimulation to make it interesting. But I will be relying on you all to provide the bulk of the stimulating ideas and responses.

The main feature of a blog is that it is a place where an individual can write about whatever they want, and hopefully build up an audience which has the opportunity to comment on what has been written. In out context, it would be very interesting to see some of you reflect on multimedia learning. Many of you are doing a major in digital media. Why?

On communicating, I have recommended that you set up your blog as a private one to our group, however this prevents the use of RSS feeds that notify people whenever you update your blog which is a pity. The issue of Private or Public will be a significant issue during the course later.

Of course people don't usually monitor 38 blogs at a time. To help me keep track of things, if you switch your blog to open to 'anyone' send me an email so say so. If you leave it Private, send me an email each time you add a Post to the blog so I know to have a look. When we get going properly there will be a web page to list all the blogs.

Starting your blog

Some guidelines for getting started in Blogger. You need a Google account, then go to www.blogger.com and follow the instructions to build you blog. I am suggesting this free blog because it is a large and powerful and convenient, being part of the Google empire. If you already have a blog or two it is still desirable that you start this one just for the course. The following is advice, not compulsory.

• the blog is in two parts - the visible part, that looks nice, and the management part; when you are in the view section, see the Customize link top right to get to the management area. In this area see the View Blog link to get back, and also the Dashboard link to take you to overall control panel.
• In the management (Customizing) view go through the following....
  
• Settings: select Permissions and go for the middle setting - only viewable by people you invite.
• Template choose the look you like.
• Posting (writing an entry) Introduce yourself. Add some images if you can. Remember privacy: we plan this to be a closed network, but think about what you want to disclose about yourself. If you open it to public view, anyone can find your information. I just did a google search on my name and Woomera (where I went to primary school) The first search result was this blog!

Then Publish and go to View Blog. The little pencil icon is the edit button if you want to modify it. Others will only be able to see your great creation if you go to Settings/ Permissions and add their email address in the Invite box.