Thing 16

OneNote

I have used OneNote before during my undergraduate studies but found the interface difficult to use because of the need for me to insert mathematical symbol and equations meaning that I needed to be able to change from typing to drawing and back again quickly which required a touchscreen device. Instead, I used an online document coding tool called ShareLaTeX to write papers and took notes in class using a pen and paper or a normal word document linked to the cloud for easy access. ShareLaTeX is very easy to use once you get used to the coding language and can create complex documents that would not be possible through an ordinary word processor.

Thing 15

Vine

One of the social media sites that I used extensively while I was growing up was Vine. It was a video sharing platform that limited its content to six seconds looping video clips. Launched in 2012 the service had 200,000,000 users by 2015 and was popular amongst young people but was also used by performers to advertise concerts, album releases or just to inform fans of what they were doing. Twitter, the owner of Vine, partially shut down the service in 2016 disabling content and in 2017 archived the site so users can still view and download videos from the service but uploading, sharing and linking within the service is no longer possible. It was announced that the founder of Vine is about to launch V2 a similar platform to the original.

Thing 12

Open Educational Resources

I had some experience with OERs prior to this as we had used them at school, but I was unaware that they had grown to the extent that they have. It is interesting to see that it was, in fact, UNESCO that started the open education revolution, which now sees universities such as The University of Edinburgh, The Open University and MIT making educational resources available online. The resource that I chose to share here was an online course titled Prejudice Reduction Strategies and is available from OpenEd. It investigates the differences between stereotypes and prejudices, an interesting topic in the times of heightened tensions that we are in at this point in time.

 

Thing 11

Copyright

The first example I am using is a Video of a Southwest Boeing 737-700 passenger airliner landing at Portland Airport (PDX). In the ‘Show More’ section of the video, it states that the media is posted with a “creative commons attribution licence (reuse allowed)”. By following this link, YouTube outlines that if you mark your work with a creative commons licence you, and others, are allowed to use this content subject to the licence granted to them, however, final copyright is retained by the owner. It is interesting that even if the video or images are reused it still requires an attribution to the original author despite it being posted on the largest video sharing website on the internet.

The second example is a Soundcloud Link for the remix of a DJ Khaled and Niki Manaj song. It is uploaded under a creative commons licence which allows for others to share and remix the original but they have to attribute the author in an appropriate way. The material cannot be used for commercial uses and must be reproduced under the same licence as the original. Soundcloud is quite an interesting platform as it has been criticised in the past for allowing copyright infringement by its users.

Thing 6

The accessibility of websites is something that has interested me for a while. Being Dyslexic, I often struggle with the layout of written work including how the text is coloured. One thing that I find has helped is in the increasing number of websites that allow you to access an accessibility mode, with some offering coloured filters which can help people suffering from visual stress, a condition prevalent in dyslexic individuals.

However, since coming to university I have been able to reduce the number of times that I use coloured filters. Because of this, I thought that it would be interesting to look at how people with visual impairments can struggle with accessibility on their phones. The American Foundation for the Blind has a number of guides for those with visual impairments. The one that I looked at spoke about the use of voiceover technology, magnification, and other accessibility features on the IPhone.

The resource can be found here:

http://www.afb.org/info/living-with-vision-loss/using-technology/cell-phones-tablets-and-other-mobile-technology-for-users-with-visual-impairments/apple-ios-for-iphone-and-ipad-considerations-for-users-with-visual-impairments-and-blindness/1234

 

Thing 5

The Bitmoji craze was something that I didn’t really understand, but with younger brothers, I was well aware of how widespread the fad was at a time. The interesting thought I had was that it was great that people were now able to express themselves using an image that looked like themselves. This comes in a culture of exclusivity in media, where the images we see on TV and social media are overwhelmingly populated by white faces, and there is no real attempt to provide a space for others.

Reading about how social media utilised the new access to racially segregated emojis to spread hate, racism, and bigotry didn’t particularly surprise me. This kind of abuse and intolerance was not created by these new emojis, in fact, the meanings of many existing emojis were subverted by racial undertones and used by many on social media in this way.

Thing 4

This exercise was interesting because it was something that I had thought about before and I regularly check my privacy settings on my phone. The interesting thing this time was that I also checked which apps were allowed to access my location and under what circumstances. Apps such as games automatically had access to my location when they had no obvious reason to. Other apps such as the Ski Tracking appl Snoww and travel apps such as Easyjet obviously have a reason to access your location, however, I made sure to alter these settings from ‘Always’ to ‘when using app’.

Thing 3

I Googled myself and my hometown and found no information on myself. Next, I googled my name and a number of other keywords such as the name of my school, the name of the Universities I have attended, and a number of competitions I have been involved in. From this, there were a number of images on google images including my Linkedin profile picture and my Twitter account. The results were quite interesting as they also returned results for family members who have been named in news articles.

The main result of Googling my name was the late voice actor Patrick Allen, along with a number of doctors in the UK and USA.

Thing 2

What do I hope to gain from The Edinburgh Award and 23 Things?

I hope to explore and learn a number of key transferable skills in digital content creation. I have always found the concept of a digital footprint an interesting thought, its something that we learn about in a negative way with warnings about what not to put online. However, since starting university I have been told about how important it is to build a profile of your work and research. Therefore, I will find it interesting to see how we can strike a balance between making an impression online whilst being subtle and appropriate for our audiences.

 

What do I think of the University’s guidelines on Social Media usage?

In the era of ‘Fake News’ it is interesting to see that this phenomenon has spread into the academic setting also. The guidelines talk about the concept of “Authenticity” speaking about the problems that inaccuracy can cause if it is spread throughout the student population. Another interesting thing in the social media guidelines is that they talk about “Academic Integrity”. It is interesting that this concept must now transgress academic work and enter into the social media sphere, something that many students don’t consider when using Twitter, Facebook, or any other media. One thing that I have noticed amongst my peers is the increase in the number of people having a personal and academic social media presence, in which they can separate their personal views and opinions with their academic work. I’m not sure if this is a solution or simply a workaround that prevents the expression of truthful opinions?

The Journey Begins

Thanks for joining me on my first blog! This blog will document the work I am doing towards achieving my Edinburgh Award in Digital Content Creation.

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton