Jennifr

An (Honest) Account of TA assessment

Week 8 into Semester one and my 6th week of teaching (ever) and I had my teaching assistant assessment from my boss (aka the course leader). It happened to coinside with one of my busiest weeks of presentations - 3 hours, 3 seperate seminars and 9 presentations between them. From the little experience I have, I figured that I would pushed for time and wouldn’t have much time for discussion afterwards, therefore I didn’t write a lesson plan…

Of course, this would be the week where several of the students that were due to present were 1) Ill (it happens), 2)pled ignorance (What? I was meant to present? Nobody told me!) 3) not check their emails until RIGHT before the class (Nergh - once I’ve done this a few more times, I may start getting a bit tougher on them..) and 4)Just plain give up on their degree and didn’t turn up. I thought I had 9 people to mark, I ended up only having 4.

It gets to 11.20am - Sod’s law, both students that were due to present in the seminar I was being marked on, had finished presented and I had about 30 seconds to think up what the HELL I was meant to do for the remaining 40 minutes…

The theme of the lecture that week was technology and culture - I took a similar class during my masters, which was ran by my Ph.D. supervisor - so I tried to think back to examples that were used then. I remember the “One Laptop, One Child” campaign and fired this random video up on youtube… all the while absolutely sh*tting myself, the eyeballs of 15 students (and my boss) staring at my back as I try and disguise my fear..

I had a whole 1 minute 2 second distraction to come up with a convincing lesson plan.

Technology, culture - split the class in two and get them to debate argue for and against one child, one laptop iniciative. Encourage them to think about economical, political and cultural reasons (on both sides) - and just hope it worked. (Thanks to twitter, a thread of discussion that had occured a few weeks ago - my 24/7 access line to those who know far more about this sort of stuff than I do…)

And with that, I split the class in two and explained that the only information that they have about the scheme is the video I had shown them and anything they had found out themselves prior to this. I was also keen for them to think outside their comfort zones - so asked them to keep personal opinions outside of the argument and focus on producing a convincing arguement instead.

And with that, we got 35 minutes of absolutely brilliant student led discussion - I was so proud of them - and breathing a massive sign of relief. It was rewarding to see them working through the thought process and coming to their own conclusions from either side.

As they were leaving, several thanked me and said they really enjoyed taking part in the discussion - it felt good actually - and I was relieved, I was completely rattling with nerves so much have done a good job of hiding it from them!

As I was leaving, I explained to my boss that I was expecting so many presentations and totally paniced - and he me that he couldn’t have asked for anything better from the seminars and said that they were excellent (!) He also told me not to worry about not having something prepared, as I did a good job of thinking on my feet.

Many lessons learnt for me - that is, be prepared for the complete opposite of your own expectations. I’ll find out the rest of the feedback on Monday when we compare presentation marks. Fortunately I have a whole new subject and class to contend with next semester, as I’ve had my contract extended until at least May. I am curious to see how my opinion and teaching experiences change as I progress..

Posted in leicester university, new media, phd, seminars, teaching | Comments

Just a few things…

I think I am well over-due a blog entry. I’ve been spending the last few weeks sorting out a few things (and moving house, again!) and preparing myself for the looming January Ph.D. start date.

I got my Masters result a few weeks ago and if all goes to plan, I will be graduating with a MA with distinction(!) I am obviously over the moon with my result and I am hoping that it will put me on good footing for being the Ph.D.

From this, I have also begin my first job as a teaching assistant - tutoring once a week for the 2nd year undergraduate module, “New Media and the Wired World“. Hopefully if all goes to plan, I will have a 2nd module to teach next semester (unsure what it will be yet - probably be more media studies than new media studies - so I will have to do a bit of revision myself!), which would cover the first semester of my Ph.D. regarding work etc.

I’ve also been attending the Creative Coffee Morning (which is held at De Montfort Graduate Bar, every 2nd Wednesday 10-12: Facebook group here) - which pointed me in the direction of NESTA, more specifically an event called Amplifed08, which I will be attending in London next week. I’m keen to get more involved with such types of networking meetings and events as I feel that, firstly, they are a source of valuable connections which could later provide excellent resources in terms of my future research and secondly, I really do agree with the shared, collaborative sense of creativity that such organisations are promoting. Furthermore,  I leave the events feeling positive and motivated, which can only be a good thing!

Not much else to report, I hope to do a bit of work looking at the importance of avatars and identity (especially when it comes to using Twitter) and get some of the smallworlds stuff kickstarted again before christmas. I’m hoping now things have settled and I’m about to set foot back into a regular routine that my blog posts will be more frequent. We’ll see how it goes!

Posted in general, identity, internet tools, leicester, leicester university, masters, new media, part time jobs, phd | Comments

Managing Identities: Part 2 (Netvibes)

The smallworlds project aims to introduce emerging online research tools, such as Twitter and Delicious, at a grassroots level to early stage laboratory students at the University of Leicester. For many of the students that we met at the introductory sessions last week, this was their first encounter with these sites - and it was clear that they were slightly overwhelmed by the amount of websites they had signed up to at the event (the smallworlds wiki, twitter and del.icio.us to begin with)

Even as an experienced user, I still find it quite hard to grok a tried and tested method of organising and adding to my online accounts.  My biggest issue is what to do when I am using a computer that is not my own - something that can happen frequently when you are at University. It’s convenient to set up your personal computer to receive information the way you like it. However, when I am using a University computer I cannot download and install desktop clients, such as Twhirl, to manage my online accounts. Furthermore, I now possess more than one account for several of my communities (See: Managing Indentites: Part One) - something that can get very confusing when it comes to adding and responding to my contacts.

A Possible Solution?

I came across sites such as Netvibes, iGoogle and Pageflakes about a year ago. They are personalised and social homepages - where you can create small, movable versions of all aspects of your web environment and save and arrange them as your own personal homepage - which is also compatible with most browsers. You can add modules such as your personal email, your favourite RSS feeds, your twitter stream and Facebook accounts - whilst each section will collect, “pull” and update the information from each website you are add to your homepage. Essentially, you can check your emails, your twitter page, read news feeds and update your Facebook status - all from your homepage. This overcomes the issue of not being able to download applications on University machines - and also allows you to check all your accounts from one location - updating as soon as new information is available.  Furthermore, your personalised page is assessable from any machine - regardless if you set it as homepage or not - you log in and it logs you into everything thing at the same time.

My personal favourite has been Netvibes - I feel it is the most functional (and prettiest…) - There are two separate features that allow you to manage your online identities effectively: Private page and your public page. You can access my public page here.

Private: Identities

[All screenshots can be seen closer by clicking the image..]

Modules, such as email, are accessed on the private area of your netvibes page - for obvious reasons. The private section allows for the user to construct an area for the daily web activities. Content is added by searching for relevant “widgets”, dragging them onto your page and inputting your log in details into each section.

I find this section particularly useful for organising my twitter accounts. I have both accounts (caffeinebomb and jennifermjones) separated by a twitter search module (see screenshot for details) - which is customised to only bring tweets with the tag “smallworlds08″ (this is so I can see what is being discussed related to the project) You can set up as many twitter search modules as you want - each one provides a quick pulse for your subject area. This is only one way of constructing a netvibes page - and as you can see along the top - you can create many different page tabs. This is a good feature if you are juggling not only many online accounts - but using multiple accounts for multiple projects. Finally, I like the fact that it will pull information, lessening the need to constantly refresh - and even if you do what to refresh, you can refresh each section separately. I leave netvibes running in the background with its own browser tab.

Public: 

The public netvibes page has a very different purpose. For example, you do not see the same twitter module as you would on your private page - the public page, like your public twitter page, will only display your tweets - not the rest of your network.

I feel that a public netvibes page is a good place to display different online accounts. I guess it could be used as a dynamic data collection exercise. Again, like the private pages, users are only required to input log in details and netvibes will collect the data from each website automatically - creating a page which will update automatically when the user updates the site remotely. Again, like the private page, this is only one use - and I am interested in how other are utilising sites like Netvibes - particularly in a university environment.

What’s next?

This is only a very basic introduction to Netvibes - as the premise of the website includes the possiblity to generate a personalised homepage, the possibilities are endless. I would recommend to those who are new to the smallworlds project, and to sites such as twitter and delicious, to have a look at websites such as Netvibes in order to develop your own understanding of how to display and manage your online identities - I find that they are user-friendly and fun to play around with - ideal if you are new to the social media environment. Think about the separation of private and public and what each section can be used for. Some may find it that it makes cuts down on time - others may find that they benefit from having a page which contains their online identities in the one place. Remember that this is only one suggestion and it may not work for everyone. I am interested to hear any feedback from those who have tried netvibes - or indeed anyone who has anything to add!

Posted in general, identity, internet tools, leicester university, new media, online identity, smallworlds08, social media, university | Comments

Managing Identities: Part One

It was decided when we started the small worlds project that those involved would create an alternative twitter identity from that they were currently using day-to-day. When I set up @jennifermjones - it got us reflecting on how separate twitter identities would be managed practically (to come shortly). In particular, it could me thinking about my own online identity management and why it would be beneficial for myself to separate my online accounts from each other.

Background:

I’ll use my own Internet presence as an example:

At 23-and-11-months, I’m probably part of the last generation to remember a time without the Internet being commonplace in our day to day lives - along with the fact that I’ve grown up online - leaving a trail of teenage angst and misguided opinions strewn across the online social landscape. We had to learn about context from experience (and growing up!) , for example, public discussion (read:arguments) on BBS forums were moved to locked, friends only livejournals - where me and a bunch of friends all learnt how much is too much to share amongst strangers. I’ve had people misunderstood the context of particular websites and call me out (offline) about things in ridiculously embarrassing situations - situations, when I originally wrote a blog entry, did not expect for these posts to surfaced on google - or infact be read by anyone other than the other sociopathic teenage geeks like myself. I, and many others that I knew, learnt a set of BIG lessons regarding confidentiality. 

However, despite a history of nearly 7 years using the same username- I still use the nick “caffeinebomb” for most of my online stuff. For example, If you could be bothered googling it- you’ll find a rather cringe-worthy display of forum posts from a website called altnation.com, a glasgow based alternative community, which I’ve been a member of since 2002. This nests within all my gmail, wordpress, twitter and delicious accounts.

In the past 2 years, I’ve been more aware of my online identities and regularly purge and tidy up what is out there that represents me online (especially when I went ahead and did a MA in New Media!) - however altnation.com does not allow me to delete any posts as (I believe..) they like their forums to be searchable and if you start allowing accounts to be deleted, you start to lose the original essence of conversations.

So there is 5 years of online conversations, banter, flirting, arguments, making up -  most of the stuff discussed trivial, the emotion behind the text all but dissolved, sitting online and I’m not able to go and remove myself from it. Even then, do I want to remove it? Yeah, some of the stuff that is on there is so “of the moment” that I can barely remember writing it - and perhaps is a bit too honest (talk of drinking, swearing and other not very nice, potentially incriminating behavior) - and perhaps a lot of it I feel no attachment to anymore (teenage dramas, gossip and social experiments gone wrong) - but I can’t help but feel that a lot of it relates directly to the life-streaming and twittering that we get up to today, where a lot of it is streaming by so quickly, do we even care that we are sharing so much of ourselves anymore.

I also see a whole new wave of people who were never online before - they are all coming to terms with the sort of things we were getting to grips with 5-10 years ago (my generation anyway!) The things we had in common back then was a shared love for mucking about on a computer - now people don’t need to know that stuff now to get online. Now additional to online forums - you’ve got an extensive range of social networking websites, all of which  displaying the same show of angst, drama, love etc that you saw on these original places to begin with. People are experimenting with their online identities, making mistakes, adding and removing elements of their profiles - they are observing what their peers are doing and adapting accordingly. 

So how do we manage identities? 

Well, until recently, I was under the impression that I had to stick with the username I had and work with it - be aware of what I was sharing online and aim to bear responsibility for anything that may be deemed inappropriate by those who perhaps do not understand the purpose of different websites. I think I felt this way because I was unsure who my “audience” was - and - I am used to having to explain (or cover up) relentlessly my “secret” life online. Now I’ve been asked to take up a second identity (jennifermjones - wow, my actual name - something that used to be a bit of a taboo on some communities of the past) - it’s got me thinking about why I actually need a username like caffeinebomb in the first place.

Perhaps caffeinebomb represents the web 1.0 (yuk!) element of my online life - where you write yourself into being, where I wasn’t connecting to the people I already knew, I was experimenting with my own identity and meeting new people online. I didn’t feel I needed to be particularly a cautious about what I was putting on the web as I saw a firm distinction between online and offline. It was when these two “identities” collided that I experienced problems (embarrassment mainly) because I didn’t expect the people who knew me offline to be online (and to begin with, they weren’t!) You almost never put your real name online - whereas now people demand a real name to confirm identity (see Facebook.) 

Now, I continue to use my caffeinebomb identity, more than ever before these days. It is my main email address (but I do have a “professional” email address that I use to send emails to people who might not appreciate my teenage wildhearts obsession) I used to worry about the links to old forums that are still visible from the google-sphere. Now, I don’t worry too much - for I think as people begin to become more savvy to SNS, they’ll start noticing their own distinct trail and they’ll be a mutual awareness to the past - and a greater understanding of the importance of date, time and essentially context of what was written. 

However, I do think it is important for me to begin to work on my JenniferMJones identity. It is this identity that is going to carry my Ph.D., which will represent my work and will be used during employment and professional duties. Part of this is me coming to terms with my own knowledge and responsibility and part of this is about gaining the confidence to represent myself online. This all bottles down to a general awareness of my “audience” (even if my audience is only 1 person..) - and being clear about what is needing to be conveyed. 

I think, just like real life, these two (or more) online identities can exist synchronously. That cannot be denied - but the ways in which we manage these multiple identities -in an environment which is notoriously fluid and requires transparency and openness for it to thrive - is something that needs to be explored further. We shouldn’t be scared to share, but we need to be aware of who is watching.

Tomorrow I’m going to look at the practical ways I’ve been managing different accounts (yet still feeling a tad overwhelmed) - does anyone have anything to add?

Posted in identity, internet tools, leicester university, online identity, smallworlds08, social media | Comments

Wordles on Paper.

So here is the front pages of my MA dissertation. I ended up using a wordle on my front page, instead of an abstract - putting the abstract on the 2nd page instead. I understand that they have some clear and obvious distinctions in their role - however - I think for an item on the front page, the wordle (next to the title) gives off a clearer idea to what the dissertation is about. 

I don’t know, what do others think? Do different disciplines make a difference? 

Posted in internet tools, leicester university, masters, smallworlds08 | Comments