Tuesday, April 29

We began today by talking about currency as something that we

• want to accrue as much as possible
• pay in exchange for goods
• invest in order to create more of the same thing

You were quick to identify that, for most situations, the primary currency is money.

You were also quick to apply this concept to social media, identifying currency as attention. Especially on Twitter:

• want as much positive attention as possible [the more Followers the better]
• pay in exchange for goods [we "Follow" someone in order to gain information]
• invest in order to create more of the same thing [as the Freakonomic blog suggests, Following lots of people is an investment, or a way to build your own Following.]

So how to use our Twitter Narrative in order to acheive this first goal of gaining as many Followers [positive attention] as possible?

I think the answer to this lies in story and character development and how to make these characters worthy of attention.

Many of us are using love stories in these narratives, which is great. Though I also worry that love stories--as in most real-life relationships--are only interesting to the people in them. Watching or reading about them is often less interesting.

So I asked each group to examine some successful love stories. Using the Google Doc Character Deveopment, you examined "Romeo and Juliet," "Warm Bodies," "Casablanca," "Atonement," and the Hermione-Ron relationship in the "Harry Potter" series.

We determined that each relationship not only had a personal story, but also a public story, a large, dark thing looming in the background. Often this dark thing was war, but there were variations: the zombie apocalypse, Voldemort's world domination, etc.

We talked about the ways that this public story affects the private story: primarily separating the characters, infiltrating their lives or causing them to take drastic action in order to avoid it. In the case of Romeo and Juliet, we blamed the heros' deaths on the public story, because it required them to take so many secretive actions that these secrets eventually separated them from each other.

So having this kind of public backstory can be really useful.

I'd like you to continue thinking about this backstory in your own Twitter Narratives. Please read the "War of the Worlds" and add your comments here in the comment section of this post (rather than your own blog).

Your infographic deadline has been pushed back to next Thursday: May 8.

Thursday, April 24

Today we started with a discussion about the role of Twitter robots in your Twitter narrative and this opened to a larger discussion about how your Twitter Narratives are going. While I think we can all benefit from the kind of one-on-one discussion, I also think it's not terribly useful to use classtime to do this so I will prepare a Twitter Narrative workshop to adjust plot and characters.

Continuing to build on out Twitter Narrative, we looked at the Freaknomics Blog "Is Twitter a 2 way Street?" We talked about the role of Freakonomics as a blog about economics, how certain behaviors accrue wealth. In the case of Twitter, wealth=followers. So what kinds of behaviors attract followers on Twitter?

I asked you to read this blog (and/or listen to the podcast) and respond to it on your Blog.

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I would also like you to begin work on Wikipedia. You have recently created usernames and accounts on Wikipedia. Now I would like you to make some minor alterations as a group.

We looked at the wikipedia page for Wenzhou and found a glaring error: that WKU was omitted from the list of major universities. This is a problem we can fix.

For your assignment (post on blog):

- find something on wikipedia that needs to be corrected/updated/improved.

- take a screenshot of this problem

- explain how it is a problem and how you will fix it

- fix it

- provide the link of the new, improved article

This does not need to be an extensive correction. You do not need to proofread an entire article. 

For example: Leon found that the mayor listed in his hometown was inaccurate, so he updated it. This is a significant contribution. Your contribution might be similar.

As always, keep working on your Twitter Narratives.

Hashtags

Please post all hashtags here as comments.

Tuesday, April 22

Today, we worked on our Infographic project in class. I asked you to find a model infographic and answer the following questions:

1) what is useful to you? (ie. what will you "steal?")

2) what is not useful to you? (ie. what won't you "steal?")

3) how does the model accomodate its content?

Please post your responses--along with your model infographic with citation--on your blog.

We noted that Karin Hueck, one of the designers who created the Infographic for Stanton's TEDTalk "How to Create Story," creates such infographics on a regular basis and, using Google search, were able to find other Infographics she had created. 

We came across "The Price of Your Health," which represented...something in Portuguese...not in the traditional, boring, 2 dimensional charts and graphs, but with multiple vials of blood, filled to different measuring points and positioned at different distances to create a 3 dimensional effect. While we were unable to actually read the words written, we were able to tell, just from looking at the infographic, that was some sort of cost-benefit analysis involving health. This is what we mean by the infograhpic "accomodating" the content: the way it is built/put together leads to a clearer understanding of the subject.

We then worked on our own Infographics and I asked you:

1) to look at the outline you have already done for your TEDtalk (re-post this please)

2) How will your infographic accomodate your content?

3) what will you steal from other infographics?

in addition to this, please create your wiki account (you might find these directions useful

http://femtechnet.newschool.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Wikipedia-Assign-1.pdf)

Be sure to continue your work in Twitter:

Twitter hashtags

Engage!

Thursday. 4/10/14

Before we continue further with our Twitter Narrative, let's establish a few basic concepts and best practices of the Twitter platform itself. The Twitter Scavenger Hunt (in Google Docs) was designed to established terms as well as tools for building your profile and increasing engagement.

Congratulations to the Winning team:
Cheryl, Luna, Shalyn, Leon

We began a brief discussion about Twitter bots and the ways that they interrupt normal conversations. These are programs--not people--designed to search for specific terms and generate posts. The purpose is not interaction, but to 1) increase the number of Followers a company/user has or 2) to direct Twitter users [potential customers] to that company.

The great thing about Twitter bots is what is accidental:
- sometimes bot posts result in funny episodes in which human users "mess with" the twitter bots (i.e. "The Pace Picante Salsa" story)
- there are also, unfortunately, negative situations: we talked about the atrocious Twitter Bot incident related to Paul Walker's death and advertising car insurance

Because the Scavenger hunt took longer than I expected, we did not get to finish our discussion about Twitter Bots.
So here is our assignment (blog entry #9):

Our Twitter Narratives are, essentially stories. And all stories require disruption or conflict. In what ways might Twitter bots be used in your story to generate conflict?

(note: You might use the "Pace Picante Salsa" story (the model for our own Twitter Narratives). I asked how Mike Leidtke (aka @Pace_Foods) behaved like a Twitter bot.)

Tuesday, 4/8/14

Part I:

We began today by a little reflective writing. For our infographic project--rather than create an entire essay as one sees in Wired magazine--we are creating an infographic of a TEDTalk (similar to the TEDTalk visualized by Superinteressante.

So I asked you to:

- select a TEDTalk (if you haven't already)

- Outline the main points of this discussion

- And evaluate what makes it good both as
        1) a TEDTalk and as
        2) a subject to turn into an infographic (for a standard of what makes a "good" infographic, think back to Stanton's TEDTalk "The Beauty of Data Visualization" linked to on the right)

Please post this information on your blog.

Part II:

We then began working on our Twitter Project and I asked you to develop your own characters and their profiles.

We will review and discuss the basics of Twitter on Thursday.

Assignment:

-       Read and respond blog entry 8: Franchi’s “Infographic Thinking” workshop (link under "Resources")

Thursday, April 3

Today we will work on both projects: our Infographic Project as well as the Twitter Narrative.
Please create Google Docs for your Twitter Narrative group and post links to these Google Docs below as a comment to this post.