Goals, overview. This week is dedicated to getting you started by having you create your personal “e-portfolio” – that is, a social media presence that serves as your portfolio during the course. We will use Felix for student discussions.
You can use any number of blogging or other social media services to do this, from Ning to Blogger to MySpace. If you are new to this, we recommend using Blogger, simply because it is easy. But feel free to use what you are comfortable with.
You have the following tasks this week:
- Create your e-Portfolio. If you are going to use Blogger, then go to www.blogger.com, register if you need to and pick a template. That should be all you need to do. Problems? Email Jason at jasonohler@gmail.com.
- Let us know what your e-Portfolio address is by mailing it to me. We will maintain a list of these on this site so that your colleagues can view your work. They appear in a list on the right hand side of our class blog.
- Post your first e-Portfolio entry. This will be a brief posting about yourself, your professional and/or academic background, and your professional objectives as a future Media Psychologist. This is your chance to introduce yourself to your fellow student cohort, as well as your faculty. Feel free to add relevant photos, videos or illustrations.
- Lastly, make sure you can access your grade sheet at snapgrades.net. I should have sent each of you your name and password before the first week. The first time you log in you may need to enter the following:
- School: FGU
- City: Santa Barbara
- State: California
Thereafter you should only need to enter your name and password.
A word about successful blog or e-Portfolio management. Blogs, Google sites, Nings and other forms of social media are often misunderstood to be websites that have to be used to host public interaction. In fact, they can be private, invite-only or widely publicized. And it can be used in a variety of ways.
From a functional perspective, a media site - whether a blog, Ning or Facebook page - is simply a basic Web-page template for non-programmers (though it scales to programmers' needs if required) that can serve multiple purposes. Using social media successfully in your professional practice depends largely on choosing the appropriate metaphor for your application. Will your site function as a newsletter? A debating venue? A cooperative research project?
The metaphor for your social media site in this class is "a professional portfolio." We focus our conversation in Felix, away from your e-Portfolio site, and reserve your social media site just for your work. The question your posting should address is: Having read articles, watched media, and discussed the class material with your colleagues, what is your understanding of the topic? Use scholarly writing as you address this. Please don't use "blog speak," which tends to ramble, use too much vernacular and approach writing as though only good friends were reading it. In this case, your teachers, fellow PhD students and the professional community will be reading it, so you want it to be as professionally written as possible.
A word about the Felix discussion forum. Starting next week, there will be mandatory forum discussions as part of this class. Although you do not have to discuss this week's assignment, we have created a discussion forum should you find it helpful to talk to colleagues.
