Social Media in Disaster Response Review

Jess, Vanya and Grace did an excellent job of showing us the main points of Liza Potts book, Social Media in Disaster Response. Looking back on the presentations I recall theirs the most, the facts were there and easy to understand. Life now makes more sense because of the book. I realized that I do not even need to watch the news or look up the weather, its all in my news feed! Thanks to the ability of sharing links we can spread media quicker and more people are also seeing it. So many people are on the web on social media sites that more people get a hold of the information this way then are actually watching the news. I know that when I want to know what happened on the red line or what the huge boom was I immediately start searching it on twitter. With twitter we only get up to date stuff where as if we searched the same thing online we would get posts from two years ago. Another thing social media is great for is sharing links for relief funds. I found this great info graphic that shows the climatic use of social media in disaster response.

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Writing Arts Agora with New Media

When we sought out to create Arts Agora we had one goal in mind. We wanted a place were students can go to get motivation. Going to an Art School we often wonder if we will be in retail our whole life. Our mission is to set out to find people who have “made it” with their degree or current studies at Columbia College Chicago. We first started off by interviewing people who have essentially “made it” whether they have their dream job or are close to, working in your field doing what you love and making money counts. After we collected enough articles to post on the site thats when I went ahead and made the website and started posting them on it. I think the project gets across the message, but the only way people have to be motivated right now is by reading these interviews with people saying how they have a job. This motivates people to do better in school to either get to the place where the person who was interviewed is or to even go beyond that. We have already gotten some great comments on the site and some of the artists on our page our gaining followers already. This is only building their web presence even more. For what we have now there is nothing I would do differently to the project, there are only things I would do in addition. I think our site would be a lot better if we added more outside facts as well. In addition to our interviews we would have research done on graduation rates and job rates from art schools. We would then be a more credible site. Speaking in sense of the class project I do think that Arts Agora accomplished what it set out to do. 

I learned so much great information from Writing New Media. All of this was easily transferable to creating Arts Agora. Some of the most helpful information I learned for my end of the project was straight out of the book I was tasked to read, How to Design and Write Web Pages Today. I applied many of the things I learned from Stolley about web design and presence right into our project. I also took what i learned from him and expanded it by directly applying it to our project. I also got a lot of help from reading our text book the Web Writing Style Guide. I learned what to and what not to tweet and also what to title posts and all of the above. Watching a remix manifesto I learned much about copy writing. On our site I made sure that i did not copy and paste anything, I also made sure that I included all original made graphics. I did not want to end up with a law suit on my hands from a school project. Overall this project would not of been possible without the knowledge that i gained from taking this course. Cheers! 

 

Content Strategy: Arts Agora

Arts Agora is solely based on the idea of Columbia College Chicago students and alumni who have become successful in their creative field. Its a place to go for motivation of advice. Our audience we are targeting are students who currently attend Columbia. It is a very competitive industry and sometimes people give up and feel like they are not good enough, or not prepared enough. We are interviewing people to put on our website who have made it in their industry. We will base the interview on the skills they have learned at Columbia and applied to themselves in jumpstarting their career. Since we are interviewing people that is one way that we will get the word out, the people we are interviewing will probably share the link to their interview and if the audience is columbia students then they will probably want to see what they can do to be a part of the Arts Agora movement. 

 

Arts Agora

Arts Agora is a web space designed for Columbia College Chicago students. Its a place to go for motivation. Follow our web space to get the first updates on alumni and currently enrolled students who are finding success in their field of study.  

http://www.artsagora.cccwriting.org/ 

How to Design and Write Web Pages Today by Karl Stolley Book Review

The title of this book is quite lengthy, How to Design and Write Web Pages Today, it’s also very self explanatory. This book guides you through all the rhetoric’s of creating your own websites. It is a step-by-step guide to make you have the best content online. Along with all the in depth information the book also has an online reference that you can use as a great resource.

The book starts off by saying this book is best read near a computer. I find this statement true if you are reading this book so you can actually make your own sites. It gives you all the information to get you started; you just need to apply yourself. The beginning of the book also goes over what we have been learning and doing in class. It’s a pro choice for a beginner looking to learn more about creating and writing in your web space. This book takes you step by step through all the important aspects of making your website(s) stand out. Being so many chapters in the book I could sit here and list everything that you would learn from reading this book but that would take way to long.

If you are an artist planning on making a personal website or online portfolio I strongly advise you to read this book. I learned so many things such as what to post of my site, where to post it, and how to post it. There are so many things to take into account that I have never thought about before. I thought I had a decent amount of experience with web design but after reading this book I learned that I did not. There are so many things to take into consideration that Stolley talks about, from the usability to getting your site online.

Being a graphic designer one of the biggest things I took away from this book was learning about all the little secrets to making your site stand out to future employers. “By providing wayfinding devices such as visual cues in your navigation, you can encourage users to explore other areas of your site simply because they can be confident of where in your site they are.–‘Resume’ or ‘Design Portfolio,’ may not be enough to entice otherwise curious users to click. A compelling hyperlink image–such as a sample from your design portfolio, if you’re a designer–elsewhere on your page might be more appealing, simply because the content of the image may fit better with the vague idea of what a visitor to your site is looking for.” (Stolley 75) I found this one little piece of information so helpful. When thinking about my personal website I now will consider what images I could use for certain parts on my page to entice the users to look further.

Having basic knowledge of the languages( xhtml, html, java, xml etc..) referred to in this book will definitely assist you with the reading process. Stolley does go into great detail about what each language does and is used for in the creating process, which helps a lot. If you plan on reading this book I would suggest reading Web Write Style Guide  it’s a shorter read and will prep you on some of the things that you would be reading in How to Design and Write Web Pages Today. Both books talk about the same type of stuff but How to Design and Write Web Pages Today definitely goes into way greater detail.

What I took most from my reading of How to Design and Write Web Pages Today was how to prep my own site. I think this book would be great to add to the curriculum to a Web Design class or a class like Writing for New Media. It is a great guide for new users looking to develop great online spaces.

Arts Agora

With insecurities in the developing and existing artistic industry, students face a daunting and unsure future within their majors and passions. Although there is no guarantee or easy way in, there are still promising stories of numerous hardworking Columbia students whose success has surpassed the norms.

            Arts Agora: creating a webspace for Columbia students and alumni to showcase upcoming projects, successes, success stories, how to break into the industry etc..

           This will be a space specifically for Columbia students, to try and raise morale and show that people in our chosen fields can be successful and show how they do it.

 

We will create a Tumblr, a logo, an email account, and a twitter. Other venues of social media are still being explored. Arts Agora will include interviews, pictures of completed works and works in progress of grads, professionals, maybe even feature students- updates on where they are and their plans and other relevant information. Make it about current students as well. (Maybe have submissions, feature someone once a week/month).

           We need to find and research successful Columbia grads and professionals willing to communicate with us and talk about their successes (what they did to get where they are). We will each research some people we think might be interested in this project and try to interview them.

Team Responsibilities

           Stephanie- Social Media Consultant/Graphic Designer, logo, tumblr,

           Gene- Twitter, Quality/Talent Control,

           Anne Marie- Social Media Consultant, Editor

           Tim B – Motion Graphics, C.O.O.

 

HTML, do it.

Is there value to knowing HTML? The answer to that is always YES.

If you do not believe so then maybe this video and my thoughts will change your mind.

The opportunities you will get from knowing coding are endless. The most obvious reason for knowing HTML or CSS is for work reasons. No matter where you work or what you do your company will most likely have a website or use the internet in some way. To be able to know how to trouble shoot or make adjustments to your employers website is a huge plus. That is one less expense for them and a lot of brownie points for you. I believe that with the technology we have now that we are entering a future that will be based around the internet. Knowing the universal HTML markup language puts you one huge step in front of the game. If you are unfamiliar with HTML one place to start is at . If you are familiar with code and want to expand what you can do w3schools also has an awesome set of that you can use to enhance your coding.

Overall I find coding very useful. Being a graphic designer I am required to have an online portfolio of my work. Coding has helped me customize my website to make it the way I want and I wouldn’t have it any other way.