Hawiane's ISM 3004 Blog: YouTube

Showing posts with label YouTube. Show all posts

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Social Media Project: The Wally-World at Wiki Example

Screen Shot: http://www.facebook.com/walmart - 04/17/2012, Hawiane Tidwell.

Wal-Mart by Group#8
Over the last couple of weeks, we have been learning about peer production, Web 2.0, and on a much broader scale - the pros and cons of social media and social media networks. Our social media project was a group project which I will admit to dreading. Not because I thought the assignment itself would be difficult but because sometimes working in groups with people you've never met and have no ties/connection to, can be very, very difficult. Well, I am relieved to say that I worried in vain. Group#8 was awesome, we worked really well together, we divided and conquered the assignment and we finished early! Below I will share details about the assignment and more about the collaborative experience.

Screen Shot: http://ism3004socialmedia.wikispaces.com/Wal-Mart - 04/19/2012, Hawiane Tidwell.

The assignment: we were tasked with choosing a company to 1) research its social media activities, 2) create a group report with our findings, and 3) share the report with the other groups by creating a wiki for the company and adding the report information to the wikipage.

Coming together as a group was a little rocky in the beginning - everyone was trying to figure out which team they were assigned to, find out the best way(s) to communicate and who was doing what as far as the specifics of the project. One thing that I did find remarkable about this phase was the fact that right from the very beginning 86% of us were on the same page in that we all wanted to complete the project as soon as possible so we could focus on finals.

We spent the most time selecting a company. Several companies were nominated; we narrowed our choices down to three (3) companies - Facebook, Wal-Mart, and Google. And I'm sure you know by now, we chose Wal-Mart. Once we chose the company, the rest of the project just flowed.

Screen Shot: http://www.walmart.com/ - 04/16/2012, Hawiane Tidwell.

We used the divide and conquer mode of attack to get as much done as quickly as possible - there were eleven (11) tasks that were assigned to individuals (I was responsible for our wiki and I helped keep our efforts organized and on schedule). Also there were three (3) tasks that were assigned to the group as a whole for collaboration. We mostly used the discussion board in Sakai, email, text messages, phone and Google+ to communicate.

About Wikispaces - I think this is a very useful tool in that it does make collaboration possible in situations where getting together physically is just not a viable option and the learning curve was as low as you can get - it was very easy to use and to navigate. However, I did find it to be somewhat antiquated and very laborious as you can only "copy and paste" text. You cannot "copy and paste" images, docs, etc. So anything you wanted to embed in your page other than text had to be first uploaded to the site folder and then inserted into your page. This really sucked up an enormous amount of time as our page has 40+ screen shots.

About the company - Wal-Mart has some pretty interesting, engaging customers who use social media extensively. Although Wal-Mart has a strong presence on some of the more popular sites like Facebook and Twitter, there is no official presence, nor published guidelines for monitoring content referencing the store or engaging customers that use some of the other social media outlets like Instagram. Here's a link to our wiki: http://ism3004socialmedia.wikispaces.com/Wal-Mart

Screen Shot: http://ism3004socialmedia.wikispaces.com/Wal-Mart - 04/19/2012, Hawiane Tidwell.

And speaking of Instagram, I will make this final comment - Attention: Wally-World Shopper's beware, someone in isle 9 just might be taking your picture...

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Project: Presentation - Effective Presentations - Still Holy Grail for Some in the Business World Today...

My Presentation: How to "Be the Change that Makes the Difference"

It is crystal clear to me that the ability to create and give an effective presentation is a very valuable skill desired and heavily relied upon in today's business world. However, if you say the phrase, "Death by PowerPoint", why is it that we all know what the phrase means? Most of us could even share experiences of an incident(s) where we've been either the giver or receiver of a torturously, boring presentation filled with cluttered, unreadable slides which lasted way too long for any human to endure - no matter the age or maturity level.

Well, help is here! Over the last three (3) weeks I have learned some TIPs - DOs and DON'Ts of Presentations that I think should be in every savvy business person's arsenal of tools. I'm going to share this information with you via my experiences as I completed this project.

The first of which is a Storyboard, I have prepared many presentations but I've never used a storyboard and this project required one be created prior to beginning work on the actual slides in PowerPoint, etc. Initially, I did not like this idea, I thought it would be a total waste of time and I will admit to procrastinating but I was totally wrong. The storyboard helped me stay organized which allowed me to more quickly collect my thoughts regarding key points and how to present them. This made the rest of the presentation process a breeze - the only remaining task that took any significant time was finding the right images that would help convey my message. Check out my storyboard:

Hawiane Tidwell, 2012. Storyboard Page 2

Hawiane Tidwell, 2012. Storyboard Page 1

Hawiane Tidwell, 2012. Storyboard Page 3

Hawiane Tidwell, 2012. Storyboard Page 4

Hawiane Tidwell, 2012. Storyboard Page 5

Once I completed my storyboard, I began working on my slides in PowerPoint. Since I had the completed storyboard, I already had the text for all my slides so they were a breeze to complete. I had the text on them all in no time. Next I worked on the slides to which I was only going to add an image - TIP: as I mentioned before, this did take a significant amount of time because I had to look for just the right image. As images are important and should support your key point(s). Once I found and inserted all my images, I began to work on animations. TIP: work on and set your slide transitions as you go along and after you make major changes, watch your presentation as a slide show. I used an egg timer so I knew where I was within the three minute time limit.

Once I finished my transitions and animations, on the first slide, and using the storyboard as my guide, I recorded myself presenting my key points. TIP: Synching the audio with the flow of the slides took a little more tweaking of the transition times and the delay of animations. Finally I had the slides and the audio synched and I saved it as a Windows Media Video (WMV). I then used YouTube, Web 2.0 Tool, to share the video of my presentation with others. I have added a clickable link to the video on the YouTube website, as well as, the video below - so check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llAd6UNsg3c&feature=youtu.be

"Hawiane Tidwell, 2012."

Now we've come to the 2nd to last step of the presentation project assignment, critiquing yourself and a peer(s). I watched many of the videos and for the most part, I was really proud of the Gator Nation talent that's out there! Watching other presentations also helped me to formulate a mental note of things that I should and should not do. The young man's presentation I chose to critique did a great job. There was a logical flow to his presentation. He really was able to 1) anticipate and answer questions, 2) to grab my attention, 3) to set the context with concise explanation, 4) to avoid clutter by presenting readable slides and 5) he said it then showed it. He didn't use any slides with bulleted text, most of his slides contained one (1) word in large font.

My presentation (MP) was also critiqued by my peers. The feedback MP received was very favorable and from it I've learned that I am more critical of myself so I will share my view of my MP. MP had a very logical flow and sequence to the content: I started out by asking the audience a question, explained why I was there, told audience what was in it for them, told audience my story, called audience to action and then closed. I feel that I appropriately anticipated and answered questions: TIP: I opened with a question to create common ground and to grab the audience's attention and curiosity. I also asked questions periodically to keep the audience actively listening and involved.

In MP I set the context with a concise explanation that made it easy for the audience to clearly understand what MP was about. I did avoided inconsistencies, errors, and typos and I did not make any unbelievable claims. However, I do feel I could have improved on validating the claims I made within my MP. I chose to use my personal experience to validate one (1) of the claims I made - which was fine. For the other claim I made reference to multiple studies that actually support my claim but I did not actually reference a specific study because again this claim could also be validated by one's personal experiences but I didn't directly state that in MP. Yep! That was where I was harder on myself than my peer(s) - they didn't feel the claims needed additional validation... Another issue regarding MP which wasn't mentioned by my peers but I feel could be improved was the quality of the sound. I didn't have a microphone other than the one inside the laptop so there was some unavoidable background noise. For my next presentation, I will definitely find a better solution for sound.

And to wrap up my critique of myself, to avoid clutter and ensure the readability of my slides, TIP: I used the "10/20/30 Rule" - Never 1) use more than 10 slides, 2) speak more than 20 minutes and 3) use a font smaller than 30 pt. I had eleven (11) slides which included the title and references pages. The presentation was a little less than three (3) minutes and I used a 32 pt font or higher on every slide - most having a font size 54 - 80 pt. I chose images which supported my key point(s). And I also stated the point(s) then showed the supporting text or slide. There were a couple of places where I paused a little too long, I would have fixed had time permitted.

I hope this information has been helpful to you and will be a source of reference should you be required to give a presentation. TIP: Just remember to keep your audience in mind, approach the presentation from their perspective, and remember the 10/20/30 Rule - you will give an awesomely, effective presentation!!

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Week 2: Muddy - Modders Do What...!?

Overclocking! - What's that...!?

Wow!! What a week - a lot of information to wade through and so many new terms! Overall though it hasn't been too bad - I realized that I do know a little something about the inner/outer workings of computers and laptops - only I just never really knew the "real" names/terms for some of the components. However, a concept that was quite muddy for me was "Overclocking" - I had never heard this term so I had no point of reference. I can laugh at myself so I will tell you that I originally thought the term referred to staying on your laptop or computer too long and I thought, how can this possibly multiply anyone's time.

Finally I understood that overclocking is when a Modder (term used in "How Computers Work" by Ron White) and/or Hobbyist (term used by Dr. Olson in UF ISM3004 video lecture "02.04 Inside Desktop"), who has purchased a personal computer (PC) with a specific clock rate - i.e. 3GHz - Intel CORE i5 - decides to increase the speed of that machine by speeding up its internal clock (a resonating quartz crystal oscillator).

You see this clock/crystal is like the PC's conductor and the faster the crystal vibrates, the faster the PC's multiplier ticks. The multiplier is the component which controls the length of time that electricity is flowing to most of the PC's components, so the faster it ticks, the faster all those affected components inside the PC are enabled to work. When there is no electricity, these components are forced to wait or sleep (this wastes time)... Keeping the electricity coming - keeps the components revved and working!!

Photo taken by isriya , 2008. http://www.flickr.com/photos/isriya/3040882030/in/photostream/

One way Modders/Hobbyists are able to accomplish this is by going into their PC's motherboard's setup and setting it to run at 4GHz instead of 3 (note: some manufactures lock the multiplier rates so that they cannot be altered). Modders/Hobbyists do this because they want to increase their machine's performance and know that the machine will exceed the listed speed because all manufacturers have factored in a certain margin for error. What they don't know is by how much will the PC's speed increase and will this modification destroy the machine.

WORD OF CAUTION: This is not recommended and even if you did this and your PC initially survives, there are still drawbacks: 1) Manufacturers have not extensively tested and certified the PC to run at the new speed. 2) Your machine will consume a lot more electricity. 3) Consuming the additional electricity causes it to generate significantly higher levels of heat. 4) The higher levels of heat will definitely decrease the PC's reliability and could cause the machine to become over-heated or even to burn-out. Modders/Hobbyists do address this issue but their solutions are not discussed in the written text of this blog. So with all that being said, 5) you still will not know how long your PC will last once you alter it.

TOO RISKY for me... Again this is NOT RECOMMENDED, but for those of you who are brave at heart, or maybe has some money you want to burn (pun intended...), below I have provided a YouTube video series that walks you through the entire process step-by-step for an Intel product(s):

Intel Overclocking Basics Part I: Introduction