
Are you looking for an online course this summer in social, mobile, and digital media culture trends? Queen’s University has one!
More info at FILM260.com
Thank you Hayley V Fuller for making this video!
a blog tracking trends of digital pop culture, by sidneyeve matrix

Are you looking for an online course this summer in social, mobile, and digital media culture trends? Queen’s University has one!
More info at FILM260.com
Thank you Hayley V Fuller for making this video!
A new study by Wakefield Research (infographic below) shows that although almost 9 out of 10 job searchers think privacy is important when searching for a job, but three-quarters of us think that in the age of social media, there is no longer any such thing as a private job search.
Quite an amazing disparity when you think about it. That enormous gap between our preferences (privacy please) and perceptions (everything is public) when it comes to seeking employment, indicates a widespread cultural need for a secure search solution.
And yet, instead of increased confidentiality we see the exact opposite trend, as job searches get more public. Consider the amazing recent popularity of Facebook job apps like BranchOut and BeKnown. The success of these new services might indicate that more of us are comfortable with social career development. It’s just as likely however, that we think we’ve no choice. In line with the survey findings, the BeKnowers and Branchouters are jumping on a trend widely perceived as inevitable: the job market is thoroughly social. Employers are screening candidates online, evaluating applicants according to their social media footprint.
And companies continue with this surveillance and social listening after they make a hire. A case in point: just this month the story of an HR professional who got fired for posting his resume on LinkedIn was carried across mainstream media — another sign of massive interest in this trend of socializing all-things human resources. In that case, the employee was not actively job searching (he claims, though he did check the box indicating an interest in “career opportunities”) but the company objected to the disclosure of what they felt was private information on his profile. This case points to the everyday social media monitoring and management that companies are engaged in, including active investigation of staff social profiles to enforce compliance with corporate social media policy.
For my online summer course on social media cultural trends, my students are tasked with creating an infographic. These (2nd to 4th year) undergraduate students came up with some fantastic and insightful creative work as is evident from the samples below (please click images for larger view).
To evaluate these infographics I used a rubric that assessed the quality of research and the impact of design choices. Students were also asked to submit a designer’s statement which documented that fewer than 10% of the 200 students in the class had any experience in using photoshop or similar image editing software. That made the results all the more impressive, because in this condensed 6 week course I do not offer any software instruction. Exit surveys confirmed that students found this infographic assignment to be the most challenging aspect of the course, stretching their digital creativity to the max. Here are my assessment guidelines for infographics.
Twitter Trends by Chris Palmer:

Digital Love by Melanie Fida

Information Freeway by Sam Rosenbaum

Fashion 2.0 by Nadia Yau

Social Music by Leanne Hein

Death of the Music Industry by Sarah Jacobs

Online News by Adam Seaborn

This week in the news, controversy surrounding Twitter’s error is verifying a hoax account impersonating Rupert Murdoch’s wife Wendi Deng. Likely because parody and spoof celebrity accounts are far from rare on Twitter, the verification process is designed to distinguish authenticity from fakery. In this case, there was a glitch that resulted in the *verified* blue icon appearing beside the rogue account (at least for a day). Hundreds of media outlets covered the story, questioning the process by which Twitter checks the authenticity of celebrity accounts. With all the focus on Twitter, another angle of the story received far less attention: the apparent lack of social listening by Murdock (or his PR/social media team) as the events unfolded over a couple of days.
On January 1st and 2nd, the Wendi-fakester tweeted at (@) Rupert Murdoch’s account numerous times. For example:



Had Murdoch (or his assistants) been doing more rigorous social listening for mentions of his name in realtime, surely the hoax would have been uncovered on January 1st, rather than two days later? Or perhaps they were using a tool such as Radian6 to monitor mentions, but the New Year’s holiday was a factor, slowing response time.
Other popular (and free) ways to monitor social media mentions include setting up Google Reader + News Alerts, and using Social Mention. I use both.
Over the December holidays I am busy planning and designing my next courses for 2012, setting up assignments and calculating assessments with the help of some excellent resources and rubrics for evaluating digital creative work, including these:
Blogging
This rubric for evaluating student blogging by University of Wisconsin is exceptionally detailed and a great starting point. As well, there are a couple of helpful articles in The Chronicle of Higher Ed discussing assessing student blogs, including this one about grading, and this one about setting and communicating expectations regarding student blogs. Closely related, here’s a useful list of how to come up with great blog topics.
Infographics
In designing my next infographic rubric I will remix elements of this infographic rubric used in Kathy Schrock’s workshop, with some ideas and insights from a course at U Mary Washington. As part of my infographics assignment I have students complete a written statement about their process, and this rubric—(link opens Word Doc) from Deaken University provides some great ideas for self-reflection regarding research and design choices and challenges.
P2P Commenting
Peer to peer feedback and collaboration are key elements of my hybrid and online courses, and as such they are evaluated as part of students’ grades. I am always seeking resources I can use to design rubrics that will describe with precision my objectives for online P2P engagement and how these activities are assessed. U Wisconsin has a great rubric here. Beyond that, two unconventional starting points for me include this piece by Judy Dunn on the qualities of unremarkable comments, and on the flipside — some best practices and tips for great comments by Bill Ferriter.
Cyberpop! is a trendwatching blog dedicated to rounding up market research and academic studies on all things related to digital popular culture.
Here you will find entries on topics from mobile technologies to social computing, educational technology to gaming, viral video to online marketing, internet dating to the latest (and strangest) smartphone apps, and emergent modes of cloud and location-aware computing.

It is written by Sidneyeve Matrix.





As Facebook removes 20K underage user accounts per day, kids continue to be drawn to the site.

Technology on campus: Social? Mobile? Online? Some surprising stats on students’ preferred learning environments

AT&T is now delivering campus and course information and materials directly to students’ knapsacks, purses, pockets via a new mLearning enterprise app.

Designers are revisioning the lowly wristwatch for the connected and social age.

Over 50% of young people in this study said their next trip was inspired by photos their friends posted on Facebook.

This episode of my Media and Culture podcast considers the often tumultuous relationship between mobile phones and movie theatres.

To find what we’re looking for online, consumers are migrating from search engines to apps and social referrals.

What kind of smartphones are most popular among the 1,100 students in my class?

Designing an app for my class is one way to organize multimedia resources for students.




Copyright 2012 Sidneyeve Matrix