Week 2 - Social Experience

This week, we looked at the different forms of communication such as traditional, semi-traditional and social media. Traditional is communication in its basic, conventional form such as face-to-face, telephone and letter. Semi-traditional shows how technology has influenced communication as email, mobile and online forms became more popular. Social media is the newest form, which includes web conferencing and social media sites such as Facebook. We also looked at issues on information content such as gender/demographic/bias, spamming and flaming.

We had our first team meeting this week. We set up a Facebook group to communicate with each other and also created a Doodle so we could arrange a time to meet up during the week that suited all of us. I booked a room in the library and we brainstormed ideas in our first meeting. Although a few members of our team could not make it, we were able to keep them updated on the Facebook group. 

We were given the challenge to go without social media for a day as an experiment for this module. I chose to do this on Friday and found it extremely difficult. I was able to stay off it during college time, using texts to contact my friends. I found it hard not being able to keep up with others using mediums such as Twitter and Facebook, constantly feeling left out. I managed to be successful in this experiment until I finished my shift at work. There was no reception on my phone and I needed to use WhatsApp to contact my dad as he was collecting me from work and I didn't know where he was. Overall, I think social media has become too important in our lives for us to live without. 

Friday was also our first lab in the Newstead building. We familiarised ourselves with MIT App Inventor so that we would know how to use it when creating our own app. Below is a screenshot of my work with the HelloPurr app.