On October 19, the content management tutor,Vasileios, had asked us to attend the startup weekend Bahrain that was to be held at the Polytechnic. I, along with the Web Media students had attended this event on October 25 with our tutors Owen and Vas.
The presentation was a bit long but very informative. The speaker talked about what startups are and how they work. From what I understood, startups are events that occur in many countries around the world in which developers, coders, designers, business folks and entrepreneurs gather to work together on thier on ideas for products and/or business startups.
Something like that....
I really liked the whole idea of having to work with strangers and establish connections and networking with like minded people, as well as the experienced from the industry if they will be there. Add to that, the fact that you might be working so hard you'll have to sleep over in the workplace on the weekend is interesting
I personally don't have a definite idea to go with, but I certainly want to participate regardless of whether I have have an idea or not and what I'm exactly going to do. In other words, I just want to be there exactly like when I wanted to just enroll at the Polytechnic, because I thought I belonged there.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Presentation 1 & Written proposal for the e-magazine
On October 13, we had our first formal presentation in which we officially introduced our e magazine proposal. It was decided by the team members that the magazine should be called: Awe-zine, short for awesome magazine! The e-mag would be aimed at Polytechnic staff and students, but it will not be limited to just the Polytechnic. As a result, the topics are going to be broad and vast, covering topics such as sports, events, education, tourism (mainly targeting the foreign staff at the Poly) and so on.
In the end, we managed to complete what I would call a poorly compiled and unprofessional draft of our supposedly draft proposal, which was to be modified later into a final professional document and submited to Vas.
Looking back, I think all of us could have done much better regardless of whether everyone contributed equally or not. Many obvious mistakes such as the inconsistency in bullet points, duplication of a paragraph and others could have been easily avoided had we actually done a full and thorough proofread.
After realizing our mistakes from Ms. Jennifer's feedback, we fixed the errors and removed the duplicated part. My section had some subject verb agreement errors, however, it wasn't because of an under-developed English, it was simply because we didn't profread our document. Had we done that, the problem could have been easily addressed and solved.
On November 1, the final version was compiled and sent to Vas. Because there was no upload link on Moodle, we thought that one copy per group was enough just like we did for Ms. Jennifer's version of the assignment, therefore, only Dana uploaded a copy on edmodo. Later after the deadline, I emailed the rest of the group a copy of the document, and we all uploaded ours a few hours after the deadline. For next time we should make sure and ask more questions to Vas and avoid assumptions!
The written proposal had to be submitted on October 23 to Ms. Jennifer, the English course tutor. On Thursday, three days prior to the submission, we, as a group, took a look at the assessment requirements and divided the key points among ourselves so that each member would go and preform his/her part. My part was "project requirements and how your e-Magazine meets these requirements".
This is my part( the final version):
Project requirements:According to the manager, Mr Donnelly, the company is need of a new project that could revitalize the company’s business; it mustn’t cost a great deal to “develop, maintain and possibly generate income.”The main requirements can be summarised into 3 points:
- A new, creative project to revive the company’s business;
- low cost;
How the proposed e-magazine meets the project requirements:The idea of having an e-magazine itself is refreshing, productive, as well as socially engaging, thus, potentially generating more traffic for the company as the content is dynamic and frequently updated along with the site design and layout.
- Generate income.
According to Bestrank.com, WordPress is an open source content management system, meaning it is free to use (2011). Therefore, the company can focus its budget on the actual development and implementation of the e-magazine.
Because of the broadness and flexibility of the target audience, the project will be able to accommodate a wide range of advertising material in the form of ad blocks around the e-magazine; from education to sports, to student related events and tourism and so on. As a result, the e-magazine will have much potential in generating income from the varying ads.
In the end, we managed to complete what I would call a poorly compiled and unprofessional draft of our supposedly draft proposal, which was to be modified later into a final professional document and submited to Vas.
Looking back, I think all of us could have done much better regardless of whether everyone contributed equally or not. Many obvious mistakes such as the inconsistency in bullet points, duplication of a paragraph and others could have been easily avoided had we actually done a full and thorough proofread.
After realizing our mistakes from Ms. Jennifer's feedback, we fixed the errors and removed the duplicated part. My section had some subject verb agreement errors, however, it wasn't because of an under-developed English, it was simply because we didn't profread our document. Had we done that, the problem could have been easily addressed and solved.
On November 1, the final version was compiled and sent to Vas. Because there was no upload link on Moodle, we thought that one copy per group was enough just like we did for Ms. Jennifer's version of the assignment, therefore, only Dana uploaded a copy on edmodo. Later after the deadline, I emailed the rest of the group a copy of the document, and we all uploaded ours a few hours after the deadline. For next time we should make sure and ask more questions to Vas and avoid assumptions!
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Web Media Year 2 semester 1 update!
After a somewhat long summer vacation, the Web Media kids are back at
Bahrain Polytechnic doing what they do best: attending!
This year, the Web Media
degree kicks off with three main courses: English communication 3, this time
with Ms. Jennifer Mcwatt; Audio and Video 1 with Owen Gallagher, and Content
Management with Vasileios Paliktzoglou.
The blog has been changed to
be about web media related topics and courses and not just Game Design. However, the aim this time is to reflect on
the Content Management project "e-magazine" that I am currently undergoing
along with my team (i-awesome) which includes: Dana, Maryam, Abbas, Fatima and
my self. So here goes:
On the first week, Mr. V asked that each group assigns its own leader on
a weekly basis. I was fortunate to be the first leader of the group, and I have attempted to organize and split the tasks among ourselves. We were to find
information related to content management systems for next week with a
scratch-the-surface approach, i.e, we weren't doing massive research, just
basics.
On October 2, following the end
of the first week, we agreed on what was needed to be done and I had documented
the tasks as evidence using edmodo:
Even though I had created the cloud notebook for the group to share our
findings, the group felt it wasn't necessary and that edmodo was enough,
therefore it was revoked, but still up in the fluffy cloud, probably going to
end as digital waste.
On October 6, we presented our short abstract for the e-magazine in Mr.V
class. We had a short 3 page PowerPoint slideshow compliled by Maryam using resources gathered by other members
On October 8, following online discussion on today's meet http://todaysmeet.com/iAwesome
And in class meetings, I posted on edmodo stating the tasks to be done in order to prepare for the upcoming proposal presentation. At that point we hadn't decided on a name for the e magazine yet.
To be continued…
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