See http://groups.google.com/group/mediate

For anyone interested, you can now see the neat little trophies and medals I gave out at the recent COM125 music and blog awards. These were specially designed and shipped all the way from China! See where they came from (really), how I painstakingly handwrote on them, and finally the many happy faces of award winners in class.

The “making of” slideshow is right over here…

As the Spring 2007 semester draws to a close, I threw an MTV-style music and blog awards to highlight the best students in the COM125: Intro to Internet class.

There are two main award categories:
1. The COM125 Idol Contest
2. The Ultimate Blog Awards

For the COM125 Idol Contest, students were ranked by the online community on their singing ability via our own Singshot contest page. There were some strange people from the public who joined in, so I’ve only taken into account our students’ entries. The music categories I came up with include: Best Male Vocal, Best Female Vocal and Best Group Vocal.

For The Ultimate Blog Awards, I took the cumulative score of their weekly blog assignments, and took into account the stuff that were external to the assignment, such as getting linked by popular blogs, getting public comments and amount of personal expression on their blogs. Since I gave out weekly blog awards, it helped in assessing each student’s overall performance.

This week, classes have officially ended. Next week, it’s all about exams. I’ll share more about my teaching experience and whether I’ve decided that Singapore is the place for me in a future blog post. For now, I don’t want to spoil anymore surprises so just watch the show… it’s a good one.

PLEASE HELP ME SPREAD THE WORD!

A little last minute, but we’ll be having an exam review & music awards party at LT4.13 this Wed (tomorrow) at 10.30-11.30am. We’ll go through the readings you should focus on on top of the COM125 Study Guide on Wikispaces. Finally, we’ll have a music awards party acknowledging the incredible singers we have in our class. Do come with questions!

This interesting chart was created by my student Cheilla, based on a reading she found relating to our previous week on Online Politics. It highlights why Online Voting is so difficult, compared with traditional eCommerce transactions. I believe that this is a comparison many of us might have made before.

Citing Cheilla: “Many people have wondered why there is no online election available currently. Well, security is absolutely the main reason. It is so vulnerable to make online election since there are plenty talented hackers out there. Meanwhile, e-Commerce, distributing, buying, selling, marketing and servicing of products or services through the Internet (“Electronic Commerce”, 2007), keeps going on. So, I found a discussion on www.schneier.com about “Internet Voting vs. Large Value e-Commerce”. People were arguing about the reason why big transaction in the e-Commerce could be protected and online election could not. I came up with this table as the summary of the answers.”

Incidentally, I’ve reopened the COM125 Study Guide (wiki) as part of their final exam preparations. This time I’m giving points for submissions, so the motivation to collaborate on print-worthy notes should be greater. It’s already shaping up pretty well if you’re interested to take a look…

References
Cripto-Gram newsletter – Internet Voting vs. Large Value e-Commerce by Schneier, B. (2001)

Missed class and you’ve missed this…
Anyway, we’ve just week left to go!

[Original photo by Mariani Chen]

Remember the COM125 study wiki?
A few of you have asked to reopen it for the final exam (glad you like it!) so I’ve done it by adding pages to include include the new weekly topics we’ve covered since the mid-term exam.

While the final exam will cover everything after the mid-term, do note that a lot of topics overlap previous content, so don’t be surprised to see questions that test your knowledge on creative commons and gift economies (e.g. Intellectual Property in Games), as well as online identities which occurs in everything we covered so far (e.g. privacy, online communities).

You talk too much… so what do I do?
Once again, instead of a blog assignment this week, you’ll be building an exam study guide together as a class. Read carefully:

1. Go to com125.wikispaces.com
2. If you haven’t, sign-up for an account using your real name (requires my approval).
3. Once logged in, explore the topics for the exam.
4. Add and/or Edit key definitions and possible questions for class.
5. Check back often as others may build on what you’ve contributed (Use the Wiki’s RSS feed).
6. Drop a comment here with your wikispaces username and a description of what you added to earn credits.
7. DEADLINE: This Sunday, 5pm

Can I do either QotW11 or Bonus Mission #3? Can do both?!?
You may perform either one or both assignments. You will be graded accordingly Mr. Kiasu (e.g. both assignment = 6 pts total).

Learning Objective
Ironically (or intentionally) , by contributing to this wiki, you’ll be practicing what you’ve learnt on gift economies, creative commons and online identity. It is hoped that you’ll not only benefit for your exam, but experience what it would be like to be a contributor to larger public wikis such as Wikipedia.

Feel free to ask questions in the comments. Students are encouraged to help answer each other’s questions.

[Original cassette photo by Rune T]

Are you ready to sing!?!
A private contest on Singshot.com has been arranged for the COM125 class. You’ll be competing on SingShot.com where you’ll rate each other in terms of singing ability. The contest is scheduled to end on 17th April, to which the winners will be determined by the online community (including yourselves).

Great, so where do I start?

1. Sign up with Singshot.com
2. Tag each recording you want to enter with “com125idol”.
3. Submit as many entries as you wish.
4. Rate your fellow classmates’ submissions.
5. Embed your recording on your blog to publicize it (sell it baby!)

On April 17th, the winners will be determined by user ratings.

Whatever… what will I win?
Sing your heart out as each contestants stand to win 3 extra credits. Winners will be worshiped by the entire class.

Learning Objective
This contest is for you to experience concepts of user generated content, crowdsourcing, unique entertainment forms, and online community interactions (e.g. populism).

Look here for contest details…

Happy Singing and Good Luck!

A gaming otaku’s dream come true! Can you guys tell which game characters they’re playing?

Some students have great presentation skills, some are good with video, and some, well, are great at role-playing. I know you want it, so here’s another photo…

Let this poll tell us your personal experience with Second Life. Fill it in and we’ll see the results at the end of class.