Exploring Digital Media

I'm Katie McGrath, a freshman and marketing major at St. Cloud State University. My anticipated graduation date is May 2018. I'm writing this blog for IM 260, Exploring Digital Media. I'm from a city outside of Boston, MA. I am also on the men's hockey cheer team at SCSU.

[kcmcgrath]

[kcmcgrath]

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Check out my website!

http://differentgenerationsandsocialmedia.weebly.com/

[kcmcgrath]

Final Class Reflection

I learned so much in IM260 this year.  I learned how to create a website and maintain a professional appearance online.  Both of these skills are extremely important to my major which is marketing.  I think this course is something that all students should take.  Social media and technology is so important in jobs now so being able to have these skills is a necessity.  It was extremely useful.  I consider myself to be pretty good at working Tumblr, Twitter and website navigation but I still learned even more than I thought I would.  This was by far my favorite class I took this year.

[kcmcgrath]

Twitter & Linked In Reflections

I kept up with the Twitter project by not tweeting all of my professional tweets in one day and making sure to space it out and participate in the #IM260 conversation as well.  What I enjoyed most was finding people related to my field of study.  I found it most difficult to find professional organizations.  Something that worked well was spacing out my tweets and not doing them all in one day.  Next time I would try to find some more professional organizations. I kept up with the Linked In project by working through all the check points by using my class time wisely.  I enjoyed making connections with people both in my field of study and other classmates.  I found it most difficult to participate in groups and finding the right groups to join.  I think having the checkpoints for Professor Carlson to check really helped to keep everyone on track, including me.  I think next time I would try to work on a better summary for my profile.

[kcmcgrath]

Website Reflections/Initial Linked In

I really enjoyed making the website.  It was fun to choose the theme, colors and pictures to include on the website. I thought making a website was going to be a lot harder but we didn’t have to do any coding so that was good too.  I think sharing them was a good idea too because it was nice to see what other people did differently on their websites.  There was some features I did not put on my website so it was cool to see how other people used them.  I’m excited to start Linked In as well.  I actually have a Linked In profile but I only have one connection (is that was they’re called?).  I’m looking forward to be able to learn how to use all of their features.  I plan to accomplish the Linked In project by paying attention in class and using that class time to make sure I’m doing everything correctly on my profile.

[kcmcgrath]

Digital Media & Society

I think having 180 patents to your name is absolutely incredible.  Even if Lee DeForest was unhappy about the electronic age, creating things like bringing sound to motion picture is amazing.  Thinking about the fact that without DeForest, we would still be watching silent movies is crazy.  I had a really hard time figuring out what to do with the resume, if we had to just go through it or if there was more to it.  I tried clicking but nothing happened.  I liked the idea of a interactive resume though.  It was a more interesting way to go through different skills.

[kcmcgrath]

Initial Website Project

I plan to accomplish the website project by staying on track and using time in class to make sure I ask questions because I have a feeling it’ll be more confusing than other projects.  I’m excited for this project.  I really like to design things and make them my own which I get to do with the website project.  I think it’s really fun to be able to set up everything how I want it, choose the colors and it’ll be cool to have the research paper up there too.  I think this will be a challenging project as well since I’ve never even attempted to create a website before.  I don’t know if we’ll have to do coding or if there are templates that we can use.

[kcmcgrath]

Digital Media and Society

Technology helps to extend our power, extend our senses, extend our intellect and enables us to reshape nature.  Different technologies can help promote new ways of thinking.  Using the computer, for example, can allow people to research and learn new things about familiar topics and about new topics in general.  Tools like computers and phones can help people learn and think in different ways that they usually don’t.  This way of thinking can be promoted by encouraging people to explore things outside of their comfort zone.

[kcmcgrath]

Technology Disconnect Reflection

Well my technology disconnect started out okay but it got bad when I woke up the next day.  My time frame was 7pm on March 11 to 7pm on March 12.  I almost checked my phone and I was getting bored.  Around 3:30 I went downstairs and my mom was watching Harry Potter and I started watching and that’s when I cracked.  I was close though with 20.5 hours.  My day was different sort of in the sense that it didn’t take me a full day to clean my closet because I didn’t have distractions but it was boring without music in the background.  I had to sing while I cleaned.  Psychologically, I feel like I could have done the 24 hours if I maybe had been with friends and not been bored like if I had things to occupy my time then I wouldn’t have been thinking about technology. I couldn’t talk to my friends so that wasn’t fun and it turns out they wanted to go to Boston that day but I didn’t see the texts so.  I didn’t do any of my homework because I needed my computer for all of it, study guides included.  I don’t think being tied to media is necessarily a bad thing.  I mean I know for me, I use it for communicating and finding things to do.  I like to be able to contact my friends or my parents when I have something to tell them or they have something to tell me.  I don’t think arguments and what not should be had over media but it does happen.  I think the people that aren’t connected are missing out honestly.  I don’t think being enriched in media makes me miss out on things.  I feel like if anything it makes me more involved.  Especially when I’m away at school, media is super important to me.  I wouldn’t be able to talk to my parents or any of my friends from home.  I would not have gone so far away for school if I couldn’t use FaceTime, texting and phone calls.

[kcmcgrath]

Initial Twitter Project

I’m really excited for the Twitter project.  I use Twitter a lot and I’m extremely familiar with it.  I plan to accomplish this project by using the evaluation to make sure I completed all elements of the project.  Since we are creating professional Twitters, I’m trying to brainstorm people I could follow that relate to my major.  I want to do marketing for either the NHL, specific arenas or music studios.  I’ll have to look up professional organizations that relate to those areas.  I feel like this project will be really fun once we get started on it.

[kcmcgrath]

Survey/Infographic Reflection

What I did in order to finish my survey and infographic was make sure my questions related to my topic and I created the infographic to show the data that I collected.  I worked on a website to make the infographic.  The part I enjoyed the most was being able to be creative when working on my infographic.  It was more fun being able to design the graphs and choosing the colors.  The part that I found the hardest was coming up with the questions on the survey.  They had to be constructed just right so that took some revision.  What worked really well was using Piktochart to create my infographic.  It was flexible and also provided templates if you needed help.  If I was to do this again, I would use Google Docs instead of Survey Monkey to create my survey. It was hard to pull my data from Survey Monkey.

[kcmcgrath]

Research Paper Reflection

What I did to finish my research paper was make a plan to work on it each night and proofread to make sure it was the best that it could be.  What I liked most about the research paper was being able to learn about the differences between the different generations and how they use technology.  It was interesting to see the statistic differences. I found the APA citations the most difficult in my paper.  If I was to do this again, I would pick a new topic or try and make this one more specific.

[kcmcgrath]

Digital Media and Society

Digital media has changed multiple aspects of society in the last few years.  Kids have become more and more technologically advanced at a much younger age.  Teens continue to use technology to connect with friends and use it in school as well.  Adults are becoming more and more familiar with technology in order to stay involved with society.  Communication has drastically changed as well.  Lots of studies have come out explaining how young adult and teen communication has become completely digital.  Face to face conversation has become less and less common.

[kcmcgrath]

Initial Survey/Infographic

Surveys are something I have done a lot of, both taking and giving some.  I have never done an Infographic before.  I'm excited to be able to be creative when making the Infographic relating to my topic.  I plan to accomplish this project by learning what makes good survey questions so the information I get from the survey is relevant.  I will also learn what makes an effective infographic so people can read the information on it.  One idea I have for the infographic is to use the different social media icons to hold the information.  I'm feeling really good about this project and I'm excited to see how it all comes together.

[kcmcgrath]

Initial Research Topic

My research topic is how different generations use social media. I'm excited to learn more about my topic but not so excited to write a research paper about.  I think it will be really interesting to see statistics comparing the social media usage of adults, teenagers and kids.  My plan to accomplish this research paper is to stay on task and make sure I get the rough draft done in time for the peer review.  Peer reviews are extremely helpful so I want to take away as much as I can from that.  I have a feeling that even though this research paper might be difficult, I think it will go okay.

[kcmcgrath]

Initial Technology Disconnect Project

Honestly, I'm extremely nervous for the technology disconnect project. I'm constantly talking to my friends from home so not being able to makes me sort of sad. My plan is to do it over spring break because I feel like it will be easier to be distracted from technology if I'm hanging out with my friends as opposed to reading in my dorm all day. I feel like keeping myself entertained is going to be the hardest part of this project.  If I keep myself distracted by having lots of other things to do then I should be okay.  I'm sort of excited as well though.  I think it'll be really good for me to disconnect for a day.  Maybe I'll make it more of a monthly thing to destress if all goes well this this project.