Final Post

This will be the final post for this blog on my case study, as it is due in tomorrow. I still haven't had any reply to my emails but I should be able to write the last part without their input.

Writing the Essay

Now that most of my research is complete I have started on writing the essay. First of all my mind went completely blank. I couldn’t remember how to write an academic essay!

I haven’t had to write one in about 7 months and I couldn’t even start it. Just spent ages writing and re-writing the same lines over and over again.

Then I remembered to plan. After creating the plan and collating all my notes, quotes and various pieces of paper together I was able to form a sort of order among my work. I know, simple!

This suits my writing style and I was able to start the first draft of the essay. I'm not sure how it's going to go as it will be the first one for Falmouth University, but hopefully it will all be fine.

Still no responses

After listening to Anne’s and Jason’s comments after the presentation I decided to email some of the other online journalists listed on the website, but so far have had no response from anyone!

Presentation Day

I have now done the presentation. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be, however, I did think more people were going to be doing the Web 2.0 question so I had to make the section on that slightly longer.

I started off my presentation brilliantly….. Not. I started by apologising and saying I had come from Camborne and that I didn’t know very much about this topic. Possibly the most embarrassing thing ever until I got to the end of the presentation, like everyone before me I asked if anyone had any questions.

I then stated that actually no I didn’t want to answer any questions. When asked why by the tutor I then said that if anyone asked me any my mind would go completely blank, I wouldn’t be able to answer and then I would blush. Consequently, I then went bright red and all but ran back to my chair!

Apart from these two incidents I think the presentation went ok, and I think it lasted around the correct amount of time too.

Disaster….

Managed to delete the hard drive on my computer! Along with the presentation only a few days before I have to stand up in front of 30 people and do it. I took it to the computer clinic down at Woodlane Campus and they managed to fix it so I’m able to do the presentation. I’m still not looking forward to it however. The thought still makes me cringe!!

However, this experience has taught me I need to back up my work more frequently!!

Questions

I emailed the online editor at the magazine asking a few questions about the site and how they planned to move it forward, and other things about circulation figures and how many hits they had on the website etc. But so far I have had no response.

Research

I sat in the library for about 4 hours today trying to make my presentation look professional. Having never done one before at Falmouth I was slightly worried about how it would compare and be marked against all of the others so I left it simple using one of the page patterns the program offers.

I research WEB 2.0 in the library using both the books and internet and was able to come up with some quite useful stuff. I combined both the notes, I was given in class and what I had found out, and was able to create a clear understanding of Web 2.0 in my presentation.

I then looked in to Horse and Riders website and made notes of all the ways they are using Web 2.0; including screen shots etc. I joined their face book groups, you tube, twitter etc, so that I was able to use the most up to date information in my case study.

Although they do use Web 2.0 they don’t use it to its full potential. With You Tube they post the videos, and although you are allowed to comment and post video responses, there is no way of uploading your own videos on to the site; or even there home site.

Twitter is obviously a good use of Web 2.0. It has 1994 followings and 1783 followers, one of them now being me! They also have a face book page, with 359 members. You are obviously allowed to use it as you would any other page; Posting links, photos and comments etc.

There are places on the website where you can put your horse up for sale and links to other websites with a variety of equestrian things for sale.

The forums are also a good use of Web 2.0, however, they are monitored strictly. Regardless of this there are 3319 topics, 1547 posts and 405 members.

There are also links mentioning the magazine on the website and also information in the magazine about the website and various other things online.