The Miniature Earth

...really interesting, I never had a look at the earth this small before

Tutorial week 8 + 9

Task for this week:

What opportunities can we find for political participation via the internet? We have to do some research and answering most of the following tasks.

->
First we had to sign an e-petition.
Democracy is essential for our live. It guarantees the human rights and gives us a choice to be part of a community, in which we have the chance to decide and change things.
I signed an e-petition of the German parliament. It is about a commission of inquiry to investigate the financial crisis. I think that's really important, cause it is about our future and our money.
You can find me as number 1059 with the following link:
https://epetitionen.bundestag.de/index.php?action=petition;petition=6483;sa=sign

Next I was to respond to a professional blogger at a major news site.

The following task was to find out what Barack Obama is up to today. On the website http://www.barackobama.com/ it is said, that the president has some interviews on a number of the major Sunday morning news shows, including ABC's This Week George Stephanopoulos , CBS's Face the Nation, NBC's Meet the Press , CNN's State of the Union with John Roberts , and Univision today (September 2o).

Our next thing was to find out,who our local, state and federal representatives are.
It was pretty tough for me to find out who they are, cause I'm from Germany, but finally I got all these information
-Local member of parliament:
Cr Ron Clarke, MBE– Gold Coast City Council
(http://www.councilofmayorsseq.qld.gov.au/content/FAQ.asp)
-State member of parliament:
Peter Lawlor- State Member for Southport
(http://www.qld.alp.org.au/01_cms/details.asp?ID=379)
-Federal Member for Parliament:
MP Stuart Clarke
(http://www.robert.com.au/)

The last time our Southport State member Peter Lawlor spoke in parliament was on the 17th of September.He talked about the Personal Property Security Bill.
(http://parlinfo.parliament.qld.gov.au/isysquery/51b8dcba-dc7c-4ce1-8aef-552b04e771fe/27/doc/)

(pictures:google images)

ireport

I created a (fun) news-story.
First I was thinking about making a video about a shark attack or a robbery, but then I found the following video on my computer and had the crazy idea to change it into a 'news-story'. I made this video last May back in Germany and actually it is about a spontanous event (Flashmob) at a famous place in Cologne where a few hundred people brought their own pillows and started a pillow fight.
So this is my really crazy news-story and my video:

Demonstration for snow in Cologne!
Cologne, 24th September 2009
Yesterday a few hundred people demonstrated in Cologne, Germany for more snow in the following winter. They started a big pillow fight to copy real snow. The demonstration took place in front of the famous cologne cathedral to get also support from the powers that be.



(http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-332922)

The funny thing is that I got a message from CNN/ireport after uploading my video and obviously they are believing in my story...:)

Hi there,
Thank you for sending a video of the pillow fight in Cologne. I have a couple of questions about your submission.

1. Can you confirm you shot this video? Is there anyone else to courtesy?

2. What is your full name?

3. Are you over 18?

4. When was this shot? What was the scene like?

5. Is this an annual event? Who organizes it?

6. Do you live in Cologne? Does it usually snow there?

7. What’s the best phone number to reach you?

8. Do you give CNN permission to show your iReport online and/or on TV?


If you have anything else to add, please do. I look forward to hearing from you!

Best,

Katie



And this one:

Hi Carolin,

Thanks for your reply. I just need a little more information about the video before I approve it for CNN. Can you send me a link to where the event was announced, or any information about it? I haven't been able to find much online, but that may be because I don't speak German!

Thanks,
Katie

Lecture week 7

Free Software and the Creative Commons

This was a really funny lecture. It was about the 'Digital Life' and we got to know more about free software and saw some really crazy things on the internet. I learned a lot about using other software, cause usually I'm the normal windows user with only little software knowledge.
We had a look at pages like www.mininova.org, www.portableapps.com or www.openoffice.org.
There are two options: You can have the software online, or you can have all the applications on your computer, or on a memory stick.
Open Office is like Microsoft Word, Power Point etc. but you can download it for free.
That's the same with GIMP (like photoshop), Blender (animation) and a lot more.
And if you have any problems with your computer software, just go to www.freewaregenius.com and download their software packages.
The problem of www.download.com, another so called 'free- download page' is, that it first says the downloads are free, but often you have to pay for it in the end.
The result of all these is, that you can safe a lot of money, cause you can find really good free software for downloading, but be careful if it's really for free.
(picture: google images)

Tutorial week 7

The task for todays tute is to download one or more of the freeware apps that Jason mentioned or one that we can find by ourselves and then write about it in your blog.

I downloaded the 'YouTube Downloader'.
It is a software program with which you can download videos from YouTube and many other pages and convert them into other video formats.
It is really easy to use. Just visit YouTube, choose your favourite video,then specify the URL for the video and click the 'OK' Button and that's it. After that you can also use the downloaded videos for your IPod, MP3 Player or just play it on your computer. Special features are also that you can cut and select the output quality of converted videos and that you can play the videos in Flash. So basically it is a very usefull and easy handling programm.

Another program I downloaded and tested was Picasa.
It finds and organizes all the pictures and you can also work on them, like fixing red eyes, or cut some pictures. You can send your photos via e-mail or create an online picasa page with all your pictures on it or you can watch the photos via slideshow of the album. It's easy to handle and you don't need so big knowledge as for photoshop for example.
(pictures:google images)

Summary lecture 6

This lecture was about consuming and producing.
Consume:
1. Big Screen:
- Cinema (shared experience)
- Television (first shared, but today more private experience)
- personal computer (private/ shared)
-> all three are consumers of media!
2. Small Screen:
- Personal media player (iPod) ->on the go
- mobile phones (iPod touch)
- 'Smart phones', 3G- Information ->on the fly

Produce:
- Fan films (fanfilms.net), fan edits, 'phantom edit'
- mash ups:
Re-Genre
Re- Cut
- mobile production:
ENG
short films

Sketchcast.com