Review on Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think"

I honestly read Steve Krug's book through, because it was more attractive with less text and more images to make things clear to the core point for a user, or in this case, a book reader. The approach of designing the book is similar to the described content - in order to make it readable, it has been made concise, packed with illustrative pictures, and "scannable", as people nowadays mind reading books full of dull text. It can be compared with a usable web page described in the book. The author adds that the reader should not know everything to get the picture, this is why he has kept the content as concise as it is.
The other good thing about the book is that Krug also suggests better solutions for the existing flaws on web pages as well as possible scenarios and outcomes for different problems, making the book a true handbook for all kinds of web page makers.

Many parts of the book came to me as familiar from Hypertext and Interface and Interaction Design lectures. I think the lecturer has used parts of it in his talks. I think that this book is very interensting and easy to read and the author gives precise instructions on how to create a web page efficiently so that the user would navigate better and with less effort on it.

The book starts with guiding principles and moves on to navigation principles. Then the author talks about usability and user testing, finalizing the book with most common problems that might come up and how to fix them. He provides sample dialogues, images, and tables in order to summarize the topics. The author also brings up some of the accessibility problems that might come up. I am not going to retell the contents of the book, but I will point out a few notes that I took:

• the user should not think while he or she browses the web in order to grasp the site quickly
• the less the user thinks, the more efficient the page is, it is necessary to remove "noise"
• users scan only certain words that they think is necessary for them, they do not read the whole content
• help is not necessary, because users do not use it, they try to get through the page themselves, the same goes for introductions, not much "happy talk" needed there
• organize parts in a clear way
• keep pace with known web page conventions, make obvious what is clickable
• remove unnecessary words, make choices clear to the user
• a good road map will be necessary in the form of "breadcrumbs" or a good menu so that the user could not get lost
• bookmarks are necessary because they show you a large chunk of the menu and they should be visible
• page logo is important, as well as the navigation marker "you are here"
• site home page should note its identity, the hierarchy, and has to have a "search" button as well as the good things that draw people's attention to it.
• the users need to know that they findon the page
• show your own identity on the web page, but make it concise
• testing should be done in the beginning and the more people involved, the better it is. After testing the mistake should be fixed and then tested again

All in all I think the book was a good read and even the points that I took out were familiar to me from various usability lectures as well as hypertext lecture. It was good to align the content with your own real-life examples, and I am glad we have tried these solutions out in our lectures as well.

I would recommend the book to all starting web page creators since it is interesting to read, packed with lots of examples and really catches the reader's attention, just like a really functional home page should do!

Week 11. Individual reflection and assessment

I took out my learning contract and started revising it. According to my contract I managed to fulfill most of the parts:

• I learned a lot from the theoretical part of creating an e-learning course as well as got a good experience of managing a group - although there were minor setbacks, everything turned out pretty well in the end. As far as committing yourself to the role is concerned, I sometimes did too much, and should have loaded more responsibility to the other members. 
• Secondary school practice went as predicted, and I managed to post more information about the tasks in order to make them clear for the lessons I was absent.
• I think I even got a good load of experience of time planning, since I managed to do most of the weeks in time, but since I joined later, I had to do some of the tasks later as well. I did not have to create a to-do-list, but managed to remember how to do the tasks needed.
• What changed was the collaboration tool from pbwiki to google docs, and also our prototype environment appeared into weebly. Other sources were used as predicted.

I think I succeeded most of the time, thus I would (based on other team members' good words and the lecturer's good words) grade myself kindly with an "A". As far as my satisfaction is concerned, I really made an effort and succeeded!

Week 10. Prototype Evaluation, and other stuff.

You can find our group's thoughts from the prototype's blog post.

 New things about groupwork were the ones that there were no new things, we did our job, and those who were busy managed to add their opinions as well. Thus we created a common understanding of our course and posted it to our prototype's blog, since it was the most suitable place to put it in.
As for my personal contract, I understood that it is not utterly possible to make people to do their job unless they are available. And this way groupwork had to be re-organized. Those who care put more effort in working and those who have other priorities put less of an effort, but all in all we worked together well as a group. I think it is really about priorities and likes of the tasks.
I think I am still motivated to doing such things in later future, because I love learning by reflecting to yourself and the facilitator.
I think my learning contract has worked within the course, but I would reflect it more deeply the next week.

Week 9. Reflection

Since we have done pretty much until now, this week's tasks were quite simple. This week we tried to smooth the consistency of our e-learning course, and added some extras to the course (e.g. team members, and timeline). I felt that my course companions were very supportive this week and made me realize that it is not always necessary to take the lead and that group members are capable of working on their own as well. It felt relaxing.

I found out that in our group there is a very nice division: some are active and some inactive, but still we managed to do the necessary work. I think that without having all members present, it is still possible to finish the work in order to get a good e-course result.

What I have noticed is that I get a great leading experience, how to act as a leader, how to make people work, etc. Also a good skill :)

PS. The timeline can be found in our weebly course environment from team page.



Oh, and it's so good to acknowledge that creating an e-course is much more than learning about e-courses. Alice is a great example of a good learner - she has learned about social networks and different collaboration- and web platforms as well. I feel thrilled!
The same about Chiara and me - I think we both are learning from international group work. This is the first time I am working with such a varied group of people, and I am grateful for new experiences. To tell you the truth, I am waiting for comments on my posts and reflection, because this course is unique for its reflection "bonus". And, well, who doesn't like positive feedback (and constructive critical feedback as well).

E-Learning Week 8 - Reflection

I had some thoughts concerning Ketlin's post of week 7.
She said she did not have a clear image of a decent e-course in mind before she started this subject, but she has learned a lot now. I must admit, that I have learned something as well, but it is fairly simple for me to surf around in the e-learning environment. I am feeling pretty good now that I have passed one bad e-course example, I even decided to give the lecturer course feedback so that she could improve her courses. After learning some basics and browsing through materials I feel pretty secure in open learning environments. I am also proud that I have participated on an e-course of the lecturer who got a quality mark from EITSA (Estonian Information Technology Foundation), so I have a few courses to compare.
I just hope that all of our group's materials of our course will be posted before evaluation, because group work matters 25%, not your own effort in the group, as far as I understand.

Explain, which type of learning environment is best suitable for your e-learning course prototype?

Our group has decided to adapt an open personal learning environment, because it is easier to follow and there are no extra passwords to remember. The other point would be that social media applications require a lot of mobility and time to get acquainted with the whole concept, thus a weekly space is left for the student to learn the things and reflect on them. We have put our materials in the web, namely a weebly-based page, which gives the objectives, main information, tasks, and the facilitator's blog (the name is made up thus there is no need to contact the person who is the "facilitator" there). Tools for learners would be a few social networking tools and also a blog for reflection. Since there is no groupwork, only minor skype chats may occur, but it is not clear yet, whether the learners would be keen on it. Some tasks are made in twitter, thus there will be an agregator for twitter feeds as well.
Why did we choose Weebly?

• easy to navigate, just a few clicks
• simple to create, and manage, just a few drag-and-drop items + text, embeddable code, etc.
• forum/feedback/blog option
• simple interface

What was the most important thing you learned this week? What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week’s activities raised for you?

I still learned that it is possible to do group work so that not everyone is present, but through collaboration with some and then the others it is possible to manage with group tasks very easily. There has to be a keen person who "fuels" the conversation, and participants who do work in time. I had quite a lot of fun setting up the weebly course and inventing facilitator's blog posts and comments. I love creative work!


What is your evaluation of this week's groupwork? (What did go well and what did not? How did groupwork influence fulfilling your personal learning contract?)

According to my observations this week has been productive, we have been online and decided things together, and there was no need to schedule time, we were all online and had a spontaneous meeting. This made our task division even more effective. Well, since everybody agreed that PBworks is not the best environment for course presentation, we decided that we would change it. As we had at least 2 weebly users, we decided to use this environment. We have had several talk sessions with the group and that is assuring, everyone took part nicely.

Describe what has changed in your personal learning environment and in group environment?

I love my organization :) but group environment changed in the sense that there appeared a new web page for the course prototype.

Prediction of Possible Business Models in Social Media in the Future.

Introduction

Social media is very clever in implementing business models in such a way that the user does not even notice while being hooked up in engaging content or an interesting application of a social media site that they find themselves paying for a service. Having tried to avoid spending money for social media-based applications has not succeeded since I have been tempted to try out the possibilities of upgraded services just to feel how it is to benefit from something. This experience has led to the conclusion that one should think about all the pros and cons of the service and come to a conclusion if buying upgraded services is necessary. I understood that there is a possibility to avoid paying when you leave the passion for an application aside or think rationally about the application benefits whether they are really necessary or not.
Having read through all possible variants of revenue models in social media, a warm feeling of recognition appeared. Nowadays social media and media economy mostly demands novelty and unique solutions in order to please the customer. When I find a social media-based web page, I have constantly found myself thinking about the websites’ conception how a certain site gains money from its customers while being totally free in the first glance. In further investigation certainly a kind of revenue model becomes apparent since the people behind the website mostly need an income.

E-Learning Week 7 - Reflection

What was the most important thing you learned this week? What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week’s activities raised for you?

I will take Chiara's example and talk about the conference I attended, E-learning conference 2010. I got a lot of inspiration through that and when the materials are put up, I hope there is a possibility to look at them. In the conference I had this e-learning course in mind several times. But I will not talk about the conference, since there are more important issues to be discussed. I learned that there is a possibility that without the group leader things get done as well. Chiara was so kind this time as to lead the forces, thus I was happy that other people take the lead as well!

What is your evaluation of this week's groupwork? (What did go well and what did not? How did groupwork influence fulfilling your personal learning contract?)
Describe what has changed in your personal learning environment and in group environment?

Concerning group work I will reflect on Chiara's post, that the communication was not all that terrible, since she got hold of the groupwork to her hands and pushed us into working. I think we would have done it anyway, but work and school and other down-to-earth activities kept the team busy on the given times (one-two people were present, still). As far as the tasks are divided, I think people do not have to be online at the same time, everyone can improve/add something to the discussion later. I remember that everyone had their excuses, thus there should be other communication options/means to collaborate. The contract did not fulfill its purposes from the leadership point of view, but I think that everything is still on track.
We have not changed our environment yet, but I think that we should place the final product somewhere else than Pbworks (but I am growing to like the environment for this course a bit).

My personal learning environment is the same, I think. I still use a blog, which is a kind of portfolio for my learning experience. I use Skype for chats and task division, and E-Learning course for task monitoring.

E-Learning Week 6 - Tasks and Reflection

What do you consider as important elements in an e-learning course?

1) A well-educated course facilitator - the facilitator's role is the most crucial as he or she has to build up a course for people who might not even meet the facilitator and coursemates. The facilitator has to know the basics of building an e-learning course as well as have a good grasp of the material.
2) A nice introduction - to define the outcome and goals of the course.
3) Good materials - by materials I mean videos, texts, notes, etc., which draw the learners' attention in such a way that they memorize things very easily. The materials to my mind should be concise and very striking, especially for younger people.
4) Evaluation - understandable criteria for passing the course. Those should be not too harsh and not too simple, because with too tight schedule a learner could never do well in a course with harsh requirements, and with too broad criteria the result might not come out as well, too, because then they just forget about the requirements and think there is time enough to pass.
5) Feedback - this is an important part, since every person needs reflection for how he or she has advanced. It can be a mark or a comment.

What was the most important thing you learned this week? 

I think I realised that groupwork is tricky work since there is no ideal time when you can meet, there is no ideal pattern that the group co-operates on, because the people in the group are so different. Yet you manage to do all things well and on time, which is a relief.


What is your evaluation of this week's groupwork? (What did go well and what did not? How did groupwork influence fulfilling your personal learning contract?)

Groupwork went well, because we met online and discussed which parts should be done and which tasks should be divided. I think that according to personal learning contract I can regard myself as successful, because the group managed to do well. I was a bit puzzled, though, that there is a kind of dependence on the group leader. Puzzled, because I think that grown-up people are able to think on their own as well. But all in all we managed well and all parties did their job on time.

Describe what has changed in your personal learning environment and in group environment?

Nothing has really changed in these learning environments. I have taken my blog as a learning blog or portfolio and for group work we are still using Pbworks. Maybe we will switch to another one, but currently all of it is as it was before.

Reply to the Facilitator's Questions of Week 3

Should every group member be responsible for all the points you have made? For instance, who should make sure that everyone has the information that is necessary for the next tasks. Is it a task for every group member to check or is it a group leader's task to take care of? 

Actually every group member took part in the creation of the points, I just formulated the final "product". The following steps will be agreed upon with the whole group, and I think we will collectively distribute tasks needed for future. I believe each group member will get familiar with the necessary information, this is not definitely my task, but as a group we support each other. I also allowed access to write into our space, so you can comment there now, I believe.

I had a look at your group environment in pbwiki about the criteria for a good online course. As I don't have access to that environment and I am not allowed to leave comments I present them here:

1. "Practical = sufficient length of the course" - a strange combination :). I found the following claim also very subjective: "The course should take up time as much as it would not disturb one's private life". I would argue that our private lives are very different and how one can quarantee that it doesn't disturb participants' private lives?
Another claim: "There is a need for the course and the need persists because of its good quality." A course can be good, but the need for that course might change due to different reasons, one of them can be out-to-date knowledge and skills it provides and encourages...

2. I so much agree with you that a course should be free, but somebody should pay for the costs at some point. Currently we have a list of courses in our wikiversity, which are for free, but certificate is given only to those who have either paid for this or enrolled to a formal program. Of course it is not the best solution, but at least it is a step further to open up the education for everybody.

3. Your claim: "The course has to be inspiring, and provide with lots of interesting ideas and new thoughts." It used to be that way that a course should be already designed in a way that it provides lots of interesting ideas and new thoughts. Now we encourage participants to say their opinions, share their experiences, discuss and argue. And I believe that all the participants can contribute to this. Of course another problem is the level of engagement from the participants... So a good course should provide opportunities for participants to provide their ideas and thoughts...

But in general, these are really good and relevant points a course designer should consider.

Thanks for the time spent on looking through our work I totally agree that there were some personal subjective thoughts, but this was the reflection of our group on the ideal course design. Since there are 5 people, everyone contributed their preferences and we had this great mash-up of thoughts. I know that there is no one clear solution for a course, and the facilitator has to make amendments on some points, but every course designer gives his/her best to create the best course.
I think that if a course wants to be up-to-date, the facilitator has to renew the course components and constantly keep the information and different applications updated - it takes up a lot of time and ideas, but I think it is possible for some time at least.
As for free courses Wikiversity is a really great environment to continue life-long learning without getting the certificate (for those who do not care about certificates).

E-Learning Week 5 - Reflection

Tasks:

Revise your personal learning contract if needed, considering what you have learned so far, what is going differently from your initial plans, how the environment has changed. Please start a new blog post for revision and keep the first version of the contract. Refer to the first version.

Since I  created my learning contract based on some knowledge already, I think it would be unfair to change anything there. After week 6 I can add if my experience with the e-learning tasks of my pupils went well or if I did anything wrong (not to encourage my pupils' motivation).

E-Learning Week 4 - Tasks and Reflection

Tasks:

Find at least one good and one bad example case of course design and reflect your opinions of these courses in your personal Weblog. Visit the blogs of your groupmates, read their reflections of course designs and add your opinions as comments about these courses.

I can easily draw a comparison between four e-courses, which I have participated in or am currently participating in:

1. Ethics and Law in New Media
2. E-Learning
3. Avatud õppematerjalide koostamine ja kasutamine
4. Value Chains and New Media

All of these courses are designed in such a way that there is input from the facilitator as well as from the student. The first three courses would be good examples and the fourth would be the bad example, although the example is still not the worst kind.

The first course is very orderly. First it gives the backbone of the course and in the backbone there is a possibility to move on to the course topics. In each topic you have the hometask as well as extra materials. In addition the lecturer provided us with a forum and a weekly skype discussion opportunity (to gain points and to get feedback on different topics). He also invited guests to our skype sessions. These weekly sessions were good for communication between different people, and also groupwork was pretty good among our participants. Each group member had to contribute to the paper we made and thus noone could miss their part. We created the course work environment in a wiki as well. What was missing from the course was the introduction to the topic (as in "today we are going to learn... etc.), but that was really a minor error. Individually we read papers and filled in our blogs.

The second course are very well designed with tasks given in correct order, topics and extra materials under the introduction, leading to separate pages. As I got used to the backbone of the previous course, the index before the topics seems a good solution, but after the index there is scrollable content (too much scrollable content is not good). This course seems not too "scrollable", satisfactory in that sense. The facilitator introduces the topics and provides with good reading materials which give additional academic knowledge to the initial knowledge base, which is great. Students have to reflect on different tasks (given on Wikiversity page) in their blogs and groupwork has to be done on a separate page. A good thing is that the facilitator gives feedback on the course in each participant's blog, and also provides us with a web conferencing option. The facilitator also keeps the students updated through her blog.

The third course is divided into two environments, having the backbone with a similar index as the second course has, and the Wikiversity page is more used as the introduction to weekly topics and tasks. Tasks are given in a separate blog, which may be a bit confusing to the first-time users, but this is well-adaptable to a technology-prone person. The facilitator uses an extra pageflakes page to collect all students' blog links into one blogroll visible to all participants at once, which is a good idea to have a look at the others' blogs as well. The blog option is used for weekly materials.
I found this kind of learning more amusing, but also more confusing. The learners in that course were intrinsically motivated and quite communicative, thus making the course more enjoyable. Sadly I had to leave because of lack of time (enormous workload).

The three previous examples were examples of good e-learning course designs, but the last one should be a bit worse example. 
The fourth Wikiversity-based course's layout is quite stretched, so you have to scroll it down, and the table of contents (what I previously called "index") appeared only recently. This is a very inconvenient way to navigate on the page. The facilitator provides with the introduction of each page, but when you start looking closer at the topics, the content seems pretty much copy-paste from the original sources (which does not seem very academic). There is a separate closed environment (iCampus) for participation and you have to upload your documents there. She provides the students with sources and topics on iCampus, but she has not defined the marking scale, nor the criteria for passing the course. This course seems a bit disturbing, because I feel more like blogging instead of scribbling documents and uploading them. Also I do not like scrolling and would prefer clicking on the topic and moving on to a separate page.

As a group define what are the criteria for a good online course and reflect it in your group space (whatever you choose this to be), but make this group space visible to other groups by posting a link on E-learning/Participants page under your group.

The page created is tallinnuniversityprojects.pbworks.com, and our group task is here.


Reading and reflection

1. Make a selection of reading material for the fourth week
2. Reflect on your learning experiences in your personal Weblog following the reflection template:

1. Explain, what are the components of course design.

1. Structure - in which order and how to place content. What kind of information to provide, what kind of links, etc.
2. Material - presented in a structured format, so that the learner can understand the topics. Chosen material does not differ from classroom material.
3. Motivation and feedback - Due to effective feedback provided by the facilitator, the learner feels motivated.
4. Interaction - a) programs that enable activity, b)open questions, games, tools and calculators stimulate good activity, c) engage the mind!
5. Involvement - Learner-controlled involvement through several activities.

2. What was the most important thing you learned this week? What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week’s activities raised for you?

The most important thing that I learned this week was that group collaboration needs strong peer support and encouragement, as well as changes in chosen web-based applications. It may turn out that in fact the chosen solution may not be the best for this particular group.

3. What is your evaluation of this week's groupwork? (What went well and what did not? How did groupwork influence fulfilling your personal learning contract?)

 I was very pleased with this week's groupwork in terms of collaboration and input. After reminding ourselves that PbWorks does not allow multiple changes for one page, we agreed on using a Google Document in order to collaborate on a draft version of our task 1, and this also went quite well, everybody started participating right away. Alice had to make an account in Google and she managed to fix her thoughts in the document as well.

I expected our wiki-collaboration to make more progress. I certainly expect the group members to add or change my posts in our wiki as well. 

I think I had good feedback on my questions and I hope I could support my team members as well as I could as well. I hope to get feedback on our groupwork from the facilitator as well, since this was the first task ever done by our group in such way. I felt we could have done more there, but maybe I am just overthinking.
Overall, my management skills proved to be excellent in getting the group together as well as allowing them all to collaborate in their own pace. I am satisfied with myself, thus I should make a green tick somewhere in order to mark my coping with the task in the contract.

4. Describe what has changed in your personal learning environment and in group environment?

What changed in our group learning environment was that a separate document for online and simultaneous collaboration was needed. Creating a Google Document was  not a difficult job. I think our group is going to use this kind of collaboration more, and maybe new means of collaboration will arise as well. Final results that our group got, were still put in PbWiki space.

The future of the Long Tail Model in the field of New Media

The Long Tail Forecast

Due to a massive update of services in the new media field, there is a possibility to sell or distribute almost everything with the means of the Internet. What I predict for the future, when we look around the Web space, is that social media like Twitter, Facebook, and other hybrids are going to make a crucial role in passing information to necessary sources. I think that information will be the source of the future long tail model. All possible multimedia solutions may be mixed in order to provide necessary information to a whole lot of people and in this way sell products from books to airplanes (this was a figurative comparison). Right now there are several business strategies that let people see only a part of information and they have to pay for the other part, but the information gets outdated and no one may need it anymore. Lots of companies and individuals nowadays use blogging as spreading information around, as well as vlogging and podcasting. You can spread the word around through witter feeds, facebook updates, myspace updates, you name it.

Traindom

Today I saw a twitter feed for a site named “Traindom”, which is a solution for starting an online information business. This is exactly what I am thinking about in terms of Long Tail model in the future. Companies start selling their information instead of answering questions of every single person, easier, cheaper, less time consuming. Traindom offers an interactive solution for e-courses instead of e-books, which according to them are obsolete. By that they enable customers to create courses for free and ask for money until the customers start making money. I think this is a clever solution of online Long Tail information model.

Conclusion

In conclusion I think that we cannot predict the far future, because social media is in constant change. I think there will be something totally new and unforeseen. But until now the social media applications are making a huge progress in helping the information flow to the right channels, thus help those channels buy the necessary information or goods they want or need. This will be satisfying for everyone – for those who benefit from it and for those who gain something from it.

Blue Team's Game Review

I tested Blue team's game, and now I would like to reflect on my thoughts on the game:

First of all, the initial problem seemed to be the wrong version of Wesnoth, 1.6.5, which gave me an error statement, that scenario 1 was erroneous. This led to downloading the other version, which I was not happy about at all. But everything for the good cause. Unfortunately the campaign did not start playing on the first Beta version as well, as far as I tried. Still, I did not manage to open the game, because an error popped onto my screen every time I wanted to play it. I tried to download it with SVN and also manually, but no use.
My final try was downloading the other Beta version of Wesnoth:

It seemed that there is the same problem: Unknown scenario: '1_stseen'.

 Concerning the review, I must say that I can write our game review, which I found very fresh and new in this game landscape, because we had cool characters and nice concept. Due to my lack of playing skills the game did not last for long, because I was not able to kill all the enemies. Nevertheless I saw what happened there during creation process, thus it was an interesting experience.

I could add that the other group had made an effort as well, as they had nice characters and a wild storyline. All in all the course was a great experience that one could learn very well from all the mistakes that happen.

My Reflection on Open Source Management Groupwork Contribution

Introduction

Group formation was the quickest task we completed, as well as taking over the name "Red team". As red generally is a provocative colour, our group's tasks also did not  come out as well as they were supposed to. The first task was to group people under certain tasks, and I got a chronicle keeper's task. I created the Red Team's tasks and "tickets" (not in the way they were supposed to be), also marked our progress, and finally reflected on the groupwork. For documentation I used the wiki part of trac environment.

The most critical part of the course was to make everything flow. As all tasks depended on different other tasks, and since the group had difficulties with programming the campaigns, there often was nothing to document, and thus it was necessary to wait for the process to go on.
From time to time I made some changes in Trac, for example uploaded storylines or documented overall progress together with Taavi.

My task was also to support the group in other tasks, like exploring Wesnoth scenarios, and suggesting the ideas from these campaigns, which would be useful in our game. On the other hand, I helped proofread the scenarios as well as posted them in Trac. I think my task in this game was achieved all in all.
I tried to help the team leader as much as I could and was able to, as well, mostly in documentation. As well as the other team leaders, I also tested the game, which worked well for me, but was difficult to progress during low Wesnoth gaming skills.

Lessons learned:

Individually I cannot say that I could have changed anything within the group, because the development did not depend directly on certain people, it depended more or less on the workflow, and on the fact how the game was managed to be put together. It probably was stuck behind the lack of knowledge in the beginning and how to "bite" through the latter afterwards.

It was quite difficult to document any progress or what went wrong until the previous steps were completed.  As it turned out, trac was the main component in the development process. Nevertheless, most of the work was transferred to Skype or done orally, because we tried to develop the game together as a group. Next time we should collaborate more with the lecturer as well, in order to get faster feedback on our errors and perhaps some help in fixing them. Forum help turned out to be more difficult than in the first glance, because it was quite difficult to grasp the necessary help topics during the process.

Wesnoth Documentation - Red Team

The groupwork process was the following:

First our group tried out playing the games in order to understand the process which takes place in Wesnoth campaigns. All scenarios were distributed among group members so that everyone could dig into the games and suggest their ideas for good game development, and understand how the game was created.

Secondly the group members looked at the code in order to find associations connected with our group's possible campaign scenarios and understand how it worked. A lot of effort was used to get a decent understanding of the code meaning and trying to find the ways of implementing the code into our game-to-be.

The third step was to create a storyline, which was a different story from our initial concept. Since we did not get any feedback to our initial story, we decided to change it. The storyline was written using imagination and proofread by other team members.

Code was created in parallel with story development. The initial concept where noone would have been killed, was changed, because the outcome was not as successful as necessary. Thus finally a new concept was created where units were killed in the end. During code development forums and other resources were used for help, also teamwork was really strong.

Maps and images were also created during story development, to keep everything in concordance. Maps were created using Map Editor of the Wesnoth game, and images were created in Photoshop as well as in Fireworks.

Meanwhile the whole process was documented as it progressed.

Our group members used skype as well as meetings in order to keep the workflow running.

Main difficulties:

1. Keeping all units alive was tricky, because it was difficult to create. This was changed so that all units get killed in the end.

2. There was a problem with image paths when the team tried to insert images of the characters in the game.

3. The forum was not useful in terms of code change, because the code had not been translated properly or it was difficult to find. This part would have been easier if it would have been done in the lecture, together with the explanations.

4. All team members depended on the other team members, and when there were difficulties, the work did not take place as planned.

Wesnoth Game Documentation - Storyline [explicit lyrics, not for kids] - Red Team

The story was created by story managers, and is the following:

Introduction

Rocco lives in a muddy village which is a very cool place for spending time, chatting and drinking coffee, but one can never become wealthy enough, that is at least what Rocco thinks. A nearby city has everything necessary to have fun with, and to do nice business. Rocco loves coffee and has proper knowldedge about running a cafeteria, but in the village called Pärnartu, people rather need bread and butter and have no means for spending time in cafeterias. As Rocco has no money for opening even a kiosk where he could sell coffee, and as he is a man of big business, it is 100% clear that he has to move over to a more urbanized area.
The closest urbanized area is a city of Bruzzano, where a spoiled son of Bernhard, Eduard, runs the chain of Cafeterias "Wobernard". Rocco applies for the position of the Chief Paristant of the "Wobernard" chain, but he is forced to sing and dance on the table. As he refuses to do it, he does not get the desired job. Being offended by arrogant urban bitch-asses, he decides to take some of "Wobernard" cafes by force. It is simple - you have to beat the shit out of the managers of the cafes, and then you can run the cafes as you wish. Having a terrible day full of blood and screaming is better than whole life without work in this god forsaken place.

E-Learning Week 3 - Tasks and Reflection

The first task was to create a group environment for our study group. 
First, I managed to gather the group in Skype for a conversation, and I also created a group environment in PBWorks.

For the first task we created a group conversation in Skype, after which we moved to Google Docs for some collaborative effort. This collaborative effort was fixed into a nice task 1. This task would need some feedback in order to see if it is done correctly or is there something more that needs to be added. [This point was already written on week 4]

The second task was to read and reflect on the following:

1. Which principles of groupwork, communities of practice and collaborative learning should a distributed group consider, when planning the design of an e-learning course?

Concerning groupwork, one should consider the following points (according to the reading material):

1. Distribute roles, and shift them if necessary.
2. Meet the deadlines and make sure everyone has done their jobs in the group.
3. Make sure everyone has the information that is necessary for the next tasks.
4. Encourage peer collaboration and ask others to remind of the work to be done.
5. Encourage and give peer feedback in order to feel good about the job that has been done and give courage for the next steps.
6. Use a collaborative environment in order to participate fully in groupwork.
7. Use an agregator in order to follow others' posts and try to make the most out of the information you get from there.

2. What was the most important thing you learned this week? What kind of questions/ideas/experiences this week’s activities raised for you?

Concerning groupwork, the experience was great. I was able to gather a group and make them participate as well. Everyone was very willing to join and had their spirits up, which was a good sign. To be honest, I considered that the group would be more passive, but I was positively surprised that I worked with such a great team. Even Alice, who joined the group later, was very positive and got her hands on the project.


3. What is your evaluation of this week's groupwork? (What went well and what did not? How did groupwork influence fulfilling your personal learning contract?)

I would evaluate our groupwork the following way:
First I managed to add every member to my Skype account and start an individual conversation with them, then we managed to fix (using Doodle) a common time when we should meet all together. I was very positive with the

4. Describe what has changed in your personal learning environment and in group environment?

My personal learning environment consists of the usual means, because this is a kind of system I have used during the whole IMKE learning period. On week 3 nothing changed in our group learning environment yet. A PbWiki environment was created in order to collaborate with the groupwork tasks. I created an introduction of all members as well as put some vital information to the environment.

Long Tail Model in New Media

The Long Tail marketing model enables to sell different goods which are covering a niche for a small number of people, in other words these are not mainstream products. As the lecture talked about selling books and audio, the other multimedia formats can be sold the same way. For example online movie renting is a great solution to engage lots of films which would be hidden or not present at all in the movie shops, can hold a perfect choice of older and newer, and perhaps even the worst films ever created. Usually there is interest in all kinds of films, and through online renting service a person would be able to get his or her favourite genres and enjoy them whenever he or she wants.

The long tail model is applied through selling content via Internet, thus not taking any physical space. People have to download content in order to watch it, and are asked to pay for watching the content. Now it does not really matter if the film itself is a niche product or a big hit, every person can find the film he or she likes, and watch it for a small fee. This model also keeps the maintenance costs low.

Another possibility to engage long tail model would be in selling information. News, blogs, podcasts, e-books, etc. can be a valuable source for anyone, but as there is not enough room for information in the libraries, it is a great opportunity to keep things on the “shelves” of online repositories for people to enjoy. Here the long tail model would be applied in form of an online repository and delivered to people through registered usage and/or payment. People now would be able to find even old and outdated information in any media format to
listen to, read or watch. I think such models make information available for all kinds of crowds. Digital information is a better source for all kinds of materials than analogue information. It is stored better, accessed more easily, and longer preserved than the original sources. This covers the need for every single person’s information need as well, and that is why this kind of model is valuable for present and future consumers.

Thoughts on Generating Revenue in New and Interactive Media.

Introduction

Interactive media is developing very fast, so that there are quite a number of changes happening every now and then. It is necessary to use creativity and some background research in order to define peoples’ interests in getting them addicted in something, and therefore getting a grip of a large amount of people to cleverly ask for revenue for the services they are willing to pay for. Although nowadays it is difficult to distinguish between
new and improved versions of making money through Internet, people are still making innovations in revenue making models.

Online communities

Since online communities are developing very fast, my guess is that a lot of the future models for generating revenue could come from these sites, including Twitter, Orkut or Facebook, where it is possible to get people hooked in many different actions. I think it is easily possible to gather a group of people through these websites, and through some kind of addictive action develop a further plan for gathering revenue for that. One can agitate a fund raising event or an auction widget. There is another possibility to make money, that is
playing online games in Facebook. These attract people easily, because they are simple and logical games. Through playing people buy virtual goods and in order to get more exclusive items, and pay for virtual money exchanged for real money. I believe that many kinds of events are possible revenue collectors as long as these actions keep people hooked up. For the latter people need to think of new ways to keep money coming in, because people tend to get bored with one thing.

Revenue Sharing Model in New Media

Participatory new media makes it possible to make profit through various channels where participation can be fun and engaging, making it even more valuable for the users. We have all become used that there is advertising flashing everywhere over the internet, either spam or something of interest, but earning revenue makes an ad more tempting for the user of the service. A service provider gets a higher sum of money and a lot of profit through such revenue system, but it is equally valuable for the service user, clients and the main company.
Not only ads are being sold this way, there is a possibility to sell different goods and get paid
by clicks from your site. In the following paragraphs I would like to describe three examples of participatory media revenue sharing models of Google AdSense, Qinteractive, and Amazon.com.