Week 4 tut 10-12

Welcome to Shane's NCT blog, this one being blog IV.



This week's Tutorial task is an introduction to Photoshop & posting images on our blogs. We have to post an assortment of images relating to certain themes.

This image is of me ( The one on the right) & my friend, Nick, which was taken at our year 12 formal using a digital camera of some sort. This photo represents the theme of friends, firstly, because Nick is my friend & secondly, formal's are a gathering of friends you have known for many years to celebrate the end of a major period in your life. This first image is pretty basic, all I done was select the background and filter it with a brush filter.

Tutorial 3 10-12

Welcome to Week III of the wonderful NCT blog!


Today’s Tutorial Task requires the class to search the library databases for resources that will help us with our essay topic. I haven’t fully decided on what my essay topic will be on but I did think that Marshall McLuhan’s work is interesting and important to this course, so he might be an intriguing topic for my essay.

The first part of this Tutorial task for this week is to find a resource on my topic that will help me ‘formulate’ my essay. The one that popped up first in my search was the book, strangely titled Marshall McLuhan by Jonathan Miller (sarcastic, as if you couldn’t tell).

The next part of this task was to find 3 academic articles related to my topic and summarise the key points. The first one was quite easy as it was one of the records in my first search entitled Marshall McLuhan: Cosmic Resource by J. Marchessault it focuses on McLuhan’s life and putting his theories into a global context. I used the database JSTOR: the scholarly journal archive for the next 2 articles. The second article I looked at was entitled McLuhan In The Light Of Classical Rhetoric by Patrick Mahony which talked about the influence of Rhetoric on McLuhan’s work. And the last article I’m using for this task is entitled The McLuhan Thesis: Its Limits And Appeals by Edward Lueders which was written in 1967 during McLuhan’s time and talks of theories and compares him to great theorists.

I have also been asked to give a brief summary of what my essay will be about. Some points of thinking of at the moment are His concepts/theories, His theories in context of today, His impact on media theory & Criticisms.

Another task was the joining of a mailing list that was related to media or technology. I found one called fibreculture.org which has forums, reviews, projects, events & a journal on information technology & new media.

I believe I’m over my Wordcount now, so for this week,
Cheerio

Week 2 10-12 SB

Welcome once again to my NCT blog for my Tutorial, this being blog II.

This week we have been tasked to choose one issue from either the lecture or any readings to which we should discuss. I have read the first four chapters of the textbook and one aspect that intriguied me was Marshall McLuhan's concept of 'hot' and 'cool' media. I found this interesting because McLuhan segregates the media of his time and places them in 2 catagories, 'hot' which means the medium is full of information and has less involvement for the audience, and 'cool' which means the content is not full of information and has a greater sensory particapation.
But I thought, what if today's ever expanding mediums were placed into these 2 categories?, or if the the 'old' mediums still belong in their categories?, and if they possibly cross into both categories.

Basically, 'hot' media contains radio, film & photography. These mediums are often content driven, and require a low participation. Film's and photo's are visually stimulating and does not require the audience to fill in any details, radio does the same with sound.
'Cool' media contains such mediums as television, cartoons/comics & the telephone and require a high participation because the audience would have to fill in details such as in a cartoon where the visual detail is low or with a TV where the amount of information is of a lesser amount than with a film.

So what McLuhan is suggesting is that different media create different levels of participation, but today, some 30 years after the passing of McLuhan does his media theory still apply?. Current media has changed alot in the past 10-15 years with new media such as the mobile phone and internet dominating today's culture. The Mobile phone, which is the new and improved telephone carries many mediums. Todays mobile's have the ability to watch live TV and download & listen to music. The Internet has the ability to listen to the radio, download TV programs & movies (naughty!) as well as many other things so it can be argued that the internet could be a 'warm' medium.

Television often has movies present- whether it be free-to-air or on pay-TV where there is channels that are dediccated to films. So does this mean that TV now crosses into the 'hot' category because it shows films? Or does it still have a 'cool' feel to it because you don't have to watch the movie like you do in a cinema?

What does the media of the future hold and what category will they fall under?, we shall see.

That's my blog for this week, I hope it ain't boring.
Shane

Week 1- Tute 10-12 SB

SHANE'S NCT BLOG FOR WEEK 1

How's it goin,
Welcome to my first blog for my New Communication Technologies (which will from now be referred to as NCT) course. My name is Shane Bailey, I'm 17, Born in Campbelltown, Sydney and moved to Tweed Heads when I was around 9-10 (can't remember exactly). I'm studying a bachelor of Journalism at GU GC campus. Journalism has always interested me, especially the field of sport's Journalism. I'm Doing 4 courses in my first year, first semester, these being (Effective Writing, NCT, intro to Marketing & Writing for the Web). I'm settling in to uni pretty well, even though the bus trip from tweed and back is a bit of a hassle. I'm finding each course to be very intriguing, the most intriguing of them being NCT (sucking up a tad).

Since we will need to be reflecting on the issues and such arising from the NCT lectures, Tutorials and the readings, I may as well start reflecting a bit on week 1. First lecture for NCT was last week, It was one of the best lectures of the week, Aprof. Stockwell is very interesting, his booming voice reminds me of my old Software teacher in high school. I'm pretty happy with the assignments involved with NCT compared to other courses I'm doing. I've read the first 4 chapters of the textboook. It's pretty interesting, but i'll have to read them again for them to sink in.

Lastly I'll talk about my interests. I enjoy Sport (League, cricket & NFL), Film, TV, Video games & reading. I'll most likely give a better blog in coming weeks since It's my first, and also My actual first blog wasn't saved for some silly reason (my mistake probably).

Till Next week,
Cheerio.