Bridget Z. Sullivan - Professor - Director Interactive Media Design Center
Department of Art+Design, Art History, Art Education, Center for the Arts 4023
Towson University, 8000 York Road, Towson, MD 21252
t. 410/704.2802 + f. 410/704.2810
bsullivan@towson.edu
im & skype: bzsnbmore + twitter @bzsnbmore + second life: bee Zimminy
IAMD Web2.0 applications
Note to IAMD students: Several Web2.0 tools are integral to the IAMD program and courses. If you wish you may begin setting up your free accounts with these services now.
You DO NOT need to set up these accounts prior to the start of classes, however I do realize you may want to begin preparing for your courses now.twitter // facebook // linkedin // skype // Second Life
twitter.com
Description: "Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. While the service costs nothing to use, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees." (Twitter, Wikipedia).
Follow @iamd-tu for useful tweets about the IAMD program, job opportunities, and info about the industry. A great way to network with your fellow IAMD students and professor.
Follow @bzsnbmore to read your professor's tweets. A great way to broaden your network out into the interactive design industry.
Facebook.com
Description: "Facebook is a social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc.[1] Users can add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region. The website's name stems from the colloquial name of a book given to incoming students at Zuckerberg's high school alma mater, Phillips Exeter Academy. The book shows the faces and names of the school's students and faculty." (Facebook, Wikipedia).
Friend your professor Bridget Zalewski Sullivan and join the Towson Innovation Lab - Second Life group and the Interactive Media Design - Towson University group. Facebook has become a great way to network.
Linkedin.com
Description: "Is a business-oriented social networking site founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003 mainly used for professional networking. As of July 2009, it had more than 43 million registered users, spanning 170 industries.." (LinkedIn, Wikipedia).
A professionally oriented networking service. You can create a useful network of business contacts to aid you in your professional networking efforts. This is not Facebook or Myspace. It is focused on your professional use. Connect with your professor and other IAMD students.
Skype.com
Description: "Epsilen ePortfolio lets students and faculty collect their lifelong work history, storing a wide array of materials to showcase performance and progress—multimedia artifacts, course-created materials, blogs, discussions, wikis, and more. " (Epsilen.com). Epsilen.com is free to students using an e-mail address ending in ".edu"
An educationally oriented networking service. You can create a useful network of education based contacts to aid you in your professional networking efforts. Epsilen offers an ePortfolio feature that permits students to showcase their projects and school work along side resume and other relavent professional information. This service is used in ART641 Interactive Media Concept+Theory to create course wikis.
Secondlife.com
Description: "Second Life (SL) is a virtual world developed by Linden Lab that launched on June 23, 2003 and is accessible via the Internet. A free client program called the Second Life Viewer[1] enables its users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars. Residents can explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade virtual property and services with one another, or travel throughout the world, which residents refer to as the grid. Second Life is for people aged 18 and over, while Teen Second Life is for people aged 13 to 17." (Secondlife, Wikipedia)
Second Life IAMD course activities
In an effort to make myself more available to my online students I am offering Monday evening chat sessions in the virtual reality environment Second Life. During the semester IAMD students are required to meet with me a minimum of 2 times in Second Life. Later in the semester there will be several required SL course activities. Instructions on how to get started in SL are posted in BlackBoard within Course Information.Second Life software and hardware
The SL software and account are free. The membership in New Media Consortium is free. The only cost is your time. It will require approximately 2-3 hours to acclimate yourself to the SL environment. If you wish to use Voice Chat in SL you will need to purchase a USB headset such as the Logitech Premium USB Headset 350 available from amazon.com for $42 (plus taxes and shipping) or available from Best Buy for $50 (plus tax and gas to get there). The purchase of the headset is completely optional.