Media Equation and my work:
Wow - seeing this information in print has blown me away. At some introspective level I was aware that I interacted with media in a social sense, but had not realized it. To realize that all humans do, is life altering to me. It makes me an even bigger "Apostle of PBS" when it comes to children and the impact of media on children. What they watch truly is who they become. I read further into chapter 2 and 3 of the book (by mistake!) but am glad I did because there are more concrete examples of how humans socialize and interact with media. The role of polite interactions whether it be human or human/media was amazing. Really makes you consider how you would shape a lesson on the computer - like our Camtasia project. Chapter 3 covered the perception of interpersonal distance when a human uses a computer - again another impact in my design process for the Camtasia project. When I looked at Joe's Captasia lesson and saw him within the display, it brought it "home" about him relating to his students who would be using the media. Good job, Joe!
An additional responsibility I have on my job is overseeing our WUFT web page. That was a decision made by my bosses, even though I told them I had NO special knowledge of the creation or utilization of web sites other than on a personal use basis. (That is on THEM!) Ever the people pleaser, I'm trying to keep on top of it and learn new things. This article really helped me understand about the social needs of the citizens who come to our site. I was just going back over it at www.wuft.tv and I'm thinking that our pledge pages need more personalization to make the donating of money more "friendly" and socially interactive. Overall, I think I need to incorporate more human faces onto the various pages to personalize the experience as well. One example of the social and natural response people have with media is this:
Our bosses at WUFT tasked a committee of us staffers to research PBS web sites and make recommendations on ours. As we met and individually reviewed which sites were our "favorites", we independently thought the sites with human faces on the front were "better". There were 3 women and 1 male on the committee. 100% of the females pointed out the human face factor and the 1 guy agreed with us. We were certainly reacting to the social interaction of the human face as a positive aspect! Our committee recommended that we get a professional web designer, but the bosses budget wouldn't allow it.....So, here I am!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Hi Pam;
ReplyDeleteI, too, take care of my UF department's website. I only work there part-time anymore since I am teaching at SFC. Our chairman always makes a point of telling me to personalize the web pages with lots of pictures and current events. After reading the media equation I can see why we would want to strive to improve the design of our site. Page 8 of the Media Equation says, "People have a strong positive bias towards social relationships and predictable environments, the more a media technology is consistent with social and physical rules, the more enjoyable the technology will be to use". Wouldn't you like to do an experiment with your pledge pages to see if different designs made a difference in the pledges received?
I agree that Joe's appearance put forth a more polite and friendly feeling to his video!
I just had a human interaction with my computer! I was almost done responding to your post, clicked on a link and... the whole response was gone. So anyway, when you said kids will become what they watch it got me thinking. I never bought into the dangers of certain tv/music on young people until my first practicum in an urban setting. The middle school students were obsessed with some really nasty, obscene lyrics. This may be the dark side of the Media Equation. Course content becomes more alive and so do some things we would like to keep our kids from taking too seriously. I think it's a great idea to make your website more "friendly". I hope the concepts we read will help me make better use of media as well. And I’m glad I got to look at the website, looks good.
ReplyDeleteJoe
I couldn't agree with you more. We are responsible for making things more "user friendly." We forget that things are about more then just information and content and that we have to take into account how the information is presented. The reactions of our students and users is crucial to the success of the learning.
ReplyDelete