SEO | Social Media | Usability | TeachingSEO | Social Media | Usability | Teaching | SEO | Social Media | Usability | Teaching

Stage 32 – Fade in to a Social Network for creatives and artists

Sascha Funk — Sat, 12 May 2012 19:50:09 +0000

The other day I stumbled across a ‘new’ social network. It focuses on creatives and artists and aims on connecting both. It’s called Stage 32 and uses the slogan ‘fade in’ to stay in your mind. When signing up you’ll be asked to enter your name, location, age and profession (comedian, artist, director, etc…) so that Stage 32 can later show you interesting people in your sidebar. Once you’re all set you can share pictures, galleries, videos, screenplays or your resume to attract and find like minded or interested people that are looking for work or artists with whom to work together. The lounge is the place to share current projects and ask for things you need for your production, promotion or whatever is on your mind. Kinda the craigslist for creatives and artists within Stage 32. The sidebar here shows current categories and the amount of discussions that are going on. You can join them or post your own project of course. The updates section then shows, surprise, updates from your network while the buzz section shows current buzz from throughout the web regarding all things creative. Furthermore there is also a active blog being maintained that covers tips [...]

The right to be read

Sascha Funk — Tue, 08 May 2012 20:27:04 +0000

A few days ago I came across a google+ discussion started by a quite famous German PR guy where he asked what people think when somebody tells them that they didn’t read their post, article, statement or paper and, when asked about it, simply rep...

Bulls Eye vs. The Heat is on | subjective NBA Playoffs Prediction 2012

Sascha Funk — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 08:15:02 +0000

Since I had so much fun ranting about the soccer (yeah actually it’s called football, like the REAL football but since this posts aims at US Sport I have to use terminology that even the guys understand who play footBALL with an egg…) match the other day I thought ‘hey…let’s pick on a new topic. bball’. Said and done. So here it goes. My 2012 NBA Playoffs Prediction. And just to spoil it: Yes, Lebron will travel and No, OKC won’t make it. The Champ is here! Honor where honor’s due. Champions first. After an incredibly disastrous season the Mavs finally found back onto track right for the playoffs by winning all of their last games and beating Atlanta in the last game of the sea….oh wait…the Mavs lost? Really? Hm. Damn it. Alright. Again: Honor where honor’s due. Champions first. After an incredibly disastrous season the Mavs seemed to find their way back on track until they lost it again after 4 or 5 games in a row and the only constant thing about their game is that it keeps on sucking. Yeah, kinda describes it. Before you all start complaining though I have to admit that I am biased. [...]

Mr. Guardiola tear down this wall

Sascha Funk — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 11:26:35 +0000

Welcome to one of the rare ‘Sascha (yes, that’s how you spell my name, really) can’t keep his mouth shut’ posts that I decided to publish here on my website. Usually I don’t publish them, throw them away or post them elsewhere. However I became to lazy to maintain all those different web personas and thought I might post more personal stuff over here. Nevertheless there won’t be any relationship or dirty laundry posts coming up. If you’re now disappointed I can totally understand that. But don’t worry, you can see more dirty laundry here… Enough of the prequel now. Back to the matter at hand. One of the least important things on a global scale, nevertheless an important thing for everybody who doesn’t have any real problems: Football. Yesterday the semi-final of the most important club trophy, the Champions League, was held between the blaugrana matadors that are being paid by the FC Barcelona and the guys that played like fish & chips tastes. From the Stamford Bridge, the FC Chelsea. I’ve always been a supporter of Barca (FC Barcelona, for the ones who usually only click and get horny when there is something about Apple or Google in [...]

If you smell…what WWE is rocking. Social Media role model.

Sascha Funk — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 15:25:04 +0000

A post about Social Media & WWE. Two of the things I like very much. Already love it. For those of you who do not know the WWE: WWE stands for World Wrestling Entertainment and it’s basically a good choreographed, action packed, ‘super athletes compete in fake beatings’. To make it short: It’s a big show and a billion dollar industry in the states. WWE airs the two most watched tv series in the states (Monday Night Raw and Friday Night SmackDown) and it’s only reasonable for such a company to take on social media. While WWE Superstars (that’s how they call their athletes/actors) participate in Social Media for quite a while already (The Rock or John Cena have some of the biggest fanpages and followers in the whole entertainment industry) WWE now takes it even a little further. When you enter the (very nice) URL www.wwe.com/social into your browser and hit enter you will be taken to the Social Media Hub ‘WWE InterAction‘ of the WWE. This hub combines twitter, facebook & the website chat in one place. It also lets you browse through each of those services individually. It pretty much combines all WWE mentions from twitter (via [...]

Loudlee – social music network

Sascha Funk — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 18:04:14 +0000

While you’re all going crazy about (wooohooo, a picture sharing platform!) I happend to come across loudlee. Loudlee is a ‘social music network‘ that lets you add songs and artists to your library and follow people (like on pinterest :P) you like. So what’s new with that you might ask by now. And that’s a good question. In a time where there are already numerous ‘social music networks’ like last.fm, blip.fm, grooveshark or even stuff like spotify bringing out a start-up in this area sounds like ‘just another bs-shot-from-the-hip-project’. And yeah, well, it didn’t invent the wheel again – but does it have too? Maybe improving the stuttering wheel is already enough. Compared to blip.fm it is, for example, wayyyy more stylish. The user interface is just cool, shows covers, artist pictures, etc and the embedded youtube videos are actually working (hello, blip.fm). Just like on last.fm – but compared to last.fm it rocks since there is no restriction regarding how many songs you can play (on last.fm I ran out of ‘free’ songs a long time ago – since then they always try to force me into a paid membership). If we take on grooveshark (which I actually happened [...]

Teaching Diary: English Communication Scavenger Hunt

Sascha Funk — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 05:22:30 +0000

Once more a hands on post about something I tried in class this term. The first time ever that somebody over here tried to pull an ‘interactive’ game off so it wasn’t that easy to get the people involved but in the end it worked out. Not perfectly, but still funny and with the desired outcome. So get ready for the first ever Udon Thani Vocational College English Communication Scavenger Hunt (EC|SH). So here are a few steps explained. Maybe it’s some inspiration, maybe you simply see what traps are awaiting you when planning such a game or maybe it even scares you off. However I thought the experience is worth sharing. Intention: Many colleagues asked me ‘why are you doing this? It’s to much work..’ – The simple answer: I think it would be fun and I want students to use their shyness when it comes to English communication. I want them to be able to use English in every day life and in all different kind of situations. Initial Situation: I told all classes they have to form teams who participate in the game. Then I told them that the game will start on a fixed date at [...]

Social Media & Education: Twitter for Teaching

Sascha Funk — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:31:20 +0000

After already talking about the biggest of all social networks, facebook, and its potential for teaching purposes and the article on how to use a self hosted website for educational matters, it is now time to focus on another big player in the social media hemisphere. Twitter. For those of you who don’t know Twitter Twitter is a short messaging service which actually plays a big role in social media marketing, branding and entertainment. The biggest user group is, right now, therefore not the typical 16-25 peer group but older users with more experience. However more and more students are getting into it and warming up with the short and quick way of sharing interests and news. Twitter allows you to send messages up to 140 characters through the web. You can either publish those messages publicly on your profile (e.g. twitter.com/nomadteacher1) twitter profile with publicly visible tweets (messages) or you can address those messages directly to a specific user while adding his username in front of a message (e.g. @sayfun check out this cool blog post about how to use twitter for teaching on nomadteacher.org). addressing a message on twitter directly – still publicly visible. you can also add [...]

Social Media & Education: Brief guide to jump-start your social media efforts

Sascha Funk — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 17:57:44 +0000

After my blog post about Facebook & Teaching I received quite a lot of mails asking for more examples and advice on how to use Social Media for teaching purposes. While I am currently writing on further in depth posts on how to use some of the well known social media platforms I thought it might also be a good idea to get a post out that doesn’t get to much into detail but shows some of the current highlights of social networks in terms of educational implementation possibilities. Having that said I hope everyone understands that this is just thought as an overview. The more specific posts to each of these social networks are coming soon. 1.) Facebook First place in our little journey across social media plattforms is, of course, Facebook. Kind of a no-brainer since Facebook is still THE fastest growing Social Network worldwide and the number one Social Network in most countries. If you are interested in an in-depth analysis on how to use facebook for teaching purposes, please follow this link to my currently published article about exactly this matter: Social Media & Education: Facebook for Teaching. In short: Facebook is great because most students [...]

Social Media & Education: Using Facebook for Teaching

Sascha Funk — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 17:51:52 +0000

Social Media is definitely a huge field with numerous possibilities to interact or getting started. However facebook somehow simply is the one network which is widely known as ‘the social network’ or even ‘the internet’. So it seemed quite reasonable for me to start my series ‘Using Social Media for Education‘ with facebook as first example. I simply assume that most of you know facebook and already are there (active or passive). If this isn’t the case please feel free to head over to my ‘Social Media Explained’ section and explore facebook’s possibilites in general. But enough with the preface, let us start with the conversation. However, before getting into examples and best practices, let us get rid of the thought that facebook is bad and the origin of all evil. I already discussed whether social media is good or bad in terms of teaching & studies, let’s not start this discussion again (if so, please in the comments section beneath the post mentioned above) and assume that facebook is not developed by the devil himself (even though I wouldn’t put my shirt on it – however it’s not the root of all evil). Here is a short informational graphic [...]