Week 3 Video of Edward Melvin , Project Manager for ICAN

Hi, I’m back this week with my second post. Unfortunately this week there was no guest lecturer and we had to watch a recording done by last year students.  The video was good but I would prefer a live lecturer, it is easier to understand and being able to interact sometimes makes a difference.

I will move on to the subject now and introduce Edward Melvin, Project Manager, ICAN. Looking at their website they seem to be a very busy company: “We employ 28 highly talented people and have some of the best strategic, creative and technical minds in the Irish digital industry working for us. From airlines to coffee, we represent a diverse range of clients…”.

Edward tried to explain how projects work in ICAN and what the process is to get a good result. Helping clients to define a vision was one of his first points. Using skills, team work, creativity they can advise their clients in order to get started on processing good projects.

They provide online and offline services including web design, online advertising, search engine optimization, project management, offline media. Sony , Oracle,  Eircom are few of the well known companies that work with them, Edward bullet pointed some of the projects they had involving these companies.

We learned  about the structure ICAN is build on and in what each of the following categories are involved :

1) Managing Director

2) Creative

3) Production

4) Client Services

5) Media

6) Search Marketing

7) Accounting

Leaving ICAN aside we looked at their clients and the reasons behind contracting a digital media agency. Campaigns will involve meetings, strategy, briefs (making the client understand the project), proposal, concept, planning, production, testing, release  and will be done by a campaign team (account manager, art director, production team etc.) Web projects on the other hand involve a plan, design, development, delivering content and partner review.

Next our guest lecturer explained his job and what project management is. Project managers have to deliver a profitable project for the agency on time, within budget and to client expectations, they way they have to ensure that is by following a set of guidelines (realistic estimating, detailed planning, client involvement).Again we seen some of his projects and he explained the process before the end product.

At the end of the video we looked in more detail at the team working in ICAN and to a short review and conclusions of the lecture we just seen.

Edward delivered us very useful information on how digital media works and the importance this industry has today and very useful tips on how to try master it.

Thanks to the students that did the recording .

Week 2 : Geraldine Gray “Learning Styles”

Hi , welcome to my first post on discussing   my Working in Digital Media module in ITB.

Our second week   we had our very first guest lecturer: Geraldine Gray Lecturer in the Department of Informatics ITB.

The discussion was about what learning styles are and how can learners be categorized ,understanding these styles will help design ways to deliver content .There are different ways people learn and we looked at few of them .I found a lot about my own ways of learning and that can put things into a new perspective helping me better assimilate information.

Channel Learning divides into three part : Visual , Kinaesthetic, Auditory and each of these represents  the way information is taken. There are specific hints for any of these categories , for example for auditory learners recording  classes on tape and then re listen and summarize  .We also found about what each of these categories are good at , visual learners being good at reading ,spelling and proof reading while kinaesthetic people are good at sports, dance…

To make a visual model of these three I will try to explain in a few words how each are working.

I will say about the auditory learners that they learn best by hearing the information or they can remember more accurately when it has been explained to them orally. They could have difficulties when the reader is going to fast and could be easily distracted by sounds.

Next are Visual Learners and they learn best from seeing content. There are two types : linguistic and spatial (category where I fit in the most).Visual linguistic learners love written word while visual spatial learners learn best from videos , diagrams , videos and other visual material. This category can encounter difficulties when listening to a lecturer that doesn’t have any visual pictures or graphics to illustrate.

Last we looked at  Kinaesthetic learners , people that learn best while touching, manipulation of different objects , simulations or at live events .The difficulties for them are as followed : sitting still, listening lectures , recalling what is seen or heard and expressing emotions without physical movement.

Towards the end of the class we learned about three cognitive strengths in learning: linguistic, non linguistic, affective . Kolb is the best known model analysing individuals approach to a learning activity. Geraldine explained the different types of learner behaviour giving us example of people that could go into each separate category.

Many thanks to Geraldine for delivering us a great lecture.