Fog
Via Nicholas Gunner - I love when campus is covered with morning fog. It gives everything a quiet, almost mystic feel.
Do you agree? Why or why not?
IBM flexes its muscles with storytelling
Last week IBM launched a video campaign called “A Boy And His Atom: The World’s Smallest Movie” which demonstrates the company’s ability to move single atoms on a surface.
IBM wants everyone in the world to know that they are doing the most insane-nasty atomic research around — especially if you’re an investor. They’ve definitely accomplished that with this video. If their audience is anything like me, they were totally blown away by the notion that individual carbon monoxide molecules can be arranged to form shapes.
I’m particularly impressed with the making-of video (below) where we see the minds behind the research. IBM takes full advantage of their own wow factor by laying on fast facts about the use of their technology in the real world. They break down what building things one atom at a time could mean for average people.
There’s something spectacular about demonstrating a really complicated product in a creative and fun way. This one gets IBM’s message across while sparking curiosity. See kids — science is fun. See kids’ dads — science is a good investment.
EnMoment: Why media design might save the world
Here we are, confidently in the digital age, a time when the collective knowledge of man-kind rests at your thigh and is accessed with a swipe and a tap. We know what’s happening in the world instantly but we often don’t get beyond the surface of stories.
It’s not that we…
Street Art
Via Nicholas Gunner - Students from the Guerilla, Graffiti and Street Art honors class installed this pac-man inspired street art early this morning in Reed Library.
Sticky Post-it notes were used to depict Pac-man and one of his enemies, a ghost. Written on each note is a word or phrase describing something that either stresses students out(blue notes) or makes them feel happy(yellow notes). All notes were collected from students at the 2013 Student Research and Creativity Exposition.
“Good things eat the bad.” said one student about the intended message of the piece.
The stress destroying nature of this art fits in perfectly with this week’s “De-stress for Success” initiatives.
The students say the piece was inspired by “Invader”, an internationally known street artist whose works often resemble pixelated video game characters. They say they learned about the artist along with many others in class.
Leesa Rittlemann teaches Honors 224: Guerilla, Graffiti and Street Art. The class aims to offer an in-depth look at art made for exhibition or performance outside of the museum or gallery. The class increases student understanding of contemporary art beyond traditional textbooks and institutions.
“2 other teams created a Moss Graffiti installation and Poetry Bomb respectively,” Rittlemann said. “I thought the Post-It note team did a nice job developing a project that is visually bold due to the neon Post-It hues, visible to all… It also offered a fun opportunity for students to write down their stressors and triumphs in these last busy weeks of the term. The team’s choice of the Pac Man and Ghost symbols worked well with the content and is in keeping with the Post-It note movement in general.”
This piece serves as a reminder that in order to score high this semester, one must not run from their stress, but rather tackle it head on.
How to make Apple Caviar
A video about an honors course at SUNY Fredonia that is focused on the science behind food.
One Year of Social Media at SUNY Fredonia
Where our primary accounts were in April of 2012:
Where they are one year later:
Where we’re going:
In the last year, we’ve been successful at maintaining a consistent social media presence for SUNY Fredonia. We’ve engaged our audience on a daily basis with original content, giving current students, prospective students, alumni, donors, media outlets and local communities a transparent view of daily happenings at our institution. Our primary goal moving forward will be to continue transmitting these glimpses of Fredonia.
There is a lot more to do. To start, we are monitoring up-coming social networks and are beginning the process of cultivating new communities online. We recently started promoting a SUNY Fredonia Instagram account as well as pushing content to SUNY Fredonia Pintrest Pinboards.
The Zweig Collection at SUNY Fredonia is an important archive of letters, manuscripts and books by and about Stefan Zweig.
Fred Post: Here are the early stages of Fredonia post, an online publication designed to house SUNY Fredonia’s social content. The site was built with mobile traffic as a top priority. It has a responsive design and thumb-ready features such as swipe-able photo slideshows. The portal gives our team the ability to incorporate experimental multimedia into our content while dramatically adding to our ability to track the effectiveness of content on the social web.
Fred Post has 4 main types of content: Recycled stories, glimpses of Fredonia, featured events, and featured stories.
Recycled stories: These are pieces of content taken from various publications across campus, such as the Campus Report, and re-published on Fred Post. Stories are chosen based on their anticipated social value.
A glimpse of Fredonia: “Glimpses” are short snapshots of campus. Usually a photo or series of photos capturing everyday moments. Several of these are published per week.
Featured events: A couple “Don’t miss” events are put into the system each week and promoted via our social channels. These featured events automatically expire after the event takes place.
Featured stories: The flagship content of Fred Post. We plan to roll out a feature story every two or three weeks. These stories dive into a topic related to SUNY Fredonia through various multimedia including photography, videography, interactive media and long form writing. Feature stories will also each have a social component to them, allowing our audience to take part in their creation. Topics are chosen with our admissions and marketing goals in mind.
Fred Post is currently live at fredonia.edu/post
Weird Google Form Notification Rules Glitch
Earlier today, I built and embedded a Google form into a campus department’s website. I do this on a regular basis and find forms to be nice for a quick and easy way to give control of forms to individuals who need them. But this time I was asked for the department to be notified via email every time an entry was made on the form.
No problem, right? Just have the doc user open the Google spreadsheet associated with the form, go to ‘Tools—>Notification rules…’ and make a rule to send an email every time someone submits the form.
Problem: The save button wasn’t clickable when setting up rules(See slightly greyed ‘Save’ button in image below). The CMS web dude in me assumed that there must be a permission error? Nope. Perhaps you can’t use notifications when the doc is shared? That’s not the problem. When it’s public you can’t send notifications? That would defeat the purpose in most cases and no, making the doc private still won’t let you save!
1 Week evaluation of “Our Common Thread” Holiday video. A simple concept: All students, faculty, staff and alums of SUNY Fredonia share a common thread.
Shot using a Canon 60d w/50mm 1.4 and edited on Adobe Premiere Pro CS6.
Fast stats (1 week after publishing):
- Facebook- Reach:2,933 | Engaged Users: 404 | Virality: 8.8% | 70 Shares | 85 Likes | 7 Comments
- Twitter- 12 Retweets | 5 Favorites
- Youtube- 5,412 Views | 61 Likes | 3 Dislikes | 19 Comments | 47.9% Male/52.1% Female | 28.5% mobile viewership | Viewed in 31 countries and 41 states | Top 5 states by views: New York (3,841), Massachusetts (277), Florida (153), California (103), Pennsylvania (96)
