Task 3

Analyzing other participants' Task 2.

For this analysis I selected randomly five blogs from the participants' list:

• http://maarjapajusalu.wordpress.com/category/nie2010/
• http://kerstitoming.wordpress.com/2010/10/09/self-observation-and-analysis-of-creating-a-study-plan/
• http://reimoverse.wordpress.com/2010/10/11/task-2-activity-plan-fall-2010/
• http://argoimke.wordpress.com/2010/10/06/task-2-self-observation-and-analysis-of-creating-a-study-plan/
• http://marupada.blogspot.com/

What elements, components, etc. have been used by others to describe their activity?

In my opinion I found three group of students and their strategy for selecting courses for this semester.

The first one would be students with work and family life. The most important factor was there the ability to fit the course into their time schedule. For example Argo could only attend evening ones or online courses.

The second group would be perhaps younger students with more free schedule, who only focus to fill the curriculum and take as much courses as possible - including free electives with subjects that interest them.

The third group is mainly last year students who are staying abroad (like myself) and only are taking those few courses that is needed for graduation.

So in general the most important components for everyone would be time and relevance to curriculum. Also in fewer cases the form of the course - online versus class lectures. 

What level of detail?

Most people described there decision making quite efficiently. In my opinion it is a bit hard to judge, because the process itself is mainly quite automatic. Ofcourse most of the students are IMKE students and as I have different background then I don't really know how many courses are offered there in the beginning of the year. For example in Baltic Film and Media School the amount of courses offered is basically the same what you have to take, so the part where you can make a selection is rather limited.

What structural aspects are showing up in their descriptions/visualisations?

In my opinion all visualization and description have the same structure. It all start with the person taking into account time, relevance to curriculum, form, amount of credit points, etc. Also the schemes of visualization have the same structure - mapping their thoughts according to their needs.

What is missing?Pros and cons of different approaches?

As for me the reading of other people blogs was basically the same. They all described same "mind-mapping" with same tools, including my own. Maybe for me it was missing a little bit more background information about the courses from what they could actually make a selection (as i pointed out before - my background seems to be completely different, so it would be nice to know how the system works in a different school). 

And maybe the reading of blogs would not be so repetitive, if people would have been using more original approach to differ from others. Therefore as the ones I was reading, did not differ so much from each other then it is also hard to list pros and cons. The good side of everyone's description was that all of them managed to explain themselves more or less clearly and it gave a good overview how the student minds are working. The main problem for me was that they were too similar, so when reading them it felt very repetitive. 

(I do not want to harm anyone's feelings and I make my selection based on pure randomness so I could have both female and male versions of study plans. And I did not read all of them. Also my own was rather poor and boring.)

Task 2

Task 2 was to map your decisions for scheduling this semester's study plan. As I am a student of Baltic Film and Media School on the edge of my graduation then this was unordinary for me (I am staying in Prague till my thesis defenses).
The main points what I considered were:

• location - to making it possible for me to graduate while staying abroad
• form of the lecture - as I had to take two more courses from TLU then they had to be online courses
• relevance to my profession or curricula - this point I had to take two courses that would fill introduction module in my department's curricula
• time - is the course time consuming or not, because as I am working and dealing with my thesis film then I needed to take something that does not occupy so much of my time.

This year my main academic goal is to graduate and move on to my master studies. (and please do forgive me the horrible image that i managed to create. i don't have proper programs for that at the moment due the lack of disk space and i had to use open office - with its flaws and irrational way of behaving)

Task 1

Web publishing

My previous experience with web publishing is rather limited. I have mainly used it for my school work or just for personal interest. Also in my opinion understanding the term "web publishing" is a bit difficult in nowadays society, because it should consist some informative content that could be interesting to some group of people, but as social networking portals like Facebook and Twitter make it so easy and accessible then it is hard to imagine a person without any previous knowledge about it.

As I young social person I do own a Facebook account and use it quite often, but mainly to stay in contact with my international friends, with who I am not able to communicate from face to face. And of course I am posting "what's on your mind" statuses and sometimes links - music videos, news pieces, etc. But I as it has been only my personal information and for my friends, I can not really call it web publishing. Although I have noticed that since I started to use it I have used less and less online news  portals, because it does provide very fast information flow and as it mainly comes from your friends (with who you share same interests) then it just helps you to find news pieces that interest you faster.

For my school work and research I mainly use Wikipedia and blogs as there are so many of them with specific content. I do appreciate that some people have taken this time and energy to share their knowledge with everyone else. Unfortunately I have to say that I have not been one of them and this is my first time to have my own blog. 

I also use semi regularly  Estonian music portal Rada7. Although I don't post there too often and it is hardly ever something important :)