To complete Thing 13, I chose to explore Vimeo. I am very accustomed to YouTube and I have even been required to upload projects while at school as part of my university course. I have also used Media Hopper before for work. However, I have only used Vimeo once, to watch one of my favourite web series. At the time, I wondered why the creative team behind the series would use Vimeo, as YouTube is arguably the more well-known video sharing platform and would, therefore, reach a greater audience. After exploring Vimeo, I can now see that it would be a good platform for original, creative content. The content rules seem quite clear and there is a great guide on the different types of licenses that users can apply to their videos. Although there will always be problems with copyright infringement on public media sharing platforms, the smaller size of the Vimeo platform appears to allow for greater control over the content. The licensing information is easily found on individual videos, by clicking on the “more” button underneath the title, and you can even search for videos based on their license type. While YouTube also has this function, it only allows you to search for videos that have been tagged “creative commons”. As for accessibility, users can add closed captioning and subtitles.

Using OER Commons, I was able to find a brief course on how to use library resources at a university. Made up of videos and explanatory PDFs, it instructs the user on how to use the catalogue, databases and common citations. Although it is not the most up-to-date example of an OER, I chose it because it was relevant to my own work and ties in with “Bonus Thing C”. If I could create an OER, it would be a similar course on how to use the library resources available at the University of Edinburgh. Many universities offer these courses, online, for students to undertake in their own time. Some schools, like the University of Bologna, have tried to popularise them by requiring that student employees complete the online course before starting work. There are many wonderful resources available to students at the University of Edinburgh, like interlibrary loans or the request a book service, and an introductory course on the use of them would ensure students can make the most of what is available to them. There are several instructive pages on the University of Edinburgh website about how to use the library and its resources, but a succinct course would ensure that students learn about ALL of the resources, not just those they are specifically searching for. Video tutorials can also often be easier to follow than written instruction. The University of Bologna Information Literacy Tutorial is a great example of this.

Wikipedia! One of my favourite resources. It is a great jumping-off point for research. It can point you towards other resources. Because the content can change in different languages, it can lead you to places you would have never found otherwise, especially if your research is usually English-based.

Last year, I had the opportunity to take part in the Wikipedia training offered by the University of Edinburgh. It was a great experience and I would highly recommend it to everyone. Even if you have no interest in editing Wikipedia, it is important to understand how the editing process, and the website in general, work. The visual editor (similar to the visual editor used on WordPress) makes it incredibly easy to edit. I decided to still do the Wikipedia Adventure and it was very helpful. It was a good refresher of what I learnt during the Wiki training and provided a bit more information about the social aspects of Wikipedia. I also like earning the little badges, I think they’re a great way to show the quality and experience level of editors and add some credibility to their edits.

There is a Wikipedia-editing session for International Women’s Day. I wish I could take the time off work to attend! There is also WikiProject Women, it is open to everyone, and addresses the under-representation of content on Wikipedia about women and covering women’s perspectives.

Over the Christmas holidays, I tried to video call my family in Canada while I was with my partner’s family on a hill, in a fairly remote area of Italy. I expected that we would encounter issues with accessing the internet, but surprisingly, connectivity was not the problem. The problem was the program we were trying to use. I had relied on this video calling service heavily in the past and I would consider myself quite computer literate, we even logged on early to ensure there would be no issues. However, the program was impossible to use. So many features had been added to this program that it became unusable. We could send messages, but then you could not use the video function. At one point, the call was ringing and we could not answer it because we could not leave the chat section. The problem was an increase in functions and an attempt to create a minimalist user interface, a disastrous combination. We settled on my brother (who was also not at the family home) video calling on the laptop to my family, me video calling with another app on the phone, and the rest of the family moving the phone around to face the computer screen, with my brother on it, as needed. It was a bizarre and confusing call, to say the least! This long story is to say, I would have appreciated Google Hangouts in that moment! During my first year of uni, we also used the aforementioned video calling program to conduct classes with my Chinese language teacher. Google Hangouts would have been great for our one-on-one tutoring sessions and we could have used Collaborate Ultra for lectures as language teaching requires a lot more interaction than a regular lecture. Exploring the options on Google Hangouts, I found it very user-friendly and the features were easy to navigate, I will definitely be using it in the future!

I started using Facebook when I was 13 and during the first week of the 23Things course, I went through all of my Facebook settings and my profile to ensure everything was up to date and my privacy was protected (as much as possible). So I am quite familiar with Facebook. I use Facebook groups often as they are a great way to connect with your community and share interests and information. My universities relied heavily on Facebook groups to both provide a space for students to share information and a place to laugh about the absurdities of living in a heavily slanted house, or sharing your bedroom with an aggressive squirrel and even complain about the live wires hanging in your bathroom. We also used groups for class projects and when I moved to Edinburgh, I used groups to find roommates. However, I have never used groups to share information with family. It may be a good idea, as there are a lot of concerns with sharing pictures online but there are also many family members who would not see these images or learn about your life otherwise. A private group seems like a more elegant solution than a long email thread.

At first, I did not think Thing 7 was particularly interesting. I set up a Twitter account a few years ago, to understand the platform while I was working with arts promotion. However, I never understood the appeal of the platform. I often found myself inundated with unnecessary, and often negative, information and I preferred image-based social media, like Instagram or Dribble. After reading through the resources for this week, I realise that you can use Twitter to connect to the people, businesses, and topics that you are interested in and you can use the tools provided through Twitter to streamline your feed. Being mindful of which accounts you are following can also improve your experience on the platform.

Although I am not interested in setting up a personal account or an account associated with my current position at the University of Edinburgh, I have decided to overhaul my original Twitter account to suit my art practice.