During the summer of 2012, I got the wonderful opportunity to study abroad through IES Abroad in London. While I was abroad for two months I explored many cities, learned about new cultures and ate wonderful food. I was also able to take a few weekend trips to Brighton, Wiltshire, Salisbury, Bath, Dublin and Barcelona.
Have a look at the personal blog I kept through my study abroad in London.
I took a class at Loyola titled, Communication and New Media. This class was run through a class wiki where all the students in the class could access, edit and share ideas with each other in one place. The course focused on exploring the way technology affects personal, cultural, and mass communication through examining the historical, societal, and ethical implications of new and interactive forms of media. I built skills in creating meaningful blog posts, creating video blogs, writing ‘thick’ verses ‘thin’ tweets, and much more throughout the semester.
The final group project was to create some sort of new media digital artifact. My team of four other students came up with ‘Instafacetwitgramanol’, a pretend pharmaceutical drug that keeps one wired and connected to social media at all times. We created a website in order to mimic that of a real drug on the market, showing the benefits and side effects of this social media drug. We created a commercial to go along with our project as well. See the ‘Artist Statement’ tab on the website to learn more.
