I spoke a tiny tiny bit about the Google Online marketing Challenge. Despite my having asked students to sort out the groups in the inter-class break, there was still some horse trading to be done.
I asked the groups to review the list of potential clients and to select some they might like to work with.
In addition to providing a summary of this week's classes the minimum requirements this week include both, taking the newsU.org online course and sending me the result; and FTPing a website up to the server and include the URL in the blog post.
We went through the unix commands needed to FTP a website to a web server. I asked students to make a small page and upload it to the server using the details I gave in class.
Students are required to include the URLs for their pages in their Week 04 blog posts.
There is no lls command in unix. I totally made that up. It's actually !ls
I started talking about Directories and Search Engines and how they work, but we got sidetracked and ended up talking about privacy issues. I love it when that happens.
Someone suggested that it wasn't a bit deal, but I asked the class to imagine that being gay was still a crime in Ireland. How harmless would all the information that Google, Facebook, and the mobile phone companies have be, if the government got its hands on it? What if China bought Google?
For the first hour of the lab students worked a it on their blogs, the NewsU course, GOMC registration.
Then we looked at FTP.
I asked students to log into a server, create a folder, and upload a small website. For security reasons, though, the login details won't be on the blog.
Students are required to include the URLs for their pages in their Week 04 blog posts.
There is no lls command in unix. I totally made that up. It's actually !ls
The Hesienberg Uncertainty Principle asserts that a student will be uncertain of how to complete the lab work assigned to him, if he spends his time watching Breaking Bad montages instead of paying attention to the lecturer.
I e-mailed captains who have yet to organize a team, to encourage them to get the finger out.
I e-mailed the captains with teams in place a list of some potential clients. If a team is interested in a particular client, let me know and I will try for optimal pairings of teams and clients. Do not contact nor publicize the list of clients in the meantime.
Teams are free to find their own client too. It might be especially interesting to have a charity as a client as the $250 free advertising might be very welcome.
I sent this e-mail to potential GOMC clients today.
Hi ***
I’m e-mailing you because you expressed an interest in participating in the Google Online Marketing Challenge (GOMC) with some of my students at Cork Institute of Technology. I got your contact details from Virginia Foley at the Rubicon Centre. The GOMC is a competition Google runs to expose businesses to its advertising products. Students are tasked with managing an $250 advertising budget over three weeks. If you participate, a team of students will devise a plan and spend the $250 on your behalf in an effort to drive traffic to your website. This process will happen over a number of stages.
Students will meet with you to establish the nature of your business. I will ask them to examine your website to ensure that it is getting as high a ranking on Google as it deserves. It may be that they will recommend some changes to your website. However, I do not propose that they would make those changes for you.
The students will devise a plan and submit to Google. After this Google will credit their AdWords account with $250. The students have a three week window of their choosing to run the campaign. However this semester ends in mid May so I would expect students to run the campaign before the end of April. Following that they will submit an impact statement to Google.
I hope to assign a team of students to you soon. In the meantime, there are some things you could consider. Is there a particular three week window that might best suit your business? If you sell chocolate, for example, before Easter would be better than after. Is your target audience confined to a geographical location, or is it global? What kinds of people are in your target audience? These are just some of the questions the students will be asking you.
All the students are in their first year of college. They may not be used to dealing with clients, so this experience will be of great benefit to them. I’m grateful to you for offering your time.
Someone asked in one class if students who did not have English as their first language were also required to have correct spelling and grammar in English. They do.
I asked students to read the 10 blogs that come after them
in the list and to leave a comment on each. Comments identifying any
spelling or grammar errors would be especially welcome by the author.
Students should ensure that their blogs contain no errors.
I
asked the Google Compettition Team Captains to start forming groups and
to register with Google. They should start a group blog and e-mail the
URL to Colin.Manning@cit.ie
I identified the team captains for the Google contest and I asked student to make a start on organizing themselves into teams. Team captains need to follow the link onf the blog and register with Google.
We discussed patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. It was a bit rushed in the end. For a more leisurely discussion, students can watch the recording of the class with one of the other student cohorts.
Today's class was interesting. It's nice when students join in. Although some looked like they had had a rough night.
I asked students to read the 10 blogs that come after them
in the list and to leave a comment on each. Comments identifying any
spelling or grammar errors would be especially welcome by the author.
Some students argued about fonts. That make me very happy.
Students should ensure that their blogs contain no errors.
I asked the Google Compettition Team Captains to start forming groups and to register with Google. They should start a group blog and e-mail the URL to me.
I asked students to read the 10 blogs that come after them in the list and to leave a comment on each. Comments identifying any spelling or grammar errors would be especially welcome by the author.
Students should ensure that their blogs contain no errors.
I asked the Google Compettition Team Captains to start forming groups.
I asked students to read the 10 blogs that come after them in the list and to leave a comment on each. Comments identifying any spelling or grammar errors would be especially welcome by the author.
Students should ensure that their blogs contain no errors.
I asked the Google Compettition Team Captains to start forming groups.
COMP6023 students should form groups of 3-6 students (I recommend 4) and one student from each group should register for the Google Online Marketing Challenge http://www.google.com/onlinechallenge/register.html.
Registration was supposed to be open from today but there seems to be some delay.
The student that registers should also set up a blog for the group and make the other team members authors also.
We looked a collage and how new works can be created from old ones, and the challenges this poses for copyright law. We discussed open source, creative commons, and public domain. We listened the The Avalanches, ray Charles, Kanye West, and Girl Talk.
