T189 Digital Photography Unofficial Forum

As the title of this blogpost says, it’s nearly all over now for the first presentation of T189

The announcement has appeared on my StudentHome page saying that the course website will be closing on August 31st and I imagine that we will lose access to OpenStudio at around the same time. So I went into OS and systematically saved each ‘week’ page to ensure I would have a record of the images I submitted for each week. Then I deleted each week’s images one after the other so my section of OS is now empty.

After that I went to the T189 website and clicked the link which allows each student to save a webpage containing all the images they’ve submitted to OpenStudio together with the comments made by other students on each one. That was a nice feature introduced in response to student requests so the course team/web developer were obviously listening to us.

The folder I created containing the nine OpenStudio pages with their image thumbnails together with the ‘digest’ version which contains the images at full size (480 pixels was the largest dimension allowed) was a fraction over 4Mb in total so not a huge download. It also means I can keep a good record of my OS contributions and comments for future reference

At the beginning of next month, the OU’s housekeeping department will (metaphorically speaking) be moving into OpenStudio and the website, cleaning and dusting and tidying it up ready for the October intake of new students, all eager and excited at the prospect of studying digital photography for ten weeks Good luck to all of them!

Many ex-T189 students remarked that they are feeling a bit ‘lost’ now that the course has finished. It takes a degree of discipline and dedication to study an Open University course and T189, despite only being a 10 week course, is no exception. Some already have their next course lined up, some were doing other courses alongside T189 and are continuing to study, others (like me) are still undecided and have yet to commit themselves.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my blog and, if you decide to take T189, I promise you’ll find it interesting, challenging and inspiring

Why not visit the T189 Digital Photography Unofficial message board where past, present and prospective students can get together. Ask questions, answer questions, post links to useful or inspirational website or just chat

T189 Digital Photography Unofficial Forum

We’d love to see you!

Well, it’s just over 24 hours since I last posted on this blog about the new board:

T189 Digital Photography Unofficial Forum

and the stats show that the board is definitely growing

Community Time: 17/07/07 16:46

Founded: 14/07/07

* 55 Avg visits per day
* 27 Posts per day
* 56 Posts in last 24 hours

* 217 Total visits
* 106 Total posts
* 28 Total topics
* 16 Total members

which is very gratifying

It’s probably the wrong time of year to launch a new board – summer is notoriously slow in messageboardland – and it may gain new members when the official T189 First Class forums close in about six to eight weeks time. Nevertheless, it’s there for any T189-ers who would like to keep in touch and anyone who is thinking of studying T189 in the future.

It’s also worth popping in to the Flickr group and checking out the discussions:

T189 OpenUni 2007

where students are posting links to their final ECA images. Those I’ve looked at have been fabulous

Now, if I can persuade my daughter that a walk would be a good idea, I hope to be going out in the slightly cooler late afternoon soon with my camera to hand. There’s no guarantee I’ll come back with any shots – she likes to keep moving – but you never know!

I ask because I announced the new T189 message board on the First Class T189 Cafe forum at lunchtime and Yuku promptly keeled over

Well, not exactly keeled over but certainly started to run like treacle …

It’s a bit like watching paint dry as you wait for the board to FINALLY appear on your screen, threads aren’t being updated, replies are not appearing and I’m starting to feel very disheartened

But a search on the Yuku support board proved that it’s happened before and, if I know message boards, it will happen again. So I’m determined not to get too upset about it and it does seem to have improved a bit as the afternoon has passed.

T189 Digital Photography Unofficial Forum

Considering that I only created the board on Saturday, tinkered with it and got it set up yesterday, posted the link here on my blog and now the announcement is also in the Red Cafe forum on OU First Class, these aren’t bad stats

Founded: 14/07/07

• 32 Avg visits per day
• 18 Posts per day
• 41 Posts in last 24 hours

• 96 Total visits
• 52 Total posts
• 18 Total topics
• 8 Total members

Like Meldrewman says:
“I hope this forum goes from strength to strength – it’s entirely up to us – can’t blame the OU for this one!”

So why not come along and check it out?