Get Your Head Out of the Cloud!

Where do I think social media is headed? Hopefully right out the door.

When I was reading the “Mining from the Data Clouds” article this week I was honestly really worried about the future of our society. More specifically the part about cell phone applications, that to me sound like they are going to take over the world. The day my phone buzz’s to alert me that a person is within a certain radius of me that I should introduce myself to is the day that I am moving into the woods and taking on the life of a hermit. There is NO need for this kind of technology, really, what have we come to. If people need to have their phones make them new friends and introduce them to their future spouse then maybe we should take a look at what is wrong with our society and the laziness and inability to socialize outside cyberspace.

There are people who live in these little cyber worlds they have created where Facebook and Twitter are real life and they cant differentiate between the two. Over Thanksgiving break I was sitting in a room with 7 other people who hadn’t seen each other in months and I took a look around at one point and every single person in the room was texting on their cell phones… worst part? Some of them were actually texting each other. This is probably why I continually run into incompetent people everywhere, everyday. No one knows how to communicate face to face and this shows when you walk into any store and the employees scatter to avoid helping customers and cashiers are “tweeting” behind the counter… “oh em gee, work is so boring today!”… great well, now that I’m in the never ending line waiting to continue on with my life while you keep your online persona as up to date as humanly possible.

We basically are creating a generation of technology dependant individuals with the power to “Google” the answers to any of life’s questions. I read an article once that actually quoted high school students saying that they don’t need to study or even be in school because they can learn everything they need to know on their phones when they need to know it and that learning important dates and history was just wasting the space in their brains for other “more useful” information. This is a very scary, scary thought that these are the people who one day will be in charge of our country and our world but what is scarier is to think that we are actually providing them the platform to actually not need to ever learn this information.

** Here is an article that talks about Cloud Computing in regards to Mobile Phones

Please Don't Make Me Tweet.

Twitter. Twitter. Twitter…. NO THANK YOU.

I can honestly say when I saw that Twitter was what our new assignment was going to involve I was not thrilled. I started an account with Twitter a while back and deleted it shortly after because I thought the concept of the whole thing was pointless. After this assignment, however, I can see how people can use this for more than just useless blabber.

The topic I focused my tweets on was music. I posted a few links to a great site [Pandora radio] and the rest to a friend’s band website. I decided to focus on this after a conversation with my friend about how it is difficult for unsigned bands to get their music out to listeners with the ever popular, MySpace, on its way out. In the past, it was easy for bands to post their music on MySpace and then share it with all of their “friends,” and anybody could have a music page. New sites like Facebook do not have this capability and require much more work. Twitter can allow a forum for bands to atleast post links to sites where their music can be heard as well as when and where they are performing.

I think when Twitter is actually used to bring something to the table then that is when it has a purpose. I found it quite interesting when the government asked Twitter not to shut down because of the Iranian presidential election. It just goes to show how much our traditional news source are being pushed by the way side for more quick and accurate means of informing the masses.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I still think it is quite possibly the dumbest thing I have ever used. Personally, I really don’t care what most people have to say and I certainly see no use in needing to know your every thought and movement via “tweet.” So on that note, if you have something of worth to add to the world, say it; if you want to share every thought that comes in to your head, resist the urge; and if yOuZ tYpE L1kE thIs, get off the computer!

...wait, it's time for the real world?! so soon?!

Today in the mail I received a piece of paper that not only have I been waiting anxiously for all semester, but really a piece of paper that I’ve been waiting for, for the past 16 ½ years. This magical piece of paper came from Buffalo State College and contained sentence such as “completed all requirements” and “approved for graduation.” This moment of sheer bliss to finally be done with school, papers, lectures and exams was quickly over shadowed by the realization that D-day was quickly approaching. This day of course being the day when it’s time to enter the real world, get a job, worry about benefits and 401K’s. This was also when I realized that I really don’t know much more than when I entered this wonderful land of higher “education.” Sure, I learned a bit… brushed up on the quadratic equation and Freud’s discoveries because this school wants me to be “well-rounded.” Now, however, here I sit weeks from finals and what do I have to show for it? Not a lot. I am trying to enter the TV and Film Industry with basic knowledge of necessary equipment and programs, a lot of which was self-taught from mere curiosity figuring there was certainly no way any of my professors would ever bother teaching me. Maybe it’s me, but for some reason when 2/3 of your credit hours are to

classes NOT towards your career something is just not write.

My mother is a high school teacher who teaches a broadcast and production class and has students who come back to visit her. Recently I had to hear about how not only did her one of her old students get a degree in half as much time as I did [18 months] but ALSO she got a new Mac and Sony camera TO HERSELF. Now with these tools she has been able to produce multiple documentaries and is being paid for her work, before she even graduates! This should be nice for her to show in her portfolio, what do you get at this school? Maybe 1 or 2 group projects that you have been spoon fed to produce exactly what the professor deems satisfactory. Buffalo State has barely enough equipment for one class let alone an entire student body in the Communication department and MAYBE a computer or editing suite that hasn’t been stolen or reserved by the lovely TFA kids who run the whole department, but that’s a whole other rant. Perhaps it’s the smell of the student loan payments approaching that has made me so bitter, so thank you Buffalo State for absolutely nothing.

Flowers, Leaves and Trees, OH MY!

Delaware Park is one of the most interesting places, I feel, in Buffalo. There is always some activity going on at the park, which in a large city like Buffalo, is nice because it brings a sense of community to the area. The list of activities that can take place at the park reach far beyond that is mentioned in the video. Delaware Park is known in the summer for its performances at “Shakespeare in the Park.” This attracts greatly to the park and is a great asset to the social and art community of this area. In the summer, visitors can also rent canoes to take around Hoyt Lake on a nice, sunny day. The best part of the park, however, is that on a nice day between classes, it is a much better location for a quick bite to eat than the loud and overcrowded student union.

It is important that not only Delaware Park but also the other seven Olmsted Parks in the city are maintained and not ruined so they can continue to bring beauty to the often ugly and run down Buffalo scenery. For more information on how you can help to keep the parks in top condition through volunteering, check out the Olmsted Parks website. Also, look out for their booth around the Union at Buffalo State, the organization frequently has a booth during Bengal Pause for interested students to sign up to volunteer.

YouTube

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Wiki.

I found this assignment to be very interesting for several reasons. The first was this concept of a group project in which the partners never met in person. This is my first online class so I guess this is a concept I am trying to grasp on multiple levels. I thought it was going to be difficult to try and form a cohesive Wiki entry, but much to my surprise it wasn’t. Denise and I used e-mail to communicate and that worked well. E-mail allowed us to share ideas back and forth as well as files and web links.

E-mail may not have proved as easy had we not had the topic we did. Denise and I decided to do a WikiHow page for “How to Survive a Study Abroad.” We chose this topic because she is currently on exchange from Australia and last year I participated in an exchange there. This made it easy for us to show this topic from opposite angles and provided us with an easy outline to work with on our page. Therefore we could both just write from our point of view and then put it together rather than having to try and combine research or opinions on a topic.

Wikipedia is “an online encyclopedia.” It is made up of a bunch of linked pages that guide the user from their searched topics on to related articles that might interest them as well. It was created by 150,000 volunteers from around the world. The site has over 2 million entries and doubles every year (Wagner, 2009). Wikipedia has branched out from its original site to create other website like Wiki How and BufWiki. One benefit of having and online encyclopedia is that it is much easier to change and update than print and bound books. I think it would be great if there was a way Wikipedia could be monitor for accuracy because I think it would provide a great tool to people who want to access information and do research right at their computers.

According to Royal and Kapila Wikipedia is currently the third most used site for news and information on the web (2008, p.139).You can find almost anything you need to know on one of these sites. This was another part of this assignment I thought was going to be very challenging. I thought it was going to be nearly impossible to find a subject that someone, somewhere in the world, hadn’t thought to post. Luckily, Denise and I were able to find a topic we had in common quite easily that no one else had.

The part of the assignment that I thought was the most interesting was that we were able to so easily create a page that is now accessible to millions of people around the world. It is weird to think that our page could come up in a Google search and people could read it and take my advice or thoughts to heart in their study abroad experience. Part of me likes that I have this ability for a couple reasons. One, when I was preparing to go abroad, the most helpful person I met along the way was the girl who was on exchange from the school I was going to be going to. She was able to answer all the questions I had, plus she was able to tell me things that the packets the international office gives out never would include. Therefore, I like that this page could possibly be helpful to someone who might not be able to have that kind of first hand knowledge. I also like this because one thing I have noticed is that people who haven’t had the kind of experience that studying abroad is, don’t really understand how much it impacts participants and they get sick of hearing about all the differences and culture shock you experienced. This Wiki is just another way to share this information to others who do want to know what I have to say because they want to know what to expect.

I think I find this so strange because it just goes to show how much stuff on the internet is made up by people with no expertise or real knowledge on a subject but how many people could see it and possibly think it was true or a fact. On the other hand, however, it is great that people who might have something out of the norm to share and have a medium to broadcast their thoughts. Prasarnphanich and Wager state in their article that Web 2.0 technologies have allowed for pages such as wikis or weblogs to be created. They believe that “wikis have allowed a very different for of collaboration.” It allows anyone to update and add to content on shared web based documents with no single ownership (2009,33).

As Wikipedia has made its climb in popularity, it is now heavily seen in academic work across the world. Colleges and Universities are having to make sure that students realize that this is not to be taken as fact because it has no editors or people who check its validity. One article I found online said they believed it is dumb-ing down higher learning because its providing false information at the click of a mouse and students aren’t learning the correct facts (Badke, 2008).

Creating this Wiki page has been a good experience for me. I was very fascinated by our topic because I was interested to see how much mine and Denise’s experiences and opinions on how to survive a study abroad would differ and how much they would be the same, having done the opposite exchanges. Having never made a page like this before I found it very interesting to see how it was all set up and how the website worked. I found this assignment to be very beneficial in learning another aspect of Web 2.0. I think that this technology is one that is going to continue to amaze in how it is integrated into society’s day to day life and I look forward to seeing how it advances.

Sources

Badke, William, “What to Do With Wikipedia,” Trinity Western University. Vol 32 No. 2, Mar/Apr 2008.

Prasarnphanich, P., Wagner, C. (2009) The role of wiki technology and altruism in collaborative knowledge creation. Journal of Computer Information Systems, 33-41.

Royal, C., Kapila, D. (2008) What's on Wikipedia and what's not....?: Assessing completeness of information. Social Science Computer Review, 27, 138-148.

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie...

This is a picture that I have had on my camera that has needed to be uploaded from my trip to Australia. It was taken in the Whitsundays (the Great Barrier Reef) from a sailing trip I was on. It is pictures like this one that make me believe that studying abroad is the best thing that a college student can do during their time in higher education.

The process of studying abroad is very easy, especially through Buffalo State. I feel that people often feel that it will be too expensive or too lengthy of a process to study abroad but it is quite the opposite. The International Office makes filling out the paper work a breeze and financial aid covers most if not all of the expenses besides airfare and spending money. If you headed to South Wing to visit there office, you could have the application filled out in mere minutes and then after the orientation with Dr. Grace you have every piece of information and checklists for exactly what has to be done and when.

However, there is no price that can be put on how much you learn while abroad. I had never traveled by myself or out of country until the day my family threw me on an airplane and sent me around the world. At first it was a scary thought to think about the 3 day flight by myself or the fact I would be away from my family for six months but as soon as I woke up and saw the pacific ocean and the dolphins jumping, Buffalo was the LAST thing I wanted to see again. People are so friendly too that it doesn’t take much more than an introduction to make a new friend. From the life long friends that I have made from this experience I could travel to almost every country in the world and have somewhere to stay and a personal tour guide!

So the way I see it is that if they are going to require a bunch of useless general education classes, why take them at Buff State? As for me, I now face a choice. I am set to graduate early in December and head right back to Australia for a year of travelling however, I am contemplating staying the extra semester and studying abroad another semester to see what other great places the world has to offer before I have to begin a career.

WEB 2.0

Web 2.0, in my eyes, is a great technology. It has made it easier for people to communicate and keep in contact around the world. In my personal life I have been able to use this technology greatly to keep contact with my friends from every corner of the globe easily and efficiently. After studying abroad in Australia, I was worried that I would loose all of the great friends I had made due to the 16-hour time difference and distance. Thanks to Web 2.0 however, I can easily get online and send them a message to keep up to date with how they are doing and vise versa. While this is a great way to use Web 2.0, there is another reason to use it that is becoming more and more relevant to me: job hunting.
As a graduating college senior preparing to enter the job market in 4 months, I have found many ways in which Web 2.0 has and will greatly help me to make the transition out of college. First, through websites like Facebook, I have been able to make many great contacts that I will be able to use when I am looking for a potential job. This is good because it is easy to use and if you asked anyone, more than likely, they use one of these social networking sites. This makes it really easy to contact potential employers or the “friend-of-a-friend-who-knows-somebody” that might be able to set me up with an interview to my dream job. I think these websites are great if they are used to their fullest potential and not just to post silly pictures from a night out on the town or keep your friends up to date on the play-by-play of your life.
Another way that Web 2.0 is going to help me in my search for a career is by giving me a new outlet to market myself. Anybody who has basic understanding of how a computer works can now make a webpage. These pages can hold endless information such as a resume or examples of work. Therefore, when I go to a job interview, I can show this page to my potential employer so they can see that not only am I qualified for the job but also that I have an understanding on how Web 2.0 work; this I feel will be a growing skill that is looked for as it continues to grow.
For these reason, I think Web 2.0 is an amazing technology. While some may find this technology to be restricting and take away privacy, I have to disagree. This technology has infiltrated so much of our society that I feel many people do not even realize all of the positive attributes it has offered to not only myself but also my community. I look forward to seeing where this technology will take us in the future and the many ways in which is will impact society for the better.