Creativity and New Media

To do this assignment I used bitstrips to form a character and comic strip. I logged on using my Facebook information which allowed me to create my first avatar and strip. My scene was going to include my employment at a bank. Therefore I chose to do three slides which showed how I got employed. In total it took me around 30 minutes to do the whole assignment. I definitely enjoyed it since every single item in the comic strip was chosen by me, rather it being randomized. It allowed me to use my creativity (or tried to use my creativity) to complete the assignment.

The title is Employed (If it doesn't work, I also posted a screenshot below).

CREATIVTY

Through the advancing of technology new media sprouted, and through this, the way we live today changed and constantly continues to change. As a result of growing media, creativity emerges and contributes to new ways of doing things. One example to prove this is Twitter. The giant tweeting company allows people to post a 'tweet' regarding anything that is on their mind. With so many people using the platform, it allows Twitter to use it to their advantage. Just as wikipedia allows editing from the people, Twitter decided to get help from its users. "This is in large part because the Internet lets people exchange ideas easily and rapidly with large groups, and computing tools let people design new products cheaply." The article titled, "Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Followers," explains the concept behind this idea. As more people are signing on to the Internet each day, they start contributing as well. Their contributions allow creative ideas to flow and eventually create another brilliant idea.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual world is an emerging technology allowing a connection to a virtual world. Games such as Sims, Minecraft, Warcraft and training programs for military allow an effective way to become connected. There are many advantages and disadvantages as we would expect, both for obvious reasons and the fact that it is still in development. Especially for kids, they cover about half the users in the Minecraft game, as Jacki Morie says that kids get "to exercise their imagination and to connect with others to also want to build and create things." By being creative at such an early age, it can definitely benefit them as they grow up. Not only does Virtual world technology help on the gaming side as it states in "Situated Learning in Virtual Worlds and Immersive Simulations" that, "over the past several years, an increasing number of immersive virtual environment experiences have become available for both educational and entertainment purposes." This emerging technology can benefit in classrooms, helping kids, teachers, and generally the whole education.

The most interesting and helpful use of Virtual World in my opinion would be training for military. Having virtual training very close to reality can allow real-live situations rather than the traditional way of training. But this technology can also have its drawbacks with its not-so-perfect reality (such as characters, perspectives, and basic laws of physics). I feel that as technology further advances, Virtual Technology will definitely benefit tremendously.

Blog About Twitter

When we want to discuss a particular topic, there are various ways in doing so. As the title says, a Twitter discussion is one of them, the others being a blackboard discussion and an in-class discussion (although there are obviously many more). Simply for a Twitter discussion, you need a Twitter account; Blackboard discussion, a blackboard account, and a class for a classroom discussion.
In a Twitter discussion, we tweet as a status what we want to say (usually ended by a hashtag to keep the discussion easy to find). This is fairly hard for people who have a lot to say because of the Twitter character restrictions. Someone who wants to say a lot of things must break it down to many little tweets, which causes confusion from the order or even finding it. In order to comment, they would need to use part of their 140 characters to address the person with a '@' symbol then tweet. For people who never used Twitter before, it can get quite confusing. The only advantage I can see in that is the ability to have a discussion any time since it is over the internet. But what about all the other followers who have no idea what you are tweeting?
In a blackboard discussion, only students with access to a blackboard can use it. This eliminates many people already. But for those who have access, it is fairly simple. You post a blog-like discussion post, which allows for all other students in the same class to read. They read and post their own/comment on your post. This is easy because it is organized and allows comments to be seen by classmates.
An in-class discussion is one that we all experience. The topic is chosen prior to the discussion date so that people can prepare. When discussion time comes, people say what they want with comments coming right after the statement. This is easiest to have a discussion because it is "live." Everything is happening simultaneously, in which you don't have to wait that long for another statement or comments on your statement. The only disadvantages I see in this type of discussion is that fact that everyone must be present in the same place at the same time, and it isn't kept in a record. People who want to take notes can, but usually this discussion is fast-paced and everything cannot be written down.

Social Networking Sites

When visiting and using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Tumblr, I find different variations of the same concept. All deal with getting the message across to people following you, or people you are friends with, depending on which social media platform you are using.
Facebook is, for most obvious reasons, the largest of the four. It gives users the ability to personalize your home page, including the ability to add a profile picture, post other pictures and statuses, create a public description of yourself, share a link or article, and so forth. As a matter of fact, Facebook allows the user to become free to do basically anything online. It is safe to say that Facebook is like a mix of all the other social media sites out there. The only big difference I see among the other listed social media sites is the friend feature. Whereas all the other sites listed have a one way relationship by a simple follow button, Facebook requires the two way relationship (I believe it makes sense to say that if you are X's friend, then X is also your friend).
Instagram on the other side is mainly used to post pictures so that your followers, or if you are public,  all the users are allowed to see and comment on your posted picture. Instagram is basically a blog of pictures. So why don't people stick to Facebook to post pictures and do exactly what Instagram does? Honestly, I do not have an answer, and I would love to see comments below why. My guess would be to say marketing was a big part of why.
Twitter is a very simple social media site that allows people to 'tweet' things to the followers. A tweet is defined by any, so called status, that doesn't reach over 140 characters. I personally do not have an active Twitter account (personal one, not one that gives me points in a class), but many celebrities do. In fact, even in live events such as a basketball game, or the Grammy's, the commentators of the TV program show live tweets of celebrities to show what they are thinking at the moment. The most recent time I have seen this was the NBA slam dunk contest, where all the big stars were tweeting the Zach Levine and Aaron Gordon showdown.
Tumblr was, in recent times, a very rapidly growing social media site that had features of Instagram and Twitter. Although Facebook has the same feature, people were allowed to post pictures and blogpost statuses to their followers. These picture are rarely their own pictures, but rather re-shared photos from other users. From personal experience, I never really liked the idea of a Tumblr. It was hard to use, even though Facebook was also hard in the beginning as well.

Social Net'g

Social Networking is an emerging form of new media that easily gets people connected no matter the distance. Major social network sites/companies include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Skype. While there are others, these major social networking platforms changed the way us individuals live today. There are many different ways social networking is used. Twitter is very closely related to a blog in the sense that you can "tweet" whatever you want. Instagram is a blog of pictures, while Facebook is a mix of both and much more; Skype however is a video chatting platform, which transformed the traditional way of calling others. One special case of how social network can benefit the community is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the Facebook for job seekers and recruiters. It is advantageous in that it can "help job hunters market themselves online by setting up profiles, listing work history and specific skills," according to the article Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting. It allows the recruiter and the job seeker to become connected and sooner or later co-workers.

Along with all its benefits, comes its cost. Many people experiencing these costs can become frustrated especially when it hurts them emotionally, such as leaked photos. This seemed to be the case with the sister of Facebook’s founder, Randi Zuckerberg. She apparently had her photo shared to the public without her consent, although an accident, she still felt that it was wrong to have her photo shown to the public. A Press Complaints Commission paper says, “It can be acceptable in some circumstances for the press to publish information taken from [social media] websites, even if the material was originally intended for a small group of acquaintances rather than a mass audience.” Imagine all of the photos you ever posted were made public and you had no control of it. So, examples such as this case shows how privacy can be ignored how such an evolution of new media can hurt you.

To my opinion, I strongly believe Facebook will last a lifetime. Not so certain about other social media, but Facebook is special in that it continues to grow and gain more users each year. Soon enough most of the world will be using Facebook and we will be able to connect with people we don’t even know; maybe even perform jobs for them.

Blog V Wiki

Both blogs and wikis have been an important way of passing information to one another. Due to technological advancements, especially the internet, we now are able to post blogs and wiki pages to share information. Both have their advantages and drawbacks, but they mainly help more than they hurt.

A blog is a way an individual can periodically post new information, usually it is done in a conversational setting and very easy to maintain. Some huge blog websites are Tumblr, a huge hit in the past but not so much now. These blogs allow the audience to view the individuals blog post and comment their own opinions on it. Some huge bloggers may even have millions of followers that view their blog each day. It is important to realize that these blogs can have huge impacts to the audience. In the "Brooklyn Blog Helps Lead to Drug Raid" article, a coffee shop owner named Katherine Khatari says, “People don’t like to fight alone. There’s strength in numbers, you know? There’s more of us than them.” She points out a great benefit of blogs; with more people/viewers, it can impact society, in this case a drug bust. Because people blogged about disturbances in the neighborhood, the police got involved.

Similar to blogs, are wikis. Wiki allows access to the general public to an open page on a certain topic that can constantly be updated for new or upcoming information. Here you can see why there is an issue with wikis; anyone can update a wiki page, even an individual who has no credibility. Because of this freedom that wiki has, topics on controversial issues can lead to constant deleting and editing one of the wiki pages. "Early adopters say corporate wikis work best when they're focused narrowly on a specific project or collection of information, as well as on a specific group of users." While wiki isn't the best place to look for debatable issues, narrow and more specific topics are for sure.

Personally, I use blogs to see peoples opinion on an issue or topic, like what gift would be a perfect mother's day present. But when searching for topics to get a general sense for, I tend to use wiki. Both blogs and wikis have their advantages as mentioned above.