Scratch

    Scratch is pretty cool.  It is a program created by MIT that allows anyone with a computer to create animated  videos that can then be posted online.  It comes with some pre-made avatars to use when creating your video.  You can them make the avatars move and talk to each other, interacting, and you can change the background.  I plan on using this program for my final project in Sustainable Development where I have to come up with and explain ten principles of Sustainable Development in some manner.  I think that using Scratch will be a really fun way to present the principles of SD as I see them.  I plan to post my scratch video online and link it to this and my SD blog so that others can see it.  I might actually make a blog specifically for this project that has the ten principles written out and explained with some sources so that anyone who wants to learn more easily can.  It is really cool to use a program like scratch that takes preset commands and translates them into a video so easily.  Knowing just a little bit of how computers work now makes me appreciate such seemingly simple programs.

Web Page!

    I now have a web page running through the schools domain.  We all created our own pages in class on Tuesday, then made an animation for them on Thursday.  I have done a little bit of page design in a workshop in middle school.  I enjoyed doing some of the more basic programming and seeing how pages are made.  It is very difficult to use and understand all of the commands available to create web pages.  Looking at other peoples pages was also super fun.  I especially enjoyed Josh Elyeas' workout page.  Creating an animation was frustrating, but enjoyable.  Drawing the same thing over and over again on paint got very tedious, but I am proud of the end result.  The hardest part was actually linking the animation to the web page that I created on Tuesday. I had to get Dr. Parks help with that.  I didn't have the files in the right place or something like that.

Honesty

     I missed our class right before Thanksgiving break.  I know that I missed a guest speaker named Michael Barry who talked about cyber security in our country.  I very much regret missing this discussion because I am researching the same subject for our annotated bibliography. On the other hand, I had a great Thanksgiving break.  I very much enjoyed being back out on my farm and unplugging from the rest of the world for a while.  I hardly used any Facebook or any type of internet.  I did continue to use my cell phone for communication with my friends and was able to plan some fun activities with them.  One thing I would like to know is how the X-box live network is protected.  They pretty much have their own private network, but it works through the existing internet.  I wonder what sort of firewalls they use and what sort of media they don't allow?

Group Discussion

     I got much more into the class discussion about our various topics this week.  I started to be able to connect the dots between peoples topics more and more.  I found in interesting to compare the ways that different countries and groups have used the internet to their advantage.  I personally studied the Taliban and how they use social media as a propaganda tool to promote themselves while some countries, specifically China, block most social media sites.  I think it would be interesting to see China use social media to promote themselves to citizens outside their own country while preventing their own citizens from accessing such sites.  Another interesting thing we talked about was the revolution in Egypt.  It surprised me that a country can have that much control over internet and cell phone use.  I always thought of those as two mostly private industries that the government wouldn't be able to just shut down.  These services may be less private in countries like Egypt, or perhaps I simply do not understand how much influence our government has over such services.

The Cloud

    I like the term "cloud computing" and the visualization it implies.  The Internet seems like some bright, misty place that magically stores information and runs computations for us.  In reality the connectivity created by the Internet is what really makes these things possible.  The abilities that the Internet has granted us do seem magical in many ways and can be used to create great archives of information that would be impossible to create otherwise.  Dr. Wilkes showed us how he has used the cloud for his, and all bee keepers, benefit.  By creating a place where bee keepers can store information about their hives for their own personal use, he has compiled a large, ever growing,  database full of statistics ready to be analyzed in ways that will benefit bee keepers everywhere.  The cloud has other uses than collecting and analyzing statistics.  It has served as a key tool in social and political change in multiple countries.  Actually, without the Internet and its "cloud" many modern day social movements would not be possible.  The power of the Internet never ceases to amaze.

Oops

     I may be a little late on posting this one, but at least I'm getting to it.  I love the idea of using games to help out society by digitizing books and improving search engines.  The coolest thing about it is that the games are actually fun and the player often isn't aware that they aren't just playing a game.  I hope that more of these games are created in the future, especially if they can be made educational.  I have always found that the best way for me to learn is to turn studying into some sort of a game.  The internet needs more games like the translation game described in the video we watched in class.  I feel that these applications of technology improve many aspects of our society including; ourselves, the internet, and our efficiency.  By creating more accurate online searches and translating pages correctly, we will waste less time online trying to decipher Russian translations and find specific images.  All in all, I am a huge fan of these types of crowd sourcing.

Presentations

I loved the way all of the books that the different groups read were all connected. Many of them brought up some of the same points such as ADD to argue slightly different points.  I did enjoy reading Rapt because the content was interesting, but the writing wasn't very good.  Most of the presenters said that about their books.  I wonder if that subject lends itself to poor writing?  More possible is the fact that most people who are writing on subjects like the internet, psychology, and attention did not study English very extensively in college.  I for one will be taking only the minimum amount of English possible to graduate.  After reading Rapt, I am more aware of  how I focus and my focus problems.  I have found that I do have trouble focusing for long periods of time unless I am in what the author described as a flow state.  Where time seems to loose meaning because I become so engrossed in what I am doing.  Unfortunately for me I almost never find that state of mind while I am doing schoolwork, only when I am reading for fun.

The Encrypter

     I am constantly amazed by the variety and coolness of the things that we discuss in our class.  I have always found encrypting a very interesting subject.  As a kid my brother and I created a alphabet of symbols that we would use to exchange secret messages.  Seeing how different types of ciphers work and even using them was like a blast from the past for me.  The ciphers we used in class were a good bit more complicated than the ones I used as a kid, but the basic idea is the same, make something that isn't comprehensible to outsiders.  I cannot imagine trying to break even one of the simple ciphers that we used in class, not to mention any of the mega ciphers that are used in computing these days.
     An update on life without a phone:  It's very hard to get in touch with my friends this way.  To make plans I have to try to find them in their rooms, which they often aren't in, or use the chat feature of Facebook.  I think that this reliance on technology might come from our rushed lifestyles that have been partially created by the technology that we use.  One really cool thing that has come from it is the fact that I have found myself spending more time with people that I didn't know so well before.  Because I cannot get in touch with my close friends, I am widening my friend base by incorporating people who used to be simply "acquaintances"

Facebook and My Phone

     Personally, I found it incredibly hard to play devils advocate in class on Thursday.  I am one of the people that sees Facebook as an incredibly distracting waste of time that I just can't seem to get away from.  I felt that most of that debate was the pro team trying to defend our position without really being able to attack the arguments that the con team made.  It was a fun assignment, mostly just because I like to argue, and it was rather enlightening to hear the different interpretations of the privacy policy that different people had.
     Another thing that I find relevant to the class is that this weekend I lost my cell phone.  I will be living until an upgrade is available (a few weeks) without it.  I am extremely interested in how this will effect my social life here at school.  I still have use of email and Facebook for communication, but I plan on keeping track of how life is different without a phone.

About Creeping

     Creeping.  One of the most interesting assignments that I have ever been given.  Literally told to creep on someone as a school assignment. Honestly I was a little surprised to hear that we would be paired up and made to research each other.  I did enjoy the assignment, it made me feel like some sort of detective, trying to find any blemish in the past of Alaina Doyle.  Unfortunately I could not.  I found cross country race times, scholarship information, date of birth, home address, and some other mostly random stuff.  The ways in which I did the sleuthing surprised even me.  Looking at Google maps to see what kind of house she lived in and other creative ways.  I am glad we did this assignment because it has led me to change my privacy settings on my Facebook and attempt to remove information from the internet.  I have now started to more closely read  information in agreements to make sure that I am not giving away any information about myself.  This has actually led to me choosing not to participate in online surveys.  Overall I feel that this was a very enlightening assignment and extremely beneficial.

Rescue Time

One thing that I don't think we talked about enough in class Thursday is the way that Rescue Time could be used in a corporate setting.  If I were running a corporation I would love Rescue Time.  It could be installed in all of the office computers to track how my employees spend their time.  No one would get away with playing solitaire or checking Facebook on company time.  I would probably hire a set of employees whose job it would be to monitor the other employees Rescue Time accounts.  I would also attempt to make it impossible for my employees to change the settings of their computers Rescue Time accounts.  This way they couldn't cheat and make social networking a +2 productivity.  Only the sites and programs required for use in the company would be labelled productive.

I do agree with what most of my classmates said about how Rescue Time is not very applicable to most college students depending on their workload and how they choose to study.  For example, I have an online physics practice test to study today, but I'm going to print it out and take it to the library to do it.  I often do this with online assignments making it hard to track a productivity percentage.

Lizzie's Blog

I just read Lizzie's blog and I'm quite impressed.  The one thing that I wanted to leave as a comment is "Have you ever seen the movie Surrogates."  I couldn't figure out how to leave a comment on hers (I might not have been signed in or something) so I decided to put it in mine.

As for the class.  I really liked the way we ran things on Tuesday.  The discussion had a natural flow to it that kept me engaged, listening, and thinking.  In many of my other classes all I have to do is listen and I know that I will make a good grade.  Not this one.  I enjoy what I'm learning in this class more than I do many of the others because of the way in which I learn it.  We are very much a learning community that challenges my views on every subject that we cover.  By doing this, I'm unaware that I'm learning about something new because most of what I end up doing is thinking about our topics.  It's almost involuntary.  Having interesting topics probably helps.

Last thing that I have to say
Is simply about the day
I went to play racket ball
And soon out of the hall
Chris Clark is attacked by
Women saying... HI!

Online Gaming

Watching the movie class today I couldn't help but think about my friend Richard who use to play WOW.  He always told me that it was addictive and he actually had to break the habit.  I never believed him.  I cannot imagine being slave to something like a video game.  Sure, they're fun and entertaining, but they can't substitute (at least not for me) that adrenaline rush I get from almost any sort of activity.  I think the most fun I have ever had was either winning a wrestling match, finishing a tough climb, or skydiving.  All three gave their own different sort of rush that no one can get from gaming.  I don't care what anyone says about how good they feel when they level up in WOW.  IT IS NOT THE SAME.  People need to get back to whats important in life, and this has been a theme of my Sustainable Development class a well, things like nature, love, and just pure physicality.  I know I sound a bit hippy-ish, but it's true and YOU know it.

Learning

Just foolin around trying to figure out how to make new posts and the like.  Also, I wasn't sure if we were supposed to blog after every class or just the end of the week.  Oh well, better safe that sorry right?  I enjoyed learning about networking and passing around plastic bowling pins and balls.  The informal learning environment actually taught me an incredible amount without me even realizing it.  One other thing that I learned is that I need to pay a bit more attention to the small gray boxes when we read.  Yes, I'll admit.  I missed that question :(

First Ever Post

Started classes at Appalachian State University this week and am loving them so far.  Specifically enjoying physics and my honors seminar, "Dissecting the Internet."  I lucked out on the seminar so far in that my dad had actually already taught me a little bit about counting in different bases including binary and hex.  Can't wait to see what we get into this week.