Final Blog-Academic blogging

I think that blogging is a useful technology for both the personal realm and the academic realm. Some people do not appreciate blogs because they don't want to read the minutia of someone's day, but blogs can be interesting. I have many friends who blog and they rarely write the details of their lives on the blog, they use it more as a place for their thoughts. They will often post song lyrics, links, or pictures and comment on them. These are sometimes funny and sometimes serious. Either way it is a totally different type of communication than email. A friend is not going to send you an email every time that he has a profound thought about something.

I think that from a journalistic standpoint blogs are very unique and exciting. Blog journalism has already uncovered large stories like the CBS scandal. The big problem with blog journalism is that it is impossible to verify facts. If I could read a blog such as "Where is Raied" and be sure that it was legitimate, then I would find it very interesting, but the nagging thought that this guy could be a college student in New Jersey takes a lot of the interest away.

Blogs do have a place in academia. I don't see the benefit of making a group blog, but the individual blogs are interesting. I think that the comment function is the most unique aspect of blogs and could be used more. I have friends who will write about a controversial issue and there will be pages of comments arguing one point or another. Blogs are a great way for students to get their thoughts out. When I blog I feel like it is somewhat of a mix between formal writing and personal journaling. This is very unique in acadamia as most assignments are formal writing. The idea of looking at a topic and then informally writing your thoughts about it is very unique. The fact that other students can see your work and comment on it makes it an even more effective way of getting the thoughts of students. It is similar to having an in-class discussion, but is in a written form, which allows a little bit more thinking and formulating of thoughts. I think that blogs could be a part of pwr. They should definitely be kept as a casual form of writing because this is what makes them unique and useful tools for students. Blogs could also be used more for getting feedback. Students can post updates on their research and get comments back from other students.

Presentation Reflections

In general I thought that the second round of presentations went much better than the first. It seems like after our powerpoint discussion people moved away from the typical powerpoint, bullet-list format. It was interesting when people gave very specific examples from their project, I am thinking of when Nikolas described "Game Theory" to us. That theory isn't the entire focus of his research, but it is one interesting aspect that helped draw us into his topic. I like Braelan's use of the white board. Using that is not necesarily better than using other mediums but it gives a different feel to the presentation and he did a good job of using it. In general it was easy to see who had practiced more than others, although overall they were more practiced than the first presentations we gave. Some people went to actual websites (such as facebook, or army), this gave it a casual feel that I liked.

February 9th Assignment

I could relate to most of these articles. Blogging, IM and internet addiction are very relevant to most Stanford students. My friends from high school are scattered throughout the country and IM is the main way that I keep in contact with them. Being on the west coast many of my friends in the east sign off and go to bed well before I am ready and it is always depressing to look at my friends list and see that everybody is either offline or idle. IM is widely used even within the dorm. A friend next door will send a message to find out if I'm ready to go to dinner, or if I have finished my homework. I don't keep a personal blog of my own, but I read a lot of my friends' blogs. Surfing the internet is the main form of entertainment for many Stanford students. If I'm not sleeping, eating, or doing homework, I'll usually be online. This is certainly not productive time, switching back and forth between AIM, websites, and checking my email. My computer has been giving me trouble recently and my internet has not been working. I have found that since my internet has been down I have been more productive, finishing my homework and even finding time to read books for fun. I think that surfing the internet can have some value as it keeps me up on world news and keeps me in contact with my friends but it eats an unbelievable amount of time. I find that I usually go back to the same sites over and over, checking to see if they've been updated. It is amazing that with millions of sites on the internet, it is often hard to think of something interesting to read. I like the internet for images. The google image search is a great tool for finding pictures of places, events, people, or objects. I also use the internet to do most of my shopping, whether it be for textbooks, music, DVD's or electronics.

Overall I think that the internet is great, I love finding interesting things to read, shopping, and keeping in contact with friends, but it is definitely addictive. I enjoy having my internet connection broken so that I have to go downstairs and use the computer cluster in order to surf the web.

Next presentation

For my next presentation I plan to focus on how my topic has changed and developed since the first presentation. I will start with where I ended last time and then talk about more practical, concrete things that I am going to research and write about. If I do use powerpoint again I will use it sparingly, possibly just using it for pictures and maybe a few quotes. Hopefully by the time that I give my presentation I will have some concrete and interesting research to present, focusing in on one specific example of the technologies that I will be talking about.

January 24th Assignment

“Does Power Point Makes us Stupid" is an article which takes an unorthodox view of the widespread technology of powerpoint. The article focuses on two unique views. David Byrne has turned powerpoint into a form of art, while Tufte is a hater of powerpoint. I had never thought about this subject before. My first reaction on hearing about "powerpoint art" was that this was a waste of money, but after seeing some of the pictures I thought that it was a little more interesting, still not worth an $80 book. I think that powerpoint can be a great tool but many people misuse it. My most boring and hard to follow lectures have been from professors who rely heavily on powerpoint. I think that as a lecturing tool, powerpoint is terrible. It is helpful to the lecturer, but not for the students. I think powerpoint can be a great tool for "presentations" If someone is giving a presentation to a committee, powerpoint can be useful for highlighting the main points. It is also a useful tool for showing pictures. I think that powerpoint is often more helpful to the presenter than to the audience. It keeps the presenter organized and on track. I think that sometimes when people decide to use powerpoint it is out of laziness and in these cases it makes they’re presentation worse than if they had put in a little extra work and not used powerpoint. I think specifically of some math and science teachers who use powerpoint. When dealing with equations and diagrams, writing on the board is much more helpful to students than powerpoint is. The article mentions the idea that powerpoint can destroy a meeting. In the context of a corporate meeting I think powerpoint is more appropriate than in the classroom. Often meetings are about analyzing the facts and making decisions, and if powerpoint can present the facts in a clean matter for everyone to see and analyze, then I think it is a good tool. In most classrooms the teachers goal is not to summarize facts, or to make a fancy graph that shows information quickly. In science classrooms I think that using the chalk board and encouraging the students to ask questions are both critical. In the humanities classroom powerpoint may be more appropriate but only for a lecture dealing with, definitions, hard facts, or statistics. I do not think that powerpoint is an inherently evil tool, but I do think that it should be used sparingly. I have rarely seen a lecturer use powerpoint well, such that it greatly enhances the classroom experience. Powerpoint is most useful for pictures, short presentations, and business meetings where a summary of facts is important. I have yet to be convinced of the artistic value of powerpoint.

January 10th Assignment

One subject that I am interested in is how technology is taking the place of humans in many fields. Grocery stores have self check-out counters, some Burger Kings have automated ordering, airports have automatic check-in counters, airplanes have autopilot. These are a few very practical ways in which technology is taking the place of human work, but it also applies to less obvious areas. With the advancement of digital technology, photography is becoming less of an art. I took a photography class in high school and spent hours in the dark room adjusting exposure, contrast etc. and now that can all be done by the push of a button on the computer. As we talked about in class, writing is also becoming more accessible to everyone and less of an art. . These technologies are not only taking away jobs but are also greatly changing society, making people more independent, more efficient, more focused. These are not necessarily good things as people become more stressed, less dependent on others, and more busy. http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~zach_champ/main.htm
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~dabrent/380/webproj/disgruntled.html

Another topic of interest is in the area of transportation technology. Over winter break I was in South Africa. I got on a plane in Johannesburg and thirty hours later stepped out in San Francisco, ten time zones away, I went from a southern hemisphere 100 degree summer to the northern hemisphere's winter. I think in some ways this is a shame because a lot of the joy and adventure of travel used to be in the journey. The rush of modern life is sometimes frustrating. Technology is allowing us to pack more and more "stuff" into less and less time which is sometimes a good thing, but overall this can be a burden.
http://www.achrnews.com/CDA/ArticleInformation/coverstory/BNPCoverStoryItem/0,6152,1108,00.html

I am leaning toward the second option, or possibly a combination of the two because it is a topic that I have an opinion on and that I am interested in. In many ways I see technology as a necessary evil. It is necessary to provide for the ever increasing population and is often a good thing for countries and businesses, but as far as everyday life goes, I would prefer the "simple old days"

January 7th Assignment

I discovered blogs a few months ago while browsing the website of one of my high school friends. I followed the links until I found a blogring made up of people from my high school and since then I have checked the entries every few days. I find it very interesting to read to read these entries, they are often about issues that would never come up in normal conversation, random thoughts about a song they heard, or an article they read, or a picture they saw. I have one friend who simply posts a picture every day with a comment underneath. I have found that by following links and comment pages I am now regularly reading the blogs of some people who I have never met. When I first discovered blogs I thought that it was very strange that people would make their personal thoughts public. People would make comments about their friends, family, teachers and it seemed to me the internet is not the best place to let your thoughts flow, especially to write negative things about someone who might stumble across your site.

Although I read many blogs, I don’t write my own. I have a personal journal that I keep on my computer, but I don’t post it online.

I think blogs are a very interesting fad. For me they are simply a unique and fun way to keep track of my high school friends, but I know that entertainment is not the only use that blogs have. I read a Time article over winter break about how the recent CBS/60 Minutes scandal started when a man mentioned in his blog that the documents shown on 60 Minutes looked suspicious to him, and by that afternoon he had received hundreds of comments on his post from people who agreed with him. This led to a full-scale investigation into the validity of the documents.