wikipedia edit

For my wikipedia edit, I chose to edit the article on the group of Protists called the Archaezoa. I chose this article because it was very small article and is a very important subject for biodiversity study. It was also very interesting to me, being a biology major, I am interested in anything that has modern biological signficance.. I learned about Archaezoa in my biology class and I decided to do some extra research and found out that there was very little info on the web about them so I used my notes from class to edit the article on them. I added the origin of the animals, a little bit of background information, and why they are significant. this was my first time editing anything on wikipedia, so it was challenging at first for me to figure out how to edit the page. I believe that there is little ITC knowledge required to edit the pages once you get the hang of them. I am a pretty large consumer of wikipedia information. Basically anytime I research something I use Wikipedia because it is the website that pops up in the browser after a search. I found the fact I navigate through Wikipedia so well but have very little editing knowledge surprising to myself since I felt like I had such a good knowledge of the site. Now that I have edited my first page, I may do it more often because I now know how too. Before today, I did not want to take the time to learn how to edit Wikipedia, and sometimes I just don’t feel like writing anything, but now that I understand how to edit, I feel more inclined to take that action. I feel almost a sense of accomplishment when I add information that could possibly help someone find a starting point for a paper. Even though not much information was added, I feel like I have contributed useful information.
ip editing adress-

User talk:143.105.203.172 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archezoa

Reflections on Social networking articles

My views on these articles are that they are accurate to real life. My view is that the MySpace vs. Facebook debate was largely based on what kids and social groups were on at the time. MySpace was the original popular social networking site, it was the site that laid the groundwork for other social networking sites and opened the doors for people on networking sites in general. MySpace was fairly simple, with a layout site for each person, a blog section, a music section, and a photo album section. It displayed basic personal information but not much else. There was a comment section where someone could comment on that persons page but there was nothing to start a conversation. Facebook created more interaction by introducing the newsfeed, where people could get a real time view of what people were doing or what was on their mind. Facebook also had a profile page with more information than MySpace, plus it introduced the wall, where someone could post on it and others could comment on that post. I believe trends on who was on who was based on the population of people in a certain area. I created a MySpace when I was a freshman in high school, when Facebook was still relatively unknown. After Facebook exploded, I made a Facebook, and now MySpace is considered dead. MySpace failed to have the features that Facebook has to keep people on its site, and it lacked real time views of what people were up to. Few people were on MySpace after Facebook took over, basically killing the site. I also agree that Facebook blew up because MySpace was old and Facebook was the new. Since social media sites were just beginning to get popular at the time Facebook became popular, that is how it took over. It simply was the new site at the dawn of a revolution. It seems like Myspace was the site that Facebook used to build its own site, as in the beginning Facebook was only a profile wall. Facebook added the newsfeed and several other features such as pages, which someone could “become a fan” of and share with the world their interests. Now Facebook uses a real time feed of everything that goes on between our friends. Some people see this as good and some people see this as bad. The downside of this is that some people think that there is too much insight into ones life on the page that is being shown, whereas some people say now we are able to completely keep in touch with our friends. Many people, including myself, see this as the reason they have a Facebook. I use it o keep in touch with my friends from high school and earlier in my life. I believe that Facebook helped me make more friends in high school because I was in constant communication with my friends and I was able to converse with them at any time. Social groups are formed, as kids get older, during the later years of high school. Social networking sites let other people see how they live their lives. By reading what is on peoples minds, we can see somewhat how they are. The pictures they post also help us delve in on who people are and what their interests are and were. I believe that Facebook has gotten to the level where it is completely diverse. If someone were to go online, they could easily see the 100’s of millions of users that now flood Facebook, from all kinds of countries and all over the world.

Essay on digital divide

For the articles listed for us to read, I found Besser’s article interesting because he describes how in a changing world we are failing to teach our students how to use technology effectively and to contribute to society. This is reinforced in Warschauer’s article when he uses the example of the hole in the wall experiment. This experiment showed that even if we give computer and Internet access to everyone, if we do not teach people how to use it then the people will not contribute to society, and therefore be more of a “consumer’’ rather than a “creator”. I can say that in my experience, I am more of a consumer. I have never created anything to contribute to society on the internet, but I use the internet everyday for information. This is in part I believe to the fact that I have never been taught how to create something over the web or to add to a website, proving the articles that we need to teach students how to create digital products. 

Over time, my ITC skills have increased greatly over the past 2 years, since my senior year of high school. This is because as school projects become more difficult it is necessary to learn how to make the projects easier using computer programs. I have also learned how to research better due to research papers I have completed in college. Compared to the model, I learned literacy from working in school during my early school years, while my ITC literacy was developed later in my life from teaching myself, there were not many effective classes that taught me how to use ITC. This can be attributed to not much time spent in a classroom learning how to use digital media programs, as well as low access in general to ITC information I believe this will change though because society is moving toward a more digital world, where everything that was once written is now digital. As this revolution takes place, Educators are now learning how ITC technology should be taught more in school so that students can actually contribute to society. This kind of literacy will be essential in the future to contributing to society and for carrying out everyday asks that were once written are now moving to strictly digital. This is a crisis to those who do not have access to get online in poorer countries because these people are now losing their chance to contribute to society, the digital divide having separated them from the rest of the world. But it is even more difficult to teach these people how to use ITC information because they do not have the time in the first place to get these people access to computers and Internet. The model presented by Warschauer provides a framework of criteria that can help us identify the crisis of the digital divide and provide us a way of getting help to those cut off from society. I believe this he same for someone like me, who because of my low ITC literacy, I have been unable to contribute to information on the web. With new approaches to making Itc literacy standard, I feel like future generations will better be able to contribute to Information on the web more than I have by my age

Digital storytelling

On monday we heard a lecture on digital storytelling. Digital storytelling is method that ordinary people use to share there life story using digital tools. They use digital media to get their stories around the world. Digital storytelling can be slideshows of photographs to videos to anything in between. The main idea is that digital methods are used to share a story from the persons eye view. This type of storytelling has come about due to blogging, youtube, and other digital media resources. I believe that digital storytelling is important because it lets people around the world see the life stories of other people. These stories can be compelling ways of geting people motivated to go out and help other in the world. I believe it is important because it is good for people to see the world around them and to get a view of what others go through in their lives. I believe the most important aspect of digital storytelling is that it lets normal people be heard and start movements on their own, getting around in the world.

Dr. Ziemke reflection

On Friday in Dolan auditorium I listened to Dr. Ziemke lecture on Crisis Mapping. Having her as a political science professor before, I knew a little bit about what crisis mapping was. I thought it was very interesting how Dr. Ziemke was responsible for starting the crisis mapping movement started. I believe that crisis mapping is a good way of mapping which areas of the world are in need and for pinpointing areas of crisis around the world. It is also a good way of showing how cellular devices are becoming completely widespread and can be used to help map out the worlds crisis'.  Dr. Ziemke demonstrated how sending out a text message puts a dot on the map of your location. The map then shows how many texts there all over the world, showing the location and number of crisis' from around the world. There was a large dot over some parts of Africa, showing how there was a large number of crisis' in that area. Crisis mapping shows proof of areas around the world that are the most in need. Crisis mapping is also useful as an early warning sign of emergencies to come. I believe that crisis mapping is a revolutionary step to useing mobile echnlogy in the forefront of information on humanitarian emergencies around the world

Reflection on " The Scope of Social Justice"

Here is my reflection for the article " The Scope of Social Justice".
When I read the article, the big picture that stood out for me was stating what social justice is and creating a  blueprint for what we could use to establish whether something is just or not. The author then tried to explain how opinion could affect how the second and third paradigms are not concrete and can fluctuate between the opinions of others. For the pizza example, we see that we must understand how to distribute the pizza. This situation is dependent on the opinion of people. There are also other variables, like no pizza is perfect, having burnt sections. Who is to decide how we regulate who gets what piece, how big each piece is, and so forth. This is very dependent on whoever is in charge of distribution. One person might say that because someone is needier they deserve a bigger piece, while another person might say that because the needy person is needy from their own poor decisions, they must get the same piece as everyone else. These kinds of questions are the main debate of distributive justice today. We see more and more societies becoming more and more liberal and moving toward socialistic societies that these kinds of questions bring up a heated debate. The main problem is that there really has been little experience with such a society. The examples we have are not really large "super power" countries, with the exception of some European countries. But I believe it is difficult to drastically change a society like the United States, which is not accustomed to a distributive government. I believe that Everyone should be accountable for themselves, but when using an example of something like pizza, which is food, a necessary need for survival, everything should be equal. When it comes to taxes, wages, and dealing with other things that are not hindering survival, I believe that people are accountable for how much they benefit society. For example, I believe that if someone is successful, they should not be punished or had their hard work distributed to someone that does not put in the effort or have the drive to succeed. an example would be giving some one who earned an A on a test a C so that everyone in the class has an equal grade, despite the person getting an A working very hard and the person getting, say an F, still getting a C so everything is equal.  Would you want to be the person with the A getting a C? When it comes to something like college acceptance, I dont believe it would be fair to accept someone with lower grades just because they are of a minority or based on family income.
When it comes to paradigm 3, I believe that it hard to determine how "hungry" someone is. There isn't really any criteria out there to defy that. But we can assume that someones financial status would probably be used to indicate the status of someones hunger. Someone with lower income is probably going to have less food than someone with a higher income. I believe that this is the best criteria for determining how hungry someone is. I think relating IQ to the amount of food that should be given would only be seen as fair to someone who believes in giving food to the individuals who have greater relative fitness, in a biological sense. This is because someone with a higher IQ is technically probably better suited to the survival of the human species than someone with the lower IQ.  So technically, this is how biologically I could see this situation being fair, but this is unrealistic because humans are emotional beings.  I believe the hardest part of the third paradigm to be putting trust into a governing body. It is always hard to hand over power to someone, but if the decision was a majority among a population then I would agree that that is the best situation for keeping control of the social distribution.

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

This is my reflection on the short story we read for class. In the story we can see that they author is trying to portray how society justifies happiness with the misery of some others. The author shows how even in a somehow perfect society, their is always suffering on the inside. I believe the author is trying to express her opinion on how suffering is an unavoidable part of this world, and there are no perfect societies. She also expresses how there is another option besides leaving the community, and that is to stand up and speak out against the community. But that would only be possible if someone had the courage to stand up to society and become a leader against such crimes. It is tough for someone to come up with that amount of courage, as we can see from the story that no one has ever stood up to the society. 

A present day example would be the Sierra Leone Conflict diamond struggle of the 1990's and early 2000's, where hundreds of thousands of people went through a terrible civil war for the control of the countries plentiful diamond fields. These diamonds were used as fuel for the war effort by being traded to supply capital to the rebel forces to overthrow the government. During this time, it was estimated that 30-40% of the worlds diamonds were conflict diamonds. So when a rich couple in the United States had a beautiful wedding and ring, tens to hundreds of people could of been killed for that diamond. It is a paradox the suffering that goes through to attain these diamonds and the beauty of them afterward.