Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age

In discussing Education in the classroom this seems to me to be a very appropriate article. It seems that this will be one of the big issues in the next ten years as students come to college with little idea of what is the difference between common knowledge and crediting authors for their works. And to be completely upfront, I have to thank Anne Mendenhal at FSU for linking me to this article on Facebook. I would also like to thank the NY times, and the author, but I can't remember his name so follow the link. . . :)

Time spent on Social Networks Up 43%

Social networks getting more of Americans' time online

This is a great article on the changes that are taking place in American's online habits. Social networks are up by more than 43% over last year while time spent on e-mail is down 25%. Other areas where on-line usage was down:

Portals were down 19% and Instant messaging was down 15%.

It appears that Social Networking is still growing strong and the desire to connect with each other has not abated.

Follow-up on Friendships

Alexandra Alter, “Is This Man Cheating on His Wife?” Wall Street Journal, Aug. 10, 2007, W8, W1.

A few days ago I wrote a piece about Friendship and if we are or are not losing our friends due to Web 2.0. I found this article written in 2007 that I thought was pretty interesting regarding virtual worlds and the impact they have on their "real world". Below are some highlights

"Nearly 40% of men and 53% of women who play online games said their virtual friends were equal to or better than their real-life friends, according to a survey of 30,000 gamers conducted by Nick Yee, a recent Ph.D. graduate from Stanford University. More than a quarter of gamers said the emotional highlight of the past week occurred in a computer world, according to the survey, which was published in 2006 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press's journal Presence."

I will ask the same question that I asked before: How will this effect society. If we no longer make social connections in the real world, how will we end up being treated, and how will we end up treating others. Will we ignore the real concerns of the world, while enjoying "paradise" in a virtual one? I don't know. . .

Are Friendships dying out?

There was a good article in USA Today, titled Is true friendship dying away. In the article researches state that "Face-to-face chatting is giving way to texting and messaging; people even prefer these electronic exchanges to, for instance, simply talking on a phone.Smaller circles of friends are being partially eclipsed by Facebook acquaintances routinely numbered in the hundreds. Amid these smaller trends, growing research suggests we could be entering a period of crisis for the entire concept of friendship. "

The article concludes by noting that the best way to have friendships is to "put down the device" and engage people.

It is so interesting that we add friends in Facebook constantly, but are they real friends? How many real friends do you actually have? How many would give you $20 without asking for it back? How about $100?

Where does society go if it can't count on one another for friendship? Who is going to get us through those rough spells in life without those neighbors that we have counted on in the past?

I say look people in the eye, say hello, walk your neighborhood and say hello to the people you meet. Ask your neighbor if they need help with their yard, or their car. Smile and be the kind of person people want for a friend.

Evan. . .

Wikileaks and Web 2.0

Wikileaks releases massive set of Afghan war files

Well Web 2.0 has done it again. A huge set of files (75,000) from Junior officers to senior officers outlining exactly how the war is going in Afghanistan. The military is outraged, the white house is outraged, and I am sure the guy in the pentagon responsible for keeping this stuff under wraps is now peeling potatoes in Alaska.

What I find funny is that immediately the government says there is no smoking gun showing that Pakistan is aiding the insurgents in Afghanistran. Excuse me??? 75,000 documents and they already know there is no smoking gun? They don't even read the 400 page bills that go through congress, how do they know what is in 75,000 documents.

It is a paradox. Web 2.0 gives us so much information, but at the same time it gives us SO MUCH information who can digest it all?

Instructional Design

It is day four at my internship. The big news is that I get to put all of those Instructional Design skills to work. I have started a project for creating a training to teach users how to create DVD’s from the film footage that the LDS church creates. Like all large organizations, the structure of this one is changing. This skill that used to be handled by a core group of individuals is now going to be made available to each department, and there is a large need to have training materials available for them so they can create this content on their own. I have started creating a project plan and a flow chart and am working with the content experts to get the materials that I need to produce the training. Very cool.

In other news I got my hands on an Ipad for the first time. It is a great device for content consumption, but I am not sure it is the best thing for content creation. I know people who have one will be saying what of course your can create content. I am not arguing the merits of this, but it is an apple device. Can it run parallels? No. Can it run the major windows suites on it? No. So while it is a great device, (and maybe in history it will be seen as a transitional device between the laptop and the tablet thing that we see in Star Trek) I still see it as an auxiliary device not a replacement for your computer. And as this is a web 2.0 class, and we are discussing produsers, I would have to say it does not move web 2.0 forward, as Web 2.0 is all about users creating content and sharing it.

Well that’s all for today. Still really enjoying my internship. . .

Hey everyone,
As part of my internship I cam across some interesting graphs about how quickly web 2.0 applications are penetrating the market, and how mobile devices are now more than ever being used for data rather than voice.





This first slide shows that Facebook and Youtube are quickly dominating the online usage. This means that produsers are more active than ever in creating content for the web.


This second slid shows how mobile phones are now more than ever being used for data rather than voice.

A third thing that I found this morning was an article talking about how ATT has abandoned their unlimited data usage plan and whether or not this could be a trigger for other wireless carriers to do the same. ( http://content.usatoday.com/communities/technologylive/post/2010/07/forecaster-says-end-of-all-you-can-eat-broadband-pricing-poses-threat-to-web-video/1 )

The question then, that we have to ask is: If more and more users are wanting to use their mobile devices for data, and the large Cellular companies are limiting the amount of data that can be sent, how will this apparent conflict be resolved.

Thoughts. . .

Evan. . .