My Reflection on the Winter '12 Semester

Retrieved from google.com/images on April 13, 2012

 So this semester in ALES204, Communication Theory and Practice, I learned how to use many different social media websites, as well as navigate around Wikipedia and edit stubs, and upload professional information to LinkedIn. The main focus of this class was to teach us how to be profession but maximize the number of tools available to use to stay connected and up to date in our future careers. Until registering in this course and starting it in January, I did not have a twitter account and I didn't understand how and why it would ever be useful in my day to day life. It finally sank in this morning, when explaining to a friend, that there is much more to twitter than just posting new tweets about whats going on in your life. Twitter is a resource, it is a field of information that is available at your fingertips, and at the click of a hash-tag. Hash-tags, for those of you who don't know, is a way of connecting tweets related to a specific topic, for example, all tweets that are related to this course get #ALES204 linked to them so that it builds a forum type page of all tweets that people have made related to ALES204. Whether you like it or not, social media is becoming a huge part of our everyday lives. Businesses are starting to advertise deals on Facebook, and update customers via Twitter about upcoming events.

Since the beginning of this class I often find myself analyzing different professors, both on how they speak while they are presenting and how their presentations (power points) are put together. I think a lot of professors at the University would benefit on a presentation surrounding Pecha Kecha, and even just a simple "do and don't" about power points. There is nothing worse than sitting through an hour and a half lecture where the power point is hard to read and crammed with words. 

This class has done a fantastic job of bringing to light many different resources that were available on the Worldwide Web. There are so many tools, like Audioboo for doing voice recordings, and LinkedIn for posting things like your resume and staying in touch with your field of work. Not only did ALES204 teach me how to use these resources, it also taught me how to remain professional while still staying in the technology loop. This image below demonstrates a perfect example of someone who could benefit from registering in ALES204.

Retrieved from Failbook on April 13, 2012

 Throughout the semester we were required to view and comment on some of our peers blogs. The fellow students whose blogs I commented on have a range of programs and add some different incite about what we learned this semester. Alex B ,Jen V ,Angela Z ,Andi C ,Erin A  are the five blogs I decided to comment on. With some guidance from Jess and our TA's, the writing of everyone appears to have improved greatly, and I know I have learned some valuable lessons about how to critically analyze not only fellow students work, but I also understand that not everything I read on the internet has been peer reviewed and edited. Everyone has to be careful about what they read on the internet, and not every website is going to be a reputable source for papers, always double check the sources credibility.

I can honestly say I value what I have learned in this class. I will always remember to think twice about what gets posted online and what a potential employer will be able to  find about me out there on the web. For more information regarding social media and professionalism on the internet, refer to the class blog!


Until next time, keep smiling!


Kelsie

Social Media, Video Games, and Personal Interactions

Gone are the days where kids ring the door bells of their neighbors to go outside and ride their bikes. I remember when my neighborhood friends would ring the doorbell to ask if I could come out to play and I was heartbroken if I wasn't allowed. Cops and robbers was the neighborhood favorite, which has now been replaced with a more demeaning, MUCH more violent video game version called Grand Theft Auto. Today, the only interaction I see around my neighborhood is when someone is passing in their car, or the kids are out selling something for a fundraiser. The generation that is growing up now seems to only know the world of technology- unless their is a video game, or a social media website at the end of the tunnel, they aren't interested. Whose fault is it that kids today sit on the couch and play video games right up until dinner and then again until bedtime? Is it the parents fault? Is it corporations and businesses like Apple,Microsoft, and Playstation who have continued to evolve the technology? I'll let you answer those questions for yourself.

This illustrates almost perfectly how the gaming world has evolved over time.
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Growing up I never owned a game console, no Nintendo64, no Gameboy, nothing. Do I feel like I missed out on anything? No. I do not resent my parents for not letting me have any of those gaming machines. My family didn't even own a computer until my dad needed one for his return to University. I never got sucked into the technology like the generation today has. To be fair though, the older I got, the more I got interested in understanding how it all worked and I started spending more and more time on the computer and the Internet. I was one of the first of my friends to have an MSN account, and let me tell you, my parents objected until the cows came home. I also claimed I would never fall into the trap of Facebook, but that did not last for long and once I signed up, into the endless rabbit hole I fell.

Image retrieved from google.com/images on April 13, 201

So much of our technology has continued to evolve over the years to "make it easier to stay connected" but are we really staying connected with one another? Angela Zimmerman wrote a fantastic blog entry on the disconnect of connection that is occurring in our world today. One of my good friends made a good point when we were out for dinner one night; I was replying to an "important" e-mail and she pointed out that we could be eating dinner on our own and just text each other, but instead we are sitting together, so we should value our time together. Ever since that meal I have made a conscious effort to keep my phone in my purse or my pocket when I am out with friends. I frequently find myself observing others when I am out in public and more times than not I find that too many people are out with friends, but really they aren't, because they spend their time on their phones doing something that does not involve personal interactions. A perfect example of this was last weekend. I was out for breakfast with my family and at the table next to me, every member of the family was on some sort of technological device. The infant, maybe she was 3, was on and iPad, dad was texting away on his iPhone, and mom was doing the same on her Blackberry. Before we know it we will all interact with each other via computer screens while we sit in our bedrooms in our pajamas all day. This picture, to the right, demonstrates the direction our world theoretically is going in if we don't start interacting face-to-face with one another. It is not just my fellow students and I who feel this way about technology. Take a look at this blog posted about how technology and social media are really effecting our relationships. 

The way technology is going, in 10 years I'll be able to just think of this post and my computer will type it out for me. Is all this technological improvement for the better? Or are we setting ourselves up for a very lonely future.

Thanks for reading, check back soon for my reflection on ALES204 and what I've learned.


Cheers,
Kelsie