21 Days Of Blogging

This course has been really eye opening to me. I learned a lot, not just about the course work but about time management with online classes. I work a full time job and have been taking care of my grandfather who is very sick in the days I have off. I had a hard time keeping up to date with the amount of coursework and how little free time I had, but it taught me that I need to work on my time management skills and be more organized because the real world is always gonna have its obstacles. I learned through the group project that online collaboration is not as easy it seems, life happens and people have different schedules or even time zones. Whats important is the end goal and communicating with each other so that we are all on the same page. I loved hearing what all of you had to say about the readings because that gave me the ability to think about things with a new perspective. The course work that we learned will follow me for the rest of my life and I believe it will help m...

I chose to do an article on a series that is being launched by Spotify called “Im with the banned”. This is a series about people using the power of music to come together and use their voices to hopefully shed some light on the worlds most important issues that we are facing today, such as immigration and LGBTQ equality. Artists from all around the world, specifically the ones listed in trumps travel ban have been using this project to collaborate with each other to create awareness in a really unique way. “It explores each musician’s personal story, and the complicated role that music has played along the way. As they begin to work with their American collaborators, music becomes a universal point of connection,” Spotify said. “By the end of each short film a brand new song was created, and we realize what we stand to lose when we become less open.” The playlists created in this series all lead the viewers to the I Am An Immigrant campaign to help celebrate everything that immigrant...

This was my favorite chapter out of the five because it touched upon something that I've been worrying about for quite some time now. After reading about the human vs. robot apocalypse I thought this was a good follow up. When talking about robots and jobs I cant help but worry about the jobs that will be lost if robots were to eventually take over. This article put my mind at ease by explaining that although robots will be replacing humans in some jobs, they will be replacing jobs that they are better at than humans. This article also talks about how robots may be taking some of our jobs in the future but we are still needed for many things that they will never be capable of. Colvin makes it a point to stress that we are not useless! I really appreciated this because after reading all these articles about robots, I was starting to lose hope. Todays society has improved so much because of technology so it's not fair of us to discredit it. Instead we need to work with ...

This article was about how successful virtual teams collaborate. I think this article was very well written and brought up some really awesome points that we could have used in our group projects. The author talked about pretty much everything that my group had a problem with. We were not in sync with each other and we did not trust each other to do each others parts. He used this article to pretty much layout what you need to do in order to be successful when collaborating in virtual teams. Doing the group project was the first time I took part in this and I have to say I wasn't that pleased with it, after reading this article I have a change of heart and feel as though we just went about it the wrong way and didn't have the proper knowledge to know how to work as a unit. I'm definitely going to think about the things I've read for a very long time. I want to work in the technical field someday so I will need to master these skills. Overall this was a very in...

Empathy is something that I have always valued because people often say that it is one of my best traits. I really enjoyed this article because it expresses the importance of empathy not just in people but how it affects almost every thing in our daily life. Finding out that college students today are 40 percent less empathetic was no surprise to me. Ive experienced a lot of different places with a lot of different people in my life, I have learned the importance of empathy in a person and their relationships. Thinking about a world without empathy is just weird, almost every single thing we do is because of empathy even if its just a little. I believe in order for us to be good people we need to be empathetic to one another and help each other out to the best of our ability. With no empathy, the ‘every man for himself’ idea would come into play and it would be a disgusting world. Im not saying we live in a place of roses and daisies because that would be a lie. We have a lot...

Technology never ceases to amaze me. Knowing that robots can one day replace humans is mind blowing. As a kid when I saw a movie that had a robot in it my dad would say, one day that will be a reality but I never believed him. Growing up in this day and age we see new and different types of computers and robots every day. Cars are now driving themselves, dating devices are used as companions and food shops are now all mechanical. So many advances have happened over the past couple of years and it's amazing that we have the knowledge and the resources to advance ourselves in this technological era. With that being said, I often get scared thinking about this whole phenomena going too far and robots taking over jobs that humans should have. For example, we all hate automated customer service representatives, right? Imagine if that was a hotel clerk. While all of this is really cool, I think that there should be boundaries on what jobs should be replaced by humans.

I thought that this was a really great article describing the foundation of this class which is collaboration. I have enjoyed this topic the most because it seems to be never ending. This   reading focused on what is needed in order for successful collaboration, the different types of collaboration, why collaboration works when it does and why it doesn't work when it doesn't. The list continues, this reading was informative and very intellectual. I really liked the way it made me think about and understand collaboration and its use in our everyday lives. For example, I kept thinking about our group project because on some of these topics my group members and I didn't always see eye to eye. It was a learning experience for all of us. From the beginning to the end of the piece we learn the process of the start of collaboration, to the pieces that make collaboration work or what ideas can come from collaboration and how they can benefit each other. To finally how col...

The introduction to spreadable media was a topic Ive known a little bit about for quite some time. Social media apps like Facebook that we use everyday have photos and videos that go viral and can spread from around America to around the world. Its kind of like memes on Instagram, they were not popular but once they started they were a hit. The reason for this being that they were relatable so they became more “spreadable” and are now all you see on Instagram. When we post on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook we are allowing what we share to be spread to however many followers or friends we have. The technology world is taking us by storm and some people can even make a living from one video they post going viral and being viewed all around the world. This article was about how easy it is for media to be spread these days because of all the social media platforms we are given to do so. I for example have multiple groups on Instagram with my friends where we share memes with each...

This was a very relevant post in my eyes. Being raised I was always taught that failure is ok, that you will get up and get them next time. It was a good thing to put into our heads because I grew up in a town where everyone was afraid to fail. My high school was very prestigious and kids would let there parents pressure them into doing everything they could to achieve which is awesome! But sometimes they took it to far and students in my class would be upset because the A minus they got is gonna cost them when they get home. It was such a sad thing because I love failure, it has gotten me to where I am today. Trust me I have had my fair share of failures but I wouldn't take any of them back. I used to regret a decision I made in high school but being older now I've realized I will never regret anything again. Any failure I've endured I've always learned from my mistake and changed. When I fail I get right back up and I go at whatever it is twice as hard as be...

Nowadays, social media is a huge part of our everyday lives. With over 700 million active users a month, Instagram has welcomed a new phenomenon into the world, the “Instagram Models”. Instagram models are men and women with a large following on Instagram. Once they have a large following on Instagram, Instagram models tend to collaborate with companies by promoting the company’s products on their pages. To someone who knows little about instagram models, it might be surprising to learn that some people can actually make a living by being an Instagram model. In fact, companies pay hundreds of dollars for ‘insta-famous’ people to post photos featuring their product, and can even pay thousands if the model features their products multiple times. But, for most Instagram models, it’s considered to be a fun hobby that helps them make some extra cash, while expanding their followings. Tammy Hembrow, an Australian based fitness influencer, is an example of how people can now make a ...

This article was a fun read because it was different then what we have been learning about before. I am very familiar with this topic because I love my music and rap music in particular. This is a very common thing that is often a sticky situation because it's so common that sometimes it can just go under the radar, other times people charge for money. For example, Kanye wests iconic the Life of Pablo album has over 20 samples from other songs and even though he got permission for all of them, some people thought that he was abusing this power. I for one think that this is always how rap music has been. Rap music is supposed to convey a message and sometimes you need to use the beginning or end of a speech or song to get that across to other people. This has been a trend for a while so I understand when it gets legal but in my opinion it should just be fair game because rap music has a really cool way of expressing really relevant issues.

This week I chose to do an article that was different then what you would expect. My article is about how scientists have been using twitter to communicate with the online community. A survey was taken of over 500 scientists to find out their attitudes towards social media. The study found that while some are not open to social media, others see the advantages.   "Most scientists saw the benefit in using Twitter - they said it was a good way to access a large and diverse audience. They also appreciate the ease of communicating in snippets, how little time it takes, and how accessible it is.”   The study found that scientists use twitter to communicate with old colleagues and other scientists, almost like the platinum of a forum. Sometimes they just use it to share their progress to people that are interested. Of the few scientists that choose to use social media, they believe that the scientists against it, are missing out on new information they could be using in their e...

This article was very interesting to me because I really didn't have much knowledge to open source culture prior to reading about it. I actually felt very uneducated about the topic because it's such a practical thing that I should have been aware about as common knowledge. Its very important for people in the technology field to have access to free software because that is how the world has evolved into what it is today. With the software being free anyone can add onto it or improve it to make it better, in the article he mentions the strength of peer production. This is where it gets sticky because although this has helped people in the technology field further where we are today it has also done some damage. Open source has hurt the music industry tremendously and the record labels and artists are suffering because of it. It has also hurt the television and box office industry. There is so many ways to watch TV shows and movies illegally now, that movie budgets are...

This article about group dynamics was interesting to me because I've always enjoyed being in a group. This is again one of the things that I thought I pretty much understood but clearly I had a very little knowledge on how many types and sub types of group there are. I thought it was funny how he mentioned that groups are typically two to seven people because that applies to me. I like to be friends with more than one group of people and none of them are over seven people. This article was very informative on what can make a group and what can define a group. There is over eleven different definitions of the word group mentioned in this article and that was mind blowing to me because all of them made sense in their own way. As well as definitions, we learned about how to classify groups and classify more complex groups within those groups. Last but not least this reading discussed the importance of interaction and relationships within groups. Groups need a dynamic to work...

In this day and age where social media is all we focus on people have gotten lost in the amount of followers they have on Instagram or how many friends they have on Facebook. Its crazy to me how it drives some peoples day to do things just to enhance their social status. In this article we learn about the Dunbar theory which states that we as humans are not able to maintain more than 150 social relationships, meaning the other friends are not real friends. We get so caught up in the numbers that we forget that most of these people are strangers in our lives. Thinking in my head I have about 1000+ Facebook friends but I would have to guess I know about 100 of them personally. This just adds on to what we have been saying about lack of face to face communication and the internet. Articles like this are really important not just for me but for everyone because they make us aware of the important aspects of life we miss when we forgot there is a real world outside of the digital ...

I think this was a very good article to read because it relates to the project that we had this semester and it's a relevant   topic to pretty much any class we take because we almost always have to work in groups. This article was about how projects are better quality and more successful when completed in groups compared to when you work alone. I agree with this 100%, being a person with a lot of anxiety I often think my ideas are of no use but having the ability to collaborate in a group really helps me know that my ideas are worth something. When I work with groups I love that we can bounce things off of each other and combine all of our thoughts into one. This article also touches upon face to face interaction and how important it is to make a group work cohesively. When interacting online we are not able to read each others body language and facial expression to know if we are all on the same page. This article stresses how without those physical components we miss o...

This week’s article talks about the success of the online communities and the different ways it is neglected. I chose this because I agree with the idea of the piece. People often never see the forest for the trees, they don't look at the bigger picture. The article talks about the factors that go into making an online community successful like number of participants, numbers of messages, as well as member satisfaction and many other things that people don't think about. People don't realize that user satisfaction, errors and productivity of the topic all depend on the community that is behind all of it. They do countless amounts of research to try to boost things like customer satisfaction and productivity to be the best it can be. They also have to focus on how to eliminate things like errors and problems that will upset the customers. This article really shows you how online communities are a science, it's not easy and it cant be done by anyone. You need to do the p...

Before I read this article I had an idea of what I thought a community of practice was. I assumed that it was about a community that all practice the same thing like a religion or a church for example. After reading the article I have learned that it is cooler than that. I think it's really great because this piece gives so many examples of what a community of practice is and its things I've known about I just never thought they would have counted as a community of practice. I have now learned that a community of practice, is a group of people that share the same passion about one thing and they work to either finish a goal or spread their knowledge of the topic they are passionate about through the art of communication. I think that this whole idea is one of the coolest things I've learned so far in this class because Im apart of a few communities of practice myself and I had no idea!

This article was very interesting to me because its was written in a very intellectual way that made me think about my online life as well as my life in the real world. He pretty much explains how with the internet we are virtually capable of doing anything. A lot more than we tend to realize or at least I realized. My favorite part about this piece was when he spoke about how the future depends on our doing, our choices and what we do to achieve our goals. We are living in a day and age now where we have all the power but we don't realize this. We can make this world whatever we want it to be, if we choose to achieve and be happy we can but we often get caught up in the chaos of the world we live in and we try to plan everything out. What this article did that I appreciated was how it explained the importance of just living in the moment for now and what happens in the future depends on what we put out today. This is an article I want my whole generation to read...

I had mixed feelings about this paper because of the way it was written and how much content was present. However, that does not mean that I did not enjoy it. I really liked learning about the complexity of online collaboration because before I had a very broad view of it. In this paper I learned about the four different kinds of collaborative rhythms : phenomenal, infrastructural, organizational and biographical. This piece did a really good job of showing how each different kind of rhythm requires different aspects in order for the whole process to work. He explained the importance of every group member being in sync or the whole thing will not work out and I thought that was very true due to my personal experiences before reading this. The writer did a very good job of explaining this in a way that was easy for me to grasp. Overall, I was really happy with this article because I gained so much knowledge on a topic I thought I pretty much understood.