Facebook Online readings

In the first website reading it discussed Facebook and a study done of undergraduate students and the amount that they use Facebook daily, and how if affects their studies. The results concluded that students who use Facebook have a lower GPA than students who do not use Facebook. This suprised me that there would be such a significant drop in GPA just due to the fact that some use Facebook and some don't.

Based on the other two readings, do you feel that if undergraduate students continue to use Facebook, the overall intellegence of college students will decrease. Do you think that there is a way to overcome these studies?

seeley brown chapter 8

From the reading on page 221 do you agree with the reading and think that "learning is a matter of absorbing or cramming in information. Yet in good colleges students also get extensive access--access, that is, to a variety of different types of community." Do you feel that all schools should provide their students with extensive access? Another question that I have is on page 231. Seeley Brown uses the term "developed university". I'm unaware of what that means.

I was surprised to read that the more conventional schools that are leaning towards alternatives and tending to keep everyone but the students "tightly bound together." I did not expect this because it would only seem logical to keep the students close and not have them distant from each other.

chapter 5 reading/response

In chapter five of The Social Life of Information, on page 119, the term epistemological, which is used in the context of a form of debate, caused me to not understand the context of the section of personal dis-function. On page 127, Brown discusses the central properties of the community of practice. As I continued reading, I was surprised to find that while getting the job done, people that were involved in the task, ignored division of rank, which then lead to forming a single group around a shared task.

On page 16 in The Social Life of Information there is a list of things that are predicted to "disappear" with the continuous spread of technology. The following that made the list really surprised me; television, universities, politics, government, and so on. Even with the abundance of technology in the world today, I did not expect television and universities to be affected by it.

One question that I have is based on the the list of things that are supposedly "going extinct", which do you believe truly will disappear in years to come?

Power Point

A tip that I have for everyone when using power point is to change up the backgrounds of the slides to make the presentation more interesting and less monotonous. Another tip I have is to use transitions throughout the entire presentation so that it will look more professional. These quick and easy tips will make your slide show even more intriguing and professional.

collective intelligence

We worked together in thinking of the idea for our actual comic. We then had to figure out how to lay out the pictures and what the exact text would be. Working with Andrea was easy and beneficial. We worked well together and got our work done in a timely and efficient manner. I didn't particularly learn anything from this experience but it reminded me that in order to work collaboratively and cooperatively you need to be able compromise and put everyones ideas together in an appropriate way.

pg 130-135 and Confessions of an Aca/Fan

In the blog that we read this week, I was confused about a few things. One of the main things that I didn't understand was the difference between collective intelligence and "the Wisdom of Crowds" model. They talked about it at the beginning of the blog but it didn't really make much sense to me.

On page 116, I was surprised to find out how fast and how many people post things on Wikipedia. It is now considered a coordinating resource. I was also suprised to read on page 133 that a lot of people post things to Wikipedia becuase of a personal desire to do a good thing. I always assumed that people posted on it just to because they wanted to and they knew that information. I didn't stop to think that people were putting things on the web to boost their self-essteem and confidence.