Goodbye!

I began my semester kind of scared. I was afraid of going back to school in general, but also afraid of taking online classes. At first I thought “omg how perfect i can rlly be invisible behind my computer screen” but when i realized how interactive moodle was I was terrified. I felt I had plenty of online experience otherwise, mastering the few things I do usually do on a daily basis, but also knew there were plenty of things i could learn.

I feel as though I opened up a lot this semester. The more weeks went on the more comfortable I felt “exposing” myself. I also really did learn a few things. Leaving this class I am taking away knowledge of a few applications that I’m sure I will use in the future. I finally got to mess around with garageband, making me feel more comfortable to play around with it to perhaps make some sort of music project I’ve always wanted to make. I am also now an active user of google drive, and have been doing all my homework on it. It makes me life a million times easier in terms of not having to save, but also being able to work on documents between home and work without having to email myself is so convenient. Another application I finally got to figure out was screencasting. I’ve always wondered how people did that kind of stuff.

Overall I feel better acclimated to going back to school. I took a break because I was overwhelmed and completely over working myself. This semester really helped getting me back in the groove (part time) but also taught me a few tools that I can hopefully use in the future assuming my professors will be as creatively flexible as Lisa. Next semester I will be returning to Champlain part time and after two part time years I should finally have my social work degree!

It was a pleasure working with you all. Thank you so much for helping me on this journey and being such positive reinforcements! Good luck in all your endeavors.

creation requires influence

     I was very intrigued by Kirby Ferguson and went further than his TED talk and found his youtube channel where he had a mini-series of videos he called "Everything is a Remix." They were all fantastic and so interesting to see. Like in his TED talk, he picks apart artists, movies, inventions, technology, everything to show that everything is a remake of something else. He exposes Star Wars basing everything off of older sci-fi flicks and western films literally play by play.
I was interested in his Apple bit where he specifically shows the things Steve Jobs ripped off of the first Xerox computer model. But even though he ripped off certain things, he still put his own ideas into the first Apple desktop and it made a killing, evolving into the company it is today.
Here was my favorite part of the series:

But you can watch all four parts here if you are just as interested as I was:

     I agree with Lawrence Lessig in the sense that copyright laws now a days are terrifying. We are a society built on copies of copies. Some of our most celebrated creators borrowed, stole, and transformed their products to create products and music we love today. Only now people are greedy enough to create laws to protect their own copies of another copy. 

Generation F

    Gary Hamels article on Generation F vs Fortune 500 companies lists a variety of examples of how online life now effects work related life. Because I don’t work in a fortune 500 company, not many of these applied to any jobs I have had. Though there are ways the online world can affect other positions for me, and my peers.

    One big thing now a days is Facebook. Everyone's on it, and employers know that. Employers can look you up before you come in to interview and it can make or break their decision of hiring you. I have seen myself my former bosses looking up potential hires on facebook just to “see what they look like.” One of my friends recently told me a story of one of the higher ups in the retail store she works in came across her instagram and wasn't pleased, and even went so far as to speak to her about it. Once you place yourself in the online world, you are placing yourself in the eyes of anyone and everyone.

    A way the online world has changed workplaces in a way that I like, is the implementation of work emails. It’s a completely modernized form of communication, and a great way to separate your work emails from your personal ones. Work emails make things so much easier. Especially working overnight, it gives me an easy and appropriate way to communicate with my bosses when someone comes up or I have a question. It also keeps me in the loop. In the hotel business a lot can happen in your days off that people may forget to tell you. A thing I like about our work emails is that it keeps a thread of happenings so I can just go through and read what other people wrote the last few days.  

    Speaking of the hotel business (as well as restaurants), everyone uses online websites to review their experience with the business. This can either be a good thing, or a bad thing depending on what they say. A lot of the time they will mention names as well if they catch them. Sometimes the things they say can be really great, but you can’t please everyone. And like I said before, once they post that review online everyone can see it. Sometimes it can really deter people from staying with you if they read that someone elses stay was absolute crap.

    With the ever-evolving web presence we have also become a very phone savy nation. My past two landlords have been very “texty.” This is obviously wonderful in terms of being too lazy to make phone calls, I could just text my landlord about any issues I had or that “hey I just sent my rent out it might be a few days late!” But it also has definitely deteriorated how professional the relationship between me and one of my past landlords was. One time I texted him about needing screens for the windows in my bedroom so bats wouldn’t fly in at night and he responded with “Bat’s are cute.” He even went so far as to text me offering cheaper rent if I gave him “massages, etc.” I said no and over the two years I lived there he gradually increased my rent. So yeah yeah yeah he’s a pig etc etc but I really blame how easy it has gotten to communicate. I highly doubt he would have ever called me and and made the massages offer, but the fact that he could hide behind his phone and ask made it easy and he didn't have to put much thought into it.

    So what I’m saying is, communication is a lot easier with Generation F, and online presence is absolute key to surviving these changes.

Tech life spans

     Chris Anderson presented some of the most terrible looking slides I've ever seen. 2004 or not, I don't think they would have ever been good. Aside from the ugly slides, he was able to paint a completely accurate picture of the life span of any and all technological advances. He used examples like DVDs and Netflix to express the 4 stages of any technology:

• Setting the right price
• Gaining market share
• Replacing another technology
• and eventually becoming obsolete

     I completely agree with his statements. It shows a progression in technology as well as us as humans. Constantly updating things to fit our ever growing need (laziness) for the most advanced gadgets. I think we can really see this in the progression of the iPhone over the last few years. Constantly there is a new and improved iPhone to the point where unless your made of money, you can't afford to keep up. I bought my first and only iPhone (with some financial help) freshman year of college. So I've had my iPhone for five years, don't ask me how it's lasted that long because I have no idea. My iPhone is so old it doesn't even have Siri. I have an iPhone 4 and since then there have been a handful of new and exciting updates that I just can't afford.
     Generally with any other phone when new updates come out the older phones have a funny way of not only becoming obsolete, but also miraculously breaking forcing people to commit to the next best thing. I have no idea how my measly little iPhone 4 hasn't followed that trend. I mean sure it autocorrects the stupidest things if I'm not paying attention, and every few months maybe it will freeze and I'll have to shut it off and turn it back on. But somehow I got lucky. It still takes fantastic pictures and gets me through my day to day social networking. I know for a fact though that if it ever really came to it's demise I would totally put off rent to invest in one of the new fancy gold ones with the fingerprint crap.
     One thing I pointed out to myself while watching the TED talk was that not necessarily everything becomes obsolete. Trends sometimes resurface in small ways and sometimes in big ways. One technology that I absolutely love that some would probably consider obsolete is collecting records and using turn tables. Perhaps it has something to do with my undying habit of collecting, but there's something I really prefer over putting a record on than plugging my iPhone into speakers.
    So records and turntables made a big comeback, something that goes against Chris Andersons 4 stages. I felt pretty good about my point and being able to bring it up in my blog post BUT when I read his article he posted 8 months after filming the TED talk I realized he already covered that base. In his Wired article he points out that marketing has a funny little way of refusing us to forget about things. Like with Netflix's suggested videos, it doesn't just suggest brand new movies and television shows, it shows a butt load of related content. As well as Amazons recommended books, movies, and overall items. So after reading a new book, it can recommend you check out this older one with similar content essentially resurfacing the obsolete object.
     I believe this really happened with the music industry. When I first started going to shows a lot of the bands I was seeing weren't selling vinyl. Just you know, CDs because that was the newest and greatest thing. But now at just about every merch table record lovers are able to purchase the bands LPS and 7"s on perfectly obsolete little plastic discs.

Podcasts

My first ever podcast was an episode of Never Not Funny that I found on earwolf.com. A website full of podcasts led by comedians, with (from what I can tell) guests that are also comedians. My first response was, oh it’s like listening to the radio. Like NPR or something. I chose the episode with Andrew Daly because I recently saw him in Review and kind of fell in love (with his sense of humor). From there on the earwolf website, I went to the Nocturnal Emotions page to listen to the episode with Macaulay Culkin (http://www.earwolf.com/show/nocturnal-emotions/). Overall I have found Earwolf to be a pretty entertaining website full of various podcasts that I can see myself tuning into while I’m at work.
After listening to different bits via podcast I realize it’s such an informal way to keep in touch with what’s happening, pop culture etc. I found it really easy to put a podcast on while I was at work and listen while I was doing my work. Way better than a tv sitting on in the background distracting me because you have to watch it. I also realized it’s a great way to learn about people I’ve never even heard of, comedians, celebrities, writers, the whole lot. Then I find myself making connections to things I have already read by them, or seen them elsewhere. It’s like podcasts are making me a more rounded person or something...
I have had a harder time finding the peace and quiet (without disrupting others) to record podcasts. Now that I have a few days off I can really focus on recording without having background noise!

Vloggin' all the way to grocery store

     After last weeks terrible experience with audio/video synching I decided to try a new approach. I tried downloading Movie Masher to give a different editing tool a try, but after downloading it immediately wouldn't open.... So after doing through the same exact process with an Adobe trial not working I decided to cut my losses and give iMovie a shot. I had only opened it when I first got my Macbook but since I wasn't all that impressed with iPhoto, I decided not to bother.
     I was immediately proved wrong when I tied for the second time. I had a speed bump in the process when trying to upload movies to the program with the videos I sent myself from my phone (because of the way they were automatically formatted). I liked that it was easy to add subtitles, choose the timing, ending credit, the whole nine yards. I'm definitely going to use iMovie to re-edit my older video.
     The only problem I have with my video is how pixelated it is. Totally my fault of coarse, recording from my phone. I think when I was saving the downloads on my computer I saved them in their "original" format rather than the suggested "large" because I figured it would just cause the video to lag and take longer to load. I may have been totally wrong, but I think it effected the video quality.

Update

I created a newer, better portfolio using a different website. Yola had too many restrictions on links and HTML and even the amount of content a page could have and it was really getting in the way of the assignment. So here's my new and improved portfolio!