The book of faces... AKA: Facebook!

I touched on facebook a little in my first post but this week I was asked to write again on my thoughts.

Facebook has brought many wonderful things to our society, like the ability to stay in touch from the comfort of your couch while wearing your pajamas. Like the ability to stalk your high school boyfriend to see what his life is like now, or to screen an individual of interest to see what they're like. I know some of my friends have met people through an online dating service - match.com, okcupid, etc. - and before their first date went on facebook to see what information they could gather about this person. With all the positives there are also some downfalls. If you aren't careful you might get yourself in trouble on facebook. There are a number of websites dedicated to this kind of folly which is referred to as a "facebook fail". Criminals have been caught because of things they posted on facebook, under age teens were caught drinking alcohol, and employees have been caught talking bad about their bosses, forgetting that their boss was a "friend" on their facebook. All of these things make facebook what it is, an awesome mash up of your life and the people in your life. We aren't perfect, we aren't all the same, but that's what makes facebook so interesting and enjoyable. I will leave you with a great facebook fail, enjoy!

-Kendelle

Getting Tricky With Wiki!

This week we are working with our class wiki. Wikis are pretty awesome and there are a number of cool things you can do to personalize your wiki. After searching Google for quite some time I found that a basic knowledge of HTML is some what important in creating wiki pages. Most of the personalization you can do use this language, however, there are many tutorials that will allow you to simply copy/paste/edit their HTML code, which makes it very easy! This week I posted a scrolling text box on our wiki and added a page; both things were fairly simple and didn't take much time to do.

Social Media

I feel that social media today has completely changed the way that we communicate with one another. Some aspects of this change is quite wonderful while other aspects can be not so lovely. Ten years ago if you wanted to keep in touch with someone you had to call, email, text, write a letter, ask a mutual friend, or visit them in person, now you are able to hop on Facebook or Twitter and instantly see the happenings of your friends and acquaintances lives as well as THEIR friends and acquaintances. Depending on how much detail the individual shares on these sites you might know more about them than their own mother does! I love that you are able to keep in touch so easily but I also think it's taking away some of the special closeness that other forms of communication bring. For example, when you call a friend you are able to talk freely and fluidly, hearing the tones in each others voices, and gauging attitudes appropriately, and talking in privacy. While there is some loss of intimacy while using a social media site you are able to keep in touch with so many people that you wouldn't normally. You are able to see pictures and read updates of hundreds of people (if desired) and I personally have enjoyed this. I like that I have reconnected with old school friends, cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. and I know that they have enjoyed reading about my life and seeing picture updates. Overall I think social media is a positive advancement and is only going to keep advancing.