Misuses

So this week when I read over the requirements for this assignment I automatically thought of the misuses of the internet and I have two articles that I researched that definitely pointed out the misuses of the internet today. The first article I read was on USA Today’s website and it was about how the internet porn business is booming but at the cost of it being at the hands of young viewers. I researched myself to see how easy it could be to get onto a porn site on the net and I was very intrigued to find out that all you have to do is type in a dirty or profane word having to deal with porn or sex and tons of sites pop up and are now at our mercy to visit. In the article it stated that one site proclaimed that if a parent doesn’t want their child to visit an explicit site, then they should turn on their parental advisory settings which don’t allow the child to view the site and you can block it as well.

When I read this I definitely disagree with how easy it is to access porn and its very disturbing to think that all some ten year old kid has to do is get on the web and type in porn and now they have their selection of tons of sites to choose rom. I do agree with the statement that it is the parent’s job to prohibit their kids from roaming onto the worng sites but at ths same time I honestly feel that a parent can’t be around the child at all imes, and technology is so advanced that a child or teen could easily turn off the parental settings and go onto a site and then turn it back on to avoid getting into trouble.  I really feel like you will never be able to get rid of porn on the web because it is a hot commodity for so many people but at the same time I think that it shouldn’t be so easy.

The second article I read was on the show on I think CBS or ABC where cops act as though they are young girls 13 and under, and they lure “predators” or grown men into thinking a little girl wants them to come hang out after talking online on a chatroom. I can’t even began to explain the disgust I have with a 30 year-old man trying to seduce a 10 year old girl online. This is a misuse of the internet to he extreme. Its bad enough that a man could ever look at a little girl in a sexual way, but to try and be sneaky about by contacting these young females online is just horrible and should be closely monitored by police and parents. In the show the grown man travels to come and see the fake little girl when it really a cop and the host of the show who confronts the male about his sick intentions. This is something I disagree with heavily because you shouldn’t use the internet to try and rape little girls although men are doing it at a ridiculous rate now a days.

Wild Card

When I first read the requirements for this week, a story automatically popped into my head which would fit the criteria perfectly. In the Wood and Smith, I read that people in certain places don’t even have telephones or reliable telephones let alone Internet access so it made me wonder, what would’ve happend had the situation which I’m about to share happen face-to-face and not through Internet communication? Well anyways this is a very  interesting story because there are two sides of the story and I will tell both to the best of my abilities so that both parties are well represented.

So last year I dated this girl, who for the sake of her privacy I will call Sally Jo. Me and Sally Jo had been dating for about three months and things were going very nice. One Sunday, I had just got back to Corvallis off of a basketball road trip. I hopped on to my computer to check my facebook page and I noticed I had a message. Of course it was from Sally Jo which obviously made me happy but she wrote me to inform me that she had broken her phone and the store was closed until Monday so we would have to communicate online for that day. I was cool with the idea so we talked and checked our pages for most of the day to see when the other one would reply to a message. That night I asked Sally Jo if she wanted to come out with me in a message on Facebook before I went to sleep and of course she said yes, but I didn’t specify what we were doing(big mistake) and I told her we would need to meet up at my house around seven o’clock the next day.

Turns out when I told Sally Jo that we were going out, she assumed that I meant a date with just me and her so that next day, she spent her time picking out a nice dress and she went to get a manicure and she got her hair done at the salon, the works! I was thinking we would just go hang out with a couple of my friends and go to hang out at the baror something and have a pretty decent night, but nothing too special because I was tired from the road trip. Well Monday night rolls around and of course Seven o’clock comes up and My door bell rings. To my surprise I open the door and Sally Jo has on a nice, sexy tight fit dress and some pumps to match. I have on a white t-shirt with an Oregon State hoody on and some jeans and shoes. By the look on her face and the whiff of how good she had smelled I could tell there was a big misunderstanding as to what we both thought I meant when I said we can go out.

Had we been able to talk on the phone or face-to-face, my invitation to go out on Monday wouldn’t have been open for interpretation Sally Jo would’ve known what I meant when I said we can go out on Facebook the night before. The situation was definitely stressful but was eased once we talked and understood where both parties were coming from and plus Sally Jo just happend to have some other clothes in her car that she can change into. This situation was big learning experience which let me know to be as clear as possible when communicating with someone who cannot hear my voice or see me physically.

Generations

This week’s assignment is very interesting. I must interview people from three different generations to see how they use the internet. It was very typical to assume that the generations outlook on the internet might be extremely different but I was optimistic to see what I would find out. In postman I read how students and teachers have come to believe that education is impossible without the structure of a college “course”. So going into my first interview I definitely wanted to go0 further than just the requirements of the assignment, and ask students who are in my generation, would they prefer to take an online class or go to an actual classroom to get an education? The student I talked to answered this question by explaining it depends on what class it is. She said if it was a hard class, she would much rather take a hands on approach and go to an actual classroom to be taught. As the conversation went on I learned that she spent majority of her time on the internet shopping or on facebook. From a personal aspect I never shop online but as I began to think more in depth, I soon realized that my generation is known for being facebook fiends. She seemed to think that technology has helped her improve her social life but hindered her studies in school. She explained that she is constantly on line, so she never gets around to her homework which is common in this generation.

The next generation I interviewed was the 36-60 age groups. I chose my coach because she seemed intrigued to know what I was doing in study hall so I had him help me out. When I asked him what he most frequently used the internet for, he replied to either check on recruits and see what they have been up to or to book plane flights and check his itinerary. I know this could probably be common for a college coach but when I asked if the internet changed the way his life functioned for the better or the worse, he replied for the worse. His explanation made perfect sense. He said that back in the old days, if a coach wanted to talk to a player they either had to meet or talk on the phone. Now with the internet on cell phones, he can handle all of his business from his phone. The problem is, the NCAA has made so many rules about contacting players, he wishes the internet wasn’t this advanced and that things could go back to the old ways.

Last but not least, the elderly folk. I interviewed my grandmother and asked her what did she use the internet for constantly. She replied with a chuckle that the most frequent thing she has used the internet for, is to buy something from offline. When I asked if the internet has been a better influence or worse in her life, she responded with a better because she said it limited the amount of times she has to leave the house and go shopping. It’s funny because she’s a home body and she hates to leave her house so it makes perfect sense. Interviewing all three generations made me realize that we are not that far off from each other. The two similarities which I thought were really interesting was that I interviewed two women and they both used the internet frequiently for shopping. I wonder if I interviewed two males, would they have used the internet frequently for sports?

Internet Community

Okay so this week was very interesting because I have been a member of a Internet community for about four weeks now and I have been logging on the discussion board at least twice a week to see what reactions I got from my posts and to respond to other people’s post. The virtual community I am apart of is the Breakdown Discussion Board which talks about all the high school hoops going on in the state of Florida. I was very intrigued to see that there were so many different posts on the board from people all over the place. Most members aren’t even from the state of Florida, which is very ironic, but they proclaimed they have either seen the team or player that is usually under discussion in each blog. I must admit I was kind of skeptical about the assignment at first, because I know how people are in the sense that if they cannot see you, it is hard for them to accept you without first denying you. For example when I first began to chat on the board, any time I would start up a new blog or topic, or write a response to someone else’s topic, I often didn’t get a response or if I did someone would write, ” Who is the new dude?”

The process of assimilation was very slow into the community. Because no one had ever seen my screen name in a response prior to four weeks ago, no one wanted to “talk to me”. I would make my presence felt and get an occasional response when I mad a good point, but no one gave me the notoriety or acceptance that I wanted. Slowly but surely, as the other members of the community began to see that I wasn’t just some bone head making dumb responses just to try to stir up a conversation, I began to get some acceptance. Members began to respond to my post that had been on the site for about a week, and they actually had some input to what they felt about my topic. I think I really knew I was fully accepted into the community, when there was a blog talking about a girls basketball in 6A which is the highest level of basketball competition in Florida (they determine this by the number of students in your school), and the member who started the blog said that Lake Mary High School would repeat for a state championship in 2009. I was the first one to respond to his statement and I replied saying my Alma mater Edgewater High School would win the title this year hands down. Within 10 minutes of my post, there had already been 5 more posts talking about my high school in either a negative way or a positive way. In the first week, nobody would’ve responded and someone would have change the subject under my post. Now I actually get well thought out responses or at least people’s honest opinions.

Usually on this site there are rarely any agreements because someone has their own opinion about who is the better player, who has the better team, or who’s coach is going to get hired/fired this year. The disagreements usually don’t get resolved until the player/team/ coaches play against each other and then within 10 minutes of a confirmed victory, the victorious member of the community will then write about the success underneath that blog so that whoever was disagreeing with them could see it.

In my paper I would look to write about whatever will prove my points and make them stronger. For the sake of this assignment I chose to write on nonverbal communication and you can determine signals and symbols people may be relaying intentionally or unintentionally that we can decipher. When looking for sources I would definitely have to find myself going into a library and start my search off for credible resources. In order to evaluate if the source is credible I would definitely have to look at where the source came from and if the material they are saying can even be used in my paper. You never want to really get information off the Internet in today’s age because people lie and twist facts around to the point where the information is completely bogus. Most of the information that I have found to be credible has come from either books or magazine articles or face-to-face interviews. For instance one credible resource I would use to absorb as much information as I could out of, would be Dr. Bushnell who teaches Nonverbal communication here at the university and has an abundance of knowledge on the subject.

I would think anyone who is trying to get a good grade would definitely evaluate the sources credibility. For one you don’t want to put something in your paper that is false or has so many errors that it hurts your paper more than it helps. Second, you don’t want to plagiarize. So many students get caught with plagiarism because they use sources from another paper instead of actually doing the work and finding the correct sources.

The value of the information usually is great but sometimes it is irrelevant to the topic and the points that I would be trying to give in my paper. You want to definitely gather tons of information whether you may actually use all of it or not. It gives you a variety of things to choose from and it doesn’t set you up to depend on one or two sources. The more information you gather, the more chances you have at reading less believable information because their are too many portals and ways of communication in which information usually gets altered or changed to be readable instead of believable. With the information you have gathered you can choose and select which information may come off as less believable because usually you’ll have the same information from another source that is either more credible, or has more facts which can make it easier to be more believable in the long run.

One definite way i would evaluate the research skills of a student of mine would be to check the resources myself. Though it would be a great deal of work if I have over 50 students in my class, I feel that if I want to have students cite five or ten sources they used in their paper and expect them to be credible and evaluate them at the same time, then I as the teacher or professor must do some work and double check the resources by looking them up myself. Obviously that would take too much time so instead of doing all of that work I would probably just check one or two sources whichever were cited the most in the paper to help evaluate the student.

Ritts, Vicki. “Six ways to improve your nonverbal Communication”http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/commun-1.htm

Segal, Jeanine PhD.”The Hidden Language of Emotional Intelligence”.http://www.helpguide.org/mental/eq6_nonverbal_communication.htm

HeathField, Susan M.”Listen With Your Eyes”.http://humanresources.about.com/od/interpersonalcommunicatio1/a/nonverbal_com.htm

Thankyou Letters

So on this week’s assignment I really wanted to focus on the letters and the assignment, but at the same time I wanted to be able to relate the assignment to the things I learned in the book, that I not only could apply to what I was doing  in this assignment, but also be able to use these concepts in other situations in my life. Three terms that really stood out to me while doing this assignment were functional alternatives, specialized channels, and emoticons. I definitely didn’t expect to be able to look at these words and identify my actions with them but I was definitely shocked after I finished this assginment.

The very first thank you letter I wrote was to my mother Deborah Claitt who has been a mother and a father to me since I was at the age of 4. My mom has been my everything and I obviously felt as though I should write her with the  letter scenario because it seemed as though the letter would seem more sentimental and have more meaning than an email. As I read the chapter I realized I was using a specialized channel to communicate my thanks and appreciation to my mother because I felt that it would mean more to her if I wrote her and took time out of my day to sit down and write her a nice letter and buy stamps and mail it as opposed to sending her an email in which she never checks. I took a very emotional and loving approach to my letter and I already know she would be able to tell that my tone was so appreciative and that I was beig serious from all the I love you mom phrases.

I my sister Somaiya next and she would definitely have to be the next best influential person in my life. She took me under her wing being a big sister and she always looked after me and taught me so much about women. When I realized I had to email her, I unintentionally used several emoticons to show her that I was saying thanks in a fun goofy way by the lol(laughing out louds) and the smiley faces I left after each sentence. Although I emailed my sister and told her thanks in a more conventional way, I felt as though my message to both women was understood in their own unique way.

My sister replied to me within hours and she sent back a thanks email in return. She asked me why was I being so nice but thinking about the assignment and not wanting to look bad, I told her I just missed her and mom and I decided to write them to express my thanks. It took my mom a few days to get the letter all the way in Florida, but immediately after she read the letter, I received a phone call and she was crying her eyes out to me telling me she loved me and I made her so proud to be doing such a great job out here at OSU. I came to the conclusion at the end of this assignment that emails and handwritten letters are not functional alternatives. As I looked at my feedback and outcome from my letter and email, I could conclude that they bring out different emotions and definitely touch people in different ways.

Facebook

I honestly didn’t have a facebook until my sophomore year in college. I was sitting in my dorm room at my old junior college, and one of my roommates asked to use my computer because his computer kept freezing up. Of course I wasn’t going to say no so I let him use it and when he got online he went to facebook. Now being from a big city I was shocked to see this guy from a small town knew  more about websites online than myself. Obviously I was very curious as to what this new website was, not knowing its been going on for quite some time, and so I asked him how do I sign up. He told me all I needed was a picture and I had to sign up through college, because at that time facebook wouldn’t allow anyone to sign up without being a student of some type of junior college, college, or university. After that night I have been an avid fan of facebook and for various reasons but the most important one is, people can see you from all over the place and only pass judgment on what you reveal and distort to them.

On facebook anyone who knows me, can come to the very first conclusion about my self-presentation that I play basketball. It is very obvious from all the pictures that I have posted under my photos category and all the good games last night posted on my wall as well. I like presenting myself as a basketball player because back home, if you made it as an athlete to the next level in any sport, you are very well respected. Here in Corvallis there is a face that athletes don’t necessarily put on but I would like to assume that majority of the students feel this way. The face is the I’m better than you because I’m a scholarship athlete face. Although it is a stereotype, when I first got here, I was told that this is the face that most basketball players, football players, and baseball players are categorized in. For a second it did make me think about if I wanted to put pictures of myself in a basketball uniform on my facebook page or if I should distort that facet of my life and let someone view me without the knowledge of me playing a sport, but then I realized that I maybe an athlete but I am not your stereotypical athlete.

Being an athlete is probably my  most revealed subject on facebook but my most distorted and best kept secret would have to be music. I don’t show any interest in music or my musical talents’ but in all actuality I’m a pretty good singer. For most of my childhood I sung in the church choir and I was always one of the lead singers with this other girl named Erika. Though I stopped singing in the church choir after I began middle school, I still possessed so much love for singing that I sung in two talent shows at my high school. Music has been a great outlet for me to just let out any anger, frustration, or even happiness on any given day. This  is not a talent that I’m happy to say I keep distorted from my life on facebook but I’m the type of person that doesn’t like to reveal all my secrets and likes and dislikes, because then you wouldn’t want to get to know me because you wold already think you know everything about me.

Brad Paisley’s video

The characters in the video were a prime example of living your normal life and then living your life on the computer screen. In the very beginning of the video a man with glasses delivers a pizza and gets the money slapped onto his forehead. He then goes back to his car and wishes that he was Brad Paisley. By being Brad Paisley, his life will be easier and getting women will be simple.

So once the man realizes that he won’t get a female if he presents his own picture online, what does he do instead, he puts a picture of Brad Paislley as his photo on his myspace page which will obviously make him seem more good looking than what he actually may appear in person. As a society we often let the way we look effect our self-esteem and our confidence when in all actuality it should be who you are as a person and your character. In today’s world when someone is online and chatting with someone whom they have never met, its easy to ask for a picture or base judgments off the pictures that are displayed on someone else’s profile. Not knowing who you may be talking to is tough and looking at a picture can make it even harder because the picture can be fake as we saw in the Brad Paisley video.

What is key in this discussion is how we use the internet for communicationm and more importantly for status in our world today. Instead of going out and meeting new people, our generation is sitting on a computer chatting online with whoever and not gaining the true experience of face-to-face conversation. In a way you could look at it as people just like being on a computer and it makes it easier to meet new people. Yes this isn true but I believe that this is more common because our generation lacks the confidence and the communication skills to go out an dmeet new people and make new relationships with people.

It’s kind of like how Postman was talking about using your tools for work that will be constructive or to get the job done. In today’s world we use the computer and the internet as a tool. To meet people and base our decisions and judgments off of a meet and greet session online. As opposed to going to the grocery store, or church, or even a night club to meet some new people and possibly a guy or a girl that we could possibly hang out with and start a relationship there after. The tools that  we need now are lomg gone in many humans and teh internet is the tool to use in any case to get any job done. Being shy is not necessarily a bad thing nore is it the reason so many people rather have a conversation online than face-to-face, but it does have something to do with the trend of meeting people online becasue some people are shy and don’t speak well in person and being in a online relationship or atmosphere gives that person an opportunity to express themselves and communnicate in their own way.

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