Online Privacy

Honestly, there’s little that you can do now to keep information about yourself from being listed online.  There are hundreds of sites collecting personal data about someone such as: credit card companies, schools, shopping stores, and other online sites being used.  Anyone that goes online knows that there are ads on the side of websites that have your information because they are showing images and other forms of media that you are interested in that they get off of their sites.  Personal privacy doesn’t exist online any more unless you don’t have any form of electronics and leave deep in the woods where no one can find you.

The information that people share today online will always be out there for the public’s eyes.  Many companies such as career builder and colleges/university are now using the web to look up employees or future student’s profiles or any information they can find before they hire or accept them.  This can go one of two ways for the person, either they have a professional, clean profile or they have a profile that will make future employers and school not want them. Many people don’t comprehend the difference between internet sharing vs. F2F sharing of information.  You post something on the internet, its open to the world to see it, F2F if that person tells someone else the information will spread slower than that to the internet if it even gets out. With the amount of information sharing sites out there today you can find any kind of information about any one.

Second Life

Getting started on Second Life at first was a little tricky and hard to comprehend. Figuring out if you wanted to make a human avatar or creature was a rough first start.  The second was trying to construct a look-a-like avatar, dressing and accessorizing it. Coming onto second life I wanted to stay true to who I am and create an image similar to that in the real world.  I wanted my identity in second life to match the one that I have here in the real world, I didn’t want to portray myself with something that I am not, so I tried to do the best I can with my human avatar to represent myself.

While fooling around with my human avatar and his looks, I felt as if I just had to learn the computer world all over again.  I was so lost in the beginning not knowing how to walk, talk, fly, or teleport to anywhere I wanted to go. I didn’t know where there was to go, what there was to do, or how to really interact with people.  It felt all new to me again and like I had to start over and take baby steps into the modern world. After playing around and learning the gimmicks to the second life world so that I would be able to move around, I dived right in and started up a conversation with a person. I realized that some people do take second life seriously, just as they would in their real life and in fact share and show the same information about themselves on their profiles.  I started to open up, spread out and talk to other people before our first meeting on second life to understand and grasp what second world was about.

I soon realized that people on second life interacted the same ways that people do in real life. That people with certain likes would hangout in certain areas, such as people that like to dance would be at the clubs and dance halls, people that like to swim at the pools, and so on.  After numerous hours of playing around meeting people, flying and teleporting to see various places, I now see that second life is very much so just like real life, but it allows people to start over or form a new identity for themselves and be anonymous. 

Technologic Classroom Vs. Sit in Classroom

Everyone believes that if technology is advancing then why can’t we as humans advance in the ways that we learn, understand, or work in the world as it moves forward.  I’m all for this but I also feel that there are certain things you can advance with people and certain things that should be still used that has been working for many years now.  School are all about modernizing there equipment and finding new programs and software to help students learn the material that they feel the teachers are not teaching.  They feel that software programs will help students understand and comprehend the material easier through a graphic interface rather than by word of mouth of the teacher or through the classroom books. 

The program that school are turning to is Cognitive Tutor which has been seen to work but for the price of it, it seems not worth it to schools that don’t have the budget for it.  Some schools Cognitive Tutor has been seen to not work as well, but that just means that different schools have different students that learn differently or see this program as something different.  Although the program is able to read strengths and weaknesses of the individuals being worked with, it allows student to easily just sit and pick answers until they arrive at the right answer instead of making the students try to learn and figure out the right answer for themselves.

These types of online programs are not only seen in high school but many colleges are turning to more online programs and classes.  They feel that internet and online classes are the future of schooling and that it will be easier for the students to learn at home in a relaxed environment. But coming from  a personal experience I have seen students take online courses because they are easier to take, fake, and receive a grade for half of the work they would have been doing in a real class situation. 

Online courses and software programs are seen as the right choice for the future of schooling but some things in life just work better the basic way.  I feel there are certain times that programs and software should be used and other times the basic classroom learning environment is the better choice for learning and comprehending a topic.

HTML Code

After working with HTML Codes I know realize the time, dedication, and complexity of a website that is found on the internet.  The fact that a browser can turn these codes that look like a list of words into a graphic interface that can be viewed is amazing.  It’s incredible to see how browsers pick up certain tags that make the codes readable and understandable so that the user on the other end of the browser can read actual writing instead of HTML Codes.  The complexity of using various codes and ability to literally make any kind of page with media graphics you want to your liking is great.  When making my browser I realized that certain codes are easier to pick up in the beginning then others.  Some are just as simple as telling the code what heading it will describe such as fonts, size, and colors.  As you begin to add pictures and hyperlinks, the page becomes more diverse and starts to take on an actual look like an internet browser page.  The tags being used as you make progress on your HTML codes start to add together and can build on one another till you reach the certain style of format you are looking for.  You literally can add anything to your Code, which you want to be shown in your browser.  After completing the codes for my browser I found it intriguing to what kind of information, time, and codes go into a web browser and how they are not really that easy to make off the spot.  A lot of work has to go into the code in order to make a professional looking browser.