The Socratic Spiderman

In McCloud’s article, “The Vocabulary of Comics,” I gained an insight into my personal perceptions. Although I hadn’t thought extensively about it before, the fact that we as people can associate a circle, two dots, and a line with a face is remarkable; we really are a “self-centered” race.

            I have been an on-again, off-again comic book enthusiast, but I have never though so in-depth about the medium until having read this piece. There are many things to consider: the abstract and concrete, level of detail, and the bond between words and pictures. From Batman to Spiderman, I’m sure there are things I have overlooked in between the lines.

            More interestingly enough, this philosophic comic made me realize the degree to which objects surrounding us become a part of ourselves. For example, on page 8 McCloud provides the riveting example of a car crash. “Hey! He hit me!” proclaims one of the comics, and rightly so. In a situation such as this, I (and presumably most people) would say the something to the same effect. This realization has made me consider how objects can easily become extensions of us.

             From vehicles to clothing, the objects we surround ourselves with ultimately become a part of who we are. The clothing we are represents our tastes and sense of style just as much as CD’s do. But there is something significant in the example above about the car crash; we wouldn’t say “Hey! He hit me!” if someone struck one of our iPods or laptops. Clothing can be a tricky middle because if someone were to step on my shoes, I would be inclined to say “You’re stepping on me,” when it is clear that they are only offending my ratty pair of Chuck Taylor’s.

            All in all, I believe that this article was probably one of the most riveting of the ones we have read. While the concepts were intricate, they were represented in a fun, visual way as to maintain the attention of the reader reader and aid in the process of understanding.

Winter Woes

            Last year, at time not unlike now, I felt nostalgic and seasonally deprived; it simply never felt like Christmas here at school. All right, there’s a Christmas tree and blowup menorah in Savitz Hall, but I still don’t feel the Christmas spirit.

            Like the majority of freshman, I didn’t have a car on campus, and I feel that this attributed to my lack of Christmas spirit last year. Seeing as I couldn’t drive around, and I spent 90% of my time on campus, I saw no blinking lights or lawn ornaments or intricately decorated malls.

            This year, sadly, seems to be no different; I still don’t feel nearly as festive as I think I should. I do, however, have a car on campus this year, but it seems that I’m rarely off gallivanting around the neighbor (mostly because I don’t know the neighborhood).

            There is a mere two or three weeks left of this semester, so I suppose that’s a plus in and of itself. Where’d the time go guys? I’m always amazed at the passage of time, and even when it seems like the workload will never end, the days seem to slip right through my fingers.

            I don’t know what I can do to better prepare myself for the holidays, but I wish everyone the best on their finals and nothing but good times over break.

            I’ll see you all next semester.

Chats and Class Participation

One of the points made in the Bump article is that holding class discussions online rather than out loud encourages more people to participate.  I completely agree with this — I personally found it much easier to speak up when there was no actual speaking involved, and I didn’t seem to be the only one.  I think that there are a few reasons for this.  First of all, I found it a lot easier to organize my thoughts in writing than while speaking, because in the chat I could stop in the middle of typing, think about it, and then resume.  Theoretically, you could pause and gather your thoughts while speaking, but it just results in awkward gaps in the conversation and you run the risk of being interrupted and not getting a chance to go back and complete your thought.  Secondly, communicating online allows you to focus more on what you’re saying than on how it’s being perceived, because you don’t see other people’s immediate reactions the way you do in face to face conversation.  This encourages people to be more blunt and to say what they think without worrying about peer rejection, although as the Bump article points out, it’s possible to take this too far and become completely apathetic towards the feelings of the people you’re chatting with.  I can’t imagine a class discussion getting that heated, but it’s something to keep in mind.  A third advantage of online chats is that everyone has a voice.  In normal class discussions, only a handful of people are willing to volunteer, or else there simply isn’t enough time to hear from everyone.  In the chat, everyone was able to type at once without interrupting each other or losing track of what the other people were saying.  Although there were still people who remained relatively quiet, for the most part the discussion was far more inclusive than what we normally experience.  For these reasons, I feel a chat session could be a valuable addition to most classes, although I don’t think that I would want one as often as the students in the Bump article voted for.  I don’t think it will or should ever replace face to face discussion, but they could work very well as complementery components of a course.

Ads on YouTube

I know at some point we were discussing the difficulty of placing ads on YouTube to cover the cost of legitimate networks and labels uploading shows and music.  I just came across an example of that, and they seem to have solved the problem pretty well.  There’s still the usual stationary ad that we’re all used to seeing (and ignoring), but rather than making users sit through 30-second clips before starting the video, there’s a banner ad at the bottom of the screen that can easily be exited.  After that, the only obstruction to the video itself is a small “Ad” button that, if clicked, brings the banner back.  I don’t know how satisfactory this will be to advertisers in the long run, because most people will probably just exit the ad within a second of its popping up without even taking notice of what’s being advertised (this is the same problem posed by stationary ads, which people usually just read around) but from a viewer’s perspective it’s a great solution.

Search for a Cause

It’s really kind of amazing how the internet is enabling people to give back to charity without any real effort.  I’m sure by now most of you have heard of FreeRice.com, the vocabulary game in which for every word you correctly define, twenty grains of rice (paid for by ads placed discreetly at the bottom of the page) are donated to the UN World Food Program.  You’ve probably also seen various buttons floating around that promise to fun a whole host of different things as long as you click once a day.  I just found out about something that doesn’t even require that minimal extra effort, so I thought I’d pass it along.

GoodSearch is a search engine powered by Yahoo that donates $.01 to the participating nonprofit of your choice every time you use it.  I’ve been playing around with it for a few days, and while it isn’t quite as good as Google, it’s definitely sufficient for what I usually use Google for.  A penny might not seem like much, but it really does add up.  The nonprofit I’ve selected, The Office Of Letters and Light (which runs NaNoWriMo, which you’ve seen me mention in previous entries), has already raised $30.11 for the month of December — that’s the past two days alone.  Since June, when the program started, it’s raised $773.84, which is quite a chunk of change for something that takes absolutely no effort at all.

Here’s a list of all the participating nonprofit organizations that you can raise money for just by using a different search engine.  I really think it’s worth checking out.

Drumroll, please…

 

…I just had to brag a little, since my last post on the subject was centered around how hopelessly behind I was.  Amazing how much can get done in one weekend — although I think my wrists preferred being lazy (in other words: ow).  Now back to your regularly scheduled blogging.

Today’s Class

I have to say I really enjoyed the chat session in class today.  It did seem strange at first not to have open discussion, but I think everyone eventually settled into it naturally.  Even though I was lagging a little behind i was able to keep up with the pace of the conversation and saw where everyone was coming from.  It was nice to be able to scroll upward and look back at what people said prior, you do not have that advantage in conversation.  Often the words come out so quickly that you cannot recall exactly what was said previously.  It did make me think about another issue when we were discussing authorship and why people write.  What about the material that is getting written for our benefit?  Has anyone else thought about this in the sense of how we are being guided by the information we read and hear?  The twist that is placed on stories, the sound bites we receive.  Who exactly is steering us on this course and where are we going to end up? 

Academia as it Stands Now

            In the days of yore (or freshman semester last year), I remember having to write about plagiarism in lengthy detail for my college composition class; all our papers were somehow based around education really. But I specifically remember having read an article before Rebecca Moore Howard’s “Understanding ‘Internet Plagiarism’” that had mentioned the website TurnItIn and the significant decline in academic standards.

            TurnItIn is a website through which teachers are able to submit the works of their students in order to check and prevent acts of plagiarism. The success rate of this website, however, is questionable due to increased concern that has been placed on plagiarism; the Internet has done a decent job of making teachers worry.

            And irony at its best was shown through the pay sites (which I’m also well aware of) that happen to offer papers about the nature of plagiarism for a certain fee – how much more ridiculous can one get? It appears that most students are looking for an easy way out of hard work – anything to do the least and still get that “hard-earned A.” Has the Internet, then, made us a lazy generation that simply wants to “get by.”

            Unfortunately, with the ability to copy and paste, as well as the infinite space of the Internet, plagiarism is and will continue to be a concern of teachers everywhere. Will there ever be a full proof of deterring plagiarism? I’m not fully sure, but I can say that hopefully someday, there will be a better academic standard than there is now.

Enough already?

In the past day, there have been three seperate items in my Facebook newsfeed related to applications — specifically, demanding that people stop sending out mass invites Or Else — and since this is a technology module I thought I’d ask: Can there be too much customization?  Relating specifically to Facebook, I can’t write on half my friends’ walls anymore because I don’t have the patience to scroll through their many applications.  I’ve seen several people denounce applications as the beginning of the end for Facebook, and though the same was said about news feeds and we’ve all gotten over that, I have to wonder if the ability to add so many features to your profile is going to be a help or a hindrance once the novelty wears off.  Any thoughts?  And will someone please explain to me the point of these werewolf/vampire/zombie requests I keep getting?

Plagierism Article

Okay, down to some serious stuff.  The plagiarism article was really interesting.  I would imagine that there are some problems out there now because there may be teacher’s out there who are not technologically savvy.  For them following up on sources can be a challenge.  I think the only way to prevent plagiarism or at least to try to contain it to a minimum is through strict tolerance and continual education.  If students are taught how to correctly annotate and site, how to properly word information, and the correct methods for researching and obtaining information then they will develop the proper skills and write with confidence.  I think this is why writing has been moved to the forefront.  Additionally, it is why our major is of such concern and importance.  Our future depends on people like us who can write, who know the proper way to write, and who can teach others.  One of the most common areas that students struggle in is writing.  So I think if we can reach more students and teach them the proper way to write with confidence and accuracy, it will help reduce the issues regarding plagiarism.