The Last One...

Last blog entry (required of all e-rhetoric students). For this final entry, please reflect on the place of blogging in academics. What is a blog, afterall? Is it an on-line journal? a form of journalism? a legitimate type of academic writing? What place, if any, does it have in academia? Please use this entry to sum up your experiences with blogging, reflect on how your understanding of blogs have changed, and to suggest ways that blogs can be effectively incorporated in the PWR curriculum -- if at all.


Hmmmm......So how has my understanding of blogs changed throughout this course? Well, I suppose before we had our discussions about blogs and their place in the academic world I thought of them primarily as diaries. I had never heard about or thought of blogs in the corporate world, although I'm sure I probably ran into some and just didn't realize they were blogs.

Even now though I still feel that blogs are utilized the best as personal diaries. Of course, as we discussed, the irony here is that anyone in the world can read these diaries, but in a different kind of way they can still feel private. And if you have close friends who comment on your blog, it can certainly be a very enriching experience.

I suppose though that taking a look at that last blog by the guy who was in Iraq during the war made me realize that blogs can be multi-purpose. While he probably wrote it as a personal journal of the events taking place in Iraq, his entries all carried a much different tone than that which we were exposed to through the news media back in the U.S. So, maybe intentionally, maybe not, this guy was able to turn his blog into a journalistic/political blog, which I thought was pretty cool. The fact that his blog became relatively famous just goes to show how hungry people are to hear the other side of the story.

All in all, I think blogs are worth mentioning in the PWR curriculum for this course, if for nothing else, at least to show this multi-purpose characteristic...

Presentation Reflections

I found most people in class responded well to the comments they had received after the first presentations and took the constructive criticism to heart in preparing for these second presentations. One thing I certainly noticed in a couple presentations was that presenters tended to have a better sense of what PowerPoint slideshows should/should not be used for. Whereas a couple people the first time around had relied on PowerPoint too much as a crutch by, for example, reading directly off the slides, for these presentations, people tended to use their slideshows as a much more auxiliary device.

I also really liked how some people chose to tell the class about their setbacks as well as their accomplishments. It's always good when people tell you how they're really doing as opposed to just giving simple updates like "my research is going well, everything's going great..." It was great to see that people's projects are really starting to take shape.

I liked the use of video clips in a couple of the presentations, those definitely kept me engaged and provided some eye candy to add to the overall "excitement" of the presentation.

All in all I was pleasantly surprised at how well these presentations turned out, when among other things, we all had our pages and pages of hypertext to crank out during this same period.

All Things Wiki

Okay, so I'd only heard of the Wikipedia before reading all of these articles. I thought it was just an online encyclopedia with some more contemporary and hip entries and information, but I had no clue it worked the way it does.

I think the the working concept behind Wikis is pretty awesome, although I'm not sure I believe it can be used to create an accurate and trustworthy online encyclopedia. It just seems like there are too many uncontrollable variables as far as letting anyone anywhere post or edit any entry. One of the articles I read mentioned the "faith-based step" as being crucial to assuring that articles on the Wikipedia are as accurate as possible. I don't believe that this can necessarily be relied on, because sure, most people who change an entry on the Wikipedia do so because they know (or think they know) a fact or figure that is currently missing, but not everyone has good intentions. People may intentionally alter the facts or vandalize an entry, and it is left to someone else who stumbles upon that entry to either ignore the wrong information, not know it is wrong and take it to be fact, or realize the error and fix it. Too much is left to chance in the Wikipedia, and that is something I'd be a little uncomfortable with if I were looking to the Wikipedia to glean accurate information.

I like the idea of using Wikis much more as a sort of brainstorming or research tool. Apparently, very little web-authoring experience is necessary, and essentially all that a user needs to know how to do is type to be able to implement his own Wiki.

All in all, I think the overarching ideas behind Wikis are great. It's meant to be a democratic way of web-authoring, and I think for some people, this makes them feel like part of a much larger whole when they actually go and edit an entry on the Wikipedia, for example. I can't say I'd ever use the Wikipedia if I were really looking for information though...

Instant Messaging?

Okay, so I somehow managed to get this blog back up and running. I hadn't done anything with it since my last entry a couple weeks ago, and all of a sudden, when i logged on a couple days ago, I had an empty new blog. Anyways, after fiddling around I got back to this one. So this entry is for the Feb. 7th response on IM.

I chose to respond to the Stanford Daily article entitled "AIM-less Addictions," which basically argued that AIM has become an out of control phenomenon, particulary on college campuses, where nearly everyone is using it.

The author doesn't criticize AIM directly however, but acknowledges instead that it can be a somewhat addicting, "insidious" time waster. I can relate to this personally. I'm always logged on my AIM account, and even though 99% of the time I'm not actually chatting with anybody, it's always there in the background.

I also agree with the point the author brings up about the feeling of individualism and control that AIM bestows upon the user. It's nice to have your own "buddy" list, from which you can add or remove "friends".

Mainly I use AIM because it's a) free, cheaper than a phone call, b) convenient; if you're on your computer a lot, might as well use it, and c) every else uses it. It was a great idea, and although it can be a serious time waster, like anything else in life, if used with self-control and restraint, it can be an incredibly empowering and useful tool, especially for college students.

I haven't really heard too much about this, but I can imagine that instant messaging services would be quite useful in the workplace, as long as they weren't abused. Instead of having to ride the elevator up to the 87th floor to ask your boss something, or instead of having to call him and worry about stumbling over your words, you could just IM him instead. I'm sure IM's already being used in various workplaces everywhere, but it's another use for it that we never really hear about.

The PowerPoint Controversy (For the 1/24/05 entry)

On this whole Powerpoint controversy I'm fairly ambivalent. I can understand both points of view; I have used it as a crutch in past presentations (for example my oral presentation last week in class) when I felt nervous about my content or not very confident. I find it distracts a little bit from my delivery, but that can also be a bad thing as some members of the audience may not like Powerpoint slideshows.

Powerpoint to a certain extent has "dumbed us down" a little with regards to presentations and how we evaluate them. I know from experience that if I was watching a Powerpoint presentation and the slides were clever and the pictures and graphics were cool, I gave it a much better mental review than I would have had another person had the exact same content but a simpler format.

On the other hand, I have had horrible experiences with Powerpoint, namely in a couple classes that I've taken here at Stanford that shall remain unnamed (*cough* MS&E 120 and Physics 55 *cough*), where the Prof's relied almost entirely on Powerpoint slideshows throughout the entire course. Not only is this generally not a good teaching style for science and math related material, but the slides weren't even interesting or colorful!!! It was plain black text on a white background, I don't think it gets more boring than that, especially when you're trying to learn how to calculate the cumulative distribution function of a Poisson random variable.

I guess I would have to say upon further reflection that the pros of Powerpoint outweigh the cons. They can be very useful for presenting statistics and relevant graphs and information. If your audience can't remember an important statistic that you presented earlier, you can just cycle back to that slide and refresh everyone's memory.

I found it interesting that David Byrne was able to create "art" with Powerpoint. I would've never conceived that as possible, but I guess stranger things have been done...

2 possible research topics...hmmmm...

Research ideas (required of all e-rhetoric students). In this blog entry, you should reflect on 2 ideas you have for a research project for this course. Remember that you should choose a topic related to digital culture or technology; see the research project page for ideas. Include links for at to least one website related to each topic. At the end of your entry, write 2-3 sentences briefly identifying which topic you are most drawn to at this point and why.

I was really suprised at how difficult it would be to think of one, let alone two, research topics relating to technology, seeing as every aspect of our lives is affected by it each and every day...but then this past Friday afternoon as i was sitting on my computer, it hit me...
I'd been having some trouble with spyware and viruses inundating my computer and making it grind to a halt. Friday afternoon everything seemed to suddenly explode and I had 30 or pop-up boxes showing up on my computer each time i turned it on. Installing windows updates and using a spyware removal program seemed to have virtually no effect, so after banging my head against a wall for a couple hours or so, i decided to totally reformat my computer......to make a long story short, it was then that i thought it might be interesting to present a research paper on spam, spyware, and all that horrible stuff floating around in cyberspace that most of us at one time or another have probably had to deal with.
My only worry is that trying to find real academic research about this topic could be quite difficult, seeing as these phenomena have really only exploded in the past decade or so. After a quick google search of "computer viruses" to see what would turn up, I discovered that most of the online sites which turned up were in the business of trying to sell antivirus software...but nonetheless i found this one which seemed interesting...

http://csrc.nist.gov/virus/

The other topic i am considering deals with how the internet and all the tools it provides can actually turn people into isolationists and pull them away from reality. This seems very general, but i can think of many examples that i've heard of, for example, obsessive online gaming. I remember one case that i heard about on tv news where online gaming literally destroyed a marriage because the husband was spending the 8 hours a day when he wasn't at work at home playing the online game Everquest instead of looking after his wife and three kids.

So i wasn't surprised when i googled online addiction and these showed up...

http://www.netaddiction.com/
http://www.findingstone.com/services/tests/_onlineaddictiontest.htm

I know we were only supposed to mention two topics of interest, but i want to get this one down somewhere in case i later forget....INTERNET MATCHMAKING. It's a booming business, one that i find a little strange, although once again i'm a little unsure where i'd turn to for good quality research.

I'm leaning most towards the online addiction topic, because it is a very real problem that afflicts many millions of people, some more so than others, and is a largely ignored or scoffed at problem, which if gone untreated, can do devastating irreparable damage to people's personal lives. With more and more online games and services emerging each and over year and the overall explosively exponential growth of the internet, it seems like this problem will only get worse.

First blog entry (required of all e-rhetoric students). For this first entry, you should simply write about your experience (or lack of experience) with blogs. Some questions that you might address include (but are not limited to): What are your preconceptions about blogs or people who keep blogs? What sort of blogs, if any, have you kept in the past? How do you feel blogs fit into your understanding of e-rhetoric? What blogs (if any) do you read on a regular basis? Why? Feel free to be as personal or formal as you wish in this entry.

I have a little experience with blogs. I had a LiveJournal blog once that i updated fairly regularly for about a year until a few months ago. I mainly used it as a tool for reflection, so that I could jot some of my thoughts and emotions down on paper and really think about what had transpired recently in my life.
I never really had any preconceptions about people who keep blogs because quite a few of my friends keep them as well, and many of them have varying interests and passions and talents in the real world; some are great athletes, some "live" in the virtual world of computers...so because of that I wasn't really imprinted with a stereotypical image of a blogger.
As far as blogs and e-rhetoric go, blogs can be a very effective rhetorical tool in the medium of the internet. People often reveal their innermost feelings in their blogs, and sometimes I have found that the frankness with which some people write in their blogs leads to very creative and stimulating writing. Without constraints, people seem much more at ease with writing and are therefore able to write more easily, and the added emotional context of blogging often makes for very fiery and passionate writing.
I no longer read blogs or update my own anymore, mainly because I simply got lazy and would forget to update it for long periods of time, so I just decided to stop. Not a very good reason, but I suppose if i ever choose to start a personal blog up again, it really wouldn't be that difficult to do.
All in all I think blogs are a great tool for personal expression. People can share their feelings with others without having to worry about real-world criticism. Instead, virtual comments provide the only feedback, and bloggers can choose to enable or disable comment at their own discretion. Sometimes, bloggers don't want feedback, as was the case for me. I just wanted a place where I could let my feelings flow.