Week 4

So the Grammy website had a discussion panel called Social Media Rock Star Summit before the show (http://www.grammy.com/live).  The panel consisted of the founders of Facebook, FourSquare, Pandora, and music celebrities Adam Lambert and Chamillionaire. The purpose was to discuss how social media plays an important part in our society and what social media means in the music industry.  I thought it was a pretty interesting discussion and relevant to our ETEC class.

They discussed how social media enables change at a rapid rate in the society and the world and how the young people are at the forefront of social media and music.  They discussed how it democratizes the public and empowers the individual to dictate personal interests rather than have it dictated to them,  i.e. Pandora, a mobile radio station where users can list their preferences in genres/bands/artists and the radio station will stream music that matches these preferences.

What I thought was interesting was the discussion on what the founders of sites like Facebook and Pandora would imagine social media will be like in the future.  They all agreed the future of social media is mobile, mobile, mobile, and that the average user in the future will not even have to sit in front of a computer.   There will always be designated places for a desktop/laptop, but they say mobile is the big market and they hope videos, music, pictures, streams, etc. will be able to be shared amongst many people with one click from their phones.

Another interesting question asked of these founders is if they thought more females used social media than males.  They skirted the issue, of course, but the Facebook rep said he thinks males initially discover and use social media, but then females take over and use it more than males, whether it'd be sharing family pictures or playing Facebook games and socializing.

A drawback they discussed was that certain foreign countries can't access certain social media because of bans/blocks/political reasons.  This is in line with what Jin told us China was doing with Facebook and from what I hear from people in Iran where they filter youtube videos and social media.  People in Canada and in European countries can't access certain streaming videos on a US site.  The musicians said this is a big problem in the music industry because their label has different departments that control different parts of PR in the world and sometimes the chain of command is slower or there is a communication disconnect.  They also suggested what the public needs to do is a "ground-up" push for more access by making their concerns known to their community leaders.

I think the Grammy website is a great example of how a site can be very useful using social media.  They have HD live feed with multiple cameras streaming from different locations: the red carpet, the stage, and a director's cut.  The user has the option of watching different streams by maximizing one screen while the other streams are in little windows below so the user can still see what is going on.  They also have a twitter feed streaming live under the HD live feeds so the user can read the Grammy comments coming from twitter of people watching (by putting a hashtag in their comments #grammylive which then shows up specifically on the Grammy website as soon as one posts it).

Week 3

We had guest speakers from Japan and China in today's session in ETEC647.  It was really interesting to hear the perspective of students living in the most technologically advanced societies in the world.

During our conversations with Ayako, Chiho, and Jin, it became very noticeable that both societies, although very advanced in mobile phones and technology, were very resistant to the wave of new social media that has taken off in the US and other parts of the world.  It could be a cultural thing, but the overall impression was that the educational system in Japan and China viewed social media to be a purely pleasure based movement that should only be reserved for personal use during free time.  It is not utilized with education in schools at all, other than connecting with students in other locations and holding meetings. 

Jin mentioned that in China, social media is viewed as "working less" as opposed to traditional methods.  These societies, whether it'd be cultural/political/governmental reasons are slow on the social media uptake, but yet, I find it fascinating that although there seems to be no desire to join in on the emerging technologies in education movement, these societies are yet looked upon on as the front runners in education and scores. 

I personally think the reason why social media is huge in American society is because it is a society that continually strives for convenience.  Japanese and Chinese view 'struggle' and 'inconvenience' as necessities that one must endure.  They must take long train rides to school because that's what is done.  They must read from textbooks, attend classes to get a degree and make sacrifices to make it work because that's how it's always done and what is expected.  Maybe this leads to discipline.  But on the other hand, the traditional methods leaves out the students who are left behind in the system because they just can't conform to what is expected of their society or they can't take the train ride to the school.  What happens to them?  The girls mentioned there is next to no online distance learning.  What if someone is disabled in some way?  How would social media in education be used to help them in these types of societies? 

Very interesting conversation with the girls and the reasons why educational social media is not accepted in Japan and China were too deep for just a couple of hours.  We have had conversations with students from Nova Scotia to Japan and China.  It would be interesting to have more conversations with students from Europe and developing countries, if possible, to gain more perspectives outside of the US on social media.

Week 2

We had a great guest speaker all the way from Nova Scotia.  She was really nice and helpful and I will be working with her on her research for the months to come. Very excited to be a part of research that will help the field in any way!
My Intro partner and I went through our classmate's assignments on their partners and they were all well done, using various technologies such as slide shows, uploaded youtube videos, and mobile devices.  We rated them and put comments on each one.  It will be interesting to see what they come up with for their other assignment, the Class Lesson for ETEC647.

Partner Introduction Assignment

I did my First Assignment on my class partner, Tom.

ZooBurst!
http://www.zooburst.com/book/zb0_4d38184f249ac

I created a link to a PhotoPeach slideshow within my ZooBurst project so that it is a media within a media. 

But here is the separate link to be viewed without going through ZooBurst.
PhotoPeach!
http://photopeach.com/myshows

Week 1

We met on Eluminate for our class and from reading the Horizon Report 2010, I have learned so much about the new and emerging technologies that are being worked on.  They are simply amazing and my curiosity and interest has been sparked on the possibilities these technologies could mean to our society.  I am very interested in gesture based computing being developed because I have always believed that conforming our bodies to the computer instead of the other way around has not been good to our health overall.  Carpal tunnel...bad posture and eyesight all are results of working too long on the computer and how the computer is built for use.  Technology where you can control a computer through remote means and natural hand gestures would help alleviate these problems.
I also found interesting how the mobile device can be used to overlay a historical map at hot spots around a town so that people can see what their immediate environment looked like at various stages in history.  There are so many possibilities with these emerging technologies, it is all very exciting and I can't wait to learn more.