Webspiration Concept Map

This is the to link the concept map that I created using Webspiration. It outlines how five different social tools can be used in my field of telecommunications.

Cloud Computing

           Cloud Computing is changing the way we communicate with one another. This network in the clouds enables multiple people to share and edit documents and other resources through an electricity grid. Cloud computing is a much more efficient way of editing documents and presentations because it allows users to go on at any time, on any computer, and view the material, edit it, and save it. Then the next person can go on and do their share of work all without having to send an unnecessary amount of emails to multiple people with a new attachment (and unclear revisions) every time someone has touched the file. Cloud computing also ensures the protection of your work in the event that an application should unexpectedly quit or a hard drive crashes. With this type of network, your work is saved through the browser and can therefore be accessed from any computer, removing the dependency of having to use just your personal computer to open saved files. The best part of using these sites, like Google Docs, is that they’re free, unlike Microsoft Word and other programs, and their easy to use because they resemble such programs you may already be familiar with, again, like Microsoft Word.

            Personally, I think cloud computing in general is beneficial to everyone in all sorts of careers. This may be more-so true for business offices but no matter where you work or whom you work for you will need to be able to communicate efficiently with your co-workers. In my field of telecommunications, which relies heavily on accurate communication, using a program such as Google Docs would allow us to get information to each other very quickly especially in cases where I may be on location somewhere reporting or in another state doing work. Yes, you can access your email from any computer and send attachments, but with Google Docs multiple people could be working on a document at one time and you can see exactly what they’re editing as they go. This way you can get things done faster instead of sitting around anticipating the email from your boss with that new revised attachment that took seemingly forever for him or her to get done. When I get out into the business world and begin working in field of study I hope that cloud computing is being taken advantage of, and if not, I’ll just introduce it to my co-workers myself.

            Since I feel like Google Docs is a great example of the advantages of cloud computing, I thought this video, entitled "Introducing a New Google Docs" was very appropriate to share. It talks about the features of this program as well as some new improvements they have made to it, to make it even more efficient.  For example, the comment system on Google Docs makes it easy for someone to add, reply, or move comments around within the document for everyone who is working on it to see. Also, collaboration happens in real time, you do not have to refresh the page to see what others are typing. The video also explains the improvements it has made to the other applications on Google Docs such as the spreadsheets and drawing capabilities. 

Clay Classic Podcast

For my podcast, I decided to share a little bit of information about my sorority’s philanthropic event, Clay Classic, which we held earlier this month. It is a skeet shooting competition in which families and fraternities can participate. The event benefits the Painted Turtle, which is an innovative medical specialty camp and family care center for children who have chronic and life-threatening illnesses. I really enjoyed creating the podcast and I really feel like doing a recording on an event like this is a great way to share it with others. I also found it fun, being a telecom major, because I felt like I was recording my own little local news report.

This is the text that I recorded in my podcast:

“On Sunday, October 24, 2010, the Delta Zeta sorority here at UF held their annual Clay Classic philanthropy at the Gator Skeet and Trap Club. It is a skeet shooting competition in which families and fraternities can participate. The event benefits the Painted Turtle, which is an innovative medical specialty camp and family care center for children who have chronic and life-threatening illnesses. This year, the first place winner in competition was Kappa Alpha Order and Alpha Tau Omega won first place overall as well as having the first place individual shooter of the day. It is a wonderful event that helps out a great cause and everyone who came out and participated had a blast!”

Podcasting

           A podcast is an audio file that can be subscribed to by listeners in order for them to play the files on their computer or download them to their MP3 players. The use of podcasts and the ability to download them onto MP3 players, such as an iPod, make it a great resource to be used amongst students in classrooms. Duke University distributed iPods to their incoming freshman in 2004 to be used academically to listen to recorded lectures and discussions for their courses. The students were able to keep these iPods and were expected to use them throughout the rest of their collegiate experience. This audio tool is very beneficial to students, allowing them to listen to lectures at their convenience and enabling them to go back and repeat sections they may have found confusing. Apple has now created enhanced podcasting in which listeners can see photos and vodcasting, which allows listeners to see video clips. These two enhancements to podcasts are even more beneficial to students who use them to learn course material and it serves as a cost efficient way to study. Podcasting is a new and rapidly developing technology and is proving itself as a great resource for the classroom.

           As a telecommunications major I feel as though podcasts would be a unique way to keep constant news flowing to viewers. News reports could be recorded and an uploaded on to the station’s website immediately for the public to listen too. This would be extremely convenient for those people who like to stay up to date on the news but work in offices all day with no TV access. With podcasts they would be able to go onto the website, download the podcast, and listen to the report as they continue to work. That’s another great advantage to the podcast for my field, it allows people to continue whatever they are doing while just listening rather than having to sit and read through an entire article which can sometimes be mundane. Podcasting is a very innovative new technology and I think it would be beneficial to the telecommunications field to find creative ways, such as the one I suggested above, to incorporate it into everyday news.

In class we watched a couple videos that explained how to use certain technological tools in plain English. I really enjoyed these videos because they did make using each tool a lot clearer and easier, so when I found Podcasting in Plain English, I had to share it in my blog post. It explains how Podcasting lessens our dependency on traditional media and we don’t have to sit around the television at a certain time to watch our favorite TV show. All because podcasting allows us to download these shows off the Internet and have them on our computer, which in turn allows us to download them onto our MP3 players and listen to them whenever we want, wherever we want. Also, it is possible for pretty much anyone to create their own podcast to share on the web and anyone who may be interested in their podcast can subscribe and enjoy. Podcasting allows everyone to have a voice. 

My Digital Storytelling Video

This is my digital storytelling video that I created using Animoto. This video shows pictures of the new friends I’ve made and the memories I’ll continue to make as a Delta Zeta sister.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Digital Storytelling

Digital storytelling uses a combination of narrative, photos, sound, and video to create a short, or sometimes extended, video that depicts a life experience of an individual or even their thoughts and emotions towards an occasion. This unique way of sharing an experience is often used in a basic format by people with little experience but with digital storytelling the sky is the limit and with a simple tutorial or workshop, you can begin creating in no time. The slideshows can be persuasive, if used in a business setting to sell a pitch to colleagues, instructional or historical, if used by a teacher in a classroom, or just reflective, to share an emotional moment with friends. Specifically, when used in an educational setting, digital storytelling provides an entertaining and interactive format for an educator to present information on an array of topics to their students. The great thing is, in any one of these circumstances the resources available to incorporate into the digital stories are endless.

I feel like my career choice is a form of digital storytelling all on its own. As a news reporter, it is my job to relay a story to others and obviously the audio comes from me but pictures are used in news stories as well as footage from wherever the scene of the action may be. My field of work is very digitalized and technological and so I look at it as digital storytelling in itself and using other resources available to help aid that job. However, in the context we have been using to talk about digital storytelling where you’re creating a video to share an event, I see that as being a less common tool utilized for the branch of work I want to do.

               I found this article on digital storytelling while I was researching the topic and I found it really interesting because it provided me with a whole other way to look at digital storytelling and its positive impacts on our society. The article explains how digitally sharing a story is an excellent way to engage those students with learning disabilities who otherwise have a difficult time with writing skills. Giving these children the opportunity to create a story with pictures and videos allows them to engage themselves into the activity and because it may be easier for them then writing it out, they continue to give more to the story. This digital format can also help these students with their writing because once they have laid out their story via pictures, video, or art, and their ideas are clear, they can transcribe it using the computer. I think the concept of this article, however, can be applied to any learner because it is much more engaging to be able to tell your story this way than to write it all out on paper. 

Visual Literacy

Where would we be without visual literacy? Our sense of visual literacy allows us to look at photographs, street signs, symbols and anything else that is a still picture and interpret what it means. If we couldn’t encode and decode these visual images, we wouldn’t be able to figure out where the bathroom was or when to cross the street. In today’s society we are surrounded more and more by images and understanding these images is the only way for us to understand our world.  The article about visual literacy activities explains how it is important to study photographs with students in order to help them understand the complexities of the world. Becoming visually literate is a process of encoding and decoding images in a way that allows you to express your own ideas in a visual format and understand the meaning behind other images. This is all very important because photographs tell stories and many of us rely on pictures to tell us a story about historical events or even about our daily news. However, it is important to keep in mind that what you see is not always what you get especially in this day and age when people have access to so many computerized editing tools. Not to say, don’t rely on visual literacy to help you interpret events but remember that in some cases, whoever this image came from, may be biased to a particular viewpoint.  

The branch of telecommunications I am looking to hold a career in is broadcasting/news reporting and this side of the major your job is to report on stories to share with the public audience. Visual literacy allows people to understand and interpret stories through pictures. Therefore, with the increasing dependency on visual literacy, it is pertinent for someone in my position to use images to help clearly explain the story at hand. I feel like this is a major part of telecommunications anyway but it will become much more important in the coming years.

I chose this video about visual literacy because it refers back to idea that teachers should help facilitate the cognitive learning of their students by providing them with a deeper understanding of images in all subject areas. Kids are shown countless numbers of images throughout their educational career whether it be in their teachers PowerPoint’s or in the textbooks and with the help of their teachers they could gain a better sense of visual literacy for these images, thus helping them better comprehend the subject matter. I can personally vouch for this and say that I wish my high school teachers had dug deeper as to guide me in understanding all those geographical maps, scientific charts, and historical photographs. This video shows a number of images that are seen in classrooms in different subjects everyday and without any guidance, one young mind could not fully grasp the complex meaning behind such images. Visually literacy is a very important concept and educators all around the world have the power in their hands to help their students become successful visual learners.