Mentoring

I've recently been mentoring my roommate. I've become his big brother educating him in the ways of the WEB 2.0 and new technologies. The most recent new thing that I've introduced to him has been the very exciting world of blogging. Hopefully he will write something for me.

:)

What to talk about????

I've recently started listen to Beirut a World indie band which is kind of folksy. Our last presentation in class was mainly focused on music in the Middle East. Every time I hear some Middle Eastern type music I feel like I should be in the back of a beat-up truck in the middle of the desert with a posse who are all carrying AKs. I don't think that one is going to happen.

I should work on getting that posse first.

More Ranting.

Its late and I can't sleep again, so I can at least try to be productive. I've recently been watching tons of indie films. I just finish this one called O'Horton a Russian drama, about a recently retired train-engineer and I swear there was a constant 5 minutes of silence between conversations. I mean I appreciate the significance of body language and non-spoken messages but at least make them entertaining. I want my 90 minutes back.

* tangent *I think I'm too negative in these blogs, but would anyone really find it entertaining to listen to me go on and on about how great puppies are.

Now to try and somehow relate what I've said to my class........Okay, I think I got something. Many of the presentations in our class are very dry, they seemed to have missed the train on the whole entertaining thing. Even my own group's presentation was kind-of dry. I think in order to have a successful presentation you have to entertain your audience especially the current generation who is constantly engulfed in a firestorm of information. Just think if Al Gore didn't have a scissor-lift would anyone care about global warming; don't worry I'll answer for you, No!

The Blog From 2 am

Thursday in the early moments of the day I remember that its been too long since I've vented into cyberspace. So, let the healing begin.

I tend find my blog to be an shameful form of self-promotion and I feel like I sell just a little bit more of my soul/ideals down the proverbial river every time I post something new. I feel like I'm participating in something I find destructive where I'm just adding to the overload of information where my voice is just yet another ignorable sound amongst the deafening chaos.

Now that that's out of the way. I do feel better. Lets get to the good stuff. Last week in class we discussed Wikis. I personally as well as some other guy, who will remain unnamed because I don't know his name, presented the topic of Wikis to the class. The highlights for those who weren't there: I was slightly embarrassed when I showed a video in our presentation that was the same video that was for homework. There was about a good five minutes of awkward technical difficulties, but I felt went unnoticed since most people were surfing the web. Our group showed examples of wiki-web-formats such as ehow.com a web page that gives step by step process to just about everything. I enjoyed the overall class it was very entertaining and informative.

Hello Internet

If someone blogs in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it matter. Apparently it doesn't. I have this overwhelming feeling that I'm talking to myself. I have zero followers and nothing too relevant to say. So I'm just going to enjoy the sound of silence.

What is happening my class? You ask?

Well, we discussed micro-blogging such as Twitter and Facebook statues updates. The presentation was interesting and we also had to sign up for a Twitter account. I find the application very useful for instant communication of arbitrary information. Well that all I feel like sharing.

My First Blog

I'm taking a world text and context class at VCU this semester. We are required to do a blog once a week. This will be my first of many blogs. Enjoy.

I don't think many people will read this blog as its content will be mostly about what is going on in my class. This class is a hybrid course, those who don't know what that is probably won't know what a blog is ether but I will describe it anyways. A hybrid course is a course that has both a traditional classroom interaction as while as a online component. The name "hybrid" thus illustrating a blend of two things in this case a blending between strictly online course and classroom courses. The class cover global media but more specifically online global media such as social networks and Web 2.0 interfaces.

Recently in class we have divided the world into 4 different groups based upon youth literacy. Each section of the world is then represented by 4 different group in the class. Youth literacy as the means of division of the world was chosen by a survey taken by the class. Yet the actual placement of countries into each group has little to do with youth literacy and more to do with geography. One example of this would be "The Americas Group" where as the title suggests includes North and South America. Yet as anyone who has lived a day in this world can probably tell you is that USA and Canada have more in common in regards to youth literacy to say Japan or any eastern European country then South America.