Evaluation!!

I would have to say I was very skeptical about this class but I thought it would be kind of fun as well. I was skeptical about writing blogs every week because I had never written a blog in my life and I didn’t know where to go start one at. I was nervous about that at first but once we started I thought that it would be really fun and interesting what other people in our class would write and if we would have the same opinion or same experiences, or would we clash if we didn’t agree with some bodies blog or discussion board postings. I thought the class as a whole was really fun and unique, I feel like I learned a lot from the readings and my classmates. Plus I learned a lot about technology and how much we are so depended on it and what would happen if we didn’t have advanced technology. I also learned how it technology will continue to grow and advance with time.
What experiences that I liked were just writing the blogs and seeing who had the same type of experiences you had and who had different experiences that we could learn from. Especially when it came to a few of those stalker stories. I feel like I learned something from everybody in this class and it helped because on one hand it will help you in the real world to protect yourself from just the different types of experiences that we each had and how to protect yourself on the internet. By doing these blogs it helped to learn a little more about your other classmates and to connect with different people. What I would also have to say that I don’t have anything that I didn’t really like about the class, I think that everybody should take this class because you learn a lot of different things that you wouldn’t just pick up from a normal class.
I would keep everything for this class because you have a variety of different things that you could do with the assignments. The variety was good for the class, I don’t think that it just focused on just computers, if focused on all different types of technology and made you really think. The only thing that I could think of that I would change would go longer then just 24 hours away from your computer, I would go 48 hours or I would even go without your phone or even your iPod for 24 hours. Something interesting that people seriously can’t live without. This would stir up some serious drama. Overall I thought this class was really good and I would recommend that everybody take it because you learn a lot about yourself, others and how much technology has advanced and is still advancing. You also learn how much we use technology and how we as society can’t go without and. As a whole my experience was really good and fun.

Media Misuses!!

I was able to find a story in the New York Times about major companies that turn down interns because of the information they find on them on the internet. The companies look at your resumes and grades but then they search the internet on Facebook and MySpace to do more of a background check and see what type of person they think you really are. There are a lot of major companies that do this such type of check and they don’t tell you that they check the internet to find some more information about you. You may end up not getting the job and you don’t know why and this might end up being the reason because of your history on MySpace and Facebook.
I disagree with the story because I feel like it is wrong to go snoop on your interns in that way. I feel like you should just judge them based on their credentials and if their resume looks good and they had great grades coming out of college. What they do outside of their job I feel like is none of your business and they could be totally different from what they may show you but if they get the job done then it shouldn’t be a problem. I understand that jobs should do a background check but I don’t feel like checking Facebook and MySpace is the right way to do it because I think that’s more like being sneaky then just checking. I don’t understand what would make companies check Facebook or MySpace anyway? That seems very random to me.
How we may be able to prevent this from happening is that when companies do check for more information on you then what you give them, set your profiles to private and if they ask to be your friend just deny them because you don’t really know them and that’s the best way to go about protecting yourself. I don’t feel like you can totally prevent these companies from checking you and trying to find information but I think that by limiting your profile it will help a ton because they will just have to go on your resume and grades more then the information that they could not find fully. I think another way of prevention is by asking the company when you go for the interview if they do more specific checks then just your resume and grades. Then you can tell them information that they should know or you can ask why is the information relevant to this job so that you can get some answers from them.
Also should their be some type of law that should prevent employers from getting on Facebook or MySpace to get some more information on the applicant that they are trying to hire? On the other side of that should applicants really be showing their profiles publicly when they have these types of pictures or background information on their pages?

WILDCARD!!

I have had many experiences when it comes to communicating through the internet, one of my worst experiences was with a teacher I had at my last school. I took his math class, and I would have weekly progress reports because I was an athlete so it was require. All semester I was fine, me and my academic advisor would check my grades every Friday and see how I’m doing. After my midterm I know I did bad but I new that it didn’t hurt my grade as much because I had turned in all of my assignments. Me and my academic advisor checked my grade and I had an F in the class ands the email said that I have not turned in any homework at all. I new that this was a lie because me and my tutor would work on it and I would show my advisor that I had done the homework and I turn it in.
The situation eased the conversation via email because me and my advisor could get out our frustration by email instead of face-to-face. We explained that I turned in every homework assignment and that this must be some kind of mistake and that I would come talk to him in class today. Why this worked by email first was because that’s how I would get my weekly reports was by email and this was the reason why I hadn’t talk to him yet because my grade was fine in the class before. I ended up going to class that day and I talk to him about my grade and he said the only way I would pass the class is if I was to do all the homework assignments again. I had explain to him that you see me everyday with these homework assignments and now you don’t have them really pissed me off and he just said well I don’t have them so you will have to do them over. I did all the homework assignments over and me and my advisor photocopied every last homework assignment for that class and other classes too, but at the end of the term he said it was to late and I ended up not even passing that class. The other main factor in my grade is that he didn’t even like athletes and he hated that we missed classes. Their were other athletes in this class to and he didn’t pass them either. This was a known fact that he didn’t like athletes either but his class was a required class and you had to take it and he was the only teacher teaching that class that semester.
It was easier to deal with the situation on line because it help get all my frustration out online rather then face-to-face because if the encounter were to happen face-to-face before I found out about the email it would have been ugly and I would have just blown up and it wouldn’t have been a pretty site. After talking it over with my advisor we just had a plan to photocopy everything so that if it were to happen again we would have all the evidence we needed against the teacher. The internet was a buffer to help my first reaction be put into a email rather then seeing him face-to-face and cursing him out.