The story that I am about to explain happened a few weeks ago, but it is good to write about because it shows that the registrar is not well organized (or maybe just all of savitz)…
During the summer I took a class at the community college nearest to me. After getting a good grade, I had the transcript sent to Rowan, using the address that they gave me in the office. After two months, Rowan said that they still did not have it, but this did not make sense to me. I called Brookdale (where I took my summer class) and they said it was definitely delivered because they are notified when a letter has been delivered to another school. I called Rowan again and they said the address I wrote down would go to the admissions office, not the registrar. After calling the admissions office, they had no record of ever getting it.
I just feel like this school is not as organized as it could be. I believe they misplaced my transcript, and because of this I had to pay for another trascript to be sent to Rowan from Brookdale. Fianlly, after two and a half months, my credits were transfered!
This weather is so disgusting! I hate when it is humid, hot, and misting outside. I am ready for it to get a little bit chillier outside, so I can start wearing warmer clothes. I am sick of my summer clothes and it is so hot now everytime I go on campus. In the beginning of the week, Campus Crossings made us shut off our air conditioning, and I had never been so uncommfortable.
Thank goodness we are able to turn it on last night because so many people have been complaning. I just wish they would wait to switch off the air conditioning in Crossings until it gets a little bit colder outside; Because as of now, it is still way too hot.
I am very mad at myself because every night, I set my alarm clock for my class the next morning, and apparently, last night I forgot. I did not wake up until 11:45 this morning, which meant I had missed our class, and I was very upset at myself. It is unlike me to do things like this, and I’m mad because it was our last day of the module. This class was too important to miss, and I hoope I will understand what was said in class. This module was very interesting because it taught us how to relate writing and technoogy in sociey.
I am very overwhelmed right now because I am getting so much homework in all of my classes. Can someone save me???
Ok, so, I am extremely tired this morning and i really don’t want to go to class. I know this is lame but it’s all that’s on my mind. I woke up about 3 minutes ago, got dressed and sat down at my comp because i really wanted to say something important, intelligent….no such luck. I guess in recent news, I am writing a research paper on organic vs inorganic foods. If anyone has any thoughts as to this, I would love to use you as a source in my paper
OH!!! So, writing a novel is one of my goals…and this weekend, it all came to me, all the characters, the plot, EVERYTHING. I cannot wait to put it all together. And no, it’s not going to be one of those teenage romance novels. It’s deeper than that. I’m so happy!!
So, I guess my anguish for going to class and my happiness for figuring out my novel idea cancel each other out. I guess I’m just blah…
The Internet: One can find so many ridiculous and entertaining things on it. Pictures of cats with captions, people blogging their odd everyday experience, and thousands upon thousands of assorted random videos. Since I currently lack the creative energy to comment upon something, I’d like to share with you some of things I have found on my Internet wanderings:
This video is titled The Sandman and was created by a gentleman called Paul Berry. It was created in 1992 and has won several film awards around the world. This one caught my eye because it was a retelling of a European folk tale. Its animation has a very creepy, but somewhat childish tone to it. If you can handle the creep factor, the short is quite well done and makes an excellent video to share with some friends on a slow night.
This website is a series of blog entries detailing the adventures of an American teaching English in the Japanese school system through a program called JET. He comments on his experience teaching Japanese children and being a foreigner in Japanese structured society. The entries are largely comic in nature, with nicknamed characters making reappearances through the entries. I’d recommending starting from the begin for such a reason.
Will It Blend? is a series of advertisement videos for Blendtec. The videos are short and are simple, consisting of an intro, some catchy music, and the host Tom Dickson dropping an item into a Blendtec blender. Its amazing to see what these blenders can do and the after effects of the blendings are usually amusing to watch. The short nature of the videos also makes them perfect to sneak in after a lunch break at work or during a slow day.
Well, I have quiz tomorrow on Buddhism, so studying must be done. Night folks!
Reading Mathe’s essay on social bookmarking got me thinking about the practice itself. For the uninitiated, social bookmarking is the practice of using special social bookmarking sites to tag and comment on web pages, so that others may search through them and view them based on the tags one applies to the web page. This video may explain it a bit better then I can.
What excites me most about this practice is the user controlled aspect of it. The amount of information on the Internet defies normal classification methods, like those used in libraries or coporate databases. Those systems are created by highly educated programs with large amounts of time and resources to create them. However, creating a formal classification system for the Internet would take a staggering amount of time and manpower. Social bookmarking offers a much more feasible alternative. Its major advantage over formalized systems is its ease of use and social aspects.
Formalized classification systems require a great amount of time to consider whether or not a piece of information falls into a specific category. Also, as Mathe states, being able to classify things in a formal system also requires a fair amount of education. On the other hand, social bookmarking only requires one to register for a website (most requiring no more than a user name, password, and email address) and they are ready to begin tagging pages. The process of tagging quick and easy as well. One simply clicks on the appropriate icon for the social bookmarking site, types a couple of words that describe the page, and click OK. This speed and ease make many people more inclined to tag websites then if there was a formal system in place.
The second advantage of social bookmarking over formal systems is the social aspect of it. One who classifies things within a formal system submits their classifications to a small group of people for approval. This procedure is slow and can take quite some time. With social bookmarking, ones tags are available immediately to other users, and thus user feedback. Others may give you comments and suggestions on how to better relabel your tags to fit with more widely used terms. This social aspect also aids in the location of information. This way, you still help organize the information and use terms that will make it easier to find.
Social bookmarking seems like its going to be the way of the future. It goes along with the Internet’s theme of user created. Everyday, more and more users are logging in and tagging more and more websites. Others are relabeling tags to over come vocabulary differences between language. The amount of categorized information is growing, as is its clarity. Maybe one day we’ll reach a point where most of the information on the Internet is tagged or categorized in some way. That day may be far off, but I’d suggest looking into this social bookmarking thing, just so you don’t get left in the dust. A couple potential websites to use are:
Not gonna lie, I only read about half way into the first chat when I found something really important that I wanted to talk about. In chat group #1, Amanda said, “Amanda: the internet introduces us to a world of “sharing” rather than “stealing”. I think that is a really good point. In our discussion, we talked about how there is such easy access to anything you can imagine over the internet. My conclusion about all of this is that I think it is a step forward. I like the idea of sharing. If I find something interesting, I want the world to know about it. Honestly, I love to share. We learn that sharing is a great thing from a really young age. The only people that really consider this stealing or plagiarism are the record companies. When people download music illegally, they lose money. That’s what it all comes down to, the moola. I hate that about today’s society. People have lost all sight of the value of things. I know that everyone is entitled to their own opinions and values but honestly, if you lose everything over gaining money, the money can disappear and then what do you have left? I hate money.
If I was a recording artist, I would love it that my music was just getting out there and people were enjoying my music. I would be super stoked that people were connecting to my music and liking it so much that they wanted to share it. For me, art like music or writing or painting is a form of expression. It shouldn’t matter that people are making money off of it. To me, it’s an outlet and if that outlet ends up making me a few bucks, I wouldn’t mind but that’s most certainly not my purpose. I think people who are just in it for the money are out of their minds. I mean have they ever heard the term “starving artist”? How can you go into something and do it just for the money? I think record companies should be abolished and people should promote themselves. I know it will never happen, but I just think that money has too much hold over what a lot of people do. I mean, how many people do you know that are persuing something in college SOLEY because it is their passion? Not many.
I feel really cynical tonight, if you can’t tell. haha.
I know the post on plagiarism was due like last week and I apologize for the late entry but I do have a little bit of insight I would like to get off my chest.
After reading the two articles, “Understanding ‘Internet Plagiarism’” and “Why Napster Matters to Writing”, I came up with a few things. First off, I definitely agree that the internet has made plagiarism extremely easy. With the abundance of websites out there, if you site something incorrectly on purpose, it is almost impossible for the professor to find out. As a writer, I would never plagiarize. I think it is a really bad, really addictive habit that can’t lead to anything good. I took a journalism class in high school and we watched the movie, Shattered Glass. It was about a reporter that just made things up for the newspaper, stuff that did not pertain to anything true. While I realize that it was not technically plagiarism, I believe it is along the same vein. Plagiarism is untruthful. One has to lie in order to plagiarize and I am a big advocate for the truth. I bet a lot of people wouldn’t believe me but if you knew me better, you would see that I am extremely naive and all I want is for people to be honest and get along.
In terms of Napster, I didn’t read the entire article. It was very long and I just couldn’t concentrate for that long on something that I found to be dry. But, I believe that stealing music is like plagiarizing. I never really thought of it, though, until I read this article. I mean , on iTunes, you can buy books on tape but I’m sure there are illegal book downloading sites. Though it hasn’t really caught on, I believe it could. I mean, especially in terms of really expensive text books, I know that if I could get them for free I would do it. I don’t know, the internet makes stealing and plagiarizing really easy and it doesn’t even feel like you’re doing anything wrong. This just goes to show that i really need to pay attention to what I am doing when I’m on the internet.
This is not a fun topic. I don’t like thinking about how the world is. It’s just kind of depressing.
Just so everyone knows, I am in a very good mood right now because I got accepted into the elementary education major! So writing arts is now my coordinate major, and I am so excited because I have wanted to be a teacher ever since I was little. And now I can graduate on time! I’m sure no one really cares but I needed to say it.
So anyway, reading Lisa’s blog, it made me very interested in Second Life. It is interesting that you can create your own identity by making up your own person. It is also good that no one can judge what you are saying because I am always afraid to say what I think, in fear of what others might think. A lot of times when people voice their opinion about something, other people always disagree, and it is very discouraging. This website seems that people can just be theirself without being judged which is very good for kids, teens, and adults in today’s society.
Last week in class, we used online chatting to discuss topics in our groups. This was a good way to have a discussion because you were unsure of the people you were talking to. This made it easier to stay focused on the topic we had to discuss. Although most of us put our first names down, it would be interesting to have a fake name, so the others would not know who they are talking to. I think this method of class disucssion was very helpful, and we should use it in the future. If this module was not ending I would we definitely should do it on Fridays! =]
