Advice to Baruch College

If I was hired by Baruch to use new media to improve college, I would make the following suggestions:
First, Baruch should add more online courses by adopting virtual classrooms, like second life. Instead of coming to the college, we can have a regular class through virtual world. The benefits of virtual classrooms are: it will increase the attendance rate. For instance, those who couldn't come to the regular class because they were sick can still be able to present in the virtual world. Virtual classroom will also promote class participation. It will encourages those students who are shy or afraid to speak up in front of the classmates to have more participation in virtual classroom. Second, I would suggest Baruch to adopt twitter or social networking sites for every class. It will promote collaboration. Students or professors can pose assignments on these sites in case someone missed the class. It also provides a platform for students
to discussing class materials.

My New Media Class-So Far

Technologies that are part of the new media are: social networking sites such as Facebook, my Space, and twitter, online publications like blogs and wikis, YouTube, online broadcast, online news, virtual world, etc. Among all these new media technologies, we can find one common ground between them, and that is the Internet. Internet is extremely important to the developement of new media, because every new media technologies are relying on the internet. Without the Internet, there is no way for us to access to these new media technologies. The innovation of new media technologies are to replace the old ones. For instance, YouTube or Hulu.com is the replacement of traditional television. According to the article, "Who needs a TV, I'm watching on a Laptop" by Laura M. Holson, instead of watching TV shows via traditional television, we can choose to watch any shows at any time on Hulu.com. Blogs or wikis are the replacement of newspaper. Now, everyone can become the publishers by using blogs and wikis. According to the article "celebrity Blogs: The Impact of New Media" by Melissa Gerry, more people are choosing to read news online, especially those news about celebrity. The celebrity blogs updates faster than traditional magazines, and most of the photos are uploaded within a few hours after they were taken.

Modeling Reality With Virtual Worlds

There are many different ways virtual world can be used. For instance, it can be used in game field. Many people are now playing "second life" games as a way to accomplish their imagination or dreams. In second life, users can do things they cant do in real life, such as flying. Virtual world can be also used for job training. According to "IBM Learning Programs Get a Second Life" by Ed Frauenheim, corporates like IBM are now using virtual world for employee training. It helps to bring new IBM employee that is being separated by thousands of miles to be able to mingle, interact and share ideas with others before their first day on the job. Also, it helps new employees to learn real life working skills, so they can apply them into real life situation. Virtual world can be also used in medical education. There are now medical schools adopt virtual world into surgery practice. In real world, Students don't have much chance to practice surgery. However, in the virtual world, they can practice as many times as they want in order to be familiar with all the processes and be proficient in it. The dark side of virtual world is it reduces social interaction. Since people tend to spend more time on playing "second life", and they will probably has less time to interact with others in real life. In the future, I think some of the colleges will adopt virtual world for online education. In that way, students and professors can have their own virtual classroom and communicates with each others like the way they did in real classroom.

Twitter: Discussion

After I used twitter, I feel it almost looks like text messages. The difference is text messages can only send to one person at a time and only view by the receiver. But with twitter, your message can be view by a bunch of people, especially those who follows you with just one click and it is for free. I think I'll ask my friend, who serves in Iraq right now, to join twitter. So she can updates her status regularly, and her family or friends will know how she is doing over there.
How does twitter discussion compare to Bb discussion? To an in-class discussion?
The similarity between twitter and Bb discussion is both of them allows only register users to reply to the posts. However, the posts in Bb discussion are more private, in which some of the Bb sites only allows register users to enter and view the posts. While twitter allows everyone to find and view the posts. The replies in Bb discussion are more organized than twitter because you cant find replies underneath your posts in twitter. The difference between twitter and in-class discussion is that you can hear instant reply from the classmates in in-class discussion. While with twitter, other users must log in and views your tweets and then reply.

Social Networking

Basically, users (like me) are using social networking to keep touch with friends, classmates and find new friends. But there are some portion of people using social networking as a way to promote their products, especially those who runs a small business online. By doing so, they will send a bunch of friend request to the users, and once they accept his/her friend request, he or she will post a comment on that person's wall to provide a link to his/her website, and a brief description about what kinds of products he/she is offering. We can also using social networking in politics. For instance, users can create a group for the candidates they support and allows other users to join the group, so they can express their opinions and provide the latest news about that candidate. we can also use social networking as a way to learn something new. On Facebook, users have the option to pose questions and ask for help. Furthermore, companies can use social networking to hire workers. I feel social networking did enhance our lives and provide many benefits to society. Some small online business can use social networking as a way to cut their budget since it is free for them to promote on the social networking site. According to the article, "Social Networking Technology boosts job recruiting" by Frank Langfitt, social networking helps people to find jobs, like Linkedin. Instead of wasting your time on faxing resume to different companies, you only have to post your resume on social networking sites and wait for the call. Although social networking did provide some benefits to the society, there is also some dark sides about it. According to "Is Myspace Good For Society? A Freakonomics Quorum" by Stephen J. Dubner, some companies are now googling on applicant's profiles on social networking sites, and if they find some negative side about that applicant, such as unappropriate pictures, the chance they'll hire them is very low. In the future, I think some social networking sites like Linkedin could add a view screen feature, so the job recruiters can have a online interview with job finders immediately.

Check Out Social Networking Sites

The first social networking site I registered is Hi5. I haven't used Hi5 for almost 3 years. I remember the layout is very simple, which contains only profile, pictures, profile visitor counter and comment wall. But when I logined in this morning, I found out many changes has been made. For instance, it adds game application, friend updates on homepage, tag your friend, and what are you doing now features. The second social networking site I registered is Friendster. I used it for only a week, then totally forgot about it. The layout looks almost same as Hi5. The profile page contains your profile picture, basic information about yourself, comment wall, visitor counter and lists of your friends. The difference is you can create blog with friendster. Facebook is the only social networking site I use most often. Among all the social networking sites, I think facebook has the most popular features. I enjoy to play games on facebook, such as friends for sale, test your typing speed, who has the biggest brain, etc. Facebook is spreading out in the world , even my friends and relatives in China, France and Italy are using it now. I never used Myspace. So I signed up this morning. The only unique part I found in Myspace is the option to change layout. The layout in facebook, friendster, or hi5 are fixed.