In-Class Entry 10/26

Today Luis and worked together to make a short comic strip illustrating how difficult it has become for anyone to just add information to wikipedia. We both shared ideas about what we thought would make a realistic setting for someone using wikipedia. It was more successful than working alone because we could combine our different ideas to have a more creative comic. I learned that working together can help the individuals in the group become more creative with their ideas.

Blog Entry 10/25/10

The Theme of the assigned readings was information on the Internet and how it comes from a "marketplace" of people. The Chapter in the textbook talked about how the way people, especially young people get information now is different than in years past. Now people just check on popular Internet sites like wikipedia, whose articles can be written or edited by anyone. Before there was this technology people would get it from more traditional sources like Encyclopedia Britannica where the articles are written and edited by established experts in each field. The chapter then talked about way that the information available online can become higher quality.

The article/blog talked more about different technologies that bring together information through different people's knowledge.

What kinds of things do you look for when trying to determine the validity of an online source, either for a school paper or personal research? 

I was pretty surprised that Wikipedia was proven to be comparable to Encyclopedia Britannica in terms of accuracy of articles.

Reading Response for 10/19

The Reading in the text was about the recent trend of music piracy on the internet by both digital natives and digital immigrants. It brought up points about how many of today's internet users don't quite understand the legality of peer to peer downloading vs paying for downloads.
The article by Vaidhyanathan talked about how the current laws about copyright don't hold up as well now as they did when the constitution and Bill of Rights were originally written.
 The two FAQ articles just gave point by point breakdowns on how copyright and fair use work. The FAQ about fair use game several examples of ways you can use copyrighted material while still being legal.

How does downloading music for free harm the artist? What are some of the ways you justify your own illegal music downloading( for those of you that do)?

I was surprised that The Palfrey chapter analyzed the music piracy issue from both sides of the argument. I was really expecting it to preach about how downloading music illegally is wrong and how the record companies were right to sue thousands of their potential customers.

Reading Response #4

The two assigned readings commented on the various fears about the negatives that can result from data on the internet and how government regulation on the internet is a kind of gray area. The chapter in the book mentioned that there are plenty of records that companies have about people, whether those people know it or not and how sometimes these companies can give away this information to the wrong hands. The article talked about how cyber-bullying is a big problem specifically for middle school-aged students and how there are different attitudes across the country on how schools should handle this problem. The opinions of parents range from not wanting the school to do anything about cyber-bullying to the wanting the school to suspend students who are guilty of off-campus cyber-bullying.

I was very surprised to learn that there are companies that have no other purpose than to make money by gathering data about people and what I would consider spying, and selling that data.

Discussion Question: Why would the parents not want schools to disipline students for cyber-bullying?