My Second Life Avatar

When we were first assigned to use Second Life in class, I did not know how to do anything at all. Slowly as I began to explore, I found out ways to travel from place to place, communicate with other users, buy items, and most importantly change my avatar. My avatar came with a pink dress with white polka dots, by default. I wasn't a big fan of the dress, so i decided to change my outfit into something a little more business casual. My avatar is currently wearing a pink elbow-sleeved shirt with black pants and peep-toe heals. I decided to make my avatar dressed like this because it's not too flashy, simple, conservative, and cute at the same time. Before coming to this consensus, I changed my avatars outfit nearly 10 times, but didn't like any of them. I'm not a big fan of Second Life because it is very difficult to use. Other than that, I think that the concept of the program itself is fun and an interesting hobby.

Aunt Mary

Dear Aunt Mary,

To me, my Aunt Mary represents my uncle.

Dear Uncle George,
Jason told me that you wish to create a "Myface" account. Truth be told, "Myface" is non-existent. They are Myspace and Facebook, both popular social networking sites. Although they are both online social networking sites, they are very different from one another. On social networking sites, people are able to communicate through messages, photos, videos, comments, and much more. One is able to both send and receive friend requests to add someone to your friend list. Personally, I recommend that you get a Facebook account as opposed to a Myspace account because Myspace has a lot more younger teens than Facebook does. Facebook is also much more controlled, safer, and effective than Myspace with things like mass-messaging, instant messaging, groups, event invitations, applications, and much more. Also, Facebook has a lot of security options to provide the best possible service to its users. Not only that, but it's a lot easier and knowing that you barely know how to use a computer that is probably the best choice for you. Now that you know a little about each online social network, I hope you are able to make a decision and wish you the best of luck!

Love, Shereen

Exercise Two- TV Concerns

Growing up, television in my household wasn’t a big deal. As an advanced student nearly my whole life, homework and studying always came first. When I actually got a chance to watch TV, of course my parents influenced, or practically controlled what I watched. Growing up, I was allowed to watch only educational shows and movies. Shows I was allowed to watch contained a lot of information a young child could pick up on, such as Reading Rainbow, Arthur, Sesame Street, Disney, Mr. Rodgers (RIP L), the Magic School Bus, and Barney.
Television was definitely looked at as a harmful thing in my household. Even when I finished my homework and studied, my parents would tell me to go play with my toys. Of course, all the toys they bought me were mind stimulating, therefore even when I was playing, I was learning.
Growing up, TV took a bigger part in my life. I began to care about the news, whether, and a few preteen shows and movies here and there. Though I began watching TV a little more, my parents still made sure I was on top of my education. I can remember a time where my report card contained all A’s, and only one B+. My parents were very upset with my progress in school so they took the TV out of my room. I worked harder than ever to raise my B+ to an A just so I could watch my weekly show, 7th Heaven.
Today, I have little or no time for TV. Occupied with schoolwork, family, my sorority, friends, and church, whenever I get a spare second, I sleep since I don’t get much of it.
My family has, in fact, influenced the way I view TV. While TV can be very educational and informative, it is very addicting and takes away from me doing other valuable things with my time. Instead of watching TV, I could better myself by going to the gym, studying, and working to pay for my education. As Michael Leboeuf once said, “Waste your money and you’re only out of money, but waste your time and you’ve lost a part of life.”

Wikipedia Controversy- Speedy Gonzales

The Wiki controversy that interested me most is the Speedy Gonzales discussion. Speedy Gonzales as stated on Wikipedia.org, "‘the fastest mouse in all Mexico’, is an animated cartoon mouse from the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. Speedy's major traits are his ability to run extremely fast and his comedic Mexican accent. He usually wears an oversized yellow sombrero, a white shirt and trousers, and a red ascot.”
This entry arose the controversy of what exactly to label his accent. As of now, Speedy’s accent is characterized as a “comedic Mexican accent.” Previously, his pronunciation was described as “Mexican accent,” and “stereotypical Mexican accent,” and “inauthentic Mexican accent,” all of which users found problems with. Under the discussions tab of the article on Wikipedia, this is in fact the most controversial, not to mention, longest discussion. The discussion for the characterization for his accent began in August of 2006, and surprisingly is still a controversy today. After much argument back and forth between users, the phrase “comedic Mexican accent” was decided upon. Though this issue is still controversial, the characterization “comedic Mexican accent” is more descriptive and precise compared to the previous descriptions of Speedy’s accent.
What I learned from reading the article on Speedy Gonzales reinforces the fact that information on Wikipedia should be reliable, and factual information. A stereotype to one person may be different than another’s, therefore words in which users may interpret meanings differently should not be used. This also could be offensive to a specific group of people. Coming from the Middle-East, my family is often perceived in a negative way. Knowing how that feels, I understand why the issue of Speedy Gonzales' accent is such a controversy on Wikipedia.
The purpose of Wikipedia is to inform the public, not to deceive them, and as proven in this article, Wikipedia is not the best source to obtain information. In high school my teachers always told me that Wikipedia is not a reliable resource; Wikipedia has never been my primary resource to obtain information, and it never will be.

exercise two

What is news? To me, news is factual information on what is currently going on in our world. When I watch the news, I not only look for factual information, but also unbiased information. The news was designed to inform people about what is currently going on all around us, not what people think about these topics. In watching the news, I like forming my own opinion, not basing my opinion on other people's.
There are a few things I look at when it comes to considering reliable news. As I stated before, the information must be factual and unbiased. I feel like when personal opinions are placed into the news, people don't hear both sides of the story. Do we really know what happened? To me, the opinions make the stories unbelievable. News also has to be cited properly. It's easy for us to believe what reporters say, however logically speaking if their work is not cited, why do we believe it? The only exception to this rule would be reporters who obtain the facts themselves, from experience. Other than that, how do we know they're not making it up? Citing a source would make it much more reliable. Lastly, when the news is organized, it makes it less suspicious and more reliable.
News is factual information on what is going on around us. Things i would consider news would be weather, traffic, crime, election, sports, things happening in the community, and education. Also, I have family just about anywhere you can think of so I enjoy watching the international news to see what is going on where my family lives. Often when watching the news, it seems to me that it is mostly one-sided which in turn discourages me from watching it. The reporters should let the watchers/readers make an opinion for themselves, not push one onto their audience.

Class Wiki

We need some sort of organization for the class wiki, no doubt about it. I feel like a good place to start is breaking up the wiki into certain categories, assigning a group of people to each category. Last week when we attempted to create our class wiki, it was out of control. One person would create an entry, and two minutes later someone would delete it or overwrite to their desire. People also edited entries and added their own personal opinions. By assigning particular people to particular topics, it would make the process of editing entries and adding entries to our class wiki less chaotic.
I feel that another important factor in creating a successful class wiki is making sure all entries are neutral. An entry should not promote or demote a particular topic, group, building, etc. Instead, the entries should only contain information from other reliable sources. That is a big cause of all the chaos last week, people disagreed with the opinions in an entry, deleted it, and wrote in their opinions. A wiki is not supposed to be based on opinions, rather than factual information. If however, opinions are wanting to be expressed, the wiki as a whole should be consistent. By this I mean that the class as a whole should decide whether or not they want to include opinions and go through with it. This leads me to my next discussion. If we were to add opinions on our class wiki, we should, in fact, cite our sources for our reliable, factual information.
The wiki should flow properly. There should be several topics, with other topics branching off on them. They shouldn't all be on the home page of the wiki because that is very unorganized and makes it difficult to navigate from topic to topic.
In conclusion, the main key to make our class wiki successful is organization. If the wiki is organized, it is easier for people to obtain the information they are looking for quicker, which is more effective. Also, the wiki must be consistent throughout. Lastly, each person should be assigned to a topic. This prevents chaos and controversy between the classmates.

advertisement parody

Our ad was designed to effectively communicate the affects that smoking has on people. The idea behind our parody was to show that smoking leads to death. The slogan for Camel is “Pleasure to Burn,” which was perfect for the concept of death. Cody and I came up with the idea to create an image of an urn with the Camel symbol on it. In the process of making this image, we asked which colors, backdrops, and text would most effectively communicate the message to the audience. In designing this advertisement, I realized how much thought and effort goes into each and every advertisement, and which methods are affective and which are not. I’ve also realized that advertisements have a way to catch people’s attention. There are not many limitations as to advertising. Anything can be advertised whether it’s healthy, safe, or just the opposite, as long as warning labels are also advertised. This doesn’t make sense to me at all because the advertisement is basically contradicting itself when these labels are placed on them.