RantsAndRaves

Blogs, Social Networking, Videos, and SecondLife. That is what we were said to cover in IST 110H class this year. Now let me name those units as I saw them in that order. Rambling about a bunch of things that a lot of people probably did not care to read, finding crazy relationships that exist, Celebrity Jeopardy, and a complete waste of time, bandwidth, learning, etc. Ok, now let me go into depth.

Let us start with the blogging. I actually thought I would hate blogging. And with the things in this class that we were to blog about, I kinda did. Let me clarify. I do like technology (duh, I am majoring in IST and one of those letters does stand for "technology"). However, I did not enjoy always writing and reading about it. I wish we would have had more freedom to write about whatever we want. Isn't that the idea of blogging?? I feel like I would've had a lot more blog posts if could've written about completely random crap. Or if I could piss and moan about whatever I wanted to piss and moan about. I think that I would've enjoyed this more. Writing this post that you are currently reading and the post reflecting on my semester in general were my favorite two posts to write. Why? Because I got to write very informally, something I cannot do in academic papers and I got to piss and moan and express my feelings. I really didn't enjoy reading blogs about boring technologies or commenting on them. To tell you the truth, I think I have gotten (or at least close to) the 48 comments we were supposed to write. However, I would guess that the majority of these comments were about blog posts that had aspects that dealt with more issues than pure technology. For example (I hate naming names, but in this case it is a good thing because I liked their blog posts), I can distinctly remember commenting about Ann Coulter in Martha's blog. I can also remember commenting in Abby's blog about weird things that she writes about that I thought was interesting, like this one about our mutual hatred for UHS and eLion. There was another post I distinctly remember in Albert's blog about counting the number of steps in a staircase to determine if the number was even or odd; then he (like me) could do a single step, then skip every other one with the rest (odd) or skip every other step from the beginning (even). I know I commented once on everyone's blog, so sorry if you feel bad about being left out; these are just some blog posts that I remember and enjoyed because of its variety and lack of concentration on technology. Anyway, what I am trying to say is that I wish we could've written more about anything. Like I said, I think that is the idea of blogging; to say whatever the hell I want to say.

Social networking was probably my favorite unit; I think that I liked this because we talked about things that I feel are more practical. In the "real" world, we are going to have to understand how people relate. I feel that the discussions about social networks are things that I will remember about this class. Yeah, MySpace will probably have no relevance in the business world. However, understanding how people can relate to each other, talk with each other, and form relationships with each other is vital. I really believe that this unit was the best example of showing what IST is really all about: Seeing how technology affects the greater world and learning how to make technology more compatible with that real world.

While I believed social networking was the most useful unit that we covered in IST 110H, I believed that the video unit was the most fun. Seriously, who does not enjoy watching YouTube videos? I think that this unit was great for understanding how technology plays a part in real life. However, I do not necessarily believe that I learned many skills that will eventually be vital in my career. That said, this unit was still a blast, especially making our Celebrity Jeopardy video. I had so much fun making myself look like an ass (I usually do have fun doing this as I do it quite often). Playing the part of my absolute favorite old person (sorry Grammy and Grumpy [my name for my grandpa] and Baba [name for my grandma] and Pap), it was so much fun being Joe Paterno. I was able to imitate his actions. Although I may have played him to be a little odd, I want to make it clear that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I exaggerated JoePa's actions quite a bit. I have no doubt that I will always remember this project. While it may not land me a job or internship, this is something that will last for a long time and that I will always be proud of.

Finally we come to the unit that I must struggle to keep my commentary PG when talking about it. Note when reading this, any euphemism you may read (crap, freakin, screw, garbage, stinks, etc) should be translated into the worst possible expletive you can think of. Let's try it with a general statement of what I think about SecondLife: SecondLife is a freakin peace of garbage that should never be used; screw it until there are major improvements. (The key words to be translated are "freakin," "garbage," and “screw”) This technology blows!!! (Hope that is not offensive, but I had to say it) Let me try to be concise with my reasons as to why it blows harder than hurricane force winds. Compatibility--awful. Graphics loading time--pitiful (by the way, I shelled out more money for my laptop so I could do things that required a faster processor / memory like SecondLife). Usefulness--none. Stuff in SecondLife that can easily be done outside of it--everything. Stuff to do in SecondLife that actually accomplishes something--nothing. Something I would rather do than spend time in SecondLife--play 52-card pickup, but with one million decks of cards in the BJC. Something I hate more than SecondLife--shopping with my mother. (Ooh, wait, SecondLife just took the lead on shopping with my mother in a race to be the most hated thing in my life). Let's recap about SecondLife with the following statement (it's a bit of a run-on). An irritating, and often incompatible, program that has an awfully slow graphics engine and little to no usefulness because there is almost nothing that I can do in SecondLife that is not easier to do on the web or in real life.

OK, so if you made it down here past all the pissing and moaning, you probably think that I hated this class. Believe it or not, this was my favorite class. Because of the subject matter? Well if you read the previous paragraphs, you would know that the answer would be a "hell, no." However (and I am not sucking up to Dr. Tapia here in hopes of doing research with her about open-source), this class was very well-run. I may not have liked WHAT we were learning, but I loved how we learned it. Dr. Tapia could've stood at the front of the class and lecture to us about blogging practices, uses of different social networks, interesting uses of YouTube, and businesses in SecondLife. But we did very little if any of those things. Instead we blogged ourselves, investigated social networks, watched and produced YouTube videos, and explored (though it was painfully irritating) SecondLife for ourselves. Group work was a blast and I had a lot of fun in our meetings. (Yes Team Multivac, I really did)

I hope that the subject matter for future IST classes will be different, but that the way of learning will be exactly the same. I liked how Dr. Tapia challenged us to do things much harder and more exciting than reading and memorizing. Based on subject matter of this course, I would have already changed majors. However, based on the way we learned (which I think is much more important), I am so excited and happy to be in the IST major.