Technology for the kids

The entire Web 2.0 concept of virtual integration and teamwork are parts of many businesses today, and schools are attempting to keep pace in order to prepare students for these environments. A 2009 article by Kristen Alloway discusses the use of online collaborative tools in classrooms ranging from elementary to high school. Some students participated in video conferencing with Spanish classes in different schools, while some classes discussed the use of keeping blog posts to constantly update class wikis with new information. While some may worry about the social implications of conducting classes in less personal and face-to-face interactions, I believe that it is a useful means of teaching children how to work together in an online community. With many jobs today, the candidate with the most diverse skill set, particularly concerning technology, will likely be the person chosen for a job. Skills that are representative of multimedia or technological talent will be valued by an employer, and will be common in the workplace.

However, there must be some sort of restriction if these technologies are going to be used in the schools. One concern is the quality of the writing itself. While weekly class blog posts in an American Literature class can work well to make sure students are keeping up with their work, the longer form essays must be balanced. Also, with a number of students posting up to a site, with the material readily available to view, there could exist the possibility of plagiarism or the repeating of the same comments over and over again. These educators must be very clear about making sure the homework and assignments are distinguishable. The distractions than can sidetrack effective use of Web 2.o technology in class rooms can be countered by making sure that children are only using the computer at a specific time. For those who worry about what the children are doing, many classrooms already have monitoring programs that track what each student does on his or her computer. While the temptations to stray from a new technology's educational purpose exist, they can be managed as long as classrooms are run in a smart way.

For those who worry too much about the impersonality of these tools, the fact remains that these skills are necessary for learning to adapt to a changing world. These tools are useful when used in moderation. While we can all benefit from the use of these new technologies, I doubt anyone will ever completely forget the power of personal interaction and just plug an entire class in the whole time.

Impersonal Teamwork: Effective or Not?

In The Strange Beauty of Virtual Teams, Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps laud the success rate of virtual teams in the business world, saying that they tend work "under-budget," "ahead of schedule," and produce "breakthrough results." Using virtual teams eliminates commuter costs, and allows collaboration over broad distances, decreasing the time it takes to coordinate a project and facilitating focused communication.

When looking at the positives of virtual teams, the idea does seem enticing and innovative in the scope of the current technological setting. Everything is available with the click of a button: long reports can be sent in scannable, searchable PDFs or a company representative can update its client from across the country. Every day technology grows at a pace that makes everything easier, faster, better. In this climate, virtual teams seem to be the next logical step in keeping employees and executives up-to-date with the times. The caveat to virtual teams however is to make sure that the value of face-to-face, in-person communication isn't lost.

Working in the same space, or within a short walk's distance is something that can never be replaced. Working together in the same physical space allows team members to see how other members act and interact with others. This refers to situations outside of the realm of strictly work-related business. Over the internet, you can easily send work assignments back and forth quickly. Despite this advantage, you don't really "know" the person fully. Their likes and dislikes, hobbies and general demeanor allow you to know how to approach a person and see what angle that person is taking in approaching their work. This kind of understanding is absolutely invaluable.

Laying a Digital Map Over the World

Imagine you are walking down your town's own version of Main St., a bustling row of shops and restaurants lie before you. You walk up to the window of a Barnes & Noble and, using nothing more than a wear-able computing device on your fingertips. In just a few short hand motions, you can browse through the latest book and DVD releases or simply search for the best deals in the store. After walking through the periodicals section for a while, you pick up a magazine and a video clip plays over an image of the cover story. Programs like MIT's SixthSense are showing how augmented reality applications are rapidly making their way into reality, as described in a BBC article by Jane Wakefield.

For people like TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld, the current technological trend is out with the VR and in with the AR. In an earlier article I looked at how mobile GPS programs could be used for advertising purposes, notifying someone of nearby store deals and commercials. Augmented reality will provide similar services but, in my opinion, be more socially engaging and feel less intrusive. The premise of augmented reality is that you interact with the world using the latest digital information compilers and projected graphic interfaces, instead of having bits of advertisement thrown at you. How is AR engaging?

With programs like SixthSense, users can overlay digital information on objects like books and newspapers, revising the power of paper and the printed word. This way you can have a book narrated to you as you read it, in addition to finding reviews of that book or resell prices on Amazon. Simply look at an article about Obama's latest healthcare meeting and see a video clip from the event play out in a projected form on the paper. Anywhere you go, you can see information without some sort of monitor or screen.

Also, instead of having advertisements thrown at you, you can search the deals yourself by pointing your cellphone at a certain store, restaurant, or other place of interest. You choose the information and advertising you're interested in by choosing the store yourself.

Also, the gaming possibilities seem endless. You can work with an object in the real world while projecting digital graphic interfaces over it to create games such as the Parrot AR Drone for the iPhone. You can manipulate objects in the real world in a virtual world merely by directly communicating with an iPhone. Technology like this has made Avatar, James Cameron's latest hit, possible by picking up motion data from a real object and interpreting it in a digital world with digital imagery. Whether you're a gamer or an avid shopper, it seems that pretty soon our digital interactions with the world might require nothing more than a headband and piece of paper.

Linking In to the Business World

As a college student, when I think of social networking the first thing that comes to mind is Facebook. With Facebook we meet people. People with similar interests. People who we go to school with. People who are friends of some of our closest friends. It is the go-to center of communication for your average student to have fun and make friends, but in the real world some of the most important connections one can make are career-oriented. Enter LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is an amazing tool for professional networking. It allows you to search for professionals in your field of study who can either provide advice on getting a job or hire you for a position. LinkedIn represents the way in which social media have drastically changed the way people interact with one another. The core of good networking - face to face interaction, persistence in communicating with potential employers- will never, and should never, diminish in the way we approach networking. While Facebook users can get sucked into social awkwardness by avoiding proper social interactions and hiding behind a computer screen, LinkedIn users can effectively use the website to enhance the experiences they have with their actual human interactions in the business world. It's no answer to social networking, but it's a valuable tool for finding that right answer.

LinkedIn has served as a valuable resource for finding industry professionals for me to speak with in assignments for some of my journalism classes. Recently, I wrote an article for a class about an online journalism project called the Chauncey Bailey Project, which investigated and solved the murder a Bay Area investigative journalist. I had to interview key players in the production of the project, and luckily enough for me all staff members were listed on the site. While some of them had links to e-mails, many had links to their LinkedIn profiles. I created a free one for myself after seeing this and was able to gather information about the people I would speak with. For some of them I couldn't even find email information and LinkedIn was the only way I could get in touch with them electronically. While the cost of maintaining a profile kept me from making a full one, it opened my eyes to the role and benefits that professional networking sites provide in business communication.

Where in the World Are YOU?

Anita Hamilton's article from Time magazine and Mark Cieslac's BBC article both address the issue of built-in GPS chips in phones and the effect they have on the social media market. Phones with integrated GPS capabilities provide two views of the future that are conflicting but very real. GPS phones can locate where and individual is in real time, allowing any entity, be it a company or the government, to have 24/7 access to one's whereabouts.

On the one hand, the social media implications are very positive. Depending on your location the phone could notify you of nearby restaurants, grocery stores, or gas stations. This would revolutionize the way we navigate and interact with those around us. Don't know where your best friend is? Check out the Buddy Beacon feature on your Helio Drift and you'll know where they are in minutes. Instead of wandering around some unknown place trying to understand the voice on the other end, you'll have a quick graphic representation to lead you where you need to go.

On the other hand, if the company can track you, a Big Brother element comes into play. The Ubisafe technology mentioned in the BBC article helps parents locate their children easily. However, providing companies with access to 24/7 knowledge of where you are creeps me out a bit. Companies are out for one thing: to make a profit. Internet advertising and Coke ads in movie theater previews are bad enough, but to have an advertisement pop up every time you are near a certain restaurant can be annoying. The media bombards us enough with advertising, the last thing we need is for it to follow us away from our TV or computer screens.

Facebook Page and the Corporate Conversation

Over the last five years or so, Facebook has come to dominate the social networking landscape, following in the footsteps of MySpace and leading to the inevitable success of Twitter. Within the last year, Facebook's development of the "Page" has helped to improve the manner in which companies keeo themselves engaged with the consumers of their products and receive feedback on they way they are conducting themselves. In her article "Why Conversational Marketing Requires Fundamental Business Change," Vicky Tamaru discusses the three essentials factors of conversational marketing that are crucial in maintaining useful, expansive conversations between companies and their consumers. Nowadays, every company and brand must have a fan page on Facebook to receive vital, developing feedback on their services. For conversational marketing to be useful, Tamaru says that web conversations must be

1. On-Going
2. Two-Way
3. Authentic

These qualities can easily be seen in the way that companies interact with their customers on Facebook. Take, for example, the Facebook fan page for Alternative Press, a monthly alternative rock magazine which is just shy of 14,500 fans. Through either Discussion board threads or wall posts, Alternative Press has different media where a fan of the magazine can leave comments, hear other people's criticisms of the topic or his comments, and respond accordingly. Users can leave and return to these conversations by simply clicking their ways through the profile page for a few seconds. This makes the conversations on-going.

To look at the next two factors we can examine the topics posted on the Wall of the fan page to observe the way the messages are two[way and authentic. For example, on Feb. 3 at 6:22 p.m., Alt Press posted a question on its walls asking what fans thought of the 30 Seconds to Mars cover story and received 45 comments, ranging from the completely asinine to useful criticisms on the way AP covered the band. Some comments were even critical of the choice of the band itself, which could prompt the magazine to rethink the way it judges what is cover-worthy. Through informal and familiar modes of communication that reach millions(Tamaru says that 75% of internet users are engaged in social behaviors), Alternative Press was even able to propose the idea of the use of community profiles on the magazine's website on Jan.28. This is especially interesting because not only is the magazine using a social networking site to maintain a conversation with its subscribers, but is also proposing the creation of the site's own social network to connect its fans and create new discussions on the website itself. While the occasional "F-bombs" and worse are likely to fill up the conversation, the conversation itself is a brilliant, rapidly-developing way through which companies can make themselves more accessible and transparent to the public.

The Opposite of Dumbing Down

With the two articles assigned for this week's reading, it seems as if we are experiencing the same age-old clash of generations. Keen's article and Doris Lessing's comment on the fragmentation of contemporary culture appear to be archaic and elitist, two words hated most by the proponents of the Web 2.0 revolution. However, it would be completely ignorant of those who don't agree with them to take Riley's approach to the situation, issuing a blank rant of social democratization against the people who have set examples for us.

While Keen may come off a bit pretentious, he does have a point about the state of the blogosphere. With hundreds of thousands of voices and opinions out there, it is pretty easy to get wrapped up in the most absurd of it all. Sites such as YouTube serve as a breeding ground for trash as well as interesting and engaging content. When we see some of these less credible blogging sources, such as the emo kids spouting purported musical prowess through red and black locks of swishy hair, contorting their faces to look like morons, then signing off with an awkward smile and peace sign, it's easy to see where Keen is coming from.

However, despite the fact that not all bloggers should be taken as professional journalists or experts, most aren't actually as dumb as we think. Technorati's 2009 State of the Blogosphere report found that the majority of bloggers are "highly educated and affluent," specifically with 75% having an undergraduate degree and 40% having a graduate degree. In fact, only 6% have a high school degree or less. The report represents the way in which "traditionals" underestimate current technological trends. The majority of bloggers provide diversity, the type of social democratization that has really revolutionized the way we access information. The report also found that only 35% of bloggers work within the format of "traditional media." They are doing exactly what they are best at: providing diverse opinions that lie outside of the mainstream or complimenting the experts' material.

These bloggers are not saviors, however, and the majority of people do use the Internet for the must mind-numbing of uses. I myself have spent hours on Facebook or Stumbling through Firefox to come across humorous, fake motivational posters. The important thing for the consumers of this information to remember is that not everything on the internet is set-in-stone fact. Diversity of opinion allows for a lot of garbage alongside the valuable information. The best thing that experts, journalists and scholars can do is make sure to keep up with the times and take advantage of this new media in order to make sure that their quality material is ready and available to the public. We'll always need something to turn to once the heaving and ear-wrenching groans of Chris Crocker's "Leave Britney Alone" video become too much.