The Next New Thing

While sites like LinkedIn and Facebook allow college bound students to input information about their academic standing and activities, I think a social media site that allows high schools and colleges to view students' achievements would be a great supplement or alternative to the traditional college application process. 

On such a social media platform, secondary schools, advisors, counselors, mentors could submit or verify the information that the students post. Examples of relevant information would be high school grades, SAT/ACT scores, extracurricular activities: sports, clubs, volunteer work, and work experience. Students would then subscribe to the accounts run by the colleges as a means of applying to the schools. The college accounts would then base their admission status on the student profiles. 

The student profiles could also feature photos, short video introductions, and more opportunities for applicants to display their personality and elaborate on their capabilities while also resolving any misunderstandings in their data.

This new media could make college applications be up to speed with the technology and social media driven world that we live in, and the world that technology and social media has progressed in certain ways. It would also make the applications look more interactive and interesting, forcing both the students and admissions persons to be more active in their respective processes.

P2P File Sharing

As stated in articles like "Peers Find Less Pressure Borrowing From Each Other," file sharing is the internet based exchange, or sharing of items such as music, games, documents, or various folders. With P2P file sharing, peers transfer files to other peers through networks. The one server model is instead replaced by more than one user downloading previously downloaded files which have been uploaded by a respective user. Sites like PiratesBay facilitate the sharing of these files as users can upload their own materials for others to access, download, and consume content.While illegal content, or content that infringes on copyrighted materials, has been uploaded through that platform and other platforms such as BitTorrent and Limewire, efforts have been made to eliminate or least lessen these occurrences. On the aforementioned platforms, users could upload nearly unlimited audio, video, and even literary material, assisting in making a wider array of content available from one's living room.



Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/05/10/182651552/peers-find-less-pressure-borrowing-from-each-other

Our Class Wiki - So Far

As of yet, I have not contributed to the class wiki. But, my interests in the wiki are my participating as a contributor and a graphics editor. As a contributor, I want to contribute information about the Haitian revolution. My family comes from Haiti and I have noticed that despite Haiti's major contributions to the world, our nation's status as a third world country overshadows our past, unparalleled victories. Haiti was the first black nation to get its independence from a European mother country, as well as, its independence is the product of being the only successful slave revolt in world history. Being the only nation formed by a successful slave revolt, Haiti was shunned and punished for its success against the French and was excluded from global trade and all while being forced to pay France 1 billion francs, effectively bankrupting the nation by the mid 20th century. My goal in creating a page about the Haitian revolution is to highlight these atrocities while also highlighting interesting facts, such as, Napoleon sold the Louisiana territory because he deemed it worthless with out Haiti, the new world's richest colony, and "the diamond in France's crown." I have been on the JSTOR database search for scholarly articles to cite and source for my contributions, and as well as, I plan to include information from my mother's books on Haiti. 
As a graphic editor, I hope to select pictures that will enhance the editorial contributions already made. I would google photos and various articles as sources for these photos.

Privacy & Confidentiality

In new media, many youth find themselves unable assess the issues of privacy and confidentiality. Since new media almost predates the adolescence of many, the way that people share their lives with almost no filter. Since social media has become a way of sharing global culture and practices, teens and even adults have not known when they have overshared information whether it be detailing issues in a relationship, with their jobs, or their families. Often times, sharing these issues on platforms like Facebook and and Twitter, have left some people fired, broken up with or tasked with repairing damaged relationships all while having the whole digital community observing these on-goings. These occurrences have left very few matters private. Moreover, with new media comes online shopping, online bank account access, and more. With the digitization of banking, storing of information like social security numbers, bank account numbers, and addresses, cyber criminals have developed ways of hack supposedly secure sites. This has heightened identity theft and company-wide security breaches, errors which plagued companies like Target, costing them millions of dollars. Matters of privacy and confidentiality in the age of new media face many challenges with the advent of ways to hack and expose personal information shared by the users of the new media made accessible to all.

Advice to Baruch College

If hired by Baruch College, my suggestions for improving its new media would include changes to the classroom teaching methods. Often times, even the best professors fail at keeping students interested in lectures. So I would implement more digital ways of teaching in classrooms. Such features could be, videos, interactive tutorials, and websites that complement the appropriate coursework. Additionally, I would make computers more accessible in each classroom so we can merge new media with all facets of learning. In this way, each professor can connect relevant, new media that many jobs require in the age of new media. More students can get practice with using new media such as Ted Talks, social media, and more in their careers of choice while also learning important skills. The hallways at Baruch can also include interactive maps and schedules that detail nearby subway lines and their ETA's.

Creativity

Similar to my stickman series, in 2007, some people used the new media, YouTube, to incorporate modern popular music with classic cartoons. At one point in time, the cartoons were considered products of new media such as the television and various animation devices. Through that once new media, the influence of the Disney dynasty spread around the globe and inspired waves of creativity, most notably in Kanye West who desires to become a contemporary Walt Disney via music and culture. In 2007, amid the massive success of Soulja Boy Tell 'Em's "Crank That," YouTube users married tow worlds to create hilarious videos. Today, nearly ten years later, it's the norm to do mashup videos of popular songs and odd videos. Last year, a series of mashup videos known by the hashtag, BeyonceAlwaysOnBeat, that contained clips of Beyonce's various performances and music videos with several different genres of songs which revealed that Beyonce was always dancing on  beat no matter which song played. This added to the allure of Beyonce and the deserving praise that she receives for her talents. The discovery of this truth about Beyonce's being on beat and providing humor in the merging of "Crank That" and cartoons like Mickey Mouse and Spongebob, are reflections of the creativity expressed through new media.








Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/business/media/24crank.html

Creativity and New Media

A few years ago, my friends and I took a computer animation class. I signed up because the course posting noted that we would learn how to create live action animations - online! My friends and I have seemingly always loved anime and this class made it seem like I could perhaps create the animated worlds that we held such heavy investments. But I soon learned that storytelling was not exactly my forte. I've always been a numbers guy. Numbers are tangible and accountable for, but in creating a fictional world, I had to create the tangibility present in plausible storylines, character development, and action sequences, as well as I had to be accountable for each second of the piece. So at our beginner level, I created stick figure videos. I used Pivot Animator to make the stick figures, to animate them, I used Hypercam 2 to record a sped up version of my images, similar to a digital flip-book. I uploaded my final products to YouTube to make it accessible to others. The fact that my videos exist on YouTube give me a permanent reminder of one of my first instances of honing my creativity. I appreciate that fact about fostering creativity on social media: there is a sort of timeline that can trigger one's memory and bring them back to that point in time when they first created that stickman animation or a Second Life avatar.

First stickman fight

Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah9DOgAv1d8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds2wMHLRN9I