Creativity and New Media

Topic: How New media fosters creativity
Website use: http://www.secondlife.com/
User: lily0newmedia

Includes

• My own avatar
• Access to Thousands of fun 3D places
• Live music & entertainment events

Let's get started by logging on:

Then I choose my destination, I went to Old Village Europe Market Fair

My next location is the Surf Braata Beach

And finally, i went shopping

In this life, I can customize my appearance, connect with people I meet by voice or text. Everything in this life was made by other users which they called "Residents." I can reach to diverse locations by walking, flying or teleporting. The basic objects in this life such as clothings and shoes are free, others can be bought by Linden Dollars (money they use in this life) by participating and interacting.

Creativity

New media is an essential part of today's world of technology. Critical thinking is an important skill to have as we are facing with challenging problems and issues everyday. With the risings of new media such us online publications, blogs, web designs, etc..., many are inspired to rethink, redesign and refine ourselves to find new ideas and new ways to succeed. New media fosters creativity in a way of helping people understand and connect with others. It is also the idea of trying to create new and better ways to work around these new media technologies. Other than that, when children are exposed to new media at an earlier age, it helps them express themselves better when develop a sense of technological literacy. For example, there are tons of applications out there that can foster creativity. For children, they can learn from varieties of new media such as creative art or music project. Learning and applying these digital technology can further one's knowledge. Thus, when technology lives up to its full potential and advantages when we approach it creatively. In the article, The new math of mashups, Mashups is able to find a way of using new media technology to help better compose music. The software app, Acid Pro, helped him to puts loops of different songs both in time and in tone with each other. Many of these technologies first started out with nothing but one's imagination. With the user's contribution and creation as well as the help of new media, it maximizes one knowledge and creativity.  New media is a framework for a user to fill in its contents with one's inspiration. These new media such as web page designers, game creators, 3D designers, music industry, when use differently, varieties of results hidden can be discover by different users. Some of the digital media foster creativity are programming, game design, arts and crafts, literacy and a great deal of others of communication tools enhances one's imagination and insights. The growing number of digital media aspires people creative opportunities and a platform to discover different activities never been before the rises of new media.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual World is an online environment where people can create an identity for themselves. Virtual World can be known as the "digital worlds" where one create a second identity. In such world, users can alter, build, develop and customized what they want, in most cases, something/someone they are not and can not be in the real world. It is a socialized community online, the main purpose of its creation is for gaming. In such virtual world, one can act like a normal human beings, buying houses, cars, meeting friends and de-friending someone and etc. These fictional worlds can either follow certain storyline or fictional theme or can be set freely depending on the wishes of the users. One of such gaming virtual world is http://www.secondlife.com/.
Besides gaming, virtual world can also be a great way for people to build a online socialized community where they can be used for commercial and workforce purposes. As mentioned in the article, IBM's Virtual World for its Employees, it has the largest presences in Second life where all sorts of meetings and activities can be find there on a regular basis. Of course, users also have to be responsible of what happened in second life as it might affect the actual life. For example, IBM information about a new product shared on second life might leak out and affect the actual companies' profits. Thus, IBM moved to Open Sim where they will have more flexibility and work on projects there.    
Besides gaming and workforce/commercial uses, Virtual World can be created for educational purposes. One of the greatest example is the 3D recreations that can be found in school especially computer programming, in libraries, in museum and gallery spaces. Virtual World can be helpful to share information visually. These educational worlds use in academic institutions such as school and library or nonprofit organizations such as museum, can help one understand the contents better.
Virtual worlds can also be build for politicians especially for debate and discussion forum. In At Hearing, Real and Virtual Worlds Collide: Forget C-SPAN: Congress Goes Interactive, the potential of second life can be use widely as one can form a virtual world of self-governing environment and can express our thoughts freely as one has the impression that it's not in the "real" world so that opinions can be express more honestly. By using the virtual worlds, politicians can have a sense of their supporters and others' thoughts.
As the above article mentioned, most users use virtual world for gaming, others for workforce, educational, politic, or even military uses for training purposes, but these second life virtual worlds is somewhat similar to the real life as we created a "imaginary" life that we wish we have or something out of the extraordinary.

By talking about the pros of virtual world, it can drawn people with similar interests together despite their location. It is an enjoyable communication tool that seems effective and productive. Virtual world can also provide a great opportunity for people to connect with other people despite education levels or classes as they can create another identity online. Virtual world have a tremendous level of freedom to express what we really want. When virtual world is use for educational purposes such as 3D formation, it can become an advantage in teaching. The cons of the virtual world are that no matter what, it is still a fantasy world. It can become dangerous if the one in the "virtual world" can not separate themselves out from it. The dangers of deception are inevitable and can become self-destructive if one is too into the "second life" world. One can become danger if they become inseparable from what's real and what's real not. Since people can have total freedom in the virtual world, one's mind tend to relax more and might be able to come up with ideas and thoughts that they thought they can't accomplish in the real life. Virtual world is definitely impacting science education. Virtual world focus on the concept of if you can imagine it, then one can build it. As technology advanced in graphics and software tools, virtual world users can use them to their advantage and use the second life as a platform to present these information more visually. Since there are no specific rules in the virtual world, it is just a platform used for education, training, gaming, entertainment, socializing, ecommerce and etc. With so many interactive users on the virtual world, there's no doubt that it will foster creativity from different people with different creations contribute to the web. Thus, I believe that the usage of virtual world is will play an increasingly important role in our public and private life as we move toward to the future.

Blog about Twitter

Comparing Twitter discussion to Blackboard/in class discussion, the major difference between them is that by using Twitter, we can get instant notification to our email or even to our phone if we registered it. But for Blackboard discussion, they do not have that function. An advantage Blackboard has over Twitter is that Blackboard do not limit the amount of words we can put in one discussion/response, but Twitter sets a limit. If choosing between Blackboard and Twitter for discussion purpose, Blackboard might be a better tool. But if it is for interaction between friends or classmates, Twitter will be a better choice. Blackboard discussions seem to be more formal and to have a lengthy discussion, it is better to go with Blackboard instead of Twitter. For informal use, college students tend to like Twitter better because we can easily reply with Twitter and if download the Twitter App, we can easily reply with a click and I believed that it is more excited to use Twitter for small discussion. Twitter is more convenient as we can easily found out who tweeted us while for Blackboard discussion, we have to go back and forth to open replies one by one. Twitter can be use anywhere and any time if we have a smartphone but it's hard to do the same with Blackboard discussion. Twitter is simpler and easy to access to for small chats while Blackboard is more suitable to use for large and formal discussion.  get full efficiency of our discussion, we can try to use both depending on our discussion subject.

Social Networking Sites

Comparing social networking sites, Facebook, undoubtedly, is the most popular one among the others. Facebook can be use in any languages according to our preferences and can find our long lost friends through this site. I believe when Facebook first launched out in 2004, they are mainly used by college students and one can only register an account with a  valid college email address. But now, it's grown rapidly and can use by variety groups of people with a regular email address. My first impression of Facebook was that there was lots of stuffs I can do with Facebook. We can upload pictures, videos and what most people lost was the status update. People are constantly looking at their friends or even stranger's status to know what they are up to or to be updated with the current events. Comparing to other sites, what's impressive about Facebook is their rapid global and international expansion. They are adding more and more features to get more people attention and to stay on Facebook hours after hours. My first time using Facebook years ago, I feel like Facebook is just a regular tool to connect with friends, but now, my impression of Facebook is that there are many things going on, maybe too much at times. For example, the constant changes of Facebook layout can be confusing and over complicated. But overall, I believe using Facebook as communication platform is a good choice.

As for Myspace, launched in August 2003, they are losing their users with rises of Facebook popularity. My first expression of Myspace is that it is very familiar to a social networking site, Xanga. Like Xanga, most people write their journal on Facebook. We can even customize our own page with backgrounds and different layout. What I like about it is that we can have our unique own pages and can even have our own background musics. But it's been a while since I log into Myspace. It seems as Myspace did not catch up with the technology world these days. Its mobile Myspace was realized year 2011 which was pretty late for today's world as everyone seems to have a smartphone that can access to internet every second. Myspace was popular during my high school years, but now, my friends and I seem to quit using Myspace to socialize.

For Twitter that was launched in year 2006, their catchy service is their text messaging service, tweets. We are all getting use to text messaging rather than making a phone call. I even text my sister when she's on the first floor and I'm on the second floor. What makes twitter useful is that I can get SMS for free if we don't have unlimited texting. We can even follow celebrities and my first impression of this social networking site is that its features are rather simple and can easily adapt its different functions. I like getting updates from twitter instantly. It's main feature are pretty much like a chatroom and like Facebook, twitter is like part of daily life that we check in at least once a day. Today's teens are getting use to the technology culture, so these SMS services can easily fit into teens and college student's lives.

Another interesting social networking site that I have been using is SINA. I believe this social networking site is more popular among asian as it had not expand to international users yet. SINA is like Facebook in Asia. The rises of SINA begin with the fact that all Chinese celebrity are using these tools to communicate with their fans. And the Celebrity in SINA is real celebrity, not fans page so one can directly leave msg to their favorite pop star and if one is lucky, they are get a message back from those celebrity. My first impression about SINA is that we can get to know another side of these celebrities. But the technology these days are changing so fast, we can not be sure if one social networking site can be still remain popular depending on how the trends go.

Social Networking

When use properly, social networking can become an advantage to individuals as well as the business fields. By adapting to the habit of using social networking, business can promote their companies by targeting to the right market. Social networking is a great way for business to stay updated with the industry and keep up with the current events. It also helps to know how the public feels about the companies. Customer service is important to corporate so by knowing what the public wants, it will help boost the trust customers have with the companies. Of course, the dark side of using social networking would be the fact that some top level managers will spies on what employers say about the company through Facebook, Twitter and etc. Facebook is a great example. People tend to constantly updating their Facebook status with their feelings and what they are doing at every moment. There was a case where an employee was found cursing at their level managers on Facebook and of course, the manager found out and fires the employee by replying to that employee's Facebook status.

Of course, social networking can also be use to build business relationships with colleagues, potential clients or future workers. In the article, Social Networking Technology Boosts Job Recruiting, Ms. Maureen Crawford-Hentz was thankful to the rises of social network technology. She was recruited to work for the company Osram Sylvania because she opened a LinkedIn account. Social networking can be very effective and by using it, employees can become more productive. People can express themselves better on the web and thus, letting other employees see the other side of you can create a better workmanship between workers or between managers and workers. Even President Obama sets an example of using social network to benefit the community. During election period, candidates spent tons of money on campaign, while for President Obama, he found a great way of using social networking to his advantage, in the article, How Obama Tapped Into Social Networks’ Power , he gets his supporters to unit together through social networking, Facebook. As stated in the article, "All of the Obama supporters who traded their personal information for a ticket to a rally or an e-mail alert about the vice presidential choice, or opted in on Facebook or MyBarackObama can now be mass e-mailed at a cost of close to zero." Social networking definitely helps improve the interaction between people and even strangers which can become a dark side of social network technology. As mentioned above, reputation, what one says on the web can come to haunt them. Freud and identity theft are another big issues on social network technology. Thus, it is important to think carefully of what we put on the web and who we share them with.

I strongly believe that social networking is designed to be interactive so one can build stronger relationships with each other. In the future, social network technology will evolve our everyday life in which work takes up most of our time. For companies especially big firms with hundreds and hundreds of employees, it will be great if they can establish a database or online network that have employee's basic profiles and interests. In that case, one can get to know and interact with another department's employees even when their work does not interact. Of course, with an online social network site, when coming to problem solving within the organization or having a big project, this will save time and get works done more effectively.

Blogs vs. Wikis

I believed wikis has many advantages over blogs. First of all, wikis combines the knowledge of many different people as opposed to blog which is mostly written by one person. Thus, the viewpoints on wikis can be more relevant as it combines many writers' opinions. Many people would worry about the credibility of posts on wikis. But most of the time, posts on wikis needed to be sited to ensure the accuracy of the sources so this should not be a great concern. Blogs is only limited to one person's knowledge, thus, might not give a fair discussion, but with an open collaboration of thoughts on wikis, we can review them and even give a piece of our own mind by adding or editing contents. Blogs tend to be more personal whereas wikis is more open minded. For blogs, we can only participate by commenting on one's posts. Blogging can be use for many purpose; for personal, business or pleasure. In the article "Wal-Mart Tastemakers Write a Blunt and Unfiltered Blog," Walmart's staff is using blog as a strategy for their business. They want to create a closer connection with their buyers through blogging. Both blogs and wikis are great for educational purposes because they provide rooms for discussions. I can't really said which one is better because it really depends on how one wants to use it. For example, as mentioned in the article "Wikie While Your Work/More on How to Build Your Own Wikipedia CIO," the VP of IT uses wikis to organized ideas of their project all in one place. He wants everyone to participate and contribute their own knowledge, so he decided to use wiki as a source for his colleagues to edit and comments. If one is looking for a way to reflect their own opinion and understanding, it is better to use blogs. Blogs are used for collaboration through commenting on posts as well as providing links to related sites, blogs and even photos. Blogs can be use among different people to quickly share information or to provide new guidance. While on the other hand, if one is working on a group project in need of different people's ideas or to plan events, wikis would be a better source.

Convergence is important in today's networked world especially in the business world. Convergence helps one easily transfer different forms of data such as audio, video, and texts through a wide variety of technologies. What makes convergence important is it helps expands communications and could reduce costs. For example, in today's society, the board of directors of some large firms have their meetings through video conference. This saves time and can settle some major decisions if one of the directors is on vacation, they can still get their vote through the use of convergence. The expansion of access to communication service to different part of the world is one of the factors making convergence significant in today's networked world. It is like international platforms that create effective participation and new opportunities for development as well as meeting the needs of many different people.

Wikis are mainly use as a collective knowledge that is seen use on education and even business. I think it will be great to create a wiki that collects all business and categorized them just like yellow pages. In one way, it helps consumers like us to find business near us and search for service we needed easily. Secondly, business can advertise their company for free. Of course, I think these wikis needed restrict access so that not everyone can alter the information to provide accuracy. But overall, I think using wiki as a tool for business collaboration will help both the consumers and the companies. As stated in the article, "How to Use Wikis for Business," wiki is the "simplest online database" that may "soon rule the knowledge management roost." Since wiki will be often use for business, it will be a great idea to create a directory of businesses categorized by location and services and let consumers write reviews about the companies on wikis.