Don't let Second Life become your Life

I wasn't really familiar with Second Life, but Learning in Second Life: Virtual Education gave me tips on what you can do on SL, and found it very interesting. I thought that it's a great tool for distance learning, providing education to anywhere that it's difficult to get education and providing education to people who have difficulty in come to a class physically (like, handicapped people).

But then I thought, what good does it do to the people who don't have problem in coming to a class and receiving education? Argument on which one is better: real or virtual reality classroom, is too large to discuss here, but it's pretty understandable that people who don't have any problem in coming to a real classroom is better off coming to a class room than taking a class in a virtual world.

Then the article Augmented Reality Vs. Virtual Reality: Which One Is More Real? gave me a great knowledge about Augmented Reality (AR). Easy said, it's more like adding virtual reality to the real life- instead of replacing real life with the virtual reality. In this way, I think people could combine the benefit of real classroom and virtual class room and use the fullest of technology today in education, or in any other field. I'm excited that in the future, I will be walking around the "real" town and receiving many information and enjoying anything that technology could provide us, than to be getting lost in the virtual world at home, which is not real.

+Photo Credit+
http://teamsubmarine.wordpress.com/2009/07/

Beyond Resumes

I found it very interesting to read Dan Schawbel's article, 7 Secrets to Getting Your Next Job Using Social Media. It talks about utilizing different social networking sites like Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, Twitter and such to make your job hunting effective. His point was to make yourself more visible online to the recruiters and make job opportunities to come into your doorsteps instead of just waiting for the new job post to come up on job banks.

Although many of his ideas are brilliant and use today's technology to the fullest, I still have a huge question mark about hunting a job online. I'm not talking about job posts online, that's a good idea. But Schawbel talks mostly about creating network and connection online, and I don't know how effective that could be.

Most of all, you can never trust what's online. Sure you could post resume online, create LinkedIn and Facebook profile, and even post a video resume on Youtube, but how do recruiters know that what you say on it is true? Isn't it easier for recruiters to find people who they already know in person? Those profiles may have not been updated also, so it seems like a hassle for recruiters to make sure the information are trustworthy.

Also, it's hard to build a strong enough relationship with people online for job hunting. I think it's really hard for online networking to work just like in-person networking. Network and connections are advantage of job hunting because you know them in "person", not through online profile. When recruiters are hiring people, I'm sure your academic and career history are not the only thing he/she is looking at. Knowing a person means knowing their personality, habits and attitude and it's hard to present that online.

As Liz Ryan talked about in her article, social networking is important, but I don't think online social networking should weigh 90% of your job hunting time like Schawbel insists. I rather be using my time meeting more of new "real" people through my friends, family, my boss, professor etc, in person than trying to connect unreal people online for my job hunting.

+Photo Credit+
http://www.wiltshire.ac.uk/careers/images/jobshop.gif

Security issue with GPS: good or bad?

In the articles I have read this weekend, I found many that talked about mobile GPS. I found few articles taking about security concerns regarding mobile phone GPS (companies collecting where you go, bad people may able to find out where your family are, etc). I know that introduction of iPhone and Blackberry and other smart phones, having GPS on your cell phone in America has become more common, but in my country, it's been around for quite awhile. For my impression, it seems that mobile GPS gave us more security than threatened our security.

One thing that had become common in my country is parents monitoring where the kids are using mobile GPS. Most children in Tokyo gets their first cell phone as they enter 1st grade, and parents make sure they get home safe, or they are not in a dangerous place by using mobile GPS. Same for elders. It was a huge problem in my country that many Alzheimer patients wonder around the town and forgetting how to get home (or not even realizing they are wondering around), their families were able to find them because of cell phone that was hanging from their neck.

Above are just a few of examples, but having GPS on mobile phones could help us in security issues. Articles I read talked about people are afraid because companies could collect data or stranger could obtain your information, but when GPS is used on your cell phones, it always asks if you allow the information to be sent somewhere else. People could make choice in whether they want to share information, or they could simply turn off the GPS on their phone if you prefer it. Like any other technology, there will be always a security issues, but I believe it could be more beneficial for us than give us harm.

I Want You for Feedback!

I have learned such a useful information about corporate blog today through Avil Beckford's article On Corporate Blogging: Interview with Don Martelli of MS&L and Paul Boag's article 10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Blogging along with couple of videos about corporate blogs. I never thought about the importance of the corporate blog, and my image on corporate blog was to promote the company's products just as the way paid media does. But discussions on corporate blog taught me that it could mean so much more to the companies and for their marketing.

"Feedback"

I'm not a business major, but I could understand from my experience how important the feedback is. Feedback is the key to make your products, service and company better for the customers because it shows directly what they could do more to improve them. In contrast to the paid media which only allow companies to give information to the consumers, corporate blogs allow the information to flow the other way around. Consumers could raise their opinion about the company's performance. And that's the best thing about the social networking, that everybody who's part of the network could become a part of discussion.

Perhaps, not soon though, it could be used for more than business. Like government and education where it is crucial to have feedback as their part, could maybe use the social networking to improve their performance.


+Photo Credit+
http://www.jsdguitarshack.com/images/feedback.jpg

Can the internet really make us dumb?

Duncan Riley, in his article, picked up a story about a Novel laureate saying "internet is making us dumb". After reading the article, I thought about the internet's effect in my life, and I came to conclusion that maybe it's making me dumb.

Probably about half the time I'm on the internet, I'm emailing people, using facebook, chatting, using skype, twitter, etc, it's not related to anything academic. And they are time consuming. I think that if there weren't any sites like this I could be more productive and have accomplished more things than I could ever imagine in those times that I use internet. And the other half of time I'm using internet, I am using it for academic reasons (blackboard, aplia, and researching) because I have to do it. For my classes. I don't really remember the last time I went on the internet spontaneously to learn anything that's academic (like, reading online academic journals).

But then I realized, maybe internet is not making me dumb, I choose to be so. I think most of people have heard a saying "guns don't kill people, but people do". I think it's like that. Internet is there, and how we use it is for us to choose. If we choose to spend 12 hours on facebook instead of studying, that's what we choose to do, and it will make us dumb. If we choose to use internet as an academic source, it's going to be the greatest tool you'll ever get. I don't think we should blame technology for how we are or how we became, because it's not like the technology itself has made us dumb.