New Thoreaus?

William Major took away his students' smartphones as an extra credit assignment:

As part of the experiment, I always ask my students to write about being left in the technological cold. I want to know about their expectations, reservations, and day-to-day experience of disconnection. Give me the good and the bad.

Do you consciously unplug from the digital world? Would you benefit from being forced to do so? Is this just a gimmick like pretending to live in the past, or are we really "addicted" to our gadgets and instantaneous feedback?

What Makes for an Effective Blog?

DUE: Friday by 5pm

Link to the blog you brought to class today and explain in detail why you chose it. Does it have one author or a team? Is it commercial or personal? Who is the audience? How can you tell? What's appealing about the visual layout? What about color choices? What sort of links do they offer? What brings people back?

Be persuasive.

Plagiarism & Piracy

Where do you draw the line between freely appropriating information and calling it piracy or theft? How much or what kind of information is it okay to use?

Nominees: Most Effective Users of Social Media

Who is your nominee for most effective user of social media? Who wields the blogosphere -- or Facebook -- or Twitter -- with the greatest effectiveness? How does this person/organization reach a wide audience and energize their followers? How are they able to create a "brand" identity? How would you describe that identity? How are they able to increase their audience and effectively engage a wide range of people? What makes them a success? How broad is that success -- and what can we learn from them?

Facebook vs. Twitter

Vs.

A few years ago, someone had came out with the new social networking called Myspace. That was the big thing to be a part of and everyone was on myspace, at the time. Then someone made up the social networking for college students only, called Facebook and eventually grew to be available to EVERYONE. You needed a college email college to create a facebook. And finally, now someone came out with the newest version of social networking, called twitter. I used to say to myself that I was never going to create a twitter, because it is the exact same thing as facebook, and I already have a facebook. Until last week, when I finally joined twitter.

There are many differences between facebook and twitter. Twitter is basically ONLY telling the world what you are doing at the specific time. Facebook is really an entirely different type of networking. What do you think the positives and negatives are about Twitter? What are the positives and negatives about Facebook? How do the two differenciate? And do you think that in the future someone will combine them both?

Tweeting Effectively

Twitter is based on a person tweeting about what they are doing. A persons twitter page is only successful if their tweets are good.What makes twitter so popular to people? What determines if a twitter page is good or interesting? What are you favorite twitter pages and why? If you have a twitter page, what do you tweet about that you know people will be interested in? If you don't have a twitter page, what would you tweet about?

Twitter

What can you say in 140 characters or less?

This is the concept behind Twitter, a social networking and micro-blogging site formed in 2007. Users are given 140 characters, the space available in a text message, to share their thoughts with the world, or at least their followers. Twitter is a free service, in which members send messages, known as Tweets, to followers or the community as a whole. These Tweets can be customized with the @ and # tags. One can send a message to another Twitter user by using the @ tag and the # tag groups Tweets of similar subject matter.

The subject of Tweets varies widely, as they are user generated. Anyone can Tweet anything. Tweets can be funny or serious, pointless or informative. One can subscribe to Ashton Kutcher's feed and learn about his latest plane ride. One can also subscribe to Barack Obama's feed and keep up to date on the President's agenda.

So may be your average Tweeter won't get paid for their tweets, but on the bright side, they won't have youtube videos made about their tweets either...

But when does Twitter stop being fun and pithy statements, and start getting a little awkward? Take for instance the Twitter account of the late Billy Mays, which has been kept online and is now operated by his son, Billy Mays Jr. Is it really necessary to see the final Tweets of Billy Mays? Is it an honor, or a little morbid?

So, are you a tweeter? Do you follow certain peoples Twitter accounts? What makes a good tweet, or one that is just too much information?#tmi

Oh, and do you think apologizing via Twitter is a good option?