Sunday, March 29, 2009

communication studies is freaking awesome


As many of you already know, us Comm majors have suffered a terrible insult this past week.
Kimberly Elworthy's Cord article about the apparent shortcomings of the Communication Studies major sent shockwaves through the Comm community. Quite the outrage, from what I've heard. Well I'm outraged too. But instead of posting aggressive insults on her Facebook wall, I'm going to try to do something a little bit more constructive: vent through my class blog!
So, you've all read it. So I'm going to avoid recapping the article and rebutting every short-sighted, generalized claim Elworthy made. That's pretty easy. What I'd like to do here is list the top 3 reasons I love Communication Studies classes, and why everbody else should too :)
1) We have some of the coolest class discussions ever
Try and find another major on campus where regular classroom discussions revolve around everything that is downright interesting: the Internet, television, radio, the news, the entertainment industry, culture, politics, society...Comm studies students get a behind-the-scenes look at basically evey element of society that other majors may study exclusively. That HAS to be more invigorating than molecular biology.
2) We learn how to communicate!
No, really. We do. Check out Nonverbal Comm, Human Comm Processes, etc. Not only are we learning how to be the best damned communicators around, we'll get to apply these skills each and every day in our lives...AKA job fairs, interviews, metting the boyfriend's parents, you get it. Classroom time that is often structured around discussion, which allows us to apply these skills often.
3) Bird Major my butt: Comm Majors can get ANY JOB THEY WANT
Biz Majors will argue with you on this one, but depending on how well you present yourself and your resume, you can get a shot at the same jobs usually designated for any business graduates. Now, those Biz kids gain a much more extensive and in-depth knowledge of the field, but mostly every job in the field offers internal training. You can learn a ton once you have a foot in the door. What's most important is being able to communicate effectively, understand the role the companies you apply to play in society, and essentially sell yourself. We're basically trained to be well-spoken, well-learned individuals.
Well I could go on all day here, but I want to know what YOU like most about Comm!
Let me have it

Saturday, March 28, 2009

boo turnitin.com



What cute hamsters!

But that one little guy is trying to steal his friends' carrot, and that is not cool. He did not come by that carrot in a legitimate fashion, and he is is attempting to benefit himself from his furry friends' hard work. That is unjust, dishonest, and basically really mean. He who does the work should reap the benefits.

In other words, "get your own carrot, I worked hard for this one".

What does this have to do with turnitin.com? Lots. Our classroom discussion on the cons that apply to using this assignment analyzing system really made me think about the experiences I have had with this system, and I can't say there are many positive points to look back on.
First, to explain what turnitin does (as if any of you don't know), the system analyzes students’ papers and generates a digital fingerprint of the words and patterns used in them. It then checks the fingerprint against a massive database of written submitted work, including millions of academic papers and articles in trade journals, newspapers and other subscription-based publications. What this is meant to ensure is that no-one is submitting assignments that have stolen ideas from other sources to claim them as their own.

In theory, this all sounds like a great idea. It's a system that makes it almost painfully easy for profs to catch plagiarism. However, it is evident that this system is not without it's faults. All papers submitted to the website remain there in 'storage', and many students have understandable issues with the fact that their work can be archived on a website. Maybe we would like to have sole rights to our unpublished amateur work? Not a big demand, really.

What my main problem though is that I don't see a feasible way, in an assignment, to completely avoid having material similar to someone else's. In some classes, a final assignment may have only 4 topic options for a class of nearly 300. There are seriously only a small variety of ways that information can be put down on paper. It is ridiculously easy to have a paper that may look similar to anothers even though you have have never met each other or even spoken.

As well, there are some bits of information that I have picked up over the years that have become part of my basic knowledge. I can't tell you where I learned it from or when, but I damn well know it. What do I do then, when I want to use this information in an assignment and I can't find the source? I'm not plagiarising, but at some point this information has become MINE. I know it, it's my info. This is clearly not plagiarism, but turnitin's non-human digital system is not equipped to make such distinctions. It will simply compare, and flag non sourced material.

I have personally been the victim of an unfair and altogether wrong plagiarism charge from the use of turnitin, and I cannot even begin to tell you how frusterating it is to sit there and wave a pile of rough notes and sources in front of a Prof attempting to demonstrate how I arrived at my paper in my own words and through my own research, only to have her say she was sorry, but turnitin says otherwise.

I did NOT steal the carrot.

Anyone have any similar stories?

Monday, March 23, 2009

gossip girl: participatory media at its worst


Look at Blake Lively's face.

For a girl with all the money and popularity one could want, she certainly looks unhappy, even slightly angry.
Perhaps it's just me, but she's looking pretty sketchy and conniving. No doubt at this very moment she's passing along some inane gossip that is about to seriously screw up someone's social life. Whaaaaat a beeotch.
Now, I realize that this is just a singular google image, but I think it conveys the concept of the show in it's entirety: bitchy, well dressed, well-off females (and males) in the Upper East Side of NYC all trying to ruin each others lives online and offline.

To be perfectly honest, I do not have a problem with the show Gossip Girl. In fact, I crushed 2 seasons in about a week on the Internet. Call me a girl, but I love the clothes and the complete bitchiness that pervades pretty much every episode. However, what I have noticed upon watching umpteen hours of Gossip Girl is the complete and utter destructive powers of their cell phones. The entire premise of the show revolves around a gossip site concerning the characters,
and the effects its content has on its followers. Nice!

Cell phones have advanced leaps and bounds since the dawn of their time, and nowadays a Smart Phone can do pretty much anything: take pictures, send pictures, take videos, send videos....and in this case, ruin reputations. Back in the day, all that was needed for a rumour to run rampant was an loose pair of lips and a bad conscience. Today, there can be photo evidence of scandals, and it is easier than ever for secrets to become very un-secret.

Gossip Girl demonstrates perfectly how easy it is to accomplish this. Instead of rumours being based on word of mouth, people are able to capture condemning incidents simply by being at the right place at the right time- and with the right phone. How many times in the show (if you watch it) have you seen Serena or Chuck- or basically ANY of the characters- seeing something juicy or damaging, immediately snapping a photo, and instantaneously sending it from their phone to the site? Before long, everyone sees it and BAM! Drama. Most of the time, capturing these incidents is in the best interest of those capturing them- seeing the guy they like with another girl, a drug exchange...anything. Sometimes, the images may not even convey the truth, but come on its a gossip site...nobody cares about the truth.

What this demonstrates to me is that with cell phones and the internet, it is easier than ever before to create or perpetuate damaging rumours about people. Instead of just passing along crap, now we can have PHOTO or VIDEO evidence? Awful. What changes do we have to protect ourselves? How vulnerable does that make you feel?

Since I'm a total angel with a heart of gold, I feel relatively safe. But I don't live in the Upper East Side.
But I'd stilll be on the watch. You should too.

Monday, March 9, 2009

i have A.D.D, and i bet you do too


So I'm sitting here, trying to write an assignment, make a blog post, sing along to the concourse radio tunes, and eat wedges. So far it's going okay I guess, but AH wait, forgot a drink! Green tea Gingerale or OJ..both acidic-y. Hmm, 2:04, that's like, 2 hours to class time. Zero hour let's go type type type...why is my mom calling? Crap , I need to get off Facebook. Okay, next paragraph...whoa that dude looks like Ryan Sheckler, there's no way he's or legal university age-

Good god. If my head doesn't explode in the next 40 seconds I'll consider it luck. Why can't I just focus on a single task? Years ago I don't even think it would have been possible for people my age to be doing and paying attention to so many things at once. My dad is fond of saying that back in the day, cell phones had a cord (ha. ha.) and people were rarely expected to walk and chew simultaneously.

I blame it entirely on the internet. Don't get me wrong, I love being connected, but it has come to a point where you can talk, surf the net, play music and simulate light saber noises with a single device. The internet as well as general technological advances have made it possible to easily do about fifteen and a half things at once. And know what I think this is doing to our generation? Giving each and every one of us a healthy dose of Attention Defecit Disorder.

To be able to do a million things on one device is referred to positively by technological industries as 'convergence'. In theory, having access to a multitude of functions from a single place is quite useful and convenient. It's not the idea of this convenience that I'm worried about. It is the tendencies and habits that are born of this convenience. It's the level of multi-tasking that we become accustomed to and thus employ in areas where it's maybe NOT so convenient to be multi-tasking. Such as when we are trying to do homework. Or literally ANYTHING on a computer.

Take good hard look at your computer habits. When you're sitting there trying to get to business, how many different mediums are you using in a given hour? Take me for example: I've been known to try and do assignments while: watching TV, downloading music, partaking in a living-room laptop party, eating, talking on the phone, Facebooking (don't judge), listening to the music I just downloaded, googling longboards, avoding my roommates' flatulence, doing my hair, doing ANOTHER assignment...These activites occur all at once, or in stages, give or take a few...It's never just the single task at hand, and I bet you have the same problem.

With the emergence of the Internet and multi-use devices, we have become accustomed to being able to accomplish any number of things at once, and because of this were are losing the ability to stay focussed on a single task. For me personally, it has become so bad that when I do manage to isolate my focus on a single task, I begin to stray and figet until I have incorporated some other action into what I'm doing. Is this normal?

Reversing the effects of this generational A.D.D explosion looks nearly impossible. We would have to ignore technological advances and stick to outdated methods of communication and computing, which is inconceivable as it would mean becoming less in touch with the rest of the population. It would mean being a step behind everyone else, a little bit slower. Who wants to be hanging onto the bumper of the bandwagon?

If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go ahead and buy Ritalin shares.