Mitch's Blog

[miward10]

Selfie

I agree with a lot the Mr. Franco had to say in regards to taking and posting the “selfie”. I do agree with the belief that many people prefer to follow an account that posts selfies over anything else because people can then relate to this picture and really see what that person looks like and what they are doing. I for one do have an instagram account and do really get bored with people continuously posting quotes or parts of poems, and generally tend to “unfollow” people who use those as their main posts. I like to see what people are up to and what exciting things they have been doing in their lives. I feel that is the main point if instagram and snapchat, and I really do not see a problem with the often discussed “selfie”.

[miward10]

Copyright

Copyright is a very can be a very confusing subject to talk about, mainly because of the many copyright laws today, and the amount of accessibility everyone has to items today because of the internet. 20 years ago, the only way copyright would happen is by people copying word for word out of a book onto their paper. Now a person can copy text, images, and video straight from the internet without even thinking twice about doing it. I’m assuming that most people today, including myself, have done some kind of copyright infringement without even thinking about it or doing it on purpose. This can make it very difficult for the people trying to enforce copyright laws, and also the people not trying to break them.

[miward10]

Online Filters/Biased Research

Before I had watched the ted talk on online filters, I felt very comfortable using the internet and confident that it was a fairly good tool to use. After watching this ted talk, my brain instantly started racing through all the scenarios that google could be doing with just my search history. I couldn’t believe that even when you are not online, google is running through 57 different tests to see what type of person you are, and what type of personality you have shown through your search engine. It has definitely changed my perspective and I am starting to believe that the internet is a bad thing. One thing I have always feared is our world turning to technology too much, and eventually someday our earth would be ran by robots and computers instead of humans like it was intended to be. After watching this, that fear of mine is becoming closer and closer to real life than I ever thought it would be. I completely disagree with what websites like google and Facebook are doing to “help” our searching of the web.

I believe that in today’s age, it can be very difficult to find research that isn’t biased. Every show you put on television has some kind of bias in it, most posts on the internet are bias towards one side or the other. It can be very difficult to find research without the bias, and one way I would approach this is by researching both sides of the bias and writing about the pros and cons of each side.

[miward10]

Ethical Pitfalls

My view on citations is probably similar to many students, and that is how pointless citations seem to be for how hard they are to create. It makes it very difficult for a student to want to create citations for a paper or project when the steps and time it takes to create the citation is very long and difficult, mostly when there’s nothing to show why you had to do the citation except for the teacher instructing you too. One thing about citations that also make them very difficult is how easy it can be to mess up a citation and have it be considered plagiarism because you misspelled an author’s name or got the page number wrong. I wish it was easier to create citations for a paper, or I would have learned about them more in high school because it was a big learning curve for me when coming to Montana State University.

[miward10]

Citations

        Citations have always been my least favorite part when writing a paper or doing a research project. In my eyes the most difficult part of creating a citation is trying to find all the information to include in the citation. You have to search for the author, publish dates, and where the sources might have come for this paper. All of this adds up and takes extra time that I don’t usually plan for. Another difficult part of citing my sources is figuring out what type of format I am supposed to be doing. My high school and freshman years I did a lot of MLA formats, while this year it has been more APA format. This causes my job much harder because now I have to remember the format for both ways, and I usually end up messing the citation up.

        One positive feature of citations are they do show evidence of where the student has gotten their work from, and it definitely prevents plagiarism. As a future teacher I am sure citations will become my friends instead of the enemy they are to me right now. It is also very important that the citation is accurate, because if it isn’t then the student’s source is incorrect and they have a very high chance of being accused of plagiarism. If there was one way I could change the citation process, it would be to make a citation format universal. I know this is practically impossible, but I believe it would make the citation process so much simpler for everyone, and students might actually create their own citations the right way if they are taught that way their whole entire lives.

[miward10]

Encountering Sources

Encountering sources of information can be a very simple task, and many times it is a random selection of sources for me. I usually just search for the information I am needing to find, and from there I use the sources that pop up. Some of these specific sources that I do specifically use when looking for information are mostly secondary sources. These sources are: Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, Journal Articles, and web sites. Journal articles are used for many of my classes in college, and the MSU library has a very good and broad collection of journal articles to use for research projects. In junior high and high school I used dictionaries quite often to look up vocab words for English and spelling assignments. Some sources that I have never used before, but seem very helpful when doing research are the primary sources. These sources are sometimes very historical and can be very tough to trace down such as: artifacts, diaries, original newspapers, and photographs. Primary sources seem like they would always be the best bet when looking for research information, but secondary sources are usually the ones I can get my hands on.

[miward10]

Research Topic

               My research project idea is to dig deeper into the debate about NCAA student/athletes getting paid to play. This is a very intriguing topic to me for a couple reasons, one of them mainly being that I am a health enhancement and coaching major, along with being a huge college sports fan, and also being a college student. I am excited to dig deeper into both the pros and cons of this argument and hopefully be able to decide where I would stand on the issue. Paying NCAA student/athletes to play their respective sports is growing into a nationwide debate, and something I look forward to researching about.

               Using Google Scholar and Zotero are both brand new features to me, so the first couple times I use them will be confusing for sure. Both webpages look fairly simple and easy to navigate, so hopefully I can catch on quickly.  Both of these functions seem very helpful towards the research process, and will help finding articles and data for my research project. One thing I did notice about Google Scholar was that most of the articles it gave me relevant to my research topic are from 5-10 years ago, and this is a very current and uprising topic.

[miward10]

A Day Without a Search Engine

In the research study, “A day without a search engine: an experimental study of online and offline searches”, the main summary of the article shows that the author is comparing the use of both online and offline searching when looking for information. Most of the results from the study seemed to be mostly obvious to me, and things I would definitely agree that are true. One statistic that did stand out to me was the final piece of data that said that web search results are significantly more likely to be correct (66 % vs. 43 %). I would have assumed that offline searches for information would be more reliable considering all the junk and spam found on the internet today.

I do feel that I find accurate information online, but that is also because I have been educated on where to look for information and what types of sites not to use. Many younger students that are not very experienced with the internet could easily be introduced to false information and take it seriously. The only time I actually search for information using the library database is when I actually have to find research articles that have been published. Other than that, I typically use a google search on my phone or personal laptop to find information.

Lastly, I do feel that searching for information online is an enjoyable experience and I would chose to do it 9 times out of 10 instead of offline searches. I can find the information I am looking for much faster online and there are many more sources to use.

[schellkayla-blog-blog]

After reading the article “At Sea in a Deluge of Data”, my initial reaction/ thought was that our world truly relies and revolves around technology. A “data deluge” refers to the overwhelming increase of electronic data and information. Our generation was born into the era of technology and we...

[miward10]

Kayla, I think that you bring up some really great points when discussing how our society today is "born into technology", so we have no common skills on finding information without use of the internet. I also agree with your comment of teachers needing to be more 50/50 when teaching technology resources, and as a future educator I will try to make this happen.

[miward10]

Deluge of Data

“A Sea in a Deluge of Data”, is a very interesting article that brings up quite a few key points that I completely agree with as a college student. First of all, it is great to note that entry level job openings have increases by 8% in the past year. That alone can help increase the amount of students that will be thrown into the job market almost immediately following graduation. That then relates to employers having more time working their ideal dream job and becoming more affluent in that type of work, instead of having to play catch-up and move up to fast in their field of work. This also allows for less college graduates to be jobless, and give the jobs they shouldn’t be working, to people who have to work those jobs considering they don’t have a degree. This would then lead to less people unemployed and that by itself is a huge boost to the United States economy.

                The main point of the article is to point out the fact of how uneducated our society is on being able to dig deeper into a topic to find information. The article describes that as humans today we come across a question or problem and simply Google it, instead of using deeper and more traditional skills of research and data analysis. I agree that this is a very true statement and something I am guilty with doing. How do we know that the information we find on the internet is not fake or biased? The answer is we don’t, and by using information found on the internet we are letting ourselves give in to the accessibility of the internet, instead of taking more time to find exact answers that are truthful.  

[miward10]

The Real Information Behind Information

Information is something humans use every day to help them answer questions and problems they face on a day-to-day basis. For centuries a person could only come by information from the word of mouth and listening to others experiences. Cave paintings and murals were the first forms of story telling and information that were passed on to other people without personally telling them. Throughout the years that evolved into books, newspapers, radio, television, and the internet. Nowadays, when a person needs to find an answer to just about any question, they just pull out their smartphone or laptop and Google it. This has made everyday jobs and tasks much simpler than they used to be 100 years ago. Whenever I need a recipe for the dinner I'm making or the correct way to change a tire, I can just pull the directions up on my phone and the task is done within minutes. In today's world I believe we as humans take for granted the accessibility we have for information, and that could very well be something that comes back to haunt us in the future. Without learning how to figure out a problem by ourselves and becoming dependent on the internet itself, the world could turn out very deadly someday. I believe information used to be a sign of being very powerful and wise, because it was simply so hard to come by. Now that everyone has access to it, information is becoming a common thing for all humans.