Quora

Another tool that I decided to try out this week is Quora, which is basically an question and answer website. My initial impression is that it's almost like Facebook and Yahoo Answers, while it shares similar features, there are a few differences between the sites.
For one thing there are very specific categories that users can ask question in. For example, I asked "What kind of gold metallic spray paint is best for plastic?" The categories that came up were crafting, painting, spray painting, and plastic. The best part is the users can post these questions anonymously, because we all had questions that we wanted to ask and probably was too afraid to do so.
Check it out, I think it's an interesting website

Facebook in Educational Settings

In keeping up with my theme for the week with my posts relating to Facebook, I read the in class article entitled "Friending and footprints: Privacy and ethical issues of facebook use in higher education" 

The article talks about multiple different subjects such as, privacy, ethics, sending a friend requests to students/instructors. 

Thinking about this I remember in two occurrences where I was invited into a class-related Facebook groups. One was instructor-made and the other was created by a student. 
Both were inherently helpful because it allowed us to be in a social setting without feeling the pressure of adding the professor or my classmates. 
However I noticed the different in attitude between the groups. The instructor-made was a little more formal with a hint of casual communication. The other one was much more casual, with students allowing to express their frustration or thoughts about the course without any real repercussions (as far as I know) from the professors. Sharing this kind of bond allowed for students to be closer with one another, such as study groups were frequent occurrences.

However, I wouldn't have wanted to used my Facebook for a more formal instructional component. Using it in a more informal way, such as creating a group where we can ask questions more easily and such, is much better.

FAKEbook

Fakebook is a website where users can posed as other users, such as celebrities or random strangers. According to the site, it is meant to be used for an educational purpose:

 "Use "Fakebook" to chart the plot of a book, the development of a character, a series of historical events, the debates and relationships between people, and so on!" 

I personally would just use it to be silly and when I'm bored, however, I can see the benefits of using it as a study tool and gather an understanding of the series of events that occurs in books/textbooks.  

In addition, users can save their work and return at a later date. I'm personally am having a lot of fun with it, so I think I'm going to continue to when I finish this post hehe.

Facebook groups

Facebook group is a unique feature on the networking site, users can create a group on just about anything and set its privacy setting to public, closed (where you can't see the posts, but you can see the members), and secret (no one can find the group unless they are added into it by other members).

I'm in a few Facebook group, most noticeably my fraternity "unofficial" group and a crafting group.
In one group, I know everyone in it and in the other one, there are thousands of other users in it. But still, I can't help but being connected with both of these groups. In the fraternity's unofficial group, there is always someone who is willing to help me out in someway on a personal level, such as, giving me a ride to somewhere. In the crafting group, there is always someone who is willing to give me advice or tips on how to make my art better.
It's funny how two similar, but vastly different group can help me out. Does anyone have a Facebook group like these?

I was reading an article called: "Tweet me, message me, like me: using social media to facilitate pedagogical change within an emerging community of practice" and it reminded me of the new community I will be involved with this upcoming fall. I am on the Executive Board for FSU Relay for Life and I have been in touch with the person in charge of my committee despite the fact that I have not even met her yet, but despite the fact, we have been making headway on our goals for Relay for Life next year. And despite the fact, I already feel that I am part of a community filled with mostly people that I have not spoken to in person.


Goodyear, V. A., Casey, A., & Kirk, D. (2014). Tweet me, message me, like me: using social media to facilitate pedagogical change within an emerging community of practice. Sport, Education and Society, 1-17. doi: 10.1080/13573322.2013.858624

Reddit

A couple weeks back I got a Reddit account and I was hesitant to get an account because it has an initially confusing user interface. It takes a minute, but it's not too bad once you get used to it.
The home page has information about what posts are hot at the moment. The other tabs consist of newer posts, what's controversial, the top posts, and so forth.
On Reddit, users have two options: Post a text or post a link.

From there Reddit readers can comment and up/down vote. In addition, users can search and subscribe to subreddits (think hashtag, but exclusively for Reddit)

Does anyone regularly use Reddit? Tell me about your experience and what other benefits that being on Reddit has!

Windows 10

By now, I assume mostly everyone has heard of Windows coming out with a new operating systems called "Windows 10"
 So far Windows is gradually offering updates to users and approximately 14 million computers have been installed with Windows 10 within the first 24 hours of its release.
I am personally excited about this because I have gotten tired of Windows 7 on my computer and Window 8 on my tablet feels kind of awkward.

Windows 10 promises to offer a bunch of different kind of feature such as, introducing Cortana (think iPhone version of Siri), see the storage of your computer and exactly what is taking up space, manage your notifications, run Microsoft Edge (no more Internet Explorer RIP), share your wifi connection with other people without having them see the password, and my favorite is connecting your iPhone, windows, or android phones to the computer.

Have you installed Windows 10 to your computer? What do you think of it? If not, do you plan on downloading it?