Noteflight in the News

     Hi everyone... If there's anyone still left... This is my post for unit 8. There were some complications for me and that's why I'm posting so late. Let's just say I fell behind into a deep hole that's taken me a while to get out of. Anyway, my community is Noteflight, and this is the second post I've written about it. For this assignment, we were supposed to find an article in recent news about the subject of the community or about the community itself. Something big has happened in my community lately, and I found an article on Yahoo! News about it. The link will be posted at the bottom for the full article.

     The big news was that Noteflight was finally available for mobile devices (if you have a premium [Crescendo] account). This was available with the release of it's HTML5 viewer. People can now take Noteflight with them on any mobile device, including iPhone, iPad, Android, and Kindle Fire. This development will allow students and teachers alike to be able be mobile with their performances, editing and composing as needed. This will be able to expand the level of curriculum that is able to be taught outside the music room.

Noteflight as viewed on an iPad.

I found this article to be interesting because it may give me more reason to buy a Crescendo account, because I have more devices to work with now. I have an iPhone, which would be awesome to show my scores, and be able to listen to them wherever I go. This will also make it easier for my friends, who actually use Noteflight more than I do, to show off their works while out and about. Anyone could pull out a suitable mobile device and have them log on, and they would be able to listen to their various original and arranged pieces. The day that I found out, I pulled out my phone and had my friend log on to his account and we listened to his songs for the rest of that class. I think this development will help me to be a little more familiar with it if I decide to buy a Crescendo account.

Here is a link to the Yahoo! News article:

Noteflight's Mobile Music Viewer Brings Scores to any Device

I will try to regain control over the amount of work I have fallen behind with. The next blog post will be up shortly. Thanks for reading!

Final Tweet!!

After all of the tweets, and all of the re-tweets that I have made this Spring quarter I have learned many different things about blogging communities. I vividly remember that when I started this project of using twitter, and blogging about my experience I was rather hesitant, and I really didn't think that I would gain anything from this assigned project.

            I now realize that what I have gained from this experience is that social communities like twitter offer much more to the individual than first meets the eye. After hours of exploring twitter, and utilizing all of its features I have come to find that it can, and is being used as a teaching tool which affords students and instructors the opportunity to engage on a more in depth level with learning. I believe that what really helped me to see all of the practical uses of twitter was the final paper that I just turned into drop box. The statistics and the experiments with social media cemented that there is a practical use for sites like twitter.

While I don't see myself using twitter in the future, I can definitely see myself using it if it was made mandatory by an instructor as a tool for learning. The only draw back that I could identify with twitter being used for educational purposes is that the individual can only tweet one-hundred and forty words at a time. All and all this was an experience that introduced me to social media outlets, and it taught me that there is always more than meets the eye when it comes to expectations.  

Deviant Art What did I learn

Deviant Art

I enjoy this site!
Since I am not a social butterfly I probably won't be doing a whole bunch of connecting with people in the social aspects of this site. I just like the art. I may change my mind on socializing on the net some time in the future, but for now, I will stick to social networking the old school way by actually getting out and having face to face conversations.
I know it seems crazy, but I like to talk and meet new people when I am out and about doing things I like to do. Its a pretty reliable way to interconnect with people who enjoy the same types of activities as you. I met all of my favorite people in this  way. Its serendipitous, big picture, right place at the right time and I prefer it that way.




Happy Trails To You

Vikki

Unit 10 final Facebook blog

When I started this assignment I thought I knew a little something about Facebook already and would like to know more. I chose to explore the page more in depth than I have ever done before. In doing so I learned that there is so much more involved than just signing in and making silly comments. If you are not careful, you could change your life on facebook with what you say or the pictures you post. Including but not limited to "share" when you share a photo such as this one featured below, this little guy gets around and what ever addvertisement is somehow connected to or linked up with this photo will soon invade your homepage and you won't even know this is where it originated from. Basically, it is like an e-mail that is forwarded to a mass group of people that is how the worms, viruses and malicious mischiefs get in.




Another way for outsiders to get in is this tricky little trick. When people send you a friend request so they can join the gaming side of Facebook with you, "be my neighbor" well I thought it was really harmless. But in fact, it is far from harmless when you let someone be your friend that you do not know; that also gives them access to all your friends and your daily postings and your families postings and their friends. Let me explain. If I send you a friend request and you accept it; I can then go to your timeline and click on your friends list and send them requests through you; that they may want no part of (farmville) and had you not accepted my friend request in the first place than your family and friends would not be getting requests from total strangers under the ruse that we have a mutual friend, you. This little snippet is from another persons facebook page, when I clicked on her name it told me that we have 32 mutual friends and the truth is I have no idea who these people are I just have them on my farm in the Farmville app.

What I am taking away about the people I followed and observed is this; often I noticed that people may say things over the web that they would NEVER say face to face. This can be both positive and negative. If the power of a key board gives that little extra courage someone needs to express themselves in a healthy way than good, but if the power of the key board is someones excuse to be cruel than shame on you; I have actually seen both scenarios on facebook dialogues.

What I will take with me about technology is that there is so much to learn and it is constantly changing so one would do good to keep up. But alas, it is finals week and keeping up is hard to do; according to this facebook post, this is how we do it. Bye now!

Pinterest Final Blog Post!!

             I have learned a lot of things from Pinterest! I have learned that I’m kind of addicted to crafting! I already knew I was, but this assured it. I have learned how to make a flexible ice pack from a zip lock bag and water and rubbing alcohol. I have learned how to make bath fizzies for my daughters teachers. I have learned that there is a lot of things I want to make this summer, and hopefully will be able to make some of them with my daughter.

            Who ever created Pinterest is a genius! If it wasn’t for people interested in technology we would not have web sites that are so interactive and fun to be a part of. I really like the fact that we had to look into how to use the web site as an assignment. This was very helpful to me. I have also learned that there are a lot of creative people out there in this world that love to blog and share the things they create. I wish I had the patience to take pictures of things I have made step by step.

            I can honestly say that I am not sad this class is over, but I am grateful that I have had to do blog posts weekly. It has made me want to get back to using my own blog page to update my family and friends on what is going on in my life. I will be blogging more in the future that is for sure! I will also continue to use Pinterest after this class is over.

            I hope you all have a great summer!! 

Foursquare Finale

As I say goodbye to my class, I feel like I will be also saying goodbye to Foursquare. I have to say, I did learn quite a bit about what Foursquare was about and where it is heading, but find it to be just one more thing to check or do in my day that has no time left in it. Although it has some good tools that are easily accessible regarding places to go, I probably will only refer to them when I am out of town or desperate to find a hip location to break up the monotony of school with a friend outing. I guess it is nice learning about Foursquare to know that I have an option to see what is out there when I need it.

Foursquare already had one strike against it as I pursued it as my community because I rely and depend on Facebook for my social and interactive needs. What Foursquare lacks though in the social aspect, it does make up for in it's applications of venues that Facebook does not offer. If Facebook had those apps then Foursquare would be obsolete to me.

I have realized that the web is about convenience and that shows in web communities as well. I feel that web communities are really based on peoples needs and personalities. If web communities do not offer a multitude of apps/options in their technology, they succumb quickly to those that do.

Technology is such a fast growing and moving thing, that developers are always "chasing their tail" it seems, to create a bigger and better version of their last design, to stay on top as a leader. As America shifts in social and cultural changes, needs, and desires, so must technology to be used as a tool, whether for need or want, in today's world.

Twitter Retweet

My experience with Twitter throughout this assignment has been predictable. I chose this web community because like almost every other young adult I have extensive experience with Facebook and it seems Twitter is constantly paired with the more popular web community. Twitter to me is most likely going to remain in the long shadow cast by Facebook for the foreseeable future. Talk show hosts such as Jimmy Fallon or TV shows like The Voice, Pretty Little Liars and Survivor continuously promote people to use Twitter. But is it really working? How can it been when my experience shows that none of my 400+ Facebook friends openly says they have a Twitter account that I could follow? 

While investigating Twitter I have found that while it is promoted and talked about, everything is about whom you know and where you live. When snooping around Twitter’s promo page I found that Twitter use is much more common on the East coast. That could explain the lack of average Vancouver, Washington Facebook users having (or using) a Twitter account. Along with that, if Twitter is only promoted on TV stations like CNN, Bet and MTV then a certain clientele would be expected, people who are current and up-to-date on news and politics and people who enjoy reality TV and popular hip-hop/rap artists.

This snapshot shows the increase in tweets per minute after Twitter was promoted on the show Pretty Little Liars. The jump in activity is dramatically more apparent on the East coast than on the West coast.

 

This snapshot shows the increase in number tweets per minute for Piers Morgan after have the Kardashians on CNN, again the change in activity is greater in the East than the West.

I have learned that web communities in general are subjective to each person. It doesn’t matter what social networking site you use or don’t use you will find people who hate and love that site. The reality of this became apparent with my own use. I hated using Twitter, it is still confusing to me and seems like a waste of my time, but there are people out there who use it religiously and therefore must love Twitter.

One thing I learned about technology is that you must always check out the privacy policy. Twitter is a popular site and I assumed that meant their privacy policy was going to up to par with the criteria given in our book. I was surprised to find that not to be true. While most of the points were somewhat followed, as in the item was glossed over but not specifically addressed, some points where severely lacking. While the United States has not adopted the OCED principles I still expected a certain level of agreement since we have the FTC Fair Information Practice but it didn’t stack up to the OCED guidelines. Twitter's Privacy Policy: https://twitter.com/privacy

Overall this assignment was informative but Twitter has not convinced me to keep on tweeting.