Jemel "TheJemelShow" Alston

V irtual worlds or virtual technology can be used in a multiplicity of ways, including an augmented social media experience to even a virtual educational purpose, such as the teaching tool used for nurses, according to Stephanie Simons' article in The Wall Street Journal: "Avatar II: The Hospital." Typically, virtual worlds consist of visiting a sites via a virtual character, known as an avatar that is usually designed by an end-user to interact with other virtual users. These avatars are then used in a quasi-realistic interaction with others within virtual environments. Real life experiences and scenarios are played out in these virtual worlds. Virtual worlds foster a great sense of creativity, as one can be portrayed as whomever or whatever they want to be. In many cases, one can chose an identity of the opposite gender or even as a different species, or even a different nationality. They can foster or even express different personality or communication traits that th

I am an avid user of Facebook and Instagram but just today, I took the liberty to visit a few different mainstream social media platform, which additionally included Twitter and tumbler. Though all four are almost ubiquitous and tremendously popular social norms, there are some fundamental differences in their purposes and more so functionalities. Facebook has become the cornerstone of social media hubs. It allows you to blog by posting status updates and even record live videos for your friends. Facebook is quite multifaceted and promotes the idea of building a network. The site, though it has evolved tremendously overtime is still user friendly. Twitter, another social media norm is a site that is specific to posting status update with limited characters, so most messages are abbreviated to written in a manner that a message has certain constraints. I have a relatively favorable opinion of Twitter and I further like the fact that Twitter can be used to update Facebook statuses. Insta

The idea of the integration of a social medial tool, such as Twitter into the learning environment is quite far from most academic norms. Twitter is typically used to express opinion-based idea - we have seen that concept almost literally as day to day American politics has succumbed to profuse, over-zealous, and over-reaching daily Tweets by the current American President. However, that does not mean that the 140, soon to possibly 280 character limit that uniquely defines the twitter experience, cannot be repurposed to evidence based, academic approved content. Another advantage is the instant availability that Twitter allows for, when viewing its content. Blackboard for academic use is a great tool but perhaps its usefulness and favorable opinion is only because it is widely used by many academic institutions. When posting blackboard content, it is ready available much like Twitter but the login process and then navigation of the site to get to the discussion board can be quite cum

Blogs have become apart of the new normal. With a ubiquitous emergence on the scene, blogs can and are used in so many contexts and genres and subject matters to chronicle and document the ideas and opinions of authors and content contributors. However, blogs in the corporate context is definitely the next frontier. Typically the virtual presence of many major corporations is specific to the advancement of the brand or for informational purposes. To that end, blog social networking in the corporate context is a great idea but it does raise some red flags of concern. The initial concern is privacy. Blogging tends to be a thing of "the people" and is seemingly provides a sense of transparency to the general public. It would be very important to assure that appropriate content is share via the blog method. The was an instance, in which privacy was potentially compromised for Mark Zuckerberg's (Facebooks founder and CEO) sister posted a holiday family photo on Facebook, but d

So, what is the big difference between the two? The biggest fundamental difference between a wiki and a blog is: wiki's tend to have multiple contributors or authors of its respective content. Blogs on the other hand, typically have a single author but can have other contributors. Both wikis and blogs aid the idea of a virtual convergence of today's networked world. The ability to bring together many different virtual networks of communities in one of a multiplicity of places to communicate in a collaborative manner to introduce ideas and opinions on so many different subject matters. This convergence has become increasingly important and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future, as the necessity for constant real-time communication will increase exponentially. As previously stated, blogs tend to have a single author, although there can certainly be many contributors. Blogs tend to have a more subjective, opinion-based perspective that allows for dialogue and the exc