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Opportunities, Challenges, and Power of Media and Information CN-16,17,26,29,36

Under the hot sun was a city. A city with mainly condominiums, malls, and other establishments. Its streets with cars, buses, and other public transportations there are. No one seemed to be outside. No one seemed to be enjoying the healthy nutrients from the sunlight at 7am. No one seemed to socialize anymore. As we thought that media was good, it still brought us the negatives. They make real, genuine feelings disappear. In fact, social media made us anti-social. In one of those buildings lived Ian. He was a cheerful, happy-go-lucky lad who loved to socialize with his friends and his friendly attitude has brought him quite a big circle of friends. In that circle was his best friend, Winston. Winston was pretty much the same as Ian- which made them close. They'd go to school together and the arcades after and would always choose games over studying. Typical boys. But that's just how we remember them. That was years ago! Now, with the fast advancement of technology, smartphones are invented with all these new socia media apps people can use to communicate and all sorts of stuff. Much to our dismay, our friend Ian here has become very addicted to using them. No more going out, no more parties, no more arcades, no more interactions. It was only school and home. "Hey, we're going out for lunch today. You coming with?" Winston said as he barged in Ian's room, "I think I'll pass," Ian replied while lying down with his eyes closed. Winston rolled his eyes at the guy and slammed the door shut. Oh, he was very much aware what Ian was up to. He'd be playing Mobile Legends from dusk 'til dawn. What he doesn't know is that Ian has his own little circle of friends in Cyberworld- Facebook, to be very specific. "Hey, Jmelyn. Is your name really Jmelyn or you're hiding in that name?" Ian asked through the phone call, "Yeah. It is my real name. Kinda rare, huh? People doubt that there are people named Jmelyn here. What a bunch of weirdos," the female friend replied, "And yours?" she continued. Ian hesitated for a moment. He didn't know whether to tell the truth or not, "Yes. It's Ian," he said. "Come on, I know what you're up to! Mobile Legends all day. Ian, have you forgotten about your friends?" Winston came in shouting with all his anger, spitting out these cold words in front of Ian who didn't care about a thing. "I haven't. I remember you and my onlime friends," he simply answered, "Shame on you, Ian. Karma is also digital, it'll come when you're the happiest, you don't even have to wait for it," Winston whispered to himself and exited. "So, new best friend, where were we?" Ian got back on the phone with Jmelyn, "Can't really remember," she chuckled, Ian decided to change the topic and talk about all sorts of random things existing on this planet. Hours passed, it was nighttime and not a single message came from Winston. Ian shrugged it off, thinking it was no problem and continued scrolling through his feed until his finger stopped. His eyes catch a post by a lady he was attracted to. "Irene...?" he whispered to himself. He tapped on the profile and messaged her immediately. Ian: Um, hey! Irene: Hi. Ian: I'm Ian. How are you? Irene: I can read. Hahaha. I'm good. You? Ian: It's good that you're doing good. I'm good, too! Um, what's your favorite number on the electric fan? Irene: Uh... weird but okay. Hahaha. Just 1. After a few weeks, Irene has accepted Ian's weirdness and eventually became closer than ever. Jmelyn was happy for her online friend who finally had a crush on someone. On the other hand, Winston seemed to be angry. He didn't like what was happening to Ian or to anyone else like him for that matter. He continued to ignore him even if it pained. "So, uh, Irene," Ian said softly on one end of the line. "Yeah?" "It's been a while now and uhm we've gotten to know each other and yeah... I want to tell you something." "What is it?" "I- I like you. A lot." "Ian..." "You don't have to say it back. It feels nice being able to say it." "No- I mean, I like you, too..." "What?" "You heard me." "Really? I- I can't believe it. You have no idea how happy you've made me!" "I'm as happy as you are. Listen, it's late here and I have school tomorrow so I gotta go..." "Sweet dreams and good night. Thank you so much!" Ian went to bed with a huge smile plastered on his face. As he lay down, his eyes closed shut, he drifted off to dreamland. ---- Sunshine struck the face of the sleeping lad through the huge window by his bed. This was the reason Ian chose to wake up. Thinking about the phone call last time, he shot up as fast as he could and reached for his phone. Only to his surprise, it wasn't there. "Huh?" Ian's eyes widen as he realized his surroundings. No curtains, no television, no books, no wifi, no phone. All he could hear was the sound of birds chirping outside in the early morning. He looked out the window to see no buildings. All houses looked the same. He walked out of his room only to see  Winston happily eating beside his parents. "Hey, Ian! Come and join us," he greeted with a smile. Ian shook his head in disbelief. "This must be a dream," he whispered to himself, "What dream, Honey? You must've slept early," his mom chuckled. To his surprise, his dad wasn't reading any newspaper, "Dad, you're not reading any newspaper?" he asked, "Uh, what is newspaper?" his dad answered with a quote and quote gesture. "What the actual heck. No way. T-this can't be happening," Ian stuttered and went out for fresh air. The air around him was surprisingly fresh. There were lots of trees around compared to what he was used to seeing. He walked around the sandy path, walking towards the beach, he got a twig and wrote on the sand. "What are you doing?" a girl asked behind him, "Writing," he responded, "What's writing?" He turned his back to see the same girl that attracted him. The same girl to whom he confessed to last night and the same girl who said it back. "Irene," Ian said and smiled with relief, "Who are you and how'd you know my name?" Irene took a step back, trembling with fear, "It's me. Ian," he calmly said, "N-no. I don't know any Ian," she took another step back as he walked closer, "On F-facebook," he whispered and Irene just shook her head until another lad came and held her by the waist. "What's the matter?" he asked the girl, "He knows me, Robert," Irene said in fear, "He's saying weird things like writing and Facebook," she said. "We don't know who you are but please leave my girlfriend alone. You can see she's in so much fear right now," Robert said nicely while he still had the patience. Ian's eyes widened. She had a boyfriend. No, no, no, no. Ian's feet started moving. He was running back to the present if he was in the past but sadly, he wasn't. He ended up being in front of the place where the arcade used to be and fell on his knees. "No," Ian whispered. Tears started falling down his cheeks, "My friends, Winston... Jmelyn, Irene... no," he stuttered. He felt a hand land on his shoulder, "I'm here, Ian. I've always been," Winston got down and hugged the man he's always been calling his best friend. "I don't deserve this. All of this. Karma did take place while I was at my happiest. I don't deserve you coming back now, Winston. I can't live without this. I can't live without my phone and all the contents in it. No. Irene can't have a boyfriend. Jmelyn isn't non-existent and you're supposed to be mad with me!" Ian half-shouted with anger. He swatted Winston's hand away, "Ian, no," Winston scolded with anger. Ian didn't listen. He ran. He ran as fast as he could, where his legs would take him. "Home sweet home," Ian smiled sadly and entered the now empty place. He looked around one last time with a sad smile. "It must be 2017 right now, just without Facebook and all the stuff before it... when I wake up, this will all be over, right?" Ian asked as he placed his neck on the loop of the rope hanging by the ceiling, kicked the stool below his legs and took in his last breath. Then, he disappeared alongside media without anyone knowing.

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Reflection Paper - Monica Lewinsky TED Talk CN27

           The anonymity of the internet can give people the feeling of no repercussions for what they say. This can cause people to say whatever they want. Yet although they will not be affected, they can still affect other people.  There are tons of different people around the world with tons of differing opinions and beliefs. If you’re on the internet, you’re bound to meet someone that disagrees with you and bad-mouths you, insults you, or starts calling you names. You either need to be thick skinned or to not use the internet. After all, there’s no one forcing you to use it. If you really do have to use it, most social media sites allow you to delete comments or block a person. You can even report a post if you don’t like it.

           But with that being said, cyberbullying is still a major problem because there are people getting affected by it. People with less thicker skin. Some of them even commit suicide. It is unlikely that people who bully through the internet can be arrested because they do have the right to say whatever they want. But we should teach them that what they say can affect others. We can always tell people that cyber bullying is bad, but perhaps it would be better if we could also teach people how to avoid or deal with being cyberbullied. There are always going to be people harassing others online no matter what you do.

           I do agree with Monica that news websites and the like all have shame as a driving force. Most news I hear about is someone doing something wrong. Although we should take note when someone does something wrong, some people get too attached and start harassing the person for doing what he or she did. An example would be some of my friends. The recent news that Joey de Leon dismissed depression as being fake caused a few of my friends to tell him to just shut up, call him stupid, and even wishing for him to have depression. Does this not resemble cyberbullying? When people see these types of news, they form a version of that person in their head. Let’s call it the internet version. If that person does something that something that lines up with the internet version, then it would blow up in the news and more people would see it. But if that person does something else that doesn’t line up with the internet version, nobody makes news about that, and people simply never see it or ignore it.

           Big companies follow where the money goes. And the money right now is in shame. They try to get juicy stories as fast as they can. And if they get it wrong, they’ll think it is fine because they can edit it later. If we somehow get people to stop visiting these sites for these kinds of stories, they would simply stop making them and move on to different kinds of stories.

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Reflection Paper - Monica Lewinsky TED Talk CN36

           As time goes by many thing in our world changes, including the thing that many if not all of us newer generations love and use every day, the internet. The internet is like our go to when we have free time and not only then that we use it, it helps use in doing research, in our work, and even for our entertainment purposes. But most of us doesn’t know the part of the internet when everything you know and love will ruin you in many sorts of ways. In my situation is that all of the Disney movies that I watch, includes “The Little Mermaid”, “Cinderella”, “Tangled”, and much more. When I research more deeply when all of this were inspired from. The movie endings were totally different and more creepy, like in the Cinderella the ending is that one of the step-sister cut of her little toe to fit the glass slipper, so that she could marry the prince and leave Cinderella cry and suffer the rest of her life in pain.

           In the talk of Monica Lewinsky, she mentioned mostly about cyber bullying. In her talk she talked about her life before and after she made that single mistake that change her life. Even though it was not completely her fault, but due to the internet and its earlier days, one single thing that you do in the internet can be seen and searched by millions of people out there. Even a single click matters when it comes to the internet. In my personal opinion that felling in love with a person that you truly love, isn’t something to be judge or to be called as such. Even though we know that people have feelings, but we tend to use a fake identity when going into the cyber world, we forget that the people we play with, the people we interact with, the people we talk to have feeling and they are humans. I always get carried away when I play multiplayer games online, especially the game called “League of Legends” I become a totally different person, I always the typical player that makes the enemy tilt and go rage mode and type anything, including swear words and things that hurt people, and sometimes they made a story typing it that they forget that they are in a game of League of Legends and waste a time typing rather than playing the game. I sometimes forget that people have feelings and swear back to them even though I know that it is wrong. Anyways, inside her talk she says that she was not only harassed by the online users, she enters depression and nearly taught that everything she has done the pass 24 years of her life has already been shattered. And I personally if my hard worked image till now has been shattered by just a single mistake, I might considering to do something stupid. Even though the people in the internet never change, but we can change ourselves to be better and wiser in using it. And because of her strength to endure all of that pain and suffering, now she tells the story to us next generation to learn from her mistake and be responsible on using the internet, and not abusing the fact that you can be someone totally different in the cyber space.

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Reflection Paper - Monica Lewinsky TED Talk CN33

 I think that, although the humiliation of others has existed for a long time, the invention of the internet has increased the problem of the issue. As shown in the video, some people, especially when given the anonymity of social media, are willing to bully other people and it has steadily become more prevalent in recent times. Although social media and the internet has definitely improve our lives as a whole with the ability to communicate and the easy access of information, cyberbullying is an issue that is not supposed to be ignored.

 The main reason that harassment has increased with the invention of the internet is the increased anonymity that is given with it. When we log in online and communicate with people, we do so in a way that we do not confront them face to face. Sometimes, we don’t even know their names or their identities at all. It is said that if you give someone a mask, they will show you their true face. I think that this quote is especially applied to the internet, where everyone lies behind a mask, where people are not as accountable for their actions. People are more willing to bully others because they know that they mostly will never get caught for it, who cares if you fight someone you’ll never meet? The veil of the internet makes us less empathetic towards the feelings of other people. We don’t care as much online. On the internet, no one knows who you are. Now, this is fine for people with thicker skin, however, for some people, perhaps they may not be able to handle this harassment. Some people would say that, these people should just learn to take criticism. They should just learn to take it or they should just learn to fight back. Sometimes, this might be true. Sometimes, it is necessary for us to toughen up as people because, in real life, we are not exempt from this behavior. Nobody is. However, I believe that, at some point, perhaps we should do something about it.

However, there lies another problem there too. It is hard to solve a problem such as cyberbullying. You can’t just try to remove the anonymity of users in the internet because that would violate our rights to privacy. Teaching empathy might be more effective, but in the end, we have been trying to teach each other empathy for thousands of years now. Cyberbullying is complicated, it is affected by lots of social and psychological factors. Bullying itself is something that we already have problems trying to fix. I’m not saying that we should try, rather, I feel that solving this issue requires a lot of careful analysis and patience. I think that things like cyberbullying will probably exist as long as the internet exists. However, we can take steps so that we can try to ease it. In the end, maybe online harassment is less about the mask that hides the face but more about the person behind it.

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Reflection Paper - Monica Lewinsky TED Talk CN31

In this generation, the internet is a very scary place. The internet is a very convenient for us to use for researching, chatting with friends or other people, watching videos about anything you are interested on, and etc. While having a lot of good sides, it also has many bad sides that can even ruin your life in just seconds. Nowadays people tend to abuse the power of internet because of how it is very easy to use and how you can conceal your identity in here. There are a lot of  kinds of people here, but most users are toxic. The toxic ones tend to bash people and other people will join because they think it is right. Before when I see dumb comments on Youtube, I also reply to them negatively because it just pisses me off when I see this kinds of comments. Not only on Youtube even in Facebook or Twitter, so many irritating posts of status and comments and that is why I do not use Twitter and Facebook that much anymore. I just use it to check announcement on thing related to school if our teachers post important stuff and Twitter is very helpful because the announcements of cancellation of classes are posted here. I feel like I used messenger the most because for me it is very convenient to use it for communicating with my friends or acquaintances. In the video we watched in the classroom about the hardships of Monica Lewinsky, I sympathized with her because it is very hard for a life to be ruined because of the scandal she had with Bill Clinton. At first, I was thinking why would she do it with her boss which is a political figure. I felt here regret about falling in love with her boss. When she talked about her experienced to the people, she was trying to remove the negatives thoughts of people have about her which was for me a smart move by her. To be honest I don’t even know who Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton are. Many people will surely not remove the negative thoughts on her because of how toxic the world is sadly. To me she just made a mistake like anyone else that could have done because no one is perfect or sinless. Everyone has sins no matter how good or kind you are because sins are not based on how bad it is sometimes you don’t even know you are already doing something bad. My dad told me that even by just thinking something bad about anything is already a sin even if you are not going to do it. That’s why she deserved a second chance in life. She is a very strong woman for enduring the title given to her as slut and whore and becoming a better person. I  am really glad that she kind of already have a better life and how people gave her a second chance in life. That’s why you should be careful in the internet and don’t be careless on what you post and say there because ones it is in there is no way out.

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Reflection Paper - Monica Lewinsky TED Talk CN 26

           Internet has brought to us a lot of benefits like communication to far away people and other more, but it has also brought to us some downsides like cyberbullying, online harassment, etc. When something goes online, there is no retrieving it back anymore. In just those few seconds, a lot of people would have already seen it. Whether you regret it or not it's already too late.

           It's really scary how the Internet can change your life in a few seconds just like what happened to Monica. Anyways, it's just really scary, I feel sad for her that there was nothing that can be done back then because Internet was just new. Why do people make such a big deal when someone is in love with the President, I don't think there is anything to be ashamed. People are free to do what they want, to love a person, etc. I want to say this to the people who made fun of her. If you were in her place, would you have accepted how those people would shame you? I admire her strength on how she was able live through all those years, despite all the people shaming her, if it were other people they would probably have been long gone. She was able to face the problem now and not run away from it. People nowadays don't even think before saying things to other people, whatever is at the tip of their tongue they say it immediately without considering what the receiver would feel. I think our life would be better if we weren't in the digital revolution, even if technology wasn't that good yet at that time, I would still choose to live there because back then there were no cyberbullying or there was simply no such thing as online back then. Nowadays, people don't even meet face to face anymore, they only need to use the Internet to be able to chat with each other. I feel that as our technology keeps on advancing people get more isolated.

           At the part where she said humiliation was the most felt feeling could possibly be true. Most people don't care if you are happy, angry, or sad, but when you are humiliated they start laughing at you and shaming you. I don't like the fact how people nowadays love embarrassing/ bullying through social media as if they did not know that what is going overboard. They think they are just joking around and while their having fun doing those, they would not know that there could be people suffering because of them. Maybe one reason they do things like those is because we wouldn't know their real identity. It saddens me that there was even an increase in cyberbullying, what's so fun with embarrassing people online? I don't see how it benefits us in anyway.

           I was touched by what she said at the end, just from that last message, I could already see victims seeing a light of hope, the light to guide them out of the darkness, and to be able to face that darkness.

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Reflection Paper - Monica Lewinsky TED Talk CN29

          Hi, my name’s Winston, today I am going to discuss and reflect on the TED Talk of Monica Lewinsky. First of all, I want to react and talk about cyber bullying and online harassment. Internet has many good sides but also has dark sides like cyber bullying and online harassment. It was surprising to know that many people committed suicide because of cyber bullying. The reason of this is because some people cannot bear to live because of the intense public shame. I think people should ignore the bullies because they are the reasons for depression which lead to suicide. We have the option to block and report those bullies and don’t be afraid to. For me, what other things we can do are: keep your passwords private and never share personal information to anyone, logout your social networking sites after using them to prevent hackers from hacking into your accounts, and lastly don’t reply to any harassing or abusive text, emails or messages. I also wish that the government and the president can create stricter laws and punishment regarding cyber bullying and online harassment as soon as possible.

         Before I watched this TED talk of Monica Lewinsky, I think Monica is not a good person because I often heard her name in rap song. But after watching the video, I realize the reason why she was in rap song and also make me realize she isn’t that kind of a person I am thinking of. I think Monica is a brave person, because she was finally able to talk in front of public after years of public shame and humiliation. For me the reason this was brave is because most of the people would commit suicide or hide for the rest of their life if they have been publicly ashamed or embarrassed.  Since I watch NBA a lot, I want to relate this topic to what happened to Kevin Durant (KD). KD joined the Golden State Warriors after losing to them in the Western Conference Finals. Ever since he joined the Warriors up to know, people have been bashing him on twitter and social media calling him a cupcake, coward, soft, snake, etc. because of joining a 73 wins team in the NBA. For me, KD is a brave person because he didn’t really pay attention on the haters bashing him in social media and KD still focused on his games. People said he joined the Warriors to make his life easier. If this is true, he would just get few points and let his teammates score, but no, he averaged 25 points per game and also wins the championship and the Finals MVP for the Warriors. This proves the haters wrong that he didn’t go to Warriors to make his life easier.

         Cyber bullying is becoming very popular as a form of bullying; the reason for this is due to the fact of more and more technology and social media have been created.  Society needs to become more aware of the consequences of cyber bullying and to be more accepting of others, as everyone is unique in their own different way. God created us evenly, so we need to love one another and treat one another as we would like to be treated and to accept the differences of others. And lastly, for me, the best way to avoid cyber bullying is to ignore them.

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Reflection Paper - Monica Lewinsky TED Talk CN30

    Hi! I’m Evann in this blog, I will talk about Monica Lewinsky’s talk at TED Talk. Monica Lewinsky was very brave. Her talk was called “The Price of Shame,” and it was a call to stop cyberbullying and other types of bullying. It was also the best way to describe her experience because she was humiliated in public and the internet joked about it. She was able to speak in front of a huge crowd and being able to confess what she did wrong in the past. At age 22, she fell in love with her boss and regretted it at age 24 because of a scandal. Most people are not able to confess what they did wrong in the past but she did. She withstood the shame to warn people how cruel the world is. Just one mistake, people will remember you for that. Even doing good will not save you from that mistake. You will be labeled with negative things such as “bitch, slut, prostitute, etc.” even though you just want to be yourself and express what you want. It is hard to live in a society that is judgmental and full of discrimination, because they will always find a way to criticize what you do and what you say.

    She said, “It's time to stop tip-toeing around my past ... and time to take back my narrative.” I agree with what she said because we should not linger in our past and feel pity for ourselves, but we should move forward and correct our mistakes.

    "Public shaming as a blood sport has to stop," People think that public shaming is funny and they think that it is alright, but it’s not; it takes years to build up your self-esteem, but just seconds to break it after that incident that person might become depressed or will not be the same as before. She cited Tyler Clementi, a gay Rutgers student who committed suicide in 2010 after being cyberbullied. Of course, the kid got depressed after being called such, well who won’t be. He should have guidance and advice from his mom on what he should do. Do not waste your life because of that. We only live once. Our life is precious. Think of our parents when you start thinking about suicide, what would they feel? Stand up and be proud of who you are.

    As a society I think we should just move on. We do not need to shame some individual just because of a past mistake. Sure, having a reason to cyberbully someone is also not good.  Cyberbullying in general is bad and people doing that should be punished. Hurting people in general is wrong and punishable by law. They should make a law or have a seminar that is about hurting people physically or emotionally that will open their eyes about what they were doing. It has become more serious and becoming an industry, the more the person is shamed, it will be watched; the more people that are watching, the more money it gets in the internet.

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Reflection Paper - Monica Lewinsky TED Talk CN28

    When I watched her talk on her experience in cyber shaming, I was shocked and surprised to see her talk publicly and in a brave manner. She wasn’t scared of being bashed again by the social media and that was an act I couldn’t imagine her doing. I couldn’t even imagine being the first person to be humiliated by the use of internet. I myself have not experienced cyber bullying but I am against that crime because victims of cyber bullying out there never lived a normal life, called by such inappropriate nicknames, and even resulted to suicide. I was glad that she was able to deliver that speech because that speech could save a potential amount of lives of victims experiencing cyber bullying and shaming. To have the entire world insult anybody for years is already too much abuse. Every living person has feelings and a soul conscious of what is happening around. The point of her talk was how cyber bullying and shaming is dangerous for all of us and to see news about the people still doing the act of cyber bullying and shaming was very disgraceful. This woman deserves the mass’s forgiveness and apologies for what she experienced through the years of shame. I was so ashamed of what the social media is filled with and their reactions towards people’s private information being spread publicly without the permission of that specific person. The future of social media has a very blurry outcome if this act of bullying and shaming keeps on going. Monica Lewinsky is one of those people who are helping victims, changing the cruel and merciless social media, and hoping to make the social media a better place and I myself support these brave, attentive, and thoughtful people. The dark side of internet should be taken down and eradicated until every single bit of such hideous acts is gone. All of us have the power to silence the bashers but we chose not to and sided with them because some were scared of being opposed and bashed at. A shocking trivia that I heard from Monica’s talk was that there were more cases of online bullying than offline bullying. The growth of these shameful actions has been rapid over the years and these numbers should be dwindled in order to make the social media a safer place. The concept of earning money through spreading gossips and etc should be set as an illegal act. Posting positive comments or reporting bullying situations must be publicized and practiced amongst the people who are using the internet. People who donates and supports the organizations that help victims of cyber bullying must be awarded a medal for doing such a great act of caring others instead of themselves. Monica’s encouraging words for the victims of cyber bullying must have inspired them to survive life itself, even if it is very hard for them. Bullies are just weak-minded   people who are showing insecurity and bringing you down with them. You should always remember that you can stand up to bullies and show them that you are above them.

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Information Literacy - START (Assessing Websites) - CN36

           Blogs are full of amazing, interesting, and appealing information put by peoples. This can come in many forms, the most common one is in the form of videos. Nifty is always a help for me when I need some cheap alternative for a rather expensive thing. Their youtube channel have many categories, I will name some which are “Nifty Science”, “Nifty Hacks”, “Nifty Outdoor”, “Nifty Topknot”, and the one that made Nifty famous “Nifty DIY”.

           Nifty always tackled everything. They always have been so creative with their ways. You can choose specific things that you need, they always have it all. People can learn how to do those things by simply watching their youtube videos. They have step-by-step instructions and a clear list of things that you need in order to do it perfectly. Even I, being very bad at doing creative things, can get the job done by watching it a few times. They already have 35,000 subscribers in youtube, and they received mostly positive reviews on buzzfeed. This being so efficient and creative, I don’t think you still need to find anyone for tips in life hacks. I had seen a lot of their videos and think to myself “Why didn’t I think of that?” They always keep me interested on their ways of doing, like getting recycled things and making them to a whole new thing with a whole new purpose. As you scroll down the blog, you cannot seem to find bottom of the page, they have so much videos and blogs that I think it could reach thousands of tips or hacks that may help you in your daily life. Everything that they made always keep my attention to them and always made me read or watch the whole video.

           Buzzfeed, the one who made Nifty a huge success it is now, made them famous and it also help buzzfeed to gain in popularity as well. Nifty popularity rapidly increase along the years, not only you can see it on yourube or buzzfeed, they even sometimes appear on facebook. With their creativity, there is no surprise that they would not appear on many social media platforms. People often re-post their work on facebook, people tweet it too in twitter. Nifty keeps on going because they get a lot of positive reviews which inspires them to do more and they want more and more people to know them. They also want to do this because they get a lot of fun doing so and at the same time we viewers also gain information and satisfaction on watching how they do it. The websites that I used to get all the information and research about Nifty are from

https://www.buzzfeed.com/nifty and https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCrXBpFDGpX0m3ztRArQtYlg

           The next topic we are going to talk about is about Reddit, Reddit is a social news aggregation wherein people can collect much content on other social media platforms into a unified presentation. It is also a web content rating site, it is for beneficial especially we can vote on any content what we think is the best. While doing this you can discuss in here with any people out there. Buzzfeed is great for its clear way of seeing what is the trending video or information now, especially for me, I like seeing fail compilations and buzzfeed users provide many videos for me to watch and laugh the whole day. The good part of reddit is that they can vote on what they think is the best videos so it will come up on the top of the reddit page. They are known for the toxic community (just kidding), but seriously they always criticize the people and laugh at their one mistake. The one I know is about a person making a single mistake at a league of legends world championship play, and they put some special effects and laugh at their mistakes and criticize them saying “I can play better than him” or “I will never make that mistake like him”. But on the bright side I can still laugh my day off that one single video. Reddit always find ways to make a small content creator on youtube to become famous. The youtuber “I smoke weed bra”, a league of legends content creator, last few months only have a few thousand subscribers and now he is sitting at 27,000+ subscribers, how insane is that. Sometimes people on the reddit make absolutely horrible to good videos, and these videos made reddit what it is now. The viewers can learn more about what is trending on the social media, even though sometimes there are weird and random content, sometimes there are very offensive words that they use in the video, that is why it is not suitable for kids to watch anything there. Their reviews are mixed with good and negative ones is because of that.

           The reddit has a lot of sections, this includes news, politics, gaming, space, movies, and anything you can think of they have most of it. In there you can also post anything that you desire and become a redditors, the users that post in reddit. And being a redditor is totally free and does not even require an email address to complete. And the redditors has a lot of function from the ability to vote, and submitting links and comments. They can also subscriber their interested person so that they will appear to the front page. And they have the free will to post whatever they want on their reddit page. And as of now there are roughly 234 million users worldwide. They even come up to make their own app available at the google play and app store. Reddit’s purpose is to give us redditors to make contet we like others to see and at the same time they earn a lot of money by just making the reddit alive and updated, and if they get rise in popularity they will earn much more. The websites that I used to get all the information and research are from

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reddit

and

https://www.reddit.com

[lazybloggersfunhouse-blog]

Information Literacy - START (Assessing Websites) - CN26

           Hi guys! I’m Ian and today I am going to tell you about the blogs and wikis I visited. Blogs and wikis are various websites that are put together by individuals or a collaboration of individuals. It comes in many kinds, it could be for personal, charity, entertainment, education, etc. Each of them all contain pieces of information that could possibly be useful for us. Below are some of the examples.

           Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) is one of the most commonly used websites in the world. It is an online encyclopedia, which means it has comprehensive information about almost everything (people, events, theories, etc.). “Wikipedia” is a combination of the words “wiki” and “encyclopedia”; “wiki” is a technology used for creating collaborative websites. By understanding the name of the site, we can somehow deduce that the information exchange going on in this site is collaborative, wherein anonymous volunteers can write and also edit the Wikipedia articles. The purpose of Wikipedia is not only for users to obtain the information they need immediately all in one webpage, but also for people to share their knowledge to others. Thus, aside from Wikipedia itself, the providers also include people of all ages and backgrounds who are willing to create articles and edit the ones that need corrections or additional information. This may be good in the sense that different people can contribute their knowledge. The downside to this is that there is not much quality control over the information being spread, so it is not as reliable. Although Wikipedia has policies for the articles, such as the information should be verifiable against published reliable sources, there is still no certainty to the credibility of the articles. This is why in a lot of universities, the professors don’t really encourage the citing of Wikipedia in research papers. Based on the mission statement of Wikimedia Foundation (the owner of Wikipedia), we can perhaps say that the motivation of Wikipedia is “to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content. . . and to disseminate it effectively and globally.” For the individual providers, their motives are to share what they know and educate the people.

           wikiHow (www.wikihow.com) is a collaborative writing manual that aims to become the world’s best how-to manual. It is known for its step by step instructions that are easy to follow and it also provides you with tips on what to do and warnings on what not to do. The information exchange in wikiHow is also collaborative, as it is somehow similar to what is done in Wikipedia, they also allow anonymous volunteers to edit the pages. If the question searched has a little green check mark beside, it would mean that it has already been checked by someone who excels in that specific area, making the information safer. The purpose is to create a high quality how-to manual to be able to help millions of people in their everyday lives. As said above, it could be convenient to use but still it wouldn’t really be reliable for some information may still be incorrect. Their motivation is to create the most helpful guides and let every single person in the world learn how to do anything.

           Kotaku|Anime (http://kotaku.com/tag/anime) is a blog where you can see posts about anime from all kinds of people. Being an otaku (the term given to people who loves anime), this is basically heaven. The purpose of the information is simply for entertainment. The providers are of course people who love anime, manga, etc. Once they finish watching or reading a very good anime or manga they would want to share it and let everyone know about it and that is also one of the reasons why these blogs exist. The motivation is just for people to be able to connect and share their feelings and thoughts.

           After Erin Alderson’s father had a heart attack, she decided to say goodbye to fast foods and all kinds of meat. In 2007, She made a blog named “NaturallyElla”, wherein she posts vegetarian food recipes that were made by herself. Her purpose is to help people become healthy in terms of food. In her blog, you can do a lot of things like exploring an ingredient, how to plan your meals, how to do cook a delicious meal, etc.  Personally, I don’t really like eating vegetables. But for some reason, whenever I see the food made by her, it makes my mouth watery. She was motivated to all this because of her late father who opened her eyes to reality. She didn’t want other people to suffer what her late father suffered, she wants to people to live a healthy life. (https://naturallyella.com/blog/)

           In Pokémon Blog, you can see all kinds of articles about Pokémon such as the games, series, news, etc. And if you did not know, I am actually a fan of the Pokémon games. I have started playing it since I was 8 years old and I still play it up to now. The reason why I liked it is mainly because of the story as it makes me feel like I am living in the Pokémon world such as catching or breeding Pokémons, challenging gym leaders, collecting badges, completing the Pokédex, and other more. The purpose the information serves is for Pokémon fans to always be updated. The provider is the one who created the blog but he or she still remains to be unknown until know, perhaps he or she just doesn’t want to be known. As for the motive, the creator might have just wanted the fans to be able to communicate with each other and talk about the Pokémon that we all love so much. (www.pokemonblog.com)

           In the end, I realized that blogs and wikis can actually be really powerful, they are able to directly affect us in our everyday lives, change our way of thinking, or even inspire us to do big things. Thank you for taking a bit of your time to read this.

[lazybloggersfunhouse-blog]

Information Literacy - START (Assessing Websites) - CN29

           Today, I will tell about blogs that I visited that are put together by individuals or collaboration of individuals and also I will tell below about “What kind of information exchange happening on these social media?”, “What purpose does the information serve?”, “Who provides the information”, and “What do I think their motivations and motives are”.

           The first blog site I wanted to talk about is https://www.celticsblog.com/. I often visit this blog because my favorite sports team is Boston Celtics and also a Celtics’ Fan. I often visited the blog to keep me updated about their latest news, games, team roster, trade rumors, etc.  The blog is also covering fan shots, fan posts, forum, and more. The blogs talks anything about Boston Celtics. The information tells about their future perspective of their franchise, how they will build a more solid and stronger team or super team, how they will able to win championships, what are their missions and goals, and also trusting their process. The information is provided by Celtics’ fans and Celtics’ blog staffs. For me, the blog is the reason I am a loyal Celtics fan because even if the Celtics don't reach the playoffs or have a losing record or even trading their superstars. This blog give me idea why they are doing so and having a losing record or bad season. Because they might wanted to rebuild or have higher draft picks and get rookies for the future of their franchise because in NBA if your team is rank lower you will able to get higher draft picks but it is a risk because sometimes the high drafted rookie players turn out to be a bust (or didn’t do much or contribute much) for the franchise in the future. These ideas made me stick to Boston Celtics even though they are having worst season or else I would have chosen teams like Golden State Warriors or Cleveland Cavaliers.

           The second blog site I wanted to talk about is http://www.nbalive.gg/. This blog is more about a game called NBA Live Mobile. I like to visit this site because I like playing NBA Live Mobile. The game is more of a card game with auction house where I can buy and sell cards and coins with other players. The blog keep me updated about their latest news. The news tells about its updates, patches, and what new player cards they are going to release. The information is provided by a person named Kraelo. Visiting their blog help keeps me updated about what new players are they going to release and because new players cost higher, I could sell them at a higher price and earn more coins. Like in real life, an example is Samsung S7, when it is first released, the price is high but after some time will the price will eventually drop. These are the reason for me the blog is useful.

           The third blog site I wanted to talk about is “ESPN” blog. The blog is being run by the website: http://www.espn.com/. The blog is more about sports. The blog site covers many sports like NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB, MMA, WWE and more. The blog essentially talks about anything related to sports. From player movements, injuries, signings, fan reactions, and commentaries. Most of the time, I visited the blog to see WWE, NBA, and NCAA blogs because these are the only ones I watch. The site also has live scores, stats, box scores, recaps, radios, and many more. I believe the blog was put up by http://www.espn.com/ to spur interest on sports and generate more traffic for the site. I would considered the ESPN to be giants because it is already famous that is why they have many advertisers. I also noticed that they don’t allow readers to interact or make comments. The site is also connected many other social medias like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Link is http://www.espn.com/.

           Aside from Sports Team and games, the most recently blog I visited is http://balcroft.com/improve-communication-skills/. The reason I visited the blog is because it is also part of our English Oral Communication lesson. The blog is about 10 ways to improve your communication skills.  The blog show how a person can communicate effectively. It provides tips and information about communication skill. It shows that person from digital age must know how to effectively convey and receive messages in person as well as via phone, email, and social media. The blog also show that effective communication is essential when communicating important messages, delegating tasks, and understanding feedback from others.  Improving your communication skills can positively impact relationships with others. The information is provided by a person named Suzi West. For me, the blog is important because it can be useful for me in the future when doing business, finding jobs, or even now.

           Since I am also interested in tall buildings, the next blog I want to talk about is https://www.radissonred.com/blog/travel/10-of-the-tallest-skyscrapers-in-the-world/. The blog talk about the tallest skyscrapers in the world. The blog shows where the location of the buildings is, what the height is, and when it is completed. The blog also shows the description of the buildings like the number of floors, the speed of some elevators, and also the picture. The information is provided by an unknown person. I think the purpose of the blog is to help attract tourists to go the location and visit it.

             Last but not the least; this is the last blog I will be talking about: http://dailyblogvlog.com/top-10-expensive-cars/. The blog is about the top 10 most expensive cars in the world. The blog contains the car’s price and the car’s picture. The blog didn’t say much about the cars, it is more on pictures. The information is uploaded by unknown person. I think the purpose of this blog is to give the rich people or the rich kids ideas what cars are they going to buy. The problem in this blog is there are too few descriptions about the cars.

           As a conclusion, blogs are created to provide information for people and also to earn money and popularity.

[lazybloggersfunhouse-blog]

Information Literacy - START (Assessing Websites) - CN33

 Out of the many forms of new media, blogs and wikis are some of the ones that contain the least communication. Most exchanges occur in a one sided way, with one person posting the content that is to be discussed and the comments being a way of feedback. One way wikis are different from blogs is that, in blogs, the writer or writers express something less factual and more personal. Of course, the topics they write about can be factual, but they are written in a way that is usually creative posting about events, ideas and topics in a person or person’s lives. Wikis, on the other hand, are factual. They contain information about a specific field. In wikis, the pages written have people that fact-check the substance shared, usually a moderator or administrator. If someone posts information that seems to be false, the post is changed. A comparison, I would think, would be between a novel and an encyclopedia. With novels, the book is meant to be a way for the writer to express a thought or idea, which can be to show a fact but in a more creative way. Encyclopedias, on the other hand, are books that are made for readers to learn, therefore, the content is written in a scientific way. Wikipedia even describes itself as a “free encyclopedia.”

  As an avid fan of cooking and the fine dining scene, I always visit the blog of the World’s 50 Best Restaurant awards. Every year, they award titles to what they believe to be the world’s fifty best restaurants (actually one hundred but the other 50 are less important.) They also have a blog in their website where food journalists would write about international fine dining restaurants, venues that are of interest to anyone who is a fan of cuisine. The awards themselves actually are based on different online blogs, where an algorithm would review them and create a list which would then be judged by critics. The blog writers are called Tastemakers and they are usually scattered all over the world. The 50 Best’s page has actually been very active quite recently because they had their anniversary. The purpose of the blog is to provide an insight towards the awarded restaurants and those who have sparked an interest in the modern fine dining community. Most of the pages are usually about the writer going to venue, an event or a restaurant and showcasing the cuisine within them or interviewing chefs of various award winning restaurants around the world. As the awarding company and the tastemakers are worldwide, compared to other restaurant awards, the restaurants featured are generally spread out rather than concentrated in a country or region. However, due its algorithm process, the main criticism for The World’s 50 Best is that it is too subjective, and that the public nature of its blogs and critics are open for chefs pandering their cuisine to the judges. The fact that the company judges its awardees with blogs and social media is a double edged sword. It can make the awards very diverse, getting the opinion of more people, but it can also make it susceptible to opinions and pandering.

 The wiki I have read is Wikipedia, although I want to talk about a specific part of Wikipedia. Due to recent events, the Wikipedia page for the Marcos family, specifically Ferdinand Marcos, has been one of the most edited pages in the website. I don’t want to sound like I’m pushing a political agenda, I’m not, but the fact that the page is always being edited, I feel, needs to be addressed. It is also a perfect example of how Wikipedia is factual instead of opinionated. With the recent events in the government, the running of the former dictator’s son as vice president, and the burying of the dictator in the Libingan ng mga Bayani, there has been a lot of historical revisionists attempting to tone down the human rights atrocities caused by the Marcoses in the martial law era and the money stolen by the family. In general, there has been a rising positive attitude towards the family, perhaps due to propaganda or the lack of emphasis in our education system of their actions. In the Wikipedia page of Ferdinand Marcos, there have been a lot of people attempting to edit the Wikipedia page, try to change the words to make them less aggressive, trying to downplay the martial law era, the human rights abuses and putting an emphasis on the positive aspect of the presidency. As Wikipedia is a free and open site, this is particularly an issue, not just in these pages but also with many other pages that talk about controversial topics. In fact, most of the most edited pages is the website are either politics or religion based (the 5 most edited pages are George W. Bush, List of WWE Employees, United States, Jesus and Wii.) However, the website puts importance on its factuality. Wikipedia hires moderators who fact check certain websites and edits them. They remove the biased edits that were put by historical revisionists. They make sure that the pages are as reality based as possible so that they can do their main function as a wiki which is to teach people about a topic. In my opinion, historical revisionism is something we should always fight against so that we don’t get manipulated into changing the past, and keeping Wikipedia factual is a way of preventing it.

 I think the two websites I visited are an interesting way for showing the difference between blogs and wikis and their similarities, especially in the spread of communication. In both of these websites, the information is one way, provided by a person, group or entity which is talked about by readers. The information they present is different, one being creative writing and the other being factual information, however, the way of communication is more or less similar, but that’s just from my observations. I’m not really a person who goes to these websites a lot.

[lazybloggersfunhouse-blog]

Information Literacy - START (Assessing Websites) - CN30

           Hi! I’m Evann, in this blog, I will visit various ‘blogs,’ which are put together by individuals or a collaboration of individuals.

           For the first blog, I visited Food52. Its goal is “We believe that if you want to eat better, and you want to help change our food system, you need to cook. Maybe not all the time, but some. You don't have to eat local foods every day; you don't have to shop at the farmers market every week. But it's good to try. We're not extremists in a cult of purity, slow-foodness, or locavorosity. We're realists who believe in applying the best aspects of those food movements to our everyday lives.” From: https://food52.com/about. I visited one of their blogs: https://food52.com/blog/17101-12-filipino-desserts-you-need-to-know-about-try. As you can see in the link, it discusses about Filipino desserts. I think this blog is about what to try when visiting the Philippines. From my understanding, I think this blog is done by a Filipino. She wanted to improve the tourism in the Philippines by doing this blog and answer some questions about dessert recipes.

           For the second blog, I visited Migrationology. “Migrationology is about doing something you’re passionate about, and learning and growing in that passion. For myself, and I think for you too, food and travel is that passion (and that’s what this blog is all about). Along with delicious and authentic food and restaurant recommendations, my goal is also to inspire you to get out of your comfort zone, set goals, and pursue what you’re most passionate about.” From https://migrationology.com/about/. I visited his blog: https://migrationology.com/filipino-street-food-philippines/. This blog discusses about Filipino street food. I think this blog is to point out various street food found in the Philippines. Also, I think this blog is to provide information for tourists visiting the Philippines. In my opinion, I think this blog is to earn money judging from the title.

           For the third blog, I visited Mashable. “Mashable is a global, multi-platform media and entertainment company. Powered by its own proprietary technology, Mashable is the go-to source for tech, digital culture and entertainment content for its dedicated and influential audience around the globe.” From: http://mashable.com/about/. I visited one of their blogs: http://mashable.com/2017/08/04/5-things-millennials-ruined/?utm_cid=hp-n-1#fgYSYScqdkq1. This blog discusses about what us millennials ruined. As a millennial, I disagree with this blog. Although it might be true for some millennials, some of the topics listed does not apply with me. I think their motive is to tell the millennials about what we ruined.

           For the fourth blog, I visited Businessinsider. “It is a fast-growing business site with deep financial, media, tech, and other industry verticals. Launched in 2007 by former top-ranked Wall Street analyst Henry Blodget and DoubleClick executives Dwight Merriman and Kevin Ryan, the site is now the largest business news site on the web. Business Insider was acquired by German media company Axel Springer SE in September 2015.” From: http://www.businessinsider.com/about. I visited one of their blogs: http://www.businessinsider.com/night-sky-photos-astronomy-photography-2017-8/#a-battle-we-are-losing-by-haitong-yu-1. This blog warns us to stop polluting our planet by showing these beautiful pictures. The information provider is a concerned citizen that wants to change the world.

           For the fifth blog, I visited Huffington Post. “The Huffington Post is a politically liberal American news and opinion website that has both localized and international editions founded by Andrew Brietbart, Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti. The site offers news, satire, blogs, original content, covers politics, business, entertainment, environment, technology, popular media, lifestyle, culture, comedy, healthy living, women’s interests, and local news.”  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HuffPost. I picked this blog: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/intercept-north-korean-nuclear-attack_us_59807ff7e4b08e143005946b?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009. I think this blog is to warn people about North Korea’s power. By doing this blog, people will be more cautious and prepare if North Korea does attack. I think the motive of this blog is to increase awareness.

            Buzzfeed is the only blogging site that I’m familiar with. I’ve heard the name from YouTube and Snapchat. Buzzfeed is an American internet media company based in New York City. The firm is a social news and entertainment company with a focus on digital media and digital technology. Buzzfeed also has a lot YouTube channels. I primarily watch on BuzzFeedVideo. I like watching The Try Guys, Worth It, and For the First Time. The Try Guys is a Buzzfeed comedy series made up of four men doing crazy stuff. Their viral videos already reached over 1 billion views! Worth It is another series that compares the price (from cheapest to very expensive) of a specific kind of food to be worth it or not. For the First Time is another series that, you guessed it, try some random stuff for the first time. This series is really entertaining, recording people’s reaction doing something for the first time. Although it is not really funny, it is informative. Their webpage has a few categories for news, videos, Tasty, and more+.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/?utm_term=.kvQR7Bl0v3#.clXG2jJzdK

https://www.youtube.com/user/BuzzFeedVideo

            Tasty is a Buzzfeed division that produces and shares context related to comfort food. Tasty is mostly known for recipe video series posted on its Facebook page. Tasty recipes have received over 1.5 billion views on Facebook in October 2016. The page includes four segments, including “Tasty Junior”, “Tasty Happy Hour”, “Tasty Story” and “Mom vs. Chef.” “Tasty Junior” features recipes with the low level of complexity. Children can contribute to the cooking process by performing actions, such as add seasoning, mix ingredients, etc. “Tasty Happy Hour” features recipes for alcoholic beverages. “Tasty Story” features celebrity chefs preparing the recipe of their choice and share the story associated with the recipe. “Mom vs. Chef” features a competition between a professional chef and a mother with amateur cooking skills. The competition lies in preparing the dish with one secret ingredient that varies in each series within the time limit of 30 minutes. Once the dishes are prepared, they are evaluated by Andrew Ilnyckyj, "Tasty" producer, and two children. During the final scene, the winner is announced.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasty_(Buzzfeed)

             Bleacher Report (often abbreviated as B/R) is a San Francisco-based sports news website owned by Turner, a division of Time Warner. The website focuses on trending topics in sports, with an emphasis on delivering opinion-oriented analysis and multimedia programming via varied content formats and mobile technologies. I usually use Bleacher Report at Snapchat, just for entertainment.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleacher_Report

[lazybloggersfunhouse-blog]

Information Literacy - START (Assessing Websites) - CN27

           Before blogging was popular, there were many other digital communities. They used things such as Usenet, commercial online services such as GEnie, Byte Information Exchange, the early CompuServe, e-mail lists, and Bulletin Board Systems. In the 1990s, Internet forum software created running conversations with "threads". Threads are connections between messages on a virtual "corkboard". From June 14, 1993, Mosaic Communications Corporation maintained their "What’s New" list of new websites, updated daily and archived monthly. The page was accessible by a special "What's New" button in the Mosaic web browser.

           It is incredibly simple these days to get your thoughts on the internet, where anyone can see it. You can either make a website yourself to make a blog or simply use a blogging website such as WordPress, Blogger, or Tumblr. There are several reasons on why people make blogs. It allows for people to express themselves easily or show off their skills and talents, help you exercise your writing skills and make you become a better writer, build an audience, share interesting stories about yourself and others, and it can even give you a decent income through monetization. Blogs usually comment on a particular subject or comment, work as a personal online diary, or as online brand advertising of an individual or a company.

           Most of the blogs that I’ve found were made by artists because that’s what Tumblr has suggested to me. They usually post mundane things in life in a different perspective through drawings, sometimes making it funny by subverting your expectations, or just make things that look cool.

           The first blog I read was made by a Filipino webcomic artist named Juris Go. The blog was named Janjan Comics and is famous for making fun of a scene on an anti-piracy ad campaign. Namely the scene where a thief bumps into a lady holding tomatoes with her hands and dropping them. His inspirations are from shows like Bubble Gang, foreign cartoons like Adventure Time, and even other webcomic artists. All of his posts are usually cute and lighthearted drawings of moments that people can relate to or just silly things in general. The information in his posts are just things that can make you laugh and feel happy about. They can also showcase how witty and funny the Filipino humor is. He makes the information himself based on his experiences in life as a Filipino and the things around him. I think that he simply likes to draw and share a good laugh with other people.

           This blog is made by Ariel Davis and her blog also simply named Ariel Davis. She’s an illustrator who lives in Brooklyn and has done professional work for The New York Times, Buzzfeed, and many others. Her work has also been recognized by the Society of Illustrators and American Illustration. She makes rather abstract art with bright and vivid colors and her posts are just ordinary things that look incredible because of her art style. Most of her posts seem to be her commissioned work. Things like the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef for The New York Times or the feminist movement for Refinery 29. Some of them are just sketches she’s been making. This information could just be her portfolio so she could get more work. Although she is probably given a direction of what to draw for her work, it seems like she makes most of it herself. She looks like she loves what she’s doing, and is even making a book.

           Paul Briggs is a story supervisor at Disney and he helped work on the animated films Frozen and Big Hero 6. He lives in Los Angeles. His blog is named PBCB Studios. He posts sketches of his own or from Disney movies and sometimes posts pictures of what’s inside the animation studio. The information of his posts can give us an insight on how an animated film is made and how people work together in order to make it. It can also inspire people to work at Disney. He gets all this information from his work and from other people’s animated films. His blog could be his portfolio, but it could also be used to build hype for Disney movies being made.

           Elisa is a Thai-Italian freelance illustrator born in Perugia and based in Milan. She likes colorful things, wild animals, jungle, mysterious creatures, strange objects and tom yum soup. She also runs a blog named Elisa Macellari. Her blog is a place where she displays her projects, ideas and wishes. Her art has bright colors, but also looks simple and has a very clean look. She makes an illustration every week about the things she thinks about. From time to time, she also posts short stories that she’s made. She makes these illustrations by herself and does this as a way to express her thoughts.

           The owner of the blog bigblueboo is a slightly different kind of artist. He’s a creative technologist that lives in New York. He makes data visualizations, apps, games, and hacks. He also owns a company called mode of expression, which is an app and game studio. His blog is mostly made up of animations made using Processing, an open source computer programming language built for the electronic arts; or Cinema 4D, a 3D modeling, animation, motion graphic and rendering application. Most, if not all, of his animations have no meaning and exist just for spectacle and eye-candy. They also loop indefinitely. But they show very unique looking designs that could inspire other people for their own works of art. This information in this blog is all made by him. He also tries to post something every day. He focuses on posting something impractical, weird, serendipitous, and fun. His motive seems to be to try out things in a way he’s never done them before, to try and push his limits or maybe to keep his skills sharp. This blog is also a place where his old, unpolished experiments can see the light of day.

Sources:

https://janjancomics.tumblr.com/

http://janjancomics.com

http://arielrdavis.tumblr.com/

http://pbcbstudios.tumblr.com/

http://elisamacellari.tumblr.com/

http://bigblueboo.tumblr.com/

[lazybloggersfunhouse-blog]

Information Literacy - START (Assessing Websites) - CN31

    Now a days, media is used everyday in life. Media is the main means of mass communication (broadcasting, publishing, and the Internet) regarded collectively. Examples of media are newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and the Internet. The most used media presently is the Internet because of how convenient, you can use this technology with smartphones and laptops. I will talk about information literacy. Information literacy is the ability to recognize when information is needed and to locate, evaluate, effectively use and communicate information in its various formats.

     There are a lot of kinds of information exchange happening on these online media. An example of these are blogs. Blogs are regularly updated websites or web pages, typically one run by an individual or small group, that is written in an informal or conversational style. There are a lot of kind of  blogs in the web. The top 15 most popular blogs as of July 2017 are the following: Huffington Post, TMZ, Business Insider, Mashable, Gizmodo, LifeHacker, TheVerge, The Daily Beast, Tech Crunch, Perez Hilton, Engadget, Cheezburger, Jezebel, Deadspin, and Kotaku.

Top 15 Most Popular Blogs | July 2017 - eBizMBA

       In these blogs, articles are mostly posted on the examples stated in the link above. These articles are not always true, but some are real so you need to be a good information analyzer to be able to identify them. Other forms of information exchanges are through wikis and chatrooms. Wikis are websites that provide information that visitors of the site can extend and edit. They allow users to share information and are useful for research. The best known example of a wiki is Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia which can be updated by contributors of the site. Chatrooms on the other hand are online communications with communities that is sometimes referred to as chat. Some of the large interactive communities where people take part in the same conversation or type of chat at the same time are known as chatrooms.

       These information serves a purpose. Data proficiency frames the reason for deep rooted learning. It is regular to all controls, to all learning conditions, and to all levels of instruction. It empowers students to ace substance and expand their examinations, turn out to be more self-coordinated, and expect more noteworthy control over their learning. According to Californian University Information Literacy fact sheet, (2000); an information literate individual is able to: Determine the extent of information needed. Access the needed information effectively and efficiently. Evaluate information and its sources critically. Incorporate selected information into one’s knowledge base. Use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose. Understand the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information, and access and use information ethically and legally. We live in the Information Age, and "information" is increasing at a rapid pace. We have the Internet, television, radio, and other information resources available to us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. However, just because so much  information is so easily and quickly available does not mean that all of it is worthwhile or even true. Because of resources like the Internet, finding high-quality information is now harder than ever, not easier. Finding the good stuff is not always easy. And the good stuff does not always come cheaply, either. (In short, to make it in today's Information Age, you have to be even smarter, not dumber) Why is Information Literacy important?

       Student centered, inquiry based, problem solving, and critical thinking proactive learning environment with the help of information literacy skills, will develop deep learners in the society. Furthermore, information skills are vital to the success in education, occupation, and day to day communication of all citizens. In the twenty-first century, life long learning has become one of the main themes in the higher education sector. Therefore the students need to be educated with regard to the abilities and skills of how to learn, or learning to learn, by developing the aspects of reasoning and critical thinking . Information literacy skills will help students to achieve this target in a broader sense, in student centered learning. Traditionally, we assume that the students will gain information literacy skills automatically by themselves. But it is not. In fact, information literacy skills need to be inculcated among the students, by the teachers and  professors. Most importantly, they need to be able to identify what is real and relevant not just for school but for learning, life and work.           People that provide information in media can be anyone that has a passion to that certain topic he/she wants to discuss or provide about. There are a lot of kinds of providers , some are really passionate and will make a great effort. Other providers are people who just want to mess with people by placing false information, but some just do not really know how to provide good information. The general can also provide information. For example, Bulbapedia is a famous Pokemon community used by many people. My childhood is Pokemon and I still play it until now. This website is like a Wikipedia version of Pokemon. I use it to get information about events and Pokemon news. I also use the forums to talk about it with other people in the community. This November a new Pokemon game will come out and I always check this websites for announcements. (https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Main_Page)

       Running a blog can be a very rewarding experience. But it can also be a highly draining one, and everything from maintaining consistency to the cost prior to monetizing one can be enough to push bloggers into quitting. The worst part about this had they gone just a little while longer, they could have found real success doing something they love.

       If you are finding yourself lagging in motivation you might want to check out these ten best TED Talks by professionals and creative minds. They can really give you that boot of inspiration you need to keep working at what you are doing. The link is below and thank you for reading.

        http://denisewakeman.com/business-blogging-2/best-ted-talks-for-new-bloggers-to-get-motivated/

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Information Literacy - START (Assessing Websites) - CN28

         The blog is full of wonderful, appealing, and amazing videos on food that are easy to make and delicious. The blog gives helpful tips on cooking a specific ingredient or dish. The blog made it possible for people who are inexperienced in cooking or in baking to make such amazing recipes. The blog also welcomes children who has an interest in learning cooking or baking. Their channel made five spinoff segments which are “Tasty Junior”, “Tasty Happy Hour”(for alcoholics only), “Tasty Fresh”, “Tasty Vegetarian”, and “Tasty Story.” Tasty Story is all about celebrities making and discussing their own recipes.

         They tackled on cooking in varieties of cuisines such as Chinese cuisine, Korean cuisine, Western Cuisine, and etc. They’ve been making so much different, creative, and crazy recipes that are actually pretty good from what I see. We can choose sections with recipes that highlight specific ingredients such as cheese, egg, avocado, and etc. and sections for specific dietary preferences, recipes for kids, etc.  People can learn in an instant through watching these tutorials on how to cook or bake. The instructions and ingredients lists were very easy to follow, complete, and suitable for everyone including the inexperienced ones. The media’s reviews on the blog are mostly positive and a lot has been following their youtube channel. Instead of taking cooking classes which are expensive, You can just follow their blog or youtube channel to have an idea of cooking for free. These snack-sized videos and recipes will make you want to try it. Their food will make your eyes close, feel amazing, and say “Ohhh yesss!!!” As you browse through the blog, you’ll notice that you have so much to explore through so much recipes and videos that it could reach the hundreds and probably even thousands. Reading the blog just makes me drool all over the place and make me hungry. Tasty has their own little shop for purchasing stuff specifically make by them. They have a cookbook that is probably pretty expensive and if people don't have enough cash for the cookbook, there is a PDF of it in the internet that’s free.

         Buzzfeed made the Tasty blog and the blog has been a huge success for them and helped promote the Buzzfeed community. The Tasty’s popularity rapidly increased by millions of followers when 2017 came. Tasty is linked to a lot of websites and is further expanding due to the community’s preference on their videos and content rather than other food bloggers. I think Tasty’s videos invaded the whole Facebook network because I see their videos getting posted every day. Most of the recipes that they make were suggested by the viewers and that is where they get their information. Tasty kept of going because of the positive reviews that they got and the more people notice their content, the more income they get. They also want to do this because it is fun for them and they were satisfied when they see the viewers enjoying the content they post. They wanted to show that anyone can cook and that’s why there is a section in cooking for juniors. The websites that I used to research about Tasty is  https://www.buzzfeed.com/tasty and  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJFp8uSYCjXOMnkUyb3CQ3Q.

          The next topic that we are going to talk about is Buzzfeed itself. Buzzfeed is an internet media company that delivers news and entertainment to the viewers. It is also a global media and technology company that covers a variety of topics. Their global and cross-platform network includes their website and other digital platforms such as Facebook. The Buzzfeed community are the ones handling the whole company and the content they publish.  They are best known for “exploding watermelons”, “The Dress”, “Tasty”, and other stuff. They post interesting, weird, or random videos, facts, tips, and articles about politics, social media, and etc. on their website and their youtube channels. They also keep the viewers updated on what’s happening on the social media or in the real world based on what I see in their website.

         They sometimes judge or mock the political people and on celebrities that did something humiliating, something that is wrong, or something that has gone viral. They produce daily content which is the work of their staff reporters, contributors, artists, and its community. There are so many channels made by buzzfeed in youtube. Their youtube channels produces several random and funny series such as “The Try Guys”, “Worth it”, “Taste Tests”, “Unsolved” and etc. Their videos are sometimes horrible, average, or good and these videos made their community probably like two times bigger than what it used to be back when they were little. The viewers can learn so much things from their website that is full of random yet helpful and weird things. They say that Buzzfeed is a narcotic that was addicting for others but not for me. The things that they post may not be suitable for children or young audiences. Their reviews are all mixed up with positive and negative ones and a lot of viewers has been disliking Buzzfeed lately.

         Their website has a couple of sections specifically for news, videos, Tasty, and others. There is also a community section for users to submit their content that they want to share. Everyone has their own free will to post what info they want to share and provide to others. They even made their own app just like the other socializing apps. They also have a shop where you can buy shirts, accessories, and books made by them. Their income has been increasing lately and that is what strives them to continue the media company. They post videos to entertain their viewers and followers and the more popular they are, the bigger the income they get. They post news and entertainment in order to make us updated on what is happening in the social media or in the real world. The websites I used to get all these information are from

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuzzFeed, https://www.youtube.com/user/BuzzFeedVideo/featured, and   https://www.buzzfeed.com/index?utm_term=.wxDQ24ENx6#.ygDpPwN5Zy.