Alyn Saadia's Blog

Virtual worlds is a new software technology that gives us the ability to experience an environment digitally, vs. realistically. It can be used for many purposes including video games, design, entertainment, and even education. Some pros include that the virtual worlds can be better experienced than the real world with more detail. It allows you to feel like you are in a different location than you physically are in. It allows for very good communication and connection with other people. As the article, The Advantages and Disadvantages of the Virtual Classroom and the Role of the Teacher states, “The internet offers such advantages as flexible access and new ways of communicating...” However, there are also some cons to it. Virtual worlds are very costly and cannot be accessed by all. There are not set guidelines and rules in the virtual world, so some things that are usually unacceptable in the real world, may get away in the virtual world. There is a lot of crea...

There are many ways a discussion can be conducted. Some of those ways can include Twitter discussions, Blackboard discussions, and in in-class discussions. Although the overall goals of having a discussion, no matter the method, are the same, the way the discussion is conducted is very different form one another. Each Twitter post can only be made using 140 characters max, which limits the discussion. Certain topic discussions can be easily located using hashtags (which are used when posting a status). On the other hand, the Blackboard Discussion Board does not have a limit in how much you can write, so there is no limitation in what you have to say. Forums are created and we are able to easily reply our comment directly to the forum. We can also directly reply to any comments made, without having to retweet, like you would in Twitter, in order to keep the discussion going. Although it’s the most “old school” method, my favorite is still in-class discussions. After...

After very recently creating a Twitter account, I now feel like I have most of the social networking sites down; from Facebook to Twitter, and Instagram to YouTube. I find that out of the four platforms, Facebook and Twitter are the most similar. This is because both of their focuses are on statuses that we post. It’s interesting how I find those two to be the most similar, while Facebook was the first social media account I created, and Twitter was the last. Twitter has a couple restrictions and less features than Facebook, such as: only being about to write a status with a limit of 140 characters, not having apps and games, and not being able to upload albums of photos and videos. Instagram uses the similar idea of a News Feed, but exclusively for photos or videos, usually posted with a caption. You would also post a picture on Instagram close to the time the picture was actually taken. YouTube, in my opinion, seems the most different than the other three social ...