Share Lair

• 2012-05-09

  

  If dogs could talk…

  Source: textfromdog

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  labelledliar:

  biggest gpoy ever

  (via captaincadet)

  Source: polldoll

• 2012-05-02

  

  Source: textfromdog

• 2012-04-30

  

  abukkitofcelestialintent:

  awesomepeoplehangingouttogether:

  Bill Nye the Science Guy and the Mythbusters

  #IF THEY’RE ALL THERE WHO IS OUT DOING SCIENCE

  (via captaincadet)

  Source: awesomepeoplehangingouttogether

• 2012-04-27

  -eternalflame:

  Instant reblog forever

  (via captaincadet)

  Source: ivemissedsomething

• 2012-04-03

  Social Media Deprivation

  This semester in regards to the social media focus in this class, I have been having the opposite issue to those in the social media deprivation digital project. I don’t generally spend a lot of time using social media, and therefore this semester I’ve been working hard to get involved in these mediums so as to be a more productive participant in the class. In a regular week I usually only go on the computer to check emails and facebook about once a day, and even then sometimes I’ll go several days without doing either. During the summers I work at a residential camp and therefore have no access to the internet, meaning that I go months without social media contact.

  I use social media substantially less than most of the people that I know, but even still I find myself checking facebook most every time I turn on a computer. It’s become a habit, almost a routine behaviour. Click Firefox, click facebook tab, check for notifications or messages. Much of the time I don’t even write anything, or do anything on facebook when I get there, I just feel as though I have to check it in order to stay in touch. There are quite a few friends of mine who live farther away, or who don’t have cell phones that I communicate with primarily through facebook. Having a facebook account these days is almost akin to having a home phone, and for many people I know it is one of their primary methods of communication for personal, as well as some of their academic or club needs.

  While I use facebook on a regular basis, it’s social media mediums such as twitter and tumblr that were the struggle for me this semester. I reactivated the twitter I let fall by the wayside shortly after its’ inception, and started this tumblr for the purposes of this class, finding some blogs to follow in the process. Learning to make these technologies work for me was a challenging and interesting experience. I have a feeling that in the coming weeks my twitter use will dissipate progressively, whereas I think I may actually continue to use tumblr. Checking the dashboard for my tumblr has become a new part of my routine, whereas twitter is still something that I can’t wrap my head around.

  Either way, social media deprivation is not the issue I face…but rather I need to start working towards making my way further into this world so that I don’t get left behind it.

• 2012-03-31

  Delicious and me

  This semester we were asked to create a delicious account, and so above is the link to the one that I created. I’ve found it to be an easy way to keep my internet activity organized. I don’t have a ton of bookmarks because I find that most of my internet habits revolve around the same few sites, but I have found it interesting and convenient for a number of reasons.

  This summer I’m planning on taking a camping trip into Algonquin park for a couple of weeks, and I’ve found delicious incredibly helpful in keeping all of the research that I’m doing for that trip together. It also enabled me to find a site that has full scale maps of algonquin on it for free, something that would cost an arm and a leg to by from the outfitters regularly. Delicious allowed me to create my stack of camping bookmarks and keep them all in a central location, and the use of the tagging feature allowed me to find comparable bookmarks which is how I found the website to find those maps.

  Although this semester has been a busy one, and I found that I didn’t have the time to use delicious to it’s fullest extent, I have a feeling that working with delicious is going to be a work in progress and that it will be a while before I find the true potential of the site. That being said, I’ve already found it to be an incredibly useful and helpful tool, and I will continue to discover more about it all the time.

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  CommUNITYspotlight

  In keeping with the idea of social media as a tool, my ensemble group also used a tumblr page as a means of keeping all of our thoughts in a central location. This allowed anyone to collaboratively write monologues, scenes, ideas, etc. and also edit things that our classmates had written. It was a great way to keep our thoughts and ideas organized because it allowed for any group member to access the tumblr from any location, and work on anything we needed to sort out. By tagging the individual posts we made it much easier to find certain things, such as by searching Graeme you were able to find any of my posts, or by searching scene ideas, you could find anything that was being suggested as a potential performance piece. In this way, we were able not only to keep our thoughts and ideas organized ourselves, but we were also asked to keep a scrapbook and journal of our work for class, and by tagging our own posts it made it easier for our professors to evaluate us individually. Tumblr once again proved to be an amazing tool for students to collaborate, as well as a means of sharing our ideas not only with each other, but also with our professors and with anyone else who was interested in what we were writing about.

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  Digital Safety

  I was struck by the comment on one of our first days of class this semester that not being technologically literate these days is almost like being illiterate in general. There are so many things that are closed off to someone who doesn’t understand technology, so many options, choices, opportunities that one can miss out on. The internet and technology in general these days provide so many options for one to educate themselves outside of the regular parameters of education, putting the ability and the drive in the hand of the student. However, with all of this opportunity also comes danger, and being technologically illiterate opens someone up to all kinds of issues with privacy, security, and general safety on the internet. There are many people out there who have the intention to scam others, and the internet has made it very easy for these individuals to perpetrate their crimes. Whether someone is simply sending a spam email that asks for money, or banking information, or if someone is installing spyware on your computer; your internet safety and potentially your financial safety are at risk. It can be a dangerous web to navigate without the necessary knowledge, and unfortunately some people have a difficult time understanding the guides out there. So, Sharm and I decided to create a tumblr page that would help with digital safety. We both felt that being technologically literate ourselves, we could help those that were less experienced by writing down our knowledge and sharing resources with them. We each picked a few subjects that we were particularly passionate about, or concerned about and decided to focus on them for the project. We hoped that the articles that we wrote would encourage people to find out more about their safety on the internet, and would help to give them the tools to start that journey on their own. We tried to write the articles from a layman’s perspective, not using too much jargon or language that would confuse the reader so as to make the information as accessible as possible. Fortunately, it seems to have worked: I myself signed into tumblr the other day and was greeted with notifications that a few of my digital safety posts had either been reblogged, or favourited by tumblr users that I was not personally affiliated with previously. That means to me that our work was successful; that someone was able to stumble across this information and was able to find it interesting and helpful enough to share, or to ensure that they could come back to later. I hope that more people will find this information useful, or will share it with their friends and that we have aided in just one small step for those on the path to digital safety.

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  Socratic Discourse

  Socratic Discourse was an interesting project because it provided an easy forum for free discussion. We all have ideas and topics that we are interested in and it was nice to be able to express those opinions and share ideas and topics that we were interested in with others. I appreciated the opportunity to share news articles and information with others, and to see their comments and opinions on the same subject matter. It was also interesting to read the articles that others had written, learn something, and then be able to provide my own feedback. I think that Socratic Discourse was an easy and interesting digital project that allowed for an intellectual community. I think that with time, and more participants Socratic discourse is something that could expand into an intellectual community where real ideas could be discussed, minds could come together, and real intellectual progress could be made. As it is, the limited participation that did occur through this idea allowed for those that participated to take much away from each other, and expand their own minds. I won’t deem myself clairvoyant enough to speak for everyone, but I would assume that I was not the only person who found this collaboration to be a learning experience. The forum, and the medium of wordpress was something that was simple enough to learn, and made formatting and inserting images into the articles an easy task. It is a well put together website that allows for anyone to participate and I think that the accessibility is something that lends to the idea of universal participation. Although sometimes the anonymity of the internet can be a downside, as it allows people to make comments they normally wouldn’t be brave enough to make, it can also be a helpful thing in that it allows anyone to make their voice heard, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Socratic Discourse is a great project that allowed everyone to put their two cents in, comment on each others’ thoughts, and overall create an intellectual community that I hope continues to foster beyond this course.