TFW Fall 2011 Mod 2 Tumblr

           I have spent my entire life practically chained to south jersey. I was born here, I grew up here, and when college gave me the opportunity to escape, I ended up staying here. At 20 years old, I haven’t visited even half of the 50 states and I left the country once for just about 2 hours. While Laredo, Mexico was a dirty, humid town were street vendors almost threatened us into buying worthless products, those two hours gave me a taste of life outside of the US. I get restless here in South Jersey. I often evaluate my funds and ponder the consequences of disappearing down the coast for a few days. Don’t get me wrong, South Jersey is a pretty great place (at least for the natives) but I can’t stay here. I need to “get the hell outta dodge”. For that reason, I have entertained the idea of becoming a Travel Writer. I have started following a travel writer named Carl Parkes on Twitter. Parkes also has a blog that I skimmed through to see what life as a travel writer might entail. I was a little disappointed by his blog but I have not been dissuaded from the idea of this profession.

          My disappointment is derived from the fact that Parkes doesn’t have much of his own work on his blog. I was expecting to find link after link to all of these grand places and stories about the wild adventures he’s had throughout the years. But most of his posts are pictures from other people and humorous anecdotes that other people have written. It was entertaining to look through, certainly but not exactly what I was expecting for someone who claims in their bio to have 15 years of travel writing experience.

           Parkes’ interests are obvious after reviewing who he follows on twitter. The man is obsessed with Traveling. Of the 236 accounts that he follows, approximately 41 are accounts just for travel sites such as the twitter for American Airlines and AirTreks. He’s also crazy about San Francisco and the news which is evident from the 62 accounts regarding the news and SF that he follows (the majority of which are accounts for News in San Francisco) From his blog bio, I learned that he is from San Fran and did all of his travel writing throughout Asia. So of course, many of the accounts he follows are Asia related. And for almost every account that was for a person (unlike “CBSNews” or “msnbc_travel”) the person’s bio claimed that he or she was some sort of writer be it a columnist, journalist, travel writer, editorial supervisor, etc. (And most of them worked in or around the SF area with many of them working for The San Francisco Chronicle)There were a few wild card accounts mostly for comedians (we both follow Conan O’Brien) but other than that, I did not find much variety in who he follows and it is very clear that he is a travel writer from San Francisco who loves Asia.  

One of the educational twitter accounts that I chose to follow was that of Will Richardson. Will is not only an educator of 22 years, but a parent as well. He is extremely passionate about the impact of social online learning networks in correlation with education. He has mentored countless student teachers throughout the years, and now can be seen on twitter spreading his knowledge about education. On his twitter account he has posted numerous resources for current or aspiring teachers. He tweets about ongoing topics in the educational world that are thought-provoking and inspirational. His twitter account is a great resource to any education major, and I highly suggest following him! :]

(Source: twitter.com)

ON my twitter account, I chose to follow Mr. Brisbane, who is the public editor and reader representative for The New York Times. When looking at his “following” list, he had what would be expected. Many of his colleagues like Robert Mackey, the editor for The New York Times blog, as well as several field correspondents, and other internal editors. What I found interesting is that Brisbane also follows editors of other newspapers, such as The Toronto Star and The New Yorker. He also follows every aspect of The New York Times, such as the theater section, the Home and Garden section, the sports section, all as different Tweet pages. over 90% of pages he follows has to do directly with his job as editor to the newspaper. This tells me that he is extremely dedicated to his job and that he is very much interested in all things editing. This makes sense as his role as public editor makes it important for him to keep up with the trends of the paper and how the articles he reads matches against the writings of the other sections of the paper. His twitter page can be found here -> http://twitter.com/#!/NYTimeskrugman

I never thought I’d own a twitter account, so obviously I came into this thinking of it as homework and nothing more. However, even though I am not as comfortable with it as facebook, I do see that it has more advantages and cool traits that facebook may be lacking. It can be a lot more personal and excitingly up to date. Being more along the lines or “real time,” it is consistent with being a means of interaction as opposed to a portal for farmville and embarrassing pictures of what goes on on a Thursday night.

Semiotic domains is an interesting topic. When thinking about literacy I have always thought about reading or writing, it is what I was brought up on. With all the new technologies and advances in our lives it makes sense that we can find literacy in these places. At first the semiotic domain didn’t quite make sense but by the time I finished reading I supported the concept. We learn from everything we do especially the things we participate in. I myself remember better when I am actively engaged in something. Take Twitter for example. In the begin I had no idea how it worked but since I was forced to use it everyday I have grown to know the application much better and can say that I have now entered the semiotic domain of twitter. 

This article says twitter makes a terrible first impression. I agree I really dose I hated it at first. Mostly because I told myself not to like it because it was for a class and I figured it would not be very interested in it, but I am starting to like it more then facebook. I like hearing about what my friends/ followers had for breakfast and it is actually more interesting than it sounds. I enjoy seeing what others are doing and what not. Twitter is very diverse you can see conversations people are having about a presidential debate or the American Idol finale or Tiger Woods — or a conference in New York City on education reform.

I have been following Vicki Davis, she is a teacher from Camilla, Georgia. I love her Twitter posts, “Wear a smile. Look your students in the eye. Call them by name. You’ve just begun class well #teachers .”(Davis) All of her Twitter posts are very interesting. She follows many other teachers, as well as students. She is very professional with who she follows, and also what she posts. I get the feeling that she loves her jobs; I made this assumption by looking at the people she is following.  Best teacher blog award winner, co-founder- Flat Classroom Projects, Conference, Digiteen, NetGenEd, known as the Wikinator by my students

Social networking sites are a part of our society, and they deliver more than just social interaction. Twitter is considered to be media outlet, because it is constantly flooded with the latest news and information for everyone to read about. Major media outlets are constantly tweeting about the latest breaking news for all to read. Twitter even has a section of trending topics for users to view. These trending topics are some of the most tweeted about subjects. Trending topics can be about breaking news, celebrity gossip, entertainment, sports, etc. These topics allow fellow tweeters to read the latest and greatest tweets on current happening subjects. Twitter has really changed the way people are learning about the latest news. Just this week twitter has exploded with the latest news about the Kim Kardashian divorce and the Penn State Rape allegations. Although a lot of people seem to focus on negative aspects of social media sites, there are endless positive things that come about from social technologies.

Reading about the privacy issues on the internet just made me think more about what I have come to pay more attention to in the past few years. In 2005 when I had a Myspace it wasn’t private and I was not concerned with who saw it. Now I make all of my information private and I am always thinking who could see what I post before I post it. Employeers are using Facebook and Twitter to learn more about their employees and using them as background checks. I think they need to start teaching children in middle school and high school who are using these social networking sites about what could happen if they post certain inappropriate things on them. People need to think about the fact that once you post something and someone sees it,  it is forever in the internet world.