Best Blog Posts

1. Soccer is Fake News!

• This meets the in class criteria of extending course readings to the context of current events.  This was a perfect example of how fake news is used these days to help newspapers and online news sources make money, and how people take advantage of outrageous claims to get attention.  I attempted to make it interesting by providing a funny video that makes fun of transfer rumors, as well as having a funny tweet of a real player replying to fake transfer rumors.
• It has a question at the end encouraging people to give their view on how fake news is such a big problem in soccer, and give them a chance to discuss what they think will happen in the future in regards to the topic.  I also added humor to it in the form of a picture and video to make sure it is not all text,  so it is not boring.  It offers a take on a very real problem that I encounter almost daily as a soccer fan, and something all soccer fans would have an opinion on.
• Some of the features that I was able to use in this blog were humor to make it more engaging, discussion through a question at the end, and just being able to write about something I really have an opinion on and care about

2. The Power of Wikis

• I tried to create conversation by writing about a different view than we took in class.  Many of the articles we read were about how Wikipedia was bad quality due to the nature of how it is made, yet I realized that I use wikis all the time to find out information about many different everyday things.  This was an extension of course readings to a similar topic, but more broad about wikis as a whole, and seemed to really get people interested in discussion.
• In this case, I tried to use a picture of an example of when I had to use a wiki to break up the text, but I could not find a way to use a video or add a sense of humor.  In this case, I aimed more for discussion by offering a different view on the topic and asking a question at the end.  In addition to this, I tried to make it informative by adding articles that talked about the potential business uses of wikis, so it applied to more than just hobbies and gaming, but to the professional world.
• This blog was another one that I was really interested in writing as I use wikis all the time, especially for gaming but also for TV shows.  It encouraged discussion by giving people an alternative way to view wikis, not just as a bad thing but a very useful thing, and discuss and realize the many ways they use them in everyday life.

Put Phones Away

This week I did the challenge of not taking a picture with my phone for a day.

See the world through your eyes, not your screen. Take absolutely no pictures today. Not of your lunch, not of your children, not of your cubicle mate, not of the beautiful sunset. No picture messages. No cat pics. 

At first I did not think it would be that hard, as I thought I did not take many pictures, but I forgot about Snapchat.  I did not think of that as taking photos, until I went to do it.  I got around this by sending messages in Snapchat, but it was definitely more challenging than I thought it would be.

I wanted to related this challenge to a problem that happens more and more today.  That problem is people with their phones out during things like sports events or concerts.  I went to several concerts this summer and I found it ridiculous that people would rather record bad videos on their phones than listen to the actual concert.  I am not totally against recording small parts or getting a picture or two, but when people start recording entire songs or large portions of the concert it just is not the right way to experience it.  The point of seeing a concert is experiencing the music live, if people want to watch a recording, there are many recording of concerts online or professionally done recordings.  This CNN article discusses how recording concerts on your phone ruins the experience for others as well as how performers do not enjoy the experience as much since the crowd is not as involved in the show.  One of the worst things is when you are stuck watching the show through the phone of the person in front of you.

Overall, it seems that people with their phones out at concerts, or sporting events, is becoming a bigger and bigger problem, and it affects everyone involved.  These people will not contribute to the atmosphere of the event, one of the main reasons people go to live concerts or sports, and they get in the way of people trying to watch the event.  I am okay with people using their phones a little bit, but it bothers me when people are on their phones for the majority of the event.  Do you share my view on people using their phones too much at live events?

One more reason to put phones away during sports events.