Curation Culture

I found an infographic on how professors use social media. Two points seem worth mentioning here: the social networking gap between students and professors is shrinking and professors in the humanities use social networking the most for pedagogical purposes, which could include blogs, wikis, and podcasts.

I have reproduced the graphic below, but the whole story can be found here.

Is it important that the gap is closing? Do students think it is important, helpful and/or beneficial to have social networking and other web 2.0 experiences integrated into the course? Read the rest of this entry →

Foursquare:  friendly competition, public stalking, and venue reviews all in the palm of your hand…

If you aren’t familiar with it, Foursquare is a social network where users accumulate points by “checking in” to places they travel to in their own lives.  When someone “checks in,” they receive a certain amount of points, depending on the type of venue, the number of times they’ve checked in to the venue, if there are any of their friends there at the time, and other categories.  Foursquare totals your weekly point values and displays them on a leader board with your friends, so you can see how much better or (worse!) you are doing compared to them.  If you continue visiting a place and checking in, you can become “the mayor” of a venue, which gives you more points per check in.  For example, I’m the mayor of the AKL hall (where I live), Davis Music Building (where I spend most of my day), the Caf, and a few other buildings on campus, not to mention my church, my home in Birmingham, and a few restaurants.  However, if someone else were to start checking into one of those venues more frequently than me, they could claim Mayorship and I would lose points on my check ins for that venue.

Another fun aspect of Foursquare is the badge system (which we are all familiar with since we are using them on this blog!).  For unlocking certain achievements, users can unlock badges to share with their friends.  These achievements can be rewards from checking in a certain amount of times, checking into a specific type of venue, checking in at certain times of the day, and other criteria.  The Ten Hundred Badge, (one that I proudly own!) is awarded for checking in at least 1,000 times, and the Hot Tamale Badge, (another one in my collection) is awarded for checking into a certain number of Mexican restaurants.  This type of badge is very common, and has a special feature where it levels up as you check into more and more of the same types of venue, (my Hot Tamale Badge is level 3, that’s 10 different Mexican restaurants!).  These badges carry no point values, but are simply a fun “side-mission” to the game.

The Hot Tamale Badge

On Foursquare venues, users can also leave “tips” for other users.  These can be humors, informative, even critical bits of information that can help other users make decisions about which venues to visit.  You can even post pictures to a venue to show people the fun (or not so fun) things about a particular venue.  For example, if I’ve had a terrible experience waiting 30 minutes for my food at the McDonald’s on Main Street, I can post a tip and let other users know how slow the drive-thru is, even if there’s only one person in front of me…. On the other hand, if I just ordered a new dish at a local restaurant, I can leave a tip telling other people to try it, and even post a picture of my plate.  Also, if there’s a restaurant I want to try, I might look it up on Foursquare to see if anyone has left any helpful tips before I go.

But regardless of how much fun I’m having claiming mayorships, earning badges, and posting tips, the fact still remains that I am constantly posting my exact location on the internet, and anyone I am friends with can see where I am at anytime if I’m checked into a venue.  This seems to violate basic internet safety rules, I know, so why do I (and many other users) still do it?  I think that a lot of it has to do with the security we have in our friends.  I am comfortable posting my location on the internet, because I know that only my friends can see it, and I trust them enough not to come and stalk my every move then attack me when I least expect it.  If someone does, however, start to get a little creepy, I can always de-friend them so they can’t see my locations anymore.  Also, I think the competitive aspect of the game overpowers (or at least disguises) the potential risk of posting your location.  In my quest to the top of the leader board, I’m going to check in wherever I go to get the most points, no matter who sees me.

Another issue that can cause concern is checking in while driving.  Some people have created venues for major highways, like I-65 North and South, so people can accumulate points while driving.  Just like texting and driving, this is incredibly dangerous, yet I myself have been guilty of doing it.  Why?  To get more points of course!  But these points don’t really matter at all.  I get no physical reward for being in first place, or earning a new badge, in fact, I could very well receive physical punishment in the form of my head going through my windshield….  But it’s fun….?

So my question for everyone:  is Foursquare safe?  Are the social benefits worth exposing yourself to the public and potentially endangering your life?  I play, and have lots of fun, but I would like to hear your opinions too!

This is my first post. Why is this my first post? Every time that I sit in front of my laptop I open a new tab of Fanfiction. This addiction started innocently enough. I was in 9th grade and I had just finished reading the Twilight Saga. I was angry that the story had ended and I just wished for it to continue forever.

Then I discovered Fanfiction, more specifically Twilighted.net . At the time I did not know that the discovery of this site would eventually lead to me reading novel length fanfics each week. Anyways, I understand you may not know what Fanfiction is exactly. Fanfiction is the result thousands of people wishing books or movies never ended, or in some cases, were completely different.  A formal definition of fanfic can apparently be found at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fanfic. A fanfic is fiction written around previously established characters by another author. In fanfiction the characters can do anything that the author wants. There are no limits.

The community for fanfiction is massive. Fanfiction.net alone has hundreds of categories ranging from Anime to Musicals. There are also Crossover fics, meaning that they used characters from two or more stories to create something completely different.  Within each category there are subcategories. For example the category of Books. There are fanfics for hundreds of books, some books have more than others. On Fanfiction.net there are lots of ways to find a certain type of story that you feel like reading. You can pick a certain genre, a rating, what language it is, how long it is, and what two main characters it includes. Most importantly you can search for stories that are complete.  Or you can metaphorically shoot yourself in the foot and set every option to “all” and sort through 24070 pages, each with 25 stories on it. That is just for Harry Potter stories of course, not including Crossovers.

So with all of the fanfiction to read, my life disappeared. Every now and again there is about a week or so when I just cannot find anything good to read, but then I find the most amazing fanfic ever or a new website. Now every time I am in front of my laptop, no matter what I am here to do, I end up either reading fanfiction or searching for new fanfics to read. I have a serious addiction, I know this. I literally cannot be a real person on the internet because I live in the world of Fanfiction. It is so easy to click on an already opened tab of fanfiction and start reading only to realize 30 minutes later that I was supposed to work on a paper, or a blog post.

I think that I can say my relationship with Fanfiction is becoming tension filled. There are many sleepless, or nearly so, nights. There is procrastination to the extreme. In fact just this morning at 8 am I reasoned with myself that I could finish this chapter and still answer some questions for my 9:30 class. Needless to say it was 3 chapters and 5 horribly answered questions later that I was walking out of the door at 9:21.  This doesn’t always happen but it happens enough.

I have been making an effort to cut back on the amount of fanfiction that I read. This started when I realized that after putting fanfiction on my kindle I read 1177 pages (single spaced, Times New Roman, 12pt font) of fanfiction in just under 10 days. At the time I was able to justify that, somewhat. Just a few weeks ago I want to find out exactly how much fanfiction I am really reading.  Turns out that I read about 1200 pages (single spaced, Times New Roman, 12pt font) in an average school week. I have yet to find out how much I read on the breaks from school but I would imagine that it may be about double that amount because I rarely sleep.

After 5 years of this my body is telling me to either slow down drastically or stop. My eyesight, which has always been terrible, has gotten so much worse. I hardly ever practice proper posture while on the computer and that entire self care check sheet goes out the window when in the world of fanfiction. It is also affecting my laptop. I constantly have tabs open. I have gotten them under control now but there have been times when there were 3 or 4 Firefox windows open each with 80 -100 tabs or more and the same in Google Chrome. Right now I can proudly say that I only have 45 tabs open, 5 of which I will close after posting this. If you are wondering the rest is fanfiction.

So I have cut down on the amount I read only because I am taking 19 hours this semester, but I imagine that over the Christmas break I will sit in front of my laptop and continue to read. Hopefully not to the previous extent though.

I believe that is about it. This has been my life for the past 5 years and I realize that I got what I wished for – the story never ended.

If you ever want to start reading Fanfiction I recommend:

http://www.delicious.com/bowie28/ – Mostly Criminal Minds Fanfiction

http://cmficfinders.livejournal.com/ – Strictly Criminal Minds

http://www.harrypotterfanfiction.com/ – Strictly Harry Potter

Twilighted.net – Strictly Twilight

http://archiveofourown.org

and of Course

Fanfiction.net

I caution you to read in moderation. Now I am off to read Fanfiction until I fall asleep.