Final Draft of Website

Social Network Responses
The course outcome that social networking relates to is "Diversity, Identity, and Differing Perspectives." There is a relationship there that allows the individuals to express their personal identity and observe diversity among others. There are many course outcomes to this class, and the project that we picked (Social Networking) combines many of these together. Academic skills is something that is important in social networking because there is a lot of work that goes behind the scenes that people don’t know about. The diversity is important because people can express themselves through social networks.
We all decided that we wanted to do social networking as the focus for our group because social networking are part of our every day lives, and we wanted to learn more about them and how they help or take away from us. We all (Brooke, Julia and Laura) use facebook on a daily basis, which is a very popular social network.
OUR definition of a community is: People who live close or together and work together to make the place that they live a better place to be.
A social network can also be an academic community. It is a group of people all doing the same thing and working with the same goals and ideas.
On Merriam-Webster Dictionary online, it defines a community as a unified body of individuals. When you combine that with the word "academic" you get a group of people working together in an academic way.
Hamman’s Definion : (1) a group of people (2) who share social interaction (3) and some common ties between themselves and the other members of the group (4) and who share an area for at least some of the time.
Summary of Social Network Theory:
“A social network is a social structure made of individuals (“nodes”), which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency such as friendship, kinship, sexual relationships, beliefs, knowledge or prestige,” (diigo.com). “Nodes” are the individual actors within the networks and “ties” are the relationships between the actors. So basically, the nodes are the people who are participating in the social network and the ties are the reasons that they are involved. In the 1930’s, social networks began to really take off. J.L. Moreno studied small social networks like classrooms and work groups while a group of Harvard students studied a group of interpersonal relations at work. There is a program called Social Network Analysis (SNA) and it is used for mass surveillance. They used it to examine whether or not US citizens were political threats and to study patterns of how HIV and AIDS are spread through social networks. The power of social networks is very great and can be useful with many different aspects of our world today.
Social Networks and Group Formation:
Social networks are one of the most crucial things in internet and design. They are used in society, the workplace, and for technology. The first social networks were researched in the late 1940s. Mark Granovetter and Linton C. Freeman were two people that published two important articles before the big internet boom. They wrote about social networking and how they believed whether it was based on weak or strong ties. Centralization in a network is something that is also very important. Degree of a point, control and independence are three very crucial things to have in a network. Knowing these things is very important in modern WebPages and sites. Researchers recognize that humans becoming able to make individual choices and ideas affect the progress and changes of a network. Keeping this in mind, a person could apply social networking towards a web creation, but since it is based on human systems it would be hard to predict the outcome of the network itself.
Physical Place and Cyber Place:
“Computer networks are social networks.” Computer supported social networks bringing more people together. Our world functions in networks, whether it is simply one person to another or even in the larger business companies. Social networks are giving people an opportunity to communicate with a larger range of peers. Communities now have less boundaries and more people involved. People and companies are also able to connect with more than one group, which allows our networks to grow. E.M. Foster examined the opportunities and transformations afforded by communication networks that are computerized. There are many positives to computerized communication networks such as, broader bandwidth, wireless portability, globalized connectivity, and personalization. Yet, there are also negative aspects to it such as, increased surveillance and less privacy. Through computers, our local communities are going beyond the neighborhood. People are now able to communicate with one another no matter where they are at.
The Machine Stops by F.M. Forster discussion and our academic community with no "Machine":
The Machine Stops by F.M. Forster is a story about a mother, Vashti, and son, Kuno, who live on the opposite sides of the world due to almost the entire human population living underground in cells. Each person lives in a small cell where their whole life is lived through a machine. There is not very much face-to-face interaction because they communicate through the technological world. Very few people live on the surface of the earth because they have adapted to living with dependence upon this "Machine." The biggest conflict through out the story was that people became so dependent on this "Machine" that they lost their technology knowledge and began to ignore all flaws of the "Machine." Soon, the machine begins to crash and nobody has the knowledge to fix it. If we lived our world with no machine, our academic community would slowly crash. As new generations came along, we would lose all knowledge in the technological sense. We would also lose our common sense of how to greet one another face-to-face and family traditions would soon deteriorate due to dependence on this "Machine." Our world would simply become a place where people do not live through their hearts, but through a machine.

LINK to Personal Pages and Blogs:
Julia Matthews
https://sites.google.com/a/csumb.edu/julia-matthews/about-me
http://jmatthews91.blogspot.com/
Brooke Keith
https://sites.google.com/a/csumb.edu/brookemarie/
http://brooke-keith.blogspot.com/
Laura Bockman
https://sites.google.com/a/csumb.edu/laura-bockman-s-site/
http://lbockman.blogspot.com/
CITATIONS:
Singh, Shiv. September 9, 2007. Social Networks And Group Formation. http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/social-networks

Definition of "community" found on Merriam Webster's Dictionary Website
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/COMMUNITY
Forster, E.M.. 1909. The Machine Stops.
Wellman, Berry. Febuary 2001. "Physical Place and Cyber Place: The Rise of Personalized Networking."
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/%7Ewellman/publications/individualism/ijurr3a1.htm

First Draft

Social Network Responses
The course outcome that social networking relates to is "Diversity, Identity, and Differing Perspectives." There is a relationship there that allows the individuals to express their personal identity and observe diversity among others. There are many course outcomes to this class, and the project that we picked (Social Networking) combines many of these together. Academic skills is something that is important in social networking because there is a lot of work that goes behind the scenes that people don’t know about. The diversity is important because people can express themselves through social networks.
We all decided that we wanted to do social networking as the focus for our group because social networking are part of our every day lives, and we wanted to learn more about them and how they help or take away from us. We all (Brooke, Julia and Laura) use facebook on a daily basis, which is a very popular social network.
OUR definition of a community is: People who live close or together and work together to make the place that they live a better place to be.
A social network can also be an academic community. It is a group of people all doing the same thing and working with the same goals and ideas.
On Merriam-Webster Dictionary online, it defines a community as a unified body of individuals. When you combine that with the word "academic" you get a group of people working together in an academic way.
Hamman’s Definion : (1) a group of people (2) who share social interaction (3) and some common ties between themselves and the other members of the group (4) and who share an area for at least some of the time.
Summary of Social Network Theory:
“A social network is a social structure made of individuals (“nodes”), which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency such as friendship, kinship, sexual relationships, beliefs, knowledge or prestige,” (diigo.com). “Nodes” are the individual actors within the networks and “ties” are the relationships between the actors. So basically, the nodes are the people who are participating in the social network and the ties are the reasons that they are involved. In the 1930’s, social networks began to really take off. J.L. Moreno studied small social networks like classrooms and work groups while a group of Harvard students studied a group of interpersonal relations at work. There is a program called Social Network Analysis (SNA) and it is used for mass surveillance. They used it to examine whether or not US citizens were political threats and to study patterns of how HIV and AIDS are spread through social networks. The power of social networks is very great and can be useful with many different aspects of our world today.
Social Networks and Group Formation:
Social networks are one of the most crucial things in internet and design. They are used in society, the workplace, and for technology. The first social networks were researched in the late 1940s. Mark Granovetter and Linton C. Freeman were two people that published two important articles before the big internet boom. They wrote about social networking and how they believed whether it was based on weak or strong ties. Centralization in a network is something that is also very important. Degree of a point, control and independence are three very crucial things to have in a network. Knowing these things is very important in modern WebPages and sites. Researchers recognize that humans becoming able to make individual choices and ideas affect the progress and changes of a network. Keeping this in mind, a person could apply social networking towards a web creation, but since it is based on human systems it would be hard to predict the outcome of the network itself.
Physical Place and Cyber Place:
“Computer networks are social networks.” Computer supported social networks bringing more people together. Our world functions in networks, whether it is simply one person to another or even in the larger business companies. Social networks are giving people an opportunity to communicate with a larger range of peers. Communities now have less boundaries and more people involved. People and companies are also able to connect with more than one group, which allows our networks to grow. E.M. Foster examined the opportunities and transformations afforded by communication networks that are computerized. There are many positives to computerized communication networks such as, broader bandwidth, wireless portability, globalized connectivity, and personalization. Yet, there are also negative aspects to it such as, increased surveillance and less privacy. Through computers, our local communities are going beyond the neighborhood. People are now able to communicate with one another no matter where they are at.

LINK to Personal Pages and Blogs:
Julia Matthews
https://sites.google.com/a/csumb.edu/julia-matthews/about-me
http://jmatthews91.blogspot.com/
Brooke Keith
https://sites.google.com/a/csumb.edu/brookemarie/
http://brooke-keith.blogspot.com/
Laura Bockman
https://sites.google.com/a/csumb.edu/laura-bockman-s-site/
http://lbockman.blogspot.com/
CITATIONS:
Singh, Shiv. September 9, 2007. Social Networks And Group Formation. http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/social-networks

Definition of "community" found on Merriam Webster's Dictionary Website
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/COMMUNITY

Wellman, Berry. Febuary 2001. "Physical Place and Cyber Place: The Rise of Personalized Networking."
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/%7Ewellman/publications/individualism/ijurr3a1.htm

I Already Miss It

Going home for Thanksgiving break was nice. I was excited to have a full week off. But to my dismay, the week went by so fast. It was such a blur when I look back at it. I was so upset having to leave for school yesterday. I had such a blast being home and seeing my friends. I loved being with my family at home and helping cook Thanksgiving dinner and helping my mom decorate for Christmas. It’s tradition in our family that we all decorate together. I saw my best friend Katie a lot over the week, went to school with her one day, and hung out at her house with her family. It was just like old times and I absolutely loved it. My sister has finally gotten over Mono so it was fun getting to spend some time with her instead of her just being stuck in bed. I missed the old, hyper Shelly!
I did not do any school work over the break. I probably should have but I ended up just forgetting about it and taking a break. Not much has changed by the way I felt when I left home in August than now. I actually don’t really enjoy going to school here so it’s a struggle every time I leave. I am looking forward to getting a month off for Christmas. That is going to be nice, but I have a feeling that it’s going to fly by just as fast as this break did.

Rather Detailed Review_Jessica Mendoza's Group

Jessica Mendoza’s group met all of the requirements of the assignment as well. They were all present in the video and took the role of interesting characters. Jessica was the interviewer and the other teammates were the characters of Clarisse, Mildred, and Guy Montag. The interview is set up like a talk show with Jessica as the host. She asks questions about the relationships between Guy and his two women. The questions are very basic but the atmosphere the talk show has makes them interesting. I thought that the video was very well done. The talk show was an excellent idea. My group did the same thing. It was an easy way to interview someone and have a story or background as to why they were being interviewed. It was a good setting. The only thing that I thought this group could have done better was the energy that the interviewees had on the video. They just answered the questions that they were given but did not have any personality or liveliness in their answers or characters. Overall the video that this group made met all the requirements and it was very well put together.

Rather Detailed Review_Lila Bushnell's Group

This group put together a video that met all of the requirements of the assignment. All of the members of the group were present and they each played an important role. Lila was the interviewer and her three other teammates played the roles of the characters. At the beginning of the video there was no introduction so it was hard for the audience to tell what was going on. We were not introduced in an obvious or simple way to whom was playing what role in the video. It was a bit chaotic at the beginning because of this. On the other hand, once you figured out what characters were being portrayed, it was excellent! The interviews were entertaining and her questions were good. There were many questions that their team thought of that many others did not. Their team came up with many more questions than ours did. We came up with general questions in our video, but theirs were much more in depth. I found it entertaining that Lila was “on the chase” to find the characters and interview them. That made it much more entertaining. Overall it was a good video. Could have made the beginning more clear but other than that it was good :]

Where the Sidewalk Ends

If I were to save one book in the world, it would be "Where the Sidewalk Ends" by Shel Silverstein. It is a book that really hits home for me. My mom, sister, and I used to read it every night before bed. My favorite poem was the one about the girl who wouldn't take out the trash. I find the book very interesting and would have to save it if I had to make the choice.
Silverstein is an excellent writer and the way she writes makes it easy for children and people of any age to understand. The stories and poems she tells are easy reads and catch the attention of her audience.
In the world of Fahrenheit 451, this book would be banned because, well, it's a book of course! But other than that, it is entertaining and can speak to all audiences of all ages. The poems can have many different meanings and I think that the firemen would find that intimidating.
Once books are available again in a new society after Fahrenheit 451, "Where the Sidewalk Ends" will be good to have around because of the variety of poems and stories that it brings to the table.
It is an excellent book and I have loved it since a child. "Where the Sidewalk Ends" is the book that I would choose to save.

My "Majors" Activity

Last week in my FYS 100 class we were given an assignment that was based on majors. My group members were Michael Kwasny, Brooke Keith, and Jessica Mendoza. We were asked to present our information to the class as a group and the deadline was Friday. The assignment required that we talk as a group and decide what major we wanted to make our presentation on. Everyone in my group, besides me, was a Liberal Studies major so we agreed on that major fairly easily. And so the work began…
For this power point, we did not find it necessary to meet outside of class to do the work. It was fairly easy to finish quickly and did not require much research. We all sat down together and I took the role of group “manager”, I guess you could say. I assigned each person what information they needed to research and put together. Each of the teammates got 2 different categories to work on. Once they finished their research and re-wording the information, they each sent it to me on my CSUMB email. I copy and pasted the writing on to a power point that I created. In the end it turned out to be a long power point with many slides.
The reason I took the role as the group manager was because I knew that I wouldn’t be there to present on Friday so I figured I’d do as much work as I possibly could so as to be fair. On presentation day I was not in class so I do not know exactly what happened. I do know that my group is good at speaking in front of people, and they all did their own work so they knew what was on their slides. Because of this they were probably able to present their information easily and clearly for the rest of the class to learn well. Hopefully we will receive a grade that is worthy of the amount of time and work that we put in to the assignment.
Personally I have never really known much about the Liberal Studies major. I had heard the word before but never learned about it or even bothered to ask questions. I figured it had something to do with government to tell you the truth! But after completing this assignment I actually learned a lot. The three other members in my group were very knowledgeable about it because that is what they are interested in.
This assignment was pretty easy to do. I enjoyed learning about the different majors and I have found that I love using power point!