Tutorial #6 The internet and On-line communities

Provide the web address and the name of the community you are investigating

The community that I am going to be investigating is Myspace
www.myspace.com

What is the brief or focus of this community.

MySpace is a popular social networking website offering an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos for people of all ages around the world

What services are provided? How interactive is this site? How can people contribute?

Myspace offers services such as a general Profile setting,where you can update your mood, as well as your fav movies, bands, t.v shows etc as well as being able to up-load photo's video's, audio-clips etc to your general profile, write blogs, as well as a comment space, where people can leave you comments. You can style your myspace page to match your personality, by colour co-ordinating it, adding slide-shows, quiz results and joining groups that interest you.
Myspace features in general are: Bulletins,Groups,MySpaceIM,MySpaceTV,MySpace Mobile,MySpace News, MySpace Classifieds and MySpace Karaoke.


This site is extremely interactive, with you having the ability to link to every public profile on face-book, you can watch video clips, and view photo's on Myspace, and even sign on to recieve your favourite bands new blog.

People contribute to Myspace by upload their own music, there have been a new wave of band who have become famous due to promoting their music on my-space! people also contribute by uploading photo's blogs and joining groups that they feel are important to them. They also contribute by leaving comments on fellow my-spacer pages


Consider material presented during the lecture and make comment on why people choose to contribute to this community. What is it they are seeking?

The reason why I have a My-space page is so its easier to stay in touch with my friends & family who are in a different part of the country. It's easy to see what they are up to with their lifes by having a quick look at their page, and you can look at photo's that they have posted to see what they have been up. I think a lot of people use my-space for this reason as its quicker and easier than posting a letter these days.

Other people may be seeking friendship from other people and wanting to get to know other people in there own area. Relationships may also be formed over myspace but it isn’t something I would do,as you never know if the person contacting you is telling the truth, or if they are some-one prowling on unassuming, naive people.


Cut and paste an example of the type of topics being discussed (you may have to provide a context to your excerpt).
you can join hundreds of thousands of groups:
Activities (258131 groups)
Automotive (56390 groups)
Business & Entrepreneurs (25696 groups)
Cities & Neighborhoods (44369 groups)
Companies / Co-workers (40109 groups)
Computers & Internet (18990 groups)
Countries & Regional (14911 groups)
Cultures & Community (90529 groups)
Entertainment (395449 groups)
Family & Home (54542 groups)
Fan Clubs (273493 groups)
Fashion & Style (86038 groups)
Film & Television (51012 groups)
Food, Drink & Wine (45263 groups)
Games (75199 groups)
Gay, Lesbian & Bi (42520 groups)
Government & Politics (35143 groups)
Health, Wellness, Fitness (30779 groups)
Hobbies & Crafts (37904 groups)
Literature & Arts (35171 groups)
Money & Investing (15672 groups)
Music (355313 groups)
Nightlife & Clubs (67833 groups)
Non-Profit & Philanthropic (23240 groups)
Other (1470810 groups)
Pets & Animals (41627 groups)
Places & Travel (21011 groups)
Professional Organizations (50950 groups)
Recreation & Sports (150304 groups)
Religion & Beliefs (118518 groups)
Romance & Relationships (73636 groups)
Schools & Alumni (195876 groups)
Science & History (10417 groups)
Sorority/Fraternities (33809 groups)
And discuss anything, for example:
Posted: 27 Dec 2006, 19:24 Let's make our own list of 1,000 places to see before you die.

1,000: Cinque Terre (Italy)
999: Sistine Chapel (Rome, Italy)
998: The Louvre (Paris, France)
997: Machu Picchu (Lost City of the Incas), Peru
996: Glacier Moreno, Argentina
995: Uluru (Ayers Rock), Australia
994: Grand Canyon, Arizona, USA
993: The ruins of Bagan, Burma
992: Angkor Wat-Siem Reap, Cambodia
991: Taj Mahal- Agra, India
990: Patagonia, Chile
989: Angelina's for Hot Chocolate--Paris, France
988: Eiffel Tower of course--Paris, France
987: Great Wall--China
986: Tiger Leaping Gorge--China
985: Himalayan Mountains--India, Nepal, Bhutan, Burma, China, etc...
984: Alhambra-- Grenada, Spain
983: Ha Long Bay, Vietnam
982: Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum--Phnom Penh, Cambodia
981: Choeung Ek Killing Fields-- Phnom Penh, Cambodia
980: Glacier National Park, Montana
979: Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming/Montana

and so on and so fourth!!

Considering material presented during the course and make comment on the potential ethical issues that may arise in this community e.g. lack of identity and accountability.
My-space has a page specially dedicated to safety and security: http://www.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=cms.viewpage&placement=safety_pagehome.
You have the ability to set your profile to private, therefore only your friends or immediate contacts can view your details, but if your profile isn't set to private, then any videos or pictures you have uploaded become available for anybody on the internet to use. Also people add you all the time and you have no idea who they are.



Consider material presented during the lecture and make comment on the benefits this community holds over traditional notions of community e.g. communities reliant on geographic proximity
You are given the oppertunity to meet people all over the world, and you get the ability to find out other peoples perspectives on a certain topic. It's easy to get to, for example, no having to travel anywhere as you can do it all in the comfort of your own home! People can communicate with other people who have the same interests, or have the same illness etc.


Consider material presented during the lecture and make comment what this community lacks or can not provide which traditional communities can.
There is no actual face to face stuff, its all over the internet, so you lose some sense of sociability....some people spend all their time in front of a computer, rather than getting out into the community and communicating with people, which is'nt good for building social skills.

Scarfie Days

Tutorial #4 & #5 - video production!

Task Four (Blog Posting): Provide a brief summary of the services offered by U Tube. Information can be drawn from the week five tutorial hand out.

You tube is a very popular websites and one of the biggest growing websites in the world. Youtube is a website where users can upload, view and share video content, movie clips, TV clips, music videos and video blogging on everything and everything, people post daily blogs about whats happening in their lifes, you can watch that illegal movie trailer before it gets taken down, and you can watch that funny video clip all your friends want you to watch, eg the evolution of dance (check it out, its awesome!). You tube great because it’s easy to use and navigate around and it has something to interest everybody available on it!




Task Five (Blog Posting): Provide a brief account (1-2 paragraphs) on how the use of planning (storyboarding and scripting)aided your groups short film.

A story board is a visual aid of the different shots and ideas your film will entail in order. Its beneficial to use a story board because it helps show the flow and direction that the group wanted to take while shooting this video clip. It also helps deciede the best order to show the video clips in, and wether or not the current order flows very well. The story board also ensured that we kept on track and didnt go off from the theme and images we decieded to film!

Tutorial #3 creating a blog!

Task Four: Provide a brief summary of the services offered by Blogger (this will be your third posting. Information can be drawn from the attached hand out). In addition to this name one other Blog host.

Blogger.com is a website that offers tools needed for creating your own online blog. A blog is a page where you can write about your current thoughts, moods, feeling, opinions, idea's, anything you want to talk about and share with the world or your friends

You can create a personal profile on your blog, upload photos and videos and link to other websites that you found interesting and want to tell other people about!

Setting up an account is free and easy, you can choose from a range of existing templates or for a bit more of a challenge and a more personalised blog you van create your own.


One other blog host is www.blogster.com!

Supermassive Black Hole - Muse

Tutorial Two: Digital Camera use and applications

“A new technology is rarely superior to an old one in every feature”. Briefly discuss this statement in relation to digital camera technology. What would you consider to be some of the pluses and minuses digital camera technology holds in relation to more traditional film based cameras?

Some positives of digital camera technology is that results are instant, you can view the photo you just took, and if you don’t like it you can delete the photo and take another one strait away, with the old film method you didn’t know how well the photo’s were till after you got them developed. You also don’t need to wait hours for photo development, and can now print photos in the comfort of your own home! You can also choose what colour you want the photos in, e.g black and white, sepia or colour.
Some negatives are there are lots of settings on the camera, and its very easy to change a setting without realising, and photo’s will turn out bad and you don’t know how to fix them. Sometime the quality of the photos is affected, Loss of the anticipation you used to get when you picked up photo’s from the developers, no more sense of surprise.

List some of the ways that digital images can be stored transferred and manipulated using other communications technology.
Over the internet on photoblogs eg photo-bucket, Flashdrives & Harddrives, C.D’s & D.V.D.’s, Memory Cards, E-mails, Pxt messaging, Laptops, Video Cameras.

Given the prevalence of image capturing devices, and thinking about the issues discussed in tutorial one, consider what sort of ethical issues may arise with their use.
Trustworthiness, you don’t want somebody putting up private photo’s on websites like Bebo or face-book.
Anyone can access and change the information eg photo-shopping.
The right people receiving the information again private photos being distributed to the wrong person!

Briefly discuss some of the ways that digital images could, or are, being used in occupational therapy practice.
To take photo’s of people homes, to figure out where new adaptations are going to go, for example, somebodies bathroom, or where a rail will be installed outside the main entrance.
To capture every day activities e.g. Some-bodies sitting position in a chair

Provide a brief summary of the services offered by Flickr.com
The storage and transferring of personal images on the internet.
Name one other photo storage website which offers a service similar to Flickr.com
www.photobucket.com

Explain what the difference is between a digital and an optical zoom
Optical Zoom works the same as a zoom lens on a film camera whereas digital zoom simply crops the image smaller.

Explain what is meant by the term mega pixel
A mega pixel is made up of a million individual pixels, they make up the small squares of a photo!

Tutorial 1 (obviously!)

Tutorial One: Information Technology and Ethical Issues

Provide a definition of Information Technology/Information Communications Technology (APA reference required) Information Technology: The study or use of processes ( esp. using computers, micro electronics, and telecommunications) for storing, retrieving, and sending information (e.g. words, numbers, pictures). The New Zealand Oxford Paperback Dictionary.(1998).In T. Deverson(Ed). NewYork;Oxford University Press.

Consider the definition of IT you have provided. How is this form of technology prevalent in our society? How common place has it become? Extremely prevalent, especially in the younger generations you'll be struggling to find some-body who can't send a txt or surf the web, or a house that doesn't have a computer or somebody who doesn't have a Mp3 (or I-pod)

What IT devices or system do you feel comfortable and competent using? Definantly the old Cell-phone! and yeah, i can work Lap-tops, MP3 players, the net, digital cameras, flash drives etc etc. there is probley way more but i just can't think of any right now!

Thinking about your own fieldwork experiences consider how IT is being used in Occupational Therapy practice? Digital camera's are now used during home assessments in regards to whether any building modifications need to be made, more reliable than sketches Community Physical OT's can use the net in order to get correct driving directions to a patients house!! no more wrong turns! Cell Phones are used when OTs make a home visit, so they can be easily contacted, as well as a safety precaution

What ethical implications arise from the capturing, sharing and transferring of information via IT devices (e.g. mobile phones) or systems (e.g. internet) Anybody can view and change the information uploaded onto the internet. sending authorized info to the wrong person, eg text or e-mail confidential info to the wrong person.

Provide a definition of Computer Ethics (APA reference required) Computer ethics is a branch of practical philosophy which deals with how computing professionals should make decisions regarding professional and social conduct. Retrieved February 14, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_ethics

Provide a definition of Intellectual Property (APA reference required) In law, intellectual property (IP) is an umbrella term for various legal entitlements which attach to certain types of information, ideas, or other intangibles in their expressed form. The holder of this legal entitlement is generally entitled to exercise various exclusive rights in relation to the subject matter of the IP. The term intellectual property reflects the idea that this subject matter is the product of the mind or the intellect, and that IP rights may be protected at law in the same way as any other form of property. However, the use of the term and the concepts it is said to embody are the subject of some controversy Retrieved: February14,2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property

Provide a definition of Social Justice (APA reference required) Social justice refers to the concept of a society in which justice is achieved in every aspect of society, rather than merely the administration of law. Retrieved 27 February, from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Justice

Provide a definition of Informed Consent (APA reference required) Informed Consent is a legal condition whereby a person can be said to have given consent based upon an appreciation and understanding of the facts and implications of an action Retrieved 27 February, from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informed_Consent

In your own words briefly summarise why (or why not) a great understanding of ITC and the ethical issues it encompasses will help us in our practice and daily lives. A great understanding of ITC and knowing the ethical issues encompassed with ITC will help OT's in daily practise and lives because it makes documenting and saving information so much easier, and with the right precautions, it also makes it a safer option to use!