2.2 Education and Training

Here's a little presentation on Education and Training :-)

"Follow us on..em..the book of faces?"

I watched a report on the BBC on how broadcasters in France have been refrained from mentioning the words "Facebook" or "Twitter" to their listeners. Broadcasting authorities have deemed the act as a form "hidden advertising" of commercial brands. So according to them, mention of these popular social networks would be to advertise them, which broadcasters shouldn't be doing on their bureaus. 

Many broadcasters in France use "social media" online such as tweets and status updates in parallel with mainstream media (TV news segments, online articles etc.) to get information as well as present information. The French law now says that there will be no mention of these 2 social networks on bulletins because it would be just like an advert for them. However, an opinion was expressed that the nature of this law was verging on anti-Americanism, stating that had a popular social network been run by the French authorities and broadcasting management rather than an American board of broadcasters, they would not have banned the mention of its name on the air or live to stunt its popularity. 

However, the broadcasting manager in France had refuted the notion that they had acted out of opposition to the growing popularity of a social network that is particularly American, supported by others saying that the law has been enforced to simply avoid over-advertisement of these social networks. 

This may impact the popularity of social networks in France, since a lack of mentioning social networks on TV and the radio, or in any form considered "advertisement" other than official advertisement from the social network itself may prevents people from hearing about them. As a result, they may not have much luck with popularity in France. I see the intent of the authorities on banning the mention of social networks, but I honestly don't think it's doing the French society any harm. Social networks are being used to publicize information and news networks are promoted. In doing this the social networks are promoted in turn, so "media piggy backing" ends up happening. Both parties are benefitted from the process, so I don't personally see the disadvantages of mentioning social networks on TV or the radio!

Here's the link to the segment: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/9538479.stm 

Nour

Kids and the Screen

So I read this web journal entry about kids and their exposure to technology, and basically serves as a guide to parents wanting to ease their children into the tech world appropriately and surely, just like any responsible, well-meaning parent would expect to.

What the article essentially does is address important factors in introducing children to the tech world that should be taken into consideration and provides actions that can be taken in order to steer them in the right path.

I agree with the journal entry in the sense that kids should be introduced to gadgets and the Internet at an appropriate age, and try and re-enforce the limits of time allowed on their devices as early on as possible to prevent this "addiction" to games and online sites that seems to be a growing problem these days.

Overall, a very useful guide. I recommend you check it out: http://www.avgdigitaldiaries.com/tagged/stage_two

Nour 

A video on some IT definitions

Just to clarify any misunderstandings :) hope you find it useful

Picking the best blogging system

I wanted to create a blog that
a) was well laid-out and presented
b) easy to work on, edit and update
and
c) easy for visiters and followers to navigate on.

I researched a bunch of different blogging systems online- this website gave me a truckload of info.

http://www.sitepoint.com/blog-software-smackdown-review/

I decided immediately that I definitely did NOT want to work with a self-hosted blogging system. It would, for one, take far too much time to code all the features and set it up myself, so I veered more towards hosted services. At least I knew then that all the technical aspects, I didn't have to worry about and that I could get straight into setting it up, appearance wise, as well as making posts and adding pages.

Some popular hosted services blogs used came up, Blogger being one of them. Other examples I saw included TypePad and LiveJournal. Out of the three, I chose to use Blogger purely because I didn't have to pay for additional features. Another more ITGS-ey reason would be that I liked the layout in Blogger much better. It served as a much more informational, news delivery layout than the more personal, diary entry like style of LiveJournal. Also, I found the different elements in the WYSIWYG in Blogger much more varied and easier to work with.

So to sum it all up, I chose to create a hosted services blog and chose one where I didn't have to pay a monthly fee :)

Welcome to my ITGS blog!

Welcome everyone

This blog will follow my learning journey over the two years of my ITGS course. On here you'll be taken through my experiences, ideas, and achievements in ITGS. Feel free to post anything on here you think may be useful for me, or let me know if I can do the same for you.

Nour