Ahmed Al Saadi
Mr. Ray Jones
Information Technology
November 25, 2008
Evaluation
Flat Class Room project
The flat class room project was a requirement that we had to do this year. We were first introduced to this project around mid September, for the first four weeks we where signing in to the ‘Wiki’ and the ‘Ning’ and after that we watched videos of Michael Freemen the author of the book ‘The world is flat’ and that’s what our project is based on. We also watched the videos of students from the past years. After watching those videos we had to summaries two videos that we liked and why we liked them. To be honesty I had no idea of what we are doing or what we are going to do but I did what I was asked to do and hoped to get it going in to the project. After Mrs. Lindsey talked to use and explained more about the project and assembled the teams and the groups that we are going to work in I started understanding. We had to work with other students from other school around the world, I thought that would be a great thing to do, where we could meet people from the USA to Bangladesh, that was a great project and that I would enjoy, but from experience from last year’s digital citizenship project that was similar but smaller we had lots of difficulties with editing the web pages. We were assigned to group 1 though 11 then each group is divided in to three subsections A, B and C, those letters tell us what we are requested to do for a video that we will produce at the end like for example telling a story about you topic or simply explain your topic. in those groups we had to work on producing a web page on the wiki about our topic in my case it’s the World Wide Web or in other words the internet. The World Wide Web is group 2 then I was in group A so I am requested to create a video telling a story about the internet.
The first week in to the project I was sort of lost, I see everyone sitting on ‘Facebook’ and ‘Youtube’ and not doing work so I thought that we should not do anything so I asked Mr. Jones he told me that we should start with the video plan and investigation, so I told everyone that asked some started working on the plan and some ignored and cared on with what they were doing. After completing my plan and investigation which did not take long I posted it on my blogger.I missed around two lessons because I left to Cairo for the ISAC volleyball competition, but as soon as I came back I was focused and ready to complete what I missed. For around a week all I did was add information on our group’s web page and sending and receiving discussions from the people in my group in relationship with the project and editing the web page. I faced lots of difficulties but at the end everything was resolved.
For one of our lessons Mrs. Lindsey came to our class to let us that we have to send an outsourced video to other people and also post up our request for an outsourced video on a page where everyone would be posting up there request and that’s where we would be choosing what video we want to create and send to a person. I placed my request as soon as I learned about posting up the request that was on the 9th of November 2008, the next lesson and check if anyone has responded; it’s not that my request has not been responded to, but nowhere to be found. Someone has deleted it by accident or on purpose but that we don’t know, so I reposted it the second time. I come back the next lesson and again my request is not there, for a second I thought that I was doing it wrong so I asked Mr. Jones to post it up for me but he was busy so I asked Mrs. Lindsey instead and she reposted it on the spot, and the next lesson it was gone. Then I knew it was on purpose but I cannot do anything about it but tell Mr. Jones. So I reposted it up again and I also posted it up on the ning where I was sure no one our see but I had to. This time the request was not deleted (thank god) finally but no one reposed so I had to carry on filming. After I finished filming I posted my video up on the ning and the wikiAlthough I did not have an outsourced video since no one reposed to my request I was very happy with what I created and accomplished throughout this project. I learned a lot during this project, things that would help me in the future like never wait for anybody else and never give up, keep trying and maybe you we succeed. After completing my project all I have to do is thank Mr. Jones for his time and hard work helping me in completing my video, and wait for the teachers, the judges and the whole world to look at my video and see if it is good enough to be one of the top ten videos.

Plan of Investigation:

For my Flat class room project video I would be telling a story or creating a story that would explain about the World Wide Web (WWW). The World Wide Web has affected everyone lives in the 20th century. When computers where first invented they made life easier but when the World Wide Web was first invented it created a revolution it turned the world upside down and made life the easiest possible. Now people could start a new life on the Internet with a different personality, not forgetting the communication, with the Internet present people communicate with people from the other side of the earth as if they where next to each other. The Internet also helped everyone from children to adults with education. That’s what I would like to be focusing on in my outsourced video how life changed when the World Wide Web has been introduced to our leaves.

Summary:

The video would be focusing on a student that is in high school and how he was suffering without the World Wide Web, and how he could not arrive to class on time because of his heavy textbooks and how he fails every test although he studies. Then suddenly a person appears with a laptop that contains the internet and shows how happy the student is and how successful he’s been with the help of the internet by passing all this tests and arriving to class on time.

Scene Setup:

Scene 1: The student is running in the hall way struggling to carry his heavy textbooks rushing to his lesson that he is late to. While running he drops a textbook and does not notice, another student tries to give him the book back but could not catch up. 20sec
Scene 2: The student is late to class and it’s not the first time he is late to lessons so the teacher sends him to the principle. 30 sec
Scene 3: The student writes a test and gets an F as a grade in Algebra so the teacher sends him to the principle again so the principle suspends him and kicks him out of his room. 50sec
Scene 4: The poor student is walking down the hall way depressed and his head’s to the ground. Suddenly a person appears out of nowhere the same person that found his textbook on the ground gives a laptop and his book back and leaves. 50sec
Scene5: The student realizes how useful the Internet has been. Now he is in class on time and he is acing every test and getting perfect marks. His life is finally complete and does not need anything else. 60sec
Total time: 210sec = 3mins30sec

Citizen journalism

1.What is citizen journalism?

This question could not have one right answer because this question depends on whom you ask. You are likely to get very different answers from different people. Some have called it networked journalism, open source journalism, and citizen media. Communication has changed greatly with the advent of the Internet. The basic meaning is posting news or advise on Internet sites with out professional training. Most of the times what you can put on is restricted.

http://www.purdafash.com/ this website enables everyone to post up news and also solve peoples problems.

http://www.cnn.com/ireport/ this website shows some examples of people citizen journalism

2. How can you become a citizen journalist? What tools do you need? How do you communicate? Who will read/view your story/images? Can you make money out of this??

Citizen journalism is such an easy job that any one that has a journaling hobby could do. All you need is a journalism hobby and a good sense of photography because you need to collect pictures and put your news. The tools a person needs is the Internet and that's basically everything. The good thing about citizen journalism is that a person does not have to study journalism for five years or go to trainings. Communicating is a very easy in this situation because the Internet is involved but sometimes it is hard to know or connect some people but in most cases it is fairly easy to communicate. Lots of people view or read those images and story's since it is on the world wide web them any one that is interested in it would view you image or story. A person could not make money from citizen journalism because the story or image is public it is not tagged to a specific person but in some sites it is and if one famous journalist notices it he could contact you.unfortunately there is a low possibility of this happening. In some countries like France citizen journalism is banned because of the violence caused but it.

3.What are the issues to do with citizen journalism?

Most people think that citizen journalism is a very serious issue and people could have a career of it but not any more the interest in people having citizen journalism as a career is vary limited. those days people post stories and images to raise awareness in there communities and very few consider it as a career. Another issue is the invasion of people's privacy. In some cases people are invading other people's privacy that is not the right thing to that's why in some countries citizen journalism is banned. Some countries consider citizen journalism as invading people's privacy and some think it is not. Lots of people agree that everything should go online as it happens in fact every body thinks that but yet again there are some minorities that disagree with this issue. i think that everything should go online as it happens to update people with the newest stories going at the moment.

This picture is taken by a person which is apparently a member of the iReport committee. As severe weather hit the Midwest, iReporters captured amazing photos and videos. This is a very good example of citizen journalism because the picture is taken by a normal person at the time not by a journalist. This picture shows a thunder storm in the Midwest.

Growing Online Part 1

The Issues So Far cuased by th internet

• Online Identity and profile
• CyberBullying
• Addiction to online spaces
• Social Isolation
• Security for users
• Privacy
• Kids as Participants not as victims

Before looking at some videos I never thought that Cyberbullying could impact on a persons life that would actually suicide.

My first blog post

Hello everyone

Our class wiki is here it has really made life easier for us to communicate with our teachers and with other students I trully advice everyone to use wiki I am sure it will make your life easier too.

This is my delicious account. Delicious is the best website for storing your important sites. It is much better then placing your sites on my favorites. You can orgnize your life on delicious. Adding tags also makes it easy for every one since it is open for everyone to look at your links.