Blog Review.

I've been flicking through a blog titled "A New Approach" which is run by Mandy Peace (A tutor of mine in university) and it's full of these fun little, web 2.0 applications, some general blogs regarding current affairs and education and a few videos on the topics I just mentioned.

What makes this blog useful is the amount of web 2.0 apps that she reviews and explains how to use. There are a massive number of apps that would be extremely useful for students like myself while revising and also just to generally kill some time and make something cool.

In an earlier blog I mentioned the "Wordle" app (which I discovered through Mandy's blog) which allows the user to make nifty little word clouds which vary in size depending on how often a word in the source text appears.

As well as being a frequent blogger Mandy also offers up the best free web 2.0 apps the internet has to offer as well as providing a whole bunch of educational videos on current events. If you're at all interested in education, web 2.0 or free, easy to use internet apps then I strongly suggest you follow this blog.

Until next time internet, thanks for reading.

TED Talks - Ken Robinson

Sir Ken Robinson stated that "We are educating  people out of their creative capacities." and to a certain point, I agree. Although I feel that in some cases children are sometimes encouraged to pursue their creativity, it seems that it takes a back seat compared the more academic subjects like science, maths etc. It seems as though, at this day in age people are urged to take subjects that will lead to an eventual well paying job or career at the end of it.

Sir Ken Robinson said "You were probably steered away from things at school when you were a kid - things you liked - on the grounds that you would never get a job doing that: 'Don't do music, you're not going to be a musician. Don't do art, you won't be an artist' benign advice - now profoundly mistaken". Unfortunately, this seems to be the case. We are told throughout our entire childhood that we need to do well in school to get good jobs in order to provide a good life for ourselves and our families. Putting that much pressure or stress onto children could seriously affect their desire to be creative since they might choose to ignore their passion for the arts in order to pursue a career that might end up in them pushing numbers in an office. A child may have a raw talent in art, music or drama but since they are being told that it's not as important as some of the "real" subjects they might give up on it and potentially lose out on a career in that field.

Whilst I agree that the more academic subjects are very important and useful, it does not draw from  the fact that creativity and innovation is a vital part of child development and without it there would be no movies, songs or any other type of artistic concepts. We would simply be a race of drones, following orders, living day by day never progressing forward in terms of technology or anything for that matter.

The Man In Black, He Rides Alone.

I am pretty much addicted to this song right now and even though I understand it's probably the kind of music that not every likes but the message behind this song is really moving and some of the lyrics are truly haunting.

"The man in black, he rides alone, a final destination unkown."

"I am so lost at sea, Ryan shine your light for me, I'm sinking, I can't swim, I miss you brother, you will never dim."

The brother of the vocalist went to sleep one night and never woke up and since then he claims that if he's around people who knew his brother and they're talking about him that they often see a white light around them.

The name of the songs comes from a photo message that the vocalist received while recording the song. He received a message from a friend of the local beach where him and his brother used to hang out and in the photo there was a narrow white light and he claims he just knew that it was his brother.

I've attached the song and also an interview with the vocalist on the meaning behind the song.

Until next time internet, thanks for reading.

Web 2.0 App Test.

I just checked out a pretty cool website called "Wordle" which allows you to make some awesome looking word clouds. The website asks you to insert a piece of text or to enter the URL of a blog, blog feed or any other website that has an Atom or RSS feed (Which by the way, means absolutely nothing to me).

The app works by analyzing the source text and changing the size of certain words depending on how many times the words appear. For example, if you were to write "Apple banana banana grape grape grape" it would appear like this:

This could be extremely useful while revising, for example if you one thing was more important than the rest then you could simply make it bigger than the rest of the words so that it would be easier to remember. It's even possible to change the layout, font and colour of the image to suit your liking.

However, I did find one problem with it (albeit small and easy to get around, it's a problem nonetheless). I could not find a way to save it as an image to your own computer/laptop. The only way I found a way around this was to take a screen shot using the "print screen" button then crop the image so that just the Wordle imagine is visible and save it as a jpeg. file.

Below is the text based representation of the most common words on my blog as of today.

Until next time internet, thanks for reading.

Web 2.0 Pros And Cons.

Web 2.0 is in essence what allows people to interact, collaborate and communicate over mediums such as social media websites and any other virtual community. A few examples of web 2.0 are social media sites, blogs, video sharing websites and web apps.

Positives:

A few positives of web 2.0 are:

• (As I've already mentioned) it's possible to connect with people from the other side of the world through social media and to keep in contact with friends or family
• Video sharing websites allow people to share their passion for something with the world. For example, being in a band and creating music myself, having a way to share my musical creations with the world and even perhaps make a name for myself is extremely useful.
• It's also a useful learning tool and can be used to make all sorts of educational apps for learners of any age.

Negatives:

A few negatives of web 2.0 include:

• As soon as you put any personal info into pretty much any publicly accessible website or domain, it is (as the name suggests) accessible to any one who wants it. So for example, it would be easy for anyone to potentially find out your phone number, home address and email address among other things that many people wish to keep secret.

Please Feed the Fish.

Don't just sit there, the fish on the top of my page are hungry. Please feed them (Left Mouse Click), they need food.

Happy Birthday To Me.

So, today is my 19th birthday and thought I'd mention it here so I can pressure you all into wishing me a happy birthday.
I had a fair bit of money for my birthday which is all going towards my first tattoo (which I'll update you on more at a later date).

Until next time internet, thanks for reading.