Cultivating your online identity

I read over the article that Mr. Corso posted, and I found it interesting. I do not think that it is fair for people to discriminate a potential employee because of pictures they have posted from either high school or college. College is supposed to be a time for people to have fun and make social connections with different people. It is a place where people can make mistakes and learn from them. If we didn’t make mistakes now, then we wouldn’t learn any life lessons. We would also be in big trouble in the future when we got out into the real world. I think that a person should be hired strictly on their experience, grades, and their personality. So what if a person has a couple pictures of themselves online drinking with friends? I think that just as long as the pictures don’t contain any drugs or any extreme activities are taken place, that they should not affect their chances of getting a job. I’m sure many of those people who are searching for online content of potential employees have done the same exact thing at one point in their life. I mean don’t people always say, “live it up while you can!”?
On the other hand, I definitely agree with the fact that online blogging such as posting resumes are very useful. I never even knew it was possible to post your resumes online until I discovered RIC (Regional Internship Center). I recently joined the cite and a week after posting my resume, I received a phone call from a guy asking me to come in for an interview. I haven’t had my interview yet, but if I get the internship it will be for the summer. I definitely recommend that you guys check it out! ---> http://www.ric-swpa.org/index.html

Unit 3

I never thought of the concept of community as an online community. Whenever I think of community I normally think of my hometown. But after reading unit 3 I am more aware of how the term community can be interpreted. I also was interested to learn more about the term social network. I sometimes wonder what my life would be like with out the online social networks I'm apart of. I sure would have a lot more time on my hands, considering facebook and IM consume a lot of my online time. It's nice to have social networks. They help me to strengthen friendships by staying in touch, and also a great way to meet new people. I agree with the book when it says that "online communities are often offline communities that have come online." I realized that many of the people I communicate with online are people that I regulary communicate with FTF at home and at school. This unit was very insighting and interesting to read.

Culturally Challenged

Unit one of strand two brought to my attention over half of the world’s population has never made a telephone call and well over half have never engaged in CMC. This was very surprising to me. Due to the culture and country which I have lived in and known my whole life I was unaware to these statistics. I know I’ve talked about how I feel I tend to take CMC and technology for granted, but this has opened my eyes up to how much I really do take technology and CMC for granted. I feel culturally challenged (if that makes any sense). This makes me wonder how my children’s generation will view technology and CMC. I also wonder if there will be time when more of the world’s population will start using CMC. I am curious to how other countries that don’t use CMC communicate, and how their day to day activities differ from ours. I just recently went a whole week without the use of my computer or internet. I was in Florida for Spring Break, and while there I didn’t really think about not having the internet that much, but I also still had my cell phone as means as communication. Although I didn’t think about using the internet, the first thing I did when I returned home was log onto my computer and connected to the internet. It’s funny how the use of CMC can depend on a person’s environment at the time. This unit also brought to my attention the idea of online inequality. I didn’t realize that this was such an issue. I become more open minded and aware of what exactly CMC is and how it effects mine and others everyday lives every time I read another unit in this book.