Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Thursday, November 15, 2012
A now retired NCAA athlete....playing patty cake
Well the time has come to hang up my boots. No more soccer for me, well at least at the NCAA DII level. who knows where i will end up but as of right now it looks like I will be passing on my talents through coaching.
Currently I am at Gamble Rogers Middle School as the girls coach this year. The season is in full gear and we just played our first game this past Tuesday. We won 4-3! So I can officially say as a coach I have a 1-0 record!
Getting to that victory was a little harder then I have ever anticipated. The team has a great core of girls who play club soccer competitively, but with every middle school team we have those girls that have never played soccer before in their life time until now. Well these girls are the biggest challenge for me, seeing this is the first team I have ever coached. The challenge: getting the girls who have never played before interested and keeping the club players from getting bored.
The other day at practice I had four girls who were playing patty cake during a drill... as frustrated as I was I had to keep my composure and explain to them that they were not helping the team in any way by playing patty cake. OH MAN it was so hard not to sit there and be like seriously go home.... because of my competitive nature, i had to remember where i was.
But needless to say I believe my team can do a number in the Middle School district this year and you know what I think we can win a national championship.... in patty cake :) But I do love my group of girls and my goal is to expand their knowledge in the game
Currently I am at Gamble Rogers Middle School as the girls coach this year. The season is in full gear and we just played our first game this past Tuesday. We won 4-3! So I can officially say as a coach I have a 1-0 record!
Getting to that victory was a little harder then I have ever anticipated. The team has a great core of girls who play club soccer competitively, but with every middle school team we have those girls that have never played soccer before in their life time until now. Well these girls are the biggest challenge for me, seeing this is the first team I have ever coached. The challenge: getting the girls who have never played before interested and keeping the club players from getting bored.
The other day at practice I had four girls who were playing patty cake during a drill... as frustrated as I was I had to keep my composure and explain to them that they were not helping the team in any way by playing patty cake. OH MAN it was so hard not to sit there and be like seriously go home.... because of my competitive nature, i had to remember where i was.
But needless to say I believe my team can do a number in the Middle School district this year and you know what I think we can win a national championship.... in patty cake :) But I do love my group of girls and my goal is to expand their knowledge in the game
COM 305 Online Privacy
When it comes to your privacy online, very few people actually knows what that entails. Internet users wonder how their information gets online even though they have set their information on private. Even though your profile is set to private, like most believe it is, we have no idea that people still have the power to access the information they want.
So lets bring up the topic of Facebook. Most people are aware of the ability to put your Facebook profile on private, where only those who are your friends that you accept will be able to see what we post to that profile.... so we think.
Most people when signing up for Facebook or any other social media platform, do not actually read the privacy agreement that we have to "check" in order to create the profiles to begin with. Little do we know, employers can actually access our profile even though we set them to private. These employers have the technology and tools to access our information.... So that picture of you raging at a party isn't so private after all.
Users of these platforms are frustrated with the fact that their information is still available even with the private setting. But users must be aware that they are putting their own information on the internet, and they must assume that all of the information is public. If you don't want the public to know your "Private" don't post it at all. It is a risk at all times when the information is posted!
According to Alex Masters article on The Independent Online, he believes that the Facebook Privacy agreement is a hoax .
"The best course of action when using social networks is to assume that everything you do online is public. At the end of the day, don’t post information on the web if you do not want others - including law enforcement, your boss and your technophobe mom - to see it. Who knows what will happen to Facebook in the future and where their archive of private information could end up. Servers can be hacked, making private information available to anyone if it is leaked into the public domain. And what if sites like Facebook shut down? Unlikely as it might seem, anything is possible. What happens to your private data then?"
And what about those ads that show up on the side of your Facebook feed. How do they know those ads apply to you? They have access to what you post about, if you tweet about football, an ad about football pops up on the ad feed along side your time line. This is how they try to appeal to you. So in reality we can say that no matter how private we think our information is, there is clear evidence that our information isn't really as private as we think.
If you don't want the information to reach the public mainstream, don't post it at all!
So lets bring up the topic of Facebook. Most people are aware of the ability to put your Facebook profile on private, where only those who are your friends that you accept will be able to see what we post to that profile.... so we think.
Most people when signing up for Facebook or any other social media platform, do not actually read the privacy agreement that we have to "check" in order to create the profiles to begin with. Little do we know, employers can actually access our profile even though we set them to private. These employers have the technology and tools to access our information.... So that picture of you raging at a party isn't so private after all.
Users of these platforms are frustrated with the fact that their information is still available even with the private setting. But users must be aware that they are putting their own information on the internet, and they must assume that all of the information is public. If you don't want the public to know your "Private" don't post it at all. It is a risk at all times when the information is posted!
According to Alex Masters article on The Independent Online, he believes that the Facebook Privacy agreement is a hoax .
"The best course of action when using social networks is to assume that everything you do online is public. At the end of the day, don’t post information on the web if you do not want others - including law enforcement, your boss and your technophobe mom - to see it. Who knows what will happen to Facebook in the future and where their archive of private information could end up. Servers can be hacked, making private information available to anyone if it is leaked into the public domain. And what if sites like Facebook shut down? Unlikely as it might seem, anything is possible. What happens to your private data then?"
And what about those ads that show up on the side of your Facebook feed. How do they know those ads apply to you? They have access to what you post about, if you tweet about football, an ad about football pops up on the ad feed along side your time line. This is how they try to appeal to you. So in reality we can say that no matter how private we think our information is, there is clear evidence that our information isn't really as private as we think.
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Digital Warfare
A growing threat to this nation is digital warfare, and the concern is if our nation is ready to handle it. In a recent article put out by Time Magazine, Defense Secretary Panetta issued a nationwide warning that something could be brewing in the near future. He is sounding the alarm to put everyone on notice.
“The whole point of this is that we simply don’t just sit back and wait for a goddamn crisis to happen,” Panetta told Time. “In this country we tend to do that, and that’s a concern.”
Could defense Secretary Panetta be over reacting, well maybe that is your own opinion? To me it seems like he is sending out a legitimate warning about this issue. With the world the way it is today some specialist are referring to it as a possible “Cyber Pearl Harbor”. Which I believe is credible. Our defenses on our shorelines and borders are extremely strong but are our defenses over the internet as strong. Could we possibly defend ourselves against a nationwide cyber-attack?
I don’t think this nation is ready to defend against such attack. We have so much access to the internet it is so hard for the government to monitor it all at the same time. The threat could be something as simple as a mass email that strikes at one time and no one could possibly predict when that will hit the main stream web. And what about hackers…. Now that’s a whole other topic on its own. But the truth is we, as a nation, are not ready for such attacks.
Look at it, the government is currently hiring hackers to help them out, and the secret is most of these hackers have hacked into the governments system before. The government is using them with the philosophy: If you can’t stop them hire them to help defend against others.
Is our nation truly prepared for a cyber-attack? I can only hope so but with more and more four-year-olds running around with iPhone and tablets, we can only wonder because we put the internet right in the palm of their hands. And I do not believe they will be able to tell if a pop-up isn’t a hacker trying to worm their way into their system.
Monday, October 22, 2012
The Digital Divide
Many ask what the Digital Divide may mean, In the terms of the mass media it describes the fact that the world can be divided into people who do and people who don't have access to - and the capability to use - modern information technology, such as the telephone, television, or the Internet. Every day we are trying to close this gap by providing access and by also allowing easier access to these technologies.
In an article published by the South Jersey Journal in early July of this year it tells a story of a man named Navarrow Wright who is trying step by step to reduce the digital divide. His story is about a term he coined in a broadcast that aired on CNN last fall called “Black in America: The New Promised Land - Silicon Valley”. He is quoted saying, “When the term ‘closing the digital divide’ was first introduced, it was all about equal access to the Internet,” said Wright. “We’ve made great strides and have significantly closed the gap, but to me it’s not only about equal access to the Internet, it’s about equal access to opportunities for entrepreneurship and employment in the field of technology.”
I agree with what Wright is saying. The problem with this divide is that many children who are in school are receiving homework assignments that involve the computer and access to the Internet. Also Florida has an option to take classes online for high school students for free called Florida Virtual School. These classes transfer right over to the current High School the child is enrolled in. It is an amazing tool to help kids raise their GPA or even take classes on their own time.
But the biggest problem with this is access.... There are plenty of children who attend public high schools who come from a low-income family, and maybe even a family who can't afford a computer let alone the actual Internet service fees. So what kind of advantage do these children have. Well if they have the ACCESS then they are at a great advantage but if they don't then they are basically behind the other students.
These types of families are huge players in whether they can obtain the access. Yes anyone can get up and use the public libraries as a source to help but how many computers are there compared to how many students need the access. And plus most public libraries have access codes on their computers to begin with and the computers might not even be available to use at that time.
Florida Virtual School is a huge asset to the high school era, but is it a fair enough program, or does the digital divide hinder us all from receiving equal opportunity.
In an article published by the South Jersey Journal in early July of this year it tells a story of a man named Navarrow Wright who is trying step by step to reduce the digital divide. His story is about a term he coined in a broadcast that aired on CNN last fall called “Black in America: The New Promised Land - Silicon Valley”. He is quoted saying, “When the term ‘closing the digital divide’ was first introduced, it was all about equal access to the Internet,” said Wright. “We’ve made great strides and have significantly closed the gap, but to me it’s not only about equal access to the Internet, it’s about equal access to opportunities for entrepreneurship and employment in the field of technology.”
I agree with what Wright is saying. The problem with this divide is that many children who are in school are receiving homework assignments that involve the computer and access to the Internet. Also Florida has an option to take classes online for high school students for free called Florida Virtual School. These classes transfer right over to the current High School the child is enrolled in. It is an amazing tool to help kids raise their GPA or even take classes on their own time.
But the biggest problem with this is access.... There are plenty of children who attend public high schools who come from a low-income family, and maybe even a family who can't afford a computer let alone the actual Internet service fees. So what kind of advantage do these children have. Well if they have the ACCESS then they are at a great advantage but if they don't then they are basically behind the other students.
These types of families are huge players in whether they can obtain the access. Yes anyone can get up and use the public libraries as a source to help but how many computers are there compared to how many students need the access. And plus most public libraries have access codes on their computers to begin with and the computers might not even be available to use at that time.
Florida Virtual School is a huge asset to the high school era, but is it a fair enough program, or does the digital divide hinder us all from receiving equal opportunity.
Monday, October 15, 2012
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