NEW BLOG UPDATE!

Loyal Readers,

To every season their is a purpose. The purpose of this blog was orginally to simply post homework assignments in a season of my life that was purely educational, but it has reached individuals who have truly appreciated my writing. I am ever so grateful for that! If you are interested in continuing to follow me I am putting this blog to rest and starting a new one. The new one will not be solely dedicated to one topic, but a variety of topics. I will take contributions (articles, photos etc) and I will share my perspective on the world with everyone. So if this interests you go to http://amazinglifeofcaroline.wordpress.com.

Peace and Blessings Y’all! Thanks!

Caroline

HW #13 So CONFUSED

Blockly was very confusing to me I am not going to lie, I wanted to just give up at level one because the aesthetics of it are awful and I am a very visual person, and I found it very visually bland. It was boring I will be honest I do not plan on returning to it ever again, not voluntarily at least.

#12 The Wayback Machine

I am a fitness enthusiast so one of my favorite website is fitnessmagazine.com. I put it in the wayback machine and surprisingly discovered that it dates back all the way to 1999 which i did not expect. The lay out is much simpler, and not as busy which is partially due to the fact that the internet hadn’t developed to the extent that it has now and partially for aesthetic I believe. It is simple, easy to read, and understand.

http://web.archive.org/web/20000815073621/http://www.fitnessmagazine.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Parents/PM.woa/-/FitnessPage.wo

HW #11 Word Cloud

This is my word cloud. It is based upon the idea of the gettysburg address, presidents, and other american based themes.

HW #10 Powerpoint slides

These are my three pp slides on a moment in history, the assassination of president John F. Kennedy.

HW #9

So I created two charts having to do with my life. The first is the amount of time I spent online on a weekend day, and the other is the amount of healthy versus unhealthy food I ate on a holiday weekend both equally unhealthy, they are presented here.

HW # 7 & 8 My Thoughts On Last Weeks Assigned Research of Google Maps

Google maps is an extremely useful and beneficial way to create any form of chart or map. It is easy to manipulate, it is good for those who are not technilogically savvy and just downright simple. It is always good to keep things as simple as possible and I believe that they kept this in mind when they designed this tool. Below is a map of presidents and their homestates presented on a google map.

This chart was extremely easy to create and took a very short amount of time. It was no struggle whatsoever compared to other software such as Excel, and took me about 15 minutes including the time it took to gather the information. Online tools such as these are incredibly useful due to the fact that they are free, and open  to the public. You need not worry about any kind of a monthly subscription or fee to use it. It is simply at your fingertips at a moments notice. Things such as Google Maps are what is bringing us into a new age of sharing. Yes, we already have our cell phones and the ability to share photos, but things such as these give us the capability to share large amounts of data in very easy ways. We can access our documents, presentations, and maps from any computer. These tools are what is bringing us into a place where before when all we had was a wall phone, would have made us uncomfortable. Anyone can access our thoughts on a document, our feelings in photography or our latest big news simply by accessing their computer. Yes, we already had similar abilities before, but the more software like this is developed the faster we are able to share what we have to say to  the world.

https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=206260294049496021197.0004d8c2694c2bd542ed9&msa=0&ll=41.640078,-93.955078&spn=33.301,69.960937

HW #6 Security procedures

My security practices for my computer are not what they should be I have a password to my laptop, but I rarely log out leaving it rather pointless to even have a password. I have a password for my Mason email which is my primary email account but that username and password is in the memory therefore anyone who logs onto my homepage can access my email yet again making it rather pointless to even pretend that I have any sort of “security” for my laptop. This may spawn from the fact that I have a horrible time remembering passwords, or that my family has never really had a tendancy to hide things from one another and have freely allowed each other to share computers therefore we leave them open with easy access for anyone who needs it. It also may come from the fact that I see no point in having a password because I feel as if, in that case that my laptop were stolen there is about a 10% chance of ever getting it back so I see no point in pissing the theif off even more. If they had the guts to lift a laptop (which I in NO WAY CONDONE.) they might as well get it’s full worth out of it because obviously they are either desperate or pathetic. Either way I’m not seeing my laptop anytime soon.

I do have a “Find My Mac” app on my phone and computer, meaning I can send a command to either my phone or laptop that makes an alarm go off on the computer, if the thief is attempting to use it. It will play a loud alarm, and you cannot turn it off unless you have the password. This could make a thief hesitate I suppose and possibly simply leave the laptop either where they found it or wherever the ended up trying to use it, but I feel as if this would do nothing to a person who knows the ins and outs of running and using a mac. A good hacker is a good hacker in the end, and no “app” or setting is going to stop them from getting a couple hundred for your mac at the local pawn shop if they can clean it up well enough.

Homework #5

I chose Teachers Pay Teachers, and although it seems to be legal from all aspects of the idea I find it to be lazy. I have taken education courses and learned about lesson planning and how to create an effective lesson plan. Taking my experiance into consideration I find this website to be  unethical, in that the teachers are buying lesson plans to teach children, to do their homework and learn when they are not even going to the trouble of creating the lesson plan themselves. They are trying to instill in the children a standard that they themselves are not even following. Their copyright section seems to be quite intent upon not infringing upon anyones property whether physical or intellectual, they state that they “respect the intellectual property rights of others, and [they] ask that [their] users do the same.” Also the teachers who create the lesson plans on here, cater towards their students so the use of these “shared” lesson plans will not work for every classroom and in this way cheats the student out of a good education and the government out of the money that they pay the teachers to do just that, teach. A teacher in Illinois that creates a lesson plan for her classroom is not considering the class that she has never met and in Southern California whose teacher buys her lesson plan. Lesson plans are created for a certain classroom. This is not to say that you cannot alter a lesson plan but if that is your intention than why not just create your own lesson plan in the first place? The schools pay teachers to create their own lesson plans, so I believe it is unethical for schools to allow teachers to shirk their work and get off by just downloading a lesson plan from someone who is not familiar with the children in their classroom.

HW 4

1. Whois.com Search
Registrant:
A&E Television Networks, LLC
Domain Admin
235 E 45th St
New York, NY 10017-3305
US
Email: @internationaladmin.com
Registrar Name….: CORPORATE DOMAINS, INC.
Registrar Whois…: whois.corporatedomains.com
Registrar Homepage: www.cscprotectsbrands.com
Domain Name: historychannel.com
Created on…………..: Thu, Oct 05, 1995
Expires on…………..: Fri, Oct 04, 2013
Record last updated on..: Mon, May 28, 2012
Administrative Contact:
A&E Television Networks, LLC
Domain Admin
235 E 45th St
New York, NY 10017-3305
US
Phone: +1.2124247000
Email: @internationaladmin.com
Technical Contact:
A&E Television Networks, LLC
Domain Tech
250 Harbor Drive
Stamford, CT 06902
US
Phone: +1.2122101400
Email: @internationaladmin.com
DNS Servers:
pdns6.ultradns.co.uk
pdns4.ultradns.org
pdns3.ultradns.org
pdns5.ultradns.info
pdns1.ultradns.net
pdns2.ultradns.net
http://www.whois.com/whois/historychannel.com

2. Wikipedia Sources excercise

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rankin_(abolitionist)

The sources provided for the John Rankin page on wikipedia are patially accurate and partially non-existant. Three of the pages provided out of the seven are not useful whatsoever. Two of them come up as “page not found” and one of them is a website called Findagrave.com. The only actual book referanced is a good source I have found it useful in my own personal research when necessary for a research assignment, but it is not based on research purely about the life of John Rankin. Factual information is provided, but the book is is about multiple abolitionists and not just John Rankin.

3. Jane Browning’s Research

I have in previous history classes been showed this same story, of the girl who created a completely fake history project. So it was not easy for me to critically look at her approach, but it seems as if she approached it very well due to the fact that she obviously tricked some well-versed professors into believeing that she was truly intent on discovering the origins of the last true pirate. She researched at the library first, then revisited the site, spoke with locals on the subject “came across/was given” a primary source and used that as her main source of information due to the fact that it was Edward Owen’s handwritten last will and testament.