Task 1b - Further Thoughts

Many people will admit to being 'addicted' to Facebook, and to me this is quite possibly a bad thing - I find myself a lot of the time not getting things done as I get side tracked with trying to keep up to date with the world of Facebook.  As a teacher I tend not to have pupils as my 'friends' as I want to keep the image they have of me professional.  A worrying thought was when a young child I teach aged 7/8 requested me as a friend on Facebook.  At that age I know children learn how to use computers but having a Facebook account  at an early age is wrong.  How scary is it to think the children can be speaking to strangers? People making 'fake' profiles, bullying, arranging house parties when parents are away -  the list is endless.  Facebook should have an age limit, and if it does it obviously doesn't work as people can just type any date of birth in to create an account.


I can only ever praise YouTube, but when Alan mentioned  about looking at both sides - it made me think.. Yes there are things we don't think about - like how children could come across inappropriate videos containing violence or explicit content.  There is the chance of copyright, which everyone risks when they upload a video to YouTube. 


Google docs are a great way to have your documents online but if you do not want your work to be seen by others then it should be set to private as anyone can read the content otherwise.  I discovered another great use for Google Docs today! A friend of mine brought round her USB stick to show me a PowerPoint Presentation she had made, however, I don't have the program she used and it would not open on my computer.  I had the idea of trying to open it in Google Docs and it worked perfectly! My friend was very impressed as she had never heard of Google Docs before and said she will probably use this tool in the future!


BitTorrent (file sharing) for music, videos etc.. can be very beneficial, however it can also cause harm to your computer by spreading viruses.  BitTorrent is used at your own risk as any file downloaded could contain a virus.  BitTorrent or other file sharing sites are causing sales to drop in shops or online which sell dvds and cds... 



Starting on the BAPP course and needing a lot of websites and pages at an easy click made my Google Chrome Bookmarks multiply and Delicious seems to be the perfect solution.  There I will be able to store all things I need for Bapp.  By default the bookmarks are public and so it must be changed if people do not want their bookmarks available for anyone to see.  Personally I will use delicious for my own use as my bookmarks are overloaded on Chrome.  I think it is a good idea to put all bookmarks related to one subject (BAPP!) in one easy click on delicious rather than mixed with other bookmarks which have no relation.

Blogs like other Web 2.0 tools can be changed from public to private, and I found it strange when I clicked 'next blog' the other day and found it was someone's totally random post who had nothing to do with BAPP?  I was expecting somebody's Blog I follow and was shocked when it wasn't.  I know Blogs are for anyone to see unless made private but found it strange to think that anyone can stumble across my Blog.  It probably sounds silly having thought only BAPP people could view it!

Something that worries me about flickr is that if like i said I upload photos onto the site to free space on my computer - how do I know if the site will ever shut down and the photos will be gone? Is this a possible Scenario? I have created an account and made it public - purely for the fact that I can link it to my blog and let BAPP students view them - although having photos public means anyone can see them and in normal circumstances (like when adding photos to Facebook) I would only allow friends to view them.

Web 2.0 tools are something that most people use.  There are many pros and cons for each tool but I think the pros out-way the cons, that is why the tools are still in use and so popular.  I can't imagine what the world would be without web 2.0 tools - I am just so used to using them at the click of a finger - how easy is that! But really is this making us lazy like others have said...I think so and with technology continuing to grow it's quite scary to think what's next?