Week 14-Using Games for Teaching and Learning

Educational gaming has been something that has been ingrained in many of our lives since elementary school. Now educational gaming has taken new forms with the release of the Wii gaming system as well as the playstaion game series. What we discussed in class was second life. Second life is a virtual reality where you can create a avatar and explore places like Italy and Shakespearean England. They said programs like this help children visualize the things they learn and bring textbooks to life.

The way things like Second Life could be used in public relations is being able to visualize a distant local for event planning purposes. Also building structures or mapping out an event to get a general gist fo what the set up is going to look like.

Week 13- Distance Education and Virtual Schooling

In class we spoke about distance education and virtual schooling. Online resources are definitely a fundamental portion of my college education. In discussion we spoke about the many online classes that are offered at the University of Florida and programs such as the University of Florida Masters of Business program that is offered totally online. We also discussed the legitimacy of online degrees and what profession would an online degree would be appropriate. We also reviewed what the future of online education would be in primary education as well as secondary education and whether it helps or hurts a child. We agreed that in some situation such a medical injury or may be in early childhood online education could replace the traditional classroom. Although, the class generally ha the consensus children need to experience peer-to-peer interaction in the classroom.

I don't have much use for online education. If I were to pursue a graduate degree I would want to participate in an online program so I could work. Thoguh, as ar as public relations and law an online education isn't very suitable.

Week 12- Professional Web Presence

This week's module focused on creating a professional web presence. When employers search your name it is important you are aware of what comes up and search results and have some form of control. In particular, we used google sites to creat our web presence. Google sites is an easy way of creating of web page previously I have used dreamweaver to create a website and it has proved to be a very tedious process. With google sites everything is done for you, all you have to do is add the context. We learned that sites such as these are an easy to create a professional web presence that allows you to have total control of its content.

A way a professional web presence can be used for my future career plans is for my law school application process. I can leave this website up for the potential professors to use as a resource for my letter of recommendations. It also will give my professors a more well rounded feel for who I am.

Online Social Networking Tools and Public Relations

The above is an example of online social networking tools that are pivotal to public relations professionals. Online social networking tools are a new wave in public relations that young people like myself are being recruited into public relations firms to act as an expert, These tools are ingrained in every young person's life, so it is definitely a career edge that recent college graduates have.

Week 11- Open Source Software

This module focused on open source software. Open source software is FREE software that is available and able to be edited in a forum fashion. Proprietorial software is licensed software that is usually purchased from a manufacturer, such as Microsoft office and adobe software. What open source does is offer free alternative to these often expensive software programs. For example, gimp is the open source alternative to photoshop. Audacity is the open source alternative to apple garage band. What is better about open source software is that upgrades are infinite because people can post software and allow others to improve it. The only draw back are the potential viruses that can result from the software.

For my career open source software can be beneficial currently for my class I have to work a lot with photoshop right now all I can afford is to use the software trials. Software like gimp does the same thing and is totally free. Although,open source might now be satisfactory for my professional work because if everyone has photshop no one else can manipulate or alter my work.