Blogger is a small service owned by google. The focus of this site is to enable people of all ages and races to share their voice over the internet and to "organize" World information from a personal perspective. http://www.blogger.com/features, this link will show you features offered by Blogger, including a free blog account, personal templates, adding photos and videos to posts, along with group blogging and building your own blog community created by following others blogs.
There are other sites similar to Blogger.com below.
Blogflux - http://topsites.blogflux.com/
BlogCatalog - http://www.blogcatalog.com/
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Tutorial Two: Digital Camera use and application
"A new technology is rarely superior to an old one in every feature"
In relation to digital camera technology I would have to disagree with the statement above. With a digital camera you are able to take as many photos as your card can hold, this could be hundreds depending on the size of your card. This is no extra cost, and you can pick and chose ones to delete or print off. Unlike the old film cameras where you would have to buy a film that would hold approx 25 images and would pay to get them all developed even if the pictures were a little blurred and a finger was blocking the real image.
Another plus to digital cameras is that you can instantly upload images to your home computer to view them or even manipulate the image on such programs as Photoshop. From here you can distribute them via email, Facebook, Bebo and Flikr to friends and family in a matter of minutes.
There is debate on whether the old film cameras take better images than a digital camera, however this all comes down to the quality of your camera.
Digital images can be stored, transferred and manipulated using other communication technology. On sites such as Facebook, Bebo, Twitter and Flikr you can store images in online albums that you can access on the internet in any location around the world. Some cell phones have cameras in them where you can take a decent quality image and send it to another cell phone or computer through bluetooth which costs nothing.
Digital cameras also offer digital and optical zoom. Optical zoom works like a zoom lens on a film camera. The lens changes focal length and magnification as it is zoomed. Image quality stays high within the zoom range. Digital zoom is when the picture is simply cropped and then enlarges that cropped portion.
The mega pixels of your camera can determine the quality of the image when using the digital zoom especially. Pixels are small squares of colour that make up the image.
Along with most things, there follows ethical issues. Digital cameras can cost a lot of money especially if you are wanting one that takes a high quality image. Not everyone can keep up with the forever advancing technologies and therefore don't and can get left behind with the old technologies that slowly get taken off the market, eg VCR players.
Another ethical issue is privacy. By uploading images to internet communication sites, anyone can access these images even after you have deleted them from your album.
Occupational Therapists can use digital imaging for some assessments. For example if a house is needing modifications we can take a picture of that space and send it through to places like Enable NZ to look at for funding.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Tutorial One: Information Technology and Ethical Issues
Information technology (IT) or Information Communications Technology is defined by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), as being the study, design, development, implementation, support or management of computer-based information systems. These most commonly being software applications and computer hardware that convert, store and protect, transmit and retrieve information.
While most of us are a custom to using such things stated above, some of us aren't and as we come into an age where computers and the like are used more often it is important to familiarise ourselves with the ethical issues that arise.
Privacy is a major one for me. IT is continually growing and enhancing in communication, surveillance, computation, storage and retrieval. The information I share about me and my associations on internet sites such as facebook or bebo can be accessed by thousands of people all over the world if you know where to look. Although I set my profile to private I can google my name and my picture or pictures I have uploaded can appear in google images it even gives my birth date and place of origin. So what safeguard do we have? What can we keep to ourselves and /or close friends and not be forced to reveal to others? For example the phenomenon that came to light not too long ago with a close friend of mine who received an email from an apparent friend, however the email was slightly different and the information it stated seemed odd. It stated that she was in a foreign country and had gotten into some trouble. She needed $10,000 immediately and if my friend could help with this. Luckily we knew better and decided to ignore the email after talking to our friend and hearing about similar identity theft on 20/20.
Secondly we have accuracy. How do we know the information we read over the internet, through emails, websites, on our cell phones etc, is factual? Misinformation has a way of fouling things in peoples’ lives. We can access and produce information about people and their activities so easily making exposure to issues of inaccuracy increasingly common. For example the copious amounts of information shared daily on celebrities, information on such websites as Wikipedia where anyone can write what they think is, on anything they want giving its viewers inaccurate information.
Thirdly is access. Access to information is increasingly being distributed through computers, televisions, phones, radios etc, rather than through paper resources like books. However to access this information you need to have access to information technologies. This can cause issues in social economics as not all people have the money to keep up with the new release of information technologies, so are they missing out on information the higher economic class has access to?
While most of us are a custom to using such things stated above, some of us aren't and as we come into an age where computers and the like are used more often it is important to familiarise ourselves with the ethical issues that arise.
Privacy is a major one for me. IT is continually growing and enhancing in communication, surveillance, computation, storage and retrieval. The information I share about me and my associations on internet sites such as facebook or bebo can be accessed by thousands of people all over the world if you know where to look. Although I set my profile to private I can google my name and my picture or pictures I have uploaded can appear in google images it even gives my birth date and place of origin. So what safeguard do we have? What can we keep to ourselves and /or close friends and not be forced to reveal to others? For example the phenomenon that came to light not too long ago with a close friend of mine who received an email from an apparent friend, however the email was slightly different and the information it stated seemed odd. It stated that she was in a foreign country and had gotten into some trouble. She needed $10,000 immediately and if my friend could help with this. Luckily we knew better and decided to ignore the email after talking to our friend and hearing about similar identity theft on 20/20.
Secondly we have accuracy. How do we know the information we read over the internet, through emails, websites, on our cell phones etc, is factual? Misinformation has a way of fouling things in peoples’ lives. We can access and produce information about people and their activities so easily making exposure to issues of inaccuracy increasingly common. For example the copious amounts of information shared daily on celebrities, information on such websites as Wikipedia where anyone can write what they think is, on anything they want giving its viewers inaccurate information.
Thirdly is access. Access to information is increasingly being distributed through computers, televisions, phones, radios etc, rather than through paper resources like books. However to access this information you need to have access to information technologies. This can cause issues in social economics as not all people have the money to keep up with the new release of information technologies, so are they missing out on information the higher economic class has access to?
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