Mark Zuckerburg recently said that, “Privacy is no longer a social norm”, although I do agree that more and more private information is being shared publically online.  However, some people still want to stay private online and not let the world see every detail about them. Information is easier than ever to find online, you can search a person on Facebook or even by doing a simple Google search before meeting, and find things out about them before meeting them in person. You can’t do that with everyone of course, because some people don’t have an online presence or they have one but don’t share their information publicly.

 

Personally, I do post a fair amount of information publically through my blog and Twitter. However, there are still a lot of things, especially on Facebook , that I keep private so only friends and family can see it.  I do post a lot of photos on Flickr and many are public but, any pictures that are personal, I keep private. The problem with Facebook is that they change the site so often, and each time they change the site, the privacy settings seem to get messed up even when the update has nothing to do with privacy.  It is because of this, I check my privacy settings regularly, and especially after Facebook makes a change just to be safe, because unlike my Twitter, which is totally public, my Facebook is mostly private.

 

Google Plus, which is one of the newest social networks, has what I think is the best system of privacy controls.  With Google Plus, you put friends into “Circles” such as Family, Co-Workers, etc., and then as you post content, you can choose which circles you want to share each with, or if you want to share publicly.  These granular controls allow you to select which groups of people get to see what content. Facebook, has since duplicated some of these settings but, not quite as effectively.

 

Although more content is being shared each day online, many people, myself included, don’t want to live totally publically, and would like to keep some information private.  Although Mr. Zuckerberg may think privacy is no longer a social norm, possibly because it would greatly benefit him and his business, people still want some privacy. Privacy controls will become even more important for anyone posting information online. Knowledge of effectively using these privacy controls will become more and more important as more information is posted online. This means that everyone, should know how to utilize the privacy settings to the fullest to make sure they aren’t over sharing personal information and regret it later.

Although schools across the country and the world are investing millions of dollars into technology in the classroom, according the The New York Times article we read, the additional technology does not make a major difference in Standardized Test scores. Although I am a major advocate for technology, and using it in all aspects of life, my experience with technology in the classroom, or at least  the technology that was provided by the school, was not very effective.

 

In my High School we were a part of the “Classrooms of the Future” program, which provided certain classes technology for their classrooms to further enrich the students’ education.  These rooms had laptops for each student, SmartBoards, projectors, and some other equipment that I don’t honestly remember because we barely used it. On paper, it sounds great, it lets students use the technology to better learn the course material, but in practice it didn’t seem to work that well. First of all, the computers were very slow and many times, had issues with logging in. Although the teachers were trained on using the additional technology for their course material, they didn’t have the technical skills to troubleshoot the technical issues that often occurred. This required a technical support person to be called down to the class and figure out the problem, wasting a lot of class time.   The implementation was not well done which made the technology that was meant to enrich the students’ education; they are unhelpful due to many technical issues. Many times the technology was used a scarcely throughout the semester, and sat unused many times. This was not an effective way to implement technology in a classroom from a technical standpoint, not to mention how the students were using the computers which many times, was not for educational purposes.

 

Personally, I use an iPad in all my classes for note taking which works great for me! Previously, I used a netbook, which is a small, portable laptop that did the job but, since it ran a full version of Windows XP, it was very slow and ineffective. I realized that I didn’t need a full desktop operating system for a computer that I use to just take notes, surf the web and check e-mail on, the latter two, not in class of course, although I do use my devices to look things up for class. I tried to use some lightweight Linux operating systems before finally selling my netbook and buying a like-new use iPad. It works great for notetaking, even with just an on-screen touch-based keyboard; it also takes a lot less time and effort to administrate.  I have also noticed that because the iPad was much more compact, I can use it to study my notes, instead of doing what I did previously which was printing out the notes and using a lot of paper as well as printer ink. Another benefit of using my iPad is that I can go paperless, of course with the addition of a document scanner and an app called GoodReader, which syncs files from Dropbox on my computer to my iPad for offline use. Now, instead of having physical folders for all my classes, I just use my iPad for all my papers. I still keep graded papers, but now I have a whole lot less paper in my life, which makes life much easier with my iPad. I believe that the reason this works well is because it’s very simple and can be easily administered. Since I started using an iPad, I have been doing better in my classes and have used a lot less paper.

 

Technology in the classroom can be very useful as long as it is well implemented on a technical side and that students are kept on task, as in not using them for Facebook and surfing for non-academic purposes. Technology in the classroom opens students up to a whole world of information that is hard to access without using technology. Technology will play a larger and larger part in education as it further develops and is better implemented in the classroom. Who knows, someday, maybe in 100 years or so, school could be all online!

A lot has changed in the corporate culture of Google since Stanford Graduate students, Larry Page and Surgey Brin, founded it in the late 90’s. I listened to the podcast of “Confessions of a Google Employee” which was an interview with a early Google Employee, Doug Edwards, who was the Director of Consumer Marketing and Brand Management. Edwards was also employee number fifty-nine meaning he was at Google in its infancy before it was a search giant and a subject of many major controversies.

 

When Edwards was an employee at Google, Google came up with their guiding principle, “Don’t be Evil”, which Google is now frequently criticized for violating with their many acquisitions and use of users’ information. Back then, Google was not as “corporate”, they were a search engine that had fun with that,  spawning things like the special Google logos for holidays and a notoriously fun working environment. They were also almost solely focused on their search engine and their search algorithm, while now, they have many different projects that all tie back in one-way or another to search. They were also working to become the top search engine and de-throne the current top engine of the time, Yahoo!

 

Since Edwards left, there has been many controversies over Google’s use of users’ personal information and how they use it and sell it to advertisers to generate immense amounts of money. Google has been the center of many privacy controversies ever since it grew into a more corporate entity, while when Edwards was there, it was much more of a start-up and intended to be more altruistic and in fact didn’t make a profit until five years after it’s founding.

 

Unlike their early days, Google is now the top search engine in the world, and because of that, they have collected a lot of personal information that is incredibly valuable for advertisers to target ads specifically for each individual user. But as I previously mentioned, users have protested the usage of personal information for advertisements. One such example of this, mentioned in the interview is Gmail, many users protested that Google was reading the emails, obviously not Google employees actually reading each emails and deciding what ads they will see, but using the search spiders that they use to find new websites, to search the messages for keywords and using them to target appropriate ads. This is a concern that causes many privacy-cautious people to not use Gmail, but at the same time many email providers do the same thing. Personally, this doesn’t stop me from using Gmail, because I love the powerful feature set I get from Gmail that I couldn’t get from other e-mail providers and although they are skimming my email for ads, I figure that I at least know what they are doing, while I have less of an idea about the other email providers who have not been as much in the public eye.

 

Google has changed a lot since it was founded. It started out as an innovative new search company and has now really evolved in to a large information corporation. Google is now a huge player in the most valuable commodity on the Internet, user information and has capitalized on the information in many innovative ways that many of their competitors are not. Despite being the center of these many controversies, Google sites remain extremely popular and as a result profitable.  People may often question Google’s practices and if they are still following their “Don’t Be Evil” rule but, Google remains the most popular website on the internet.