Chad as a project

For me, college has been a (very) long, ongoing,  "project". As I am a so-called non-traditional student, my goals and needs as a student may be somewhat different than others. Before transferring to Edgewood I spent a lot of time bouncing between programs trying to find pretty much anything I could tolerate not relating to computers, only to realize a long way down the road that computers and technology were my passion and interest. 

So, for now my goals include finding a niche that I enjoy. Developing my skills and knowledge in that niche. Networking with other students and professionals in the field in order to secure internships, learn more about the industry, and figure out a potential career path. Presently I am focusing heavily on finding an internship and figuring out what I am most interested in. 

As far as a timeline goes, I am currently in my 2nd year at Edgewood but I am technically a Junior. My hope is that I will have completed the first of at least 2 internships by the end of this year (2014), and have found a niche to focus on for the future. 

I am planning on graduating in May of 2016, but earlier if possible. As mentioned before, I hope to complete at least 2 internships before then or order to further my experience and skill sets. My goals after graduation would be to find full-time employment in the field and apply to graduate school for library and information science. 

My long-term goal is to work in an academic library as a library technologist, focusing on library websites, integrating technology into the library system, and developing technology related curriculum. 

Reflective Blog #7

"Should SMS be accepted as a new language and taught in schools?"

This blog will likely be a bit more concise than the others. In short, my answer is; no, it should not. 

SMS is not a different language. It is short hand. And at that, it is highly personalized. Very few people have the same way of texting. Different age groups have different styles. Different cultures have different styles. Different cliques have their own words and specialized emoticons. There is just no way to classify this as a real language.

Beyond this, it is also very trend oriented. Every few years it seems to change. Different programs, different hardware, different media influences, etc.

At some point SMS will no longer be a popular mode of communication and we will move on. And some time later that mode of communication will become outdated and something else will take over. 

So, no, I do not think that SMS should be taught in schools or considered a language. 

Reflective Blog #6

 "To what extent do relationships that are formed online and remain virtual differ from ones that are formed as a result of meeting in person?"

This is a very interesting question and one that I have a lot of experience with. The phenomenon of "internet friends" is in no way a new concept, and I would even go so far as to say it is one that is fading away. 

10+ years ago, well before "web 2.0" was a thing, the internet was a much more mysterious and experimental place. People were using web forums, online chat rooms, gaming, using IRC to chat, share files, and share a lot of not-quite-legal information with one-another, and online dating was still in development. The fact that people could connect with someone across the globe and talk about something they had in common was still exciting and new to many people. That glow, I fear, has faded. Today the ability to communicate with anyone, anywhere, any time is pretty much a given. Social media is the dominant way that we communicate with one another, and most of those people are within our circle of friends. 

This is not to say that people aren't meeting others online anymore. Forums are still active, online dating is huge, and chat rooms still exist. From my experience, however, it is just not the same. 

That being said, I feel that for many people "online friends" and "real life friends" are different for everyone. There are groups of people out there who consider their online friends to be true friends. Taking World of Warcraft as an example, the guilds people create often have very tight bonds and these people sometimes share every detail of their lives with one another. They become very close and in many ways may even be closer than their "real life friends". Some, however, form relationships with people in chat rooms and forums that are strictly professional, or just people that they chat with to have fun and may never think about them otherwise. 

In my own life, I have met many people online who later became my real life friends. I even met girls I dated through the internet when I was younger. Meeting someone through the internet was exciting because it meant you could talk to someone who lived an hour away that you may otherwise never meet in person and then connect in real life. One of my first girlfriends (a girl who lived 45 minutes from me) was met this way, and we still talk to this day even though she now lives across the country. 

I also have had a number of friendships that were maintained solely online through various message boards, games, and things of this nature. I never made that deep connection with these people like some do - it was always just chatting about whatever hobby or game we were interested in. I think that this type of friendship is pretty interesting because it is almost like a specialized friendship or even a business partnership. You serve a mutually beneficial, and quite specific, purpose to one another and that is what maintains your relationship. 

Ultimately I think what I said in the beginning - that this is different for everyone - is the real answer. It is all about how you think about people and how much you let them into your life. Either way, though, it is a very interesting topic and there are surely a million different opinions and likely a ton of research done on it. 

Network Tour

1. Describe, briefly, the overall network design strategy at Edgewood
2. What approach has been used when determining the specific technologies needed to expand the network to match the needs of the organization?
3. What types of technologies have been utilized to integrate the various facilities at Edgewood? 

4. Based on Joe's talk, what types of skills do you think are needed in order to work in the networking area of IT?

1. Joe talked about redundancy and fail safes a lot. He stressed how important it was to make sure the network was always up and if something did happen, the fact that they implemented systems to switch over the network traffic would save them. He also discussed how important their backup system was and the fact that it was updated every night and they even trade tapes between campuses to make sure there is a backup in case of a disaster.

2. It seems that it has all been an upgrade as you go kind of deal. As they have increased demand, they add capacity and work from there He mentioned they just upgraded their connection and are already maxing it out. It seems they are limited by budget, space, and time.

3. Standard cable Ethernet, fiber, and WiFi are all used throughout the campuses. Buildings and classrooms are hard wired, but the network is extended to mobile users through WiFi hotspots all over campus. Ot

4. It is obvious a deep knowledge of hardware, cabling, and the technology available is extremely important. Understanding basic networking theory, problem solving, patience, and solid pc troubleshooting skills are also likely needed. It would also seem that things like video surveillance and and understanding of telephone systems is important. A wide skill set is likely your best bet.

Reflective Blog #5

"Describe how using social networking technologies changes how you communicate with your family and friends."

The ways that social networking has impacted how I communicate with friends is HUGE. There are times where I go weeks or even months without physically talking to friends, yet we will message on Facebook regularly to keep up. The convenience factor is the key here. 

Currently I am planning my 30th birthday party and a scooter rally on Facebook, as well as tracking my attendance at around 10 other events in the next few months. This makes it so I can contact everyone that is going, send reminders, get reminders myself, and search for other events too. 

As far as family goes - I try to avoid them online as much as possible. I have a few family members as friends but I try to keep in touch with them via phone or in person. It is nice, however, to see pictures of my cousins and other family members I don't get to see often.

I feel that the move towards social media and how ingrained in our society it has become is fairly inevitable. I have been a member of various incarnations of social media for nearly 15 years now, and have always known it would be huge. First it was personal home pages, then it was blogs, then it was your Myspace page, now it is Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and many more that are used every day. 

Reflective Blog #4

"Consider the impact of personal networking devices, in terms of the environment. What do you think are the biggest areas of immediate impact? How about long term impact?"

This is an area I am not hugely familiar with. I think, however, it is easy to see a few potential positives as well as some negatives associated with the environmental impact.

Let's start with the positives -

1. Less wired infrastructure could lead to less large-scale development, construction, and destruction of natural areas.

2. All-in-one digital devices allow access to many things we used to buy individually. Things like newspapers, magazines, books, cameras, video cameras, movies, cds, audio recorders, pdas, etc. are all being combined into singular wireless devices that allow access to most forms of media.

Now, some negatives -

1. Our need as a society to have the newest, fastest, devices often leads to cycling through technology well before it's usefulness has expired. This leads to more production and more waste. Both of which demand natural resources and contribute to pollution.

2. Unknown long-term health impact of large-scale wireless networks and personal devices. Who knows what these wireless signals could end up doing to us and natural over the next 100 years. Maybe nothing, but maybe we will see a huge epidemic of cancer and birth defects.

3. The need to replace old wired infrastructure with wireless infrastructure in buildings will create a large amount of waste when we need to dispose of mountains of old cables and outdated hardware.

4. Increased usage of these services creates more demand for more bandwidth, server space, and more meaning there will be more electricity used, more centers built, and a more impact on the environment. This could potentially be negated by the lowered demand for physical media such as dvds, cds, books, etc., however.

For some additional reading, here are a few interesting articles on the topic of wireless devices and their impact on the environment that I found after writing this up:

http://www.bsr.org/reports/BSR_CTIA_Wireless_and_the_Environment.pdf




http://www.gsma.com/publicpolicy/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/environmobiledevices.pdf

Reflective Blog #3

 "Nothing is really secure - Get over it!"

I think that this statement could be taken a number of different ways, but I am gong to assume that it is meant to tell people to not worry too much about security since everything is so insecure.

This line of thinking is pretty unsafe. Imagine if we applied the same logic to other parts of our lives. "Cars aren't safe so why bother using seat belts?" or "Racism isn't going away - get over it!". It would be a pretty sad fate for us to live out our lives not trying to make things better or improving upon our current systems.

The reality is that nothing is truly secure, true, but that does not mean we shouldn't at least try to make things secure. I'm not going to leave my house unlocked when I leave simply because someone could pick the lock anyway! Doing something as simple as making sure you password protect your WiFi network and choosing the correct security settings for network sharing could be all it takes to prevent someone from accessing your data.

I have a feeling that as wireless technology becomes more and more plastered into our culture, and as people become more tech savvy we will eventually get to the point where people understand the things we need to worry about, but until then I think it is probably a good idea to make every effort to get people to lock their networks down, put passwords or locks on their devices, use passwords that aren't simple, and whatever else they can do without it being a huge issue.

I have a laptop, smart phone, tablet, desktop pc, a wireless network at home, a wireless printer, a hard drive shared on my network, and more that I have to deal with. For me security is a concern, but it is definitely more in the back of my mind. I have passwords set on everything, I make sure that my sharing options are correct, I always put lock screens on my devices, and I try to use different passwords for everything online. I recently started using a password keeper so I could use unique passwords for all websites and not have to worry about forgetting them. Nothing too fancy, and nothing that is very inconvenient.

In the end, however, if someone much smarter than me really wanted to hack into my facebook to read my messages or steal data or get into my network and look at pictures of me hanging out with my dog (how exciting!) they probably could. That doesn't mean I won't try!