Cyber warfare

According to Wikipedia, cyberwarfare is 'politcally motivated hacking to conduct sabotage and espionage'. In basic terms, it is a war within the virtual world. However, it frequently has effects in the real world.

Cyber warfare can be attacks from country to country, through businesses, terrorist organisations, as well as attacks on singletons. It has now become major concern within the cyber world. Even militaries now have branches committed to defending and running cyber warfare.

The world we live in is becoming more and more networked every day (there are over 400 million websites as of 2013). As I said, militaries have people working against cyber warfare, as well as people working for it. Although military systems have extremely high level of security, they are often breakable by certain people. If military services can be hacked and exploited, how easy do you think it would be for cyber warfare to happen someone else? 

And don't go thinking that cyber warfare is a myth and hasn't yet happened. It has. In 2009, the United States made a report available of which said the US' electrical grid was at a very high risk of being attacked. If this was to happen, it would shut off millions and millions of people's electricity.

Although an attack didn't actually happen, it can do. And if it was to, combined with a military attack, it could prove to be extremely disastrous.

What do you think of cyber warfare? Does it worry you?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwarfare

http://www.newsofdelhi.com/internet/how-many-websites-are-there

The Digital Divide

Although it may seem like every single person on earth has the ability to access the Internet at times, but the truth is that only a mere one third of the worlds population has access to the Internet. That means that 1 in 4 people in the world do not have the advantage of being able to go online. This is known as the digital divide.

According to The Guardian website, an approximate 75-90% of jobs require computer use. As well as this, it says that home access to the internet and/or a computer can improve a child's educational performance. Having higher and better quality of education would lead to better job opportunities for the youth of today. The Internet also allows children to be able to educate themselves socially. Having social skills is also a very important key aspect when it comes to finding jobs after education. People without educational and social skills will find it twice as hard in order to better themselves after education. However, if enough people were to better themselves via this technology, the worlds financial system could begin to increase.

Although, not everyone has access to technology. According to BBC News, the country that is most connected within the world is Iceland, closely followed by Sweden and the Netherlands. However the least connected country are Myanmar and Bangladesh.

The above picture shows what the digital divide was like in 2008

From what I have said above it has become obvious that there are some serious aspects to not having access to the internet and it could make a much bigger impact on the world then people first believed.

http://www.ibtimes.com/one-third-worlds-population-using-internet-developing-nations-showing-biggest-gains-795299
http://www.guardian.co.uk/social-care-network/2012/oct/17/digital-divide-tackled-social-care
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2216625/Report-shows-1billion-people-dont-mobile-phone-half-world-access-internet.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8568681.stm

Gaming within Education?

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a Hungarian professor who discovered a 'flow'- the flow is the point where your challenges meet your skills. When someone is in the state of 'flow', they are in a state of concentration or are completely involved in what they are doing that nothing else seems to matter. 
The following is a diagram that shows the state of flow- 

The diagram shows that in order to be in the state of 'flow' our minds need to have a balance between boredom and anxiety/panic. I agree with this concept- no one likes to do things that are too simple as it can get boring very quickly. However no one likes doing things too difficult as it can stress us out and give us anxiety. This proves how the flow can come into education. If you are given a task which is easy you will do it and be bored, but if you are given a 2000 word essay due in a week, you get anxiety and begin to panic. 

I believe that the flow is a good idea, and probably does work on a lot of people. However I don't believe that it works with me. I personally believe I can only really be in the 'flow' if I am enjoying what I am doing. It doesn't matter how difficult or simple the task at hand may be, if I am not interested in it I can not get into the flow. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi

Gaming Culture

Games are an extremely important part to our culture and have a very long and extensive history. However, for almost as long as they have been around, people that play games have had to face a huge amount of criticism, especially from the media.
Everyone has their own opinion on gaming, but the history of video gaming travels as far back as the 1950s when AS Douglas invented OXO. From that moment onwards, multiple video games have been released, such as Mario and Sonic and they are very well known characters in our lives.

History of Gaming

1952- AS Douglas- OXO

1961- Spacewar

1971- Computer Space

1972- Magnavox Odyssey (first ever video game console)

1978- 'Golden Age' of computer games

1980- Space Invaders, Pacman

1981- Donkey Kong

1982- Warner Communications buy Atari for a whopping $28 million

1983- North American video game crash (too many consoles, bad games)

Late 80s to early 90s- "Mario saves the day", tetris, portable games like the nintendo

1992- Mortal Kombat

1993- Doom (first 3D game graphics)

1998- Half Life (first game with a back story)

Do you remember playing any of these games? 

Video games have allowed technology to advance. There are so many different game consoles around now, i.e. wii, PS3 and the Xbox it proves that games are still extremely popular among people of all ages and there is a console for everybody. 

It has often been argued that the story lines behind the games are too violent or gruesome for the young ages that are playing them. However, games have age restrictions just like violent films in the cinema. Usually video games allow the user to participate often in a story that they can be influencing. 

Although games can be violent, and it is argued that they are promoting brutality, it really does come down to who is playing the game, not what the game is encouraging. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_games

Inanimate Alice

According to the Inanimate Alice website (www.inanimatealice.co.uk), Inanimate Alice is 'created as a reading-from-the-screen experience for the digital generation'. It says that is 'requires the reader to drive the action forward at their own pace' as well as encouraging 'reading to co-create their own versions of the story'.

Inanimate Alice was originally designed solely for entertainment purposes, however it has recently been taken in by teachers in order to help students digital literacy skills develop. Inanimate Alice is available in French, German, Italian and Spanish as well as English.

During a Digital Culture lesson at University, we were asked to try out Inanimate Alice in order to see what we thought of it:

After going through 3/4 of the stories on Inanimate Alice, it did lead me to wonder what it is actually hoping to achieve? Personally to me, it just seemed like stories online that involved you clicked the 'Next' button in order to turn the page. Saying this, I know that when I was younger and in school I would have loved Inanimate Alice in order to read stories. However, I do not understand the main point of Inanimate Alice and how it will actually help children to learn at school.

Inanimate Alice is quick and extremely easy to use and understand. Maybe it is just me, but I don't get it.

Data Journalism

Being a journalism student, I know that it is my job to supply to the public the latest news and information. As well as this, it is also my job to give it to them in a particular way that everyone can understand. This opens up a lot of new possibilities when you combine the traditional way to find information with the sheer scale and range of digital information now available. 

Journalists are now using graphics in order to provide information. This is because it makes the information easier to read and digest, as well as making it more interesting, too.

An example of data journalism?

• School League Timetables

School league timetables use the data published annually by the government. Readers are able to find their local schools by entering postcodes. Education journalists then work with the development team in order to trawl through the data for stories ahead of publication.

Infographics are graphic visual representations of information, knowledge or data intended to present complex information quickly and clearly. 

 

Click here to enlarge image.

The above image shows an infographic on why people use graphics within journalism. 

The only disadvantage of graphics used within data journalism is whether or not your learning type allows you to learn quickly and easily from graphics, interactives and sometimes games. I believe that data journalism is a big hit and should be used more widely along news and information web sites in order for people to fully understand the details they are reading. 

www.datajournalismhandbook.org

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infographic

Wikipedia- used by many

Wikipedia is a very well known website that is used by thousands of people (especially students) every single day. Many people use it in order to obtain information about things. Some people, think that is all that Wikipedia is- an online Encyclopaedia. However, this is not the case. It is also used by some, sort of like a social network. They earn 'Barnstars' to show how well they have contributed to editing Wikipedia.

Can we trust Wikipedia?

Wikipedia is used by so many people around the world in order to gather information, however, is it trustworthy? The answer is no, not really. Most Wikipedia pages can be edited by anyone. Some popular pages are constantly guarded in order to make sure no incorrect information is put online. So why do we use it?  Well, it is a free website to take information from. Please see back to the open access blogpost, here. This gives it an easy advantage for students, and other people, to use it, even though it might not be accurate.

Old habits are hard to kick, and if you can't stop using it, the best possible solution to ensuring you obtain accurate information from Wikipedia is to check it out elsewhere. Make sure other websites/books say the same thing.  

http://www.wikipedia.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Barnstars