the digital haze.

Image by dave_mcmt via Flickr

this is not a joke; that's actually the name.

i was looking around for advances in technology in public schools, and i found new media high school. it's a charter school in philadelphia specializing in, what else, new media. the curriculum is based primarily around digital multimedia and project-based learning, intended to give students skills that will be of greater benefit to them in their professional lives.

their aim is to go beyond the textbook-memorization study techniques of the past and teach to students to be actively engaged in the problems they are presented with and think critically about solutions.

while it might sound simple enough, it's actually a pretty innovative form of pedagogy. i think you'd be hard-pressed to find many teachers who would be able to conform to this method, though i think it might benefit the students.

this discovery mainly made me wonder; what is the future of technology in regard to education? we already have distance-learning programs, but will there ever be a program in place for the majority of public school students to opt for such? and also, what will this mean for certain classes where experience is imperative? as an undergrad studying art education, this is a real concern. when will conveniences and "inter-connectedness" online begin to overtake the real-life interconnectedness that interaction provides?

Image via CrunchBase

the "face" of facebook seems to be changing at a very rapid pace. i logged on the other day and noticed the new format and could only think of one thing: twitter.

i started my twitter account a few weeks before the class set them up, and i have to admit, i didn't really know what to do with it. not many of my friends have twitter accounts, so it didn't seem all that useful. since then, more and more people and organizations are getting twitter accounts, and it's made the site make a little more sense to me.

but back to facebook...what? the format was really confusing at first, and i'm still not a very big fan of it. the wall posts, status updates, and everything is just thrown in together with no graphic notation of what's what. i think the main reason this re-design took place is because the folks at facebook are noticing that twitter is picking up speed.

most of us have such short attention spans that we now only want to receive updates and information in a single line. we skim over blogs and disregard anything that's too long. i myself am guilty of this; if anyone posts a blog that is somewhat lengthy, i have to be pretty interested in whatever it is that they're talking about to read through the whole thing.

while i appreciate twitter and its simplicity, i'm kind of appalled at our lack of focus. and i also think that facebook should do its own thing and not attempt to replicate the format of another popular website.

Image by Davezilla was taken via Flickr

testing out the zemanta...

this is wicked awesome!

in other news, i found this neat article involving twitter.

a guy from the baltimoremd twitter account got the twitter "fail whale" a bunch of natty boh heads tattooed on his leg to promote the city's twitter account.

i'd say that's new level of dedication.

Image via Wikipedia

last blog, i talked about the effect of technology on the world of photography, and this time i'd like to continue on the topic of technology and art. another area where art and technology have merged is in the development of graphic design.

the number of people involved in the graphic design community has increased steadily over the past few years. companies are becoming more and more reliant on graphic design as they begin to emphasize marketing and promotion. but along with this string of creative professionals comes a new breed of artsy imitators. it seems like every teenage kid with a copy of adobe photoshop is now a "graphic designer", and i think it really takes some of the credibility away from the real artists.

along those lines, i wanted to discuss the issue of vector images. vector images are images created using mathematical formulas to generate shapes and designs that are easily manipulated and re-sized in graphics programs. they make designing layouts and images with multiple layers much easier on the designer. however, there are many instances of graphic designers who use only vector images and don't utilize drawn images at all. in fact, some graphic designers don't have artistic drawing skills at all!

personally, i feel like a "graphic artist" should be just that. an artist who works with graphics. while i understand that utilizing vector images is a huge benefit to most graphic designers, i think that a certain level of artistic skill should still be necessary. when graphic designers no longer need this level of skill i think it undermines their importance and talent.

Image via Wikipedia

technology is influencing our lives in so many ways, and it is affecting aspects of every subject and discipline. something i wanted to touch on was how technology and media are affecting the art world. two primary areas have been affected most in the last two decades or so: photography and graphic design.

in high school, i took four years of photography; three of darkroom and one of digital. over the course of my time studying the subject, i noticed an increasing emphasis on the digital side of things. in high schools (and even in colleges), darkroom photography is being phased out.

kodak has stopped making photo paper for darkroom developing, thus the price of photo paper is increasing, and schools are becoming less and less willing to accommodate for building darkrooms and disposing of hazardous chemicals used in the developing process.

personally, while the phasing out of traditional photography and introduction of digital photography makes sense economically and ecologically, i think there's something to be said for traditional photography. i much preferred my years in traditional photography to the one i spent doing digital. i think there's more of a sense of personal accomplishment that goes into taking photos, developing the film, enlarging the image, and having the technique and skill to refine the photograph. in digital photography, there aren't those little quirks that make a roll of film interesting like accidental reticulation (look it up, it's a neat technique!).

in short, digital photography is neat, convenient, and generally cheaper. but traditional is still my personal favorite. it's a labor intensive project, but you can really be proud of what you've done when it's finished.

Image via Wikipedia

wednesday morning i logged onto facebook and was immmediately presented with a message about how the site was returning to its original terms of use because its recent revision was causing such an uproar with users.

i'll be honest, i didn't even know they had revised the dang thing. realizing this, and the fact that i had no idea what facebook's policy was involving what they could do with my image/information, i decided to probe further.

first of all, i was surprised to find out that if you are under 18 and not enrolled in high school or college, you are violating the terms of use! who'dda thunk it?

also, i chuckled at the rule about not creating false representations and impersonating other people. i tested this out by searching for lauren conrad (of laguna beach and the hills fame) and promptly received 10 different people with "lauren conrad" profiles within the first few pages.

"By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof..."

i must admit, the above statement is a little frightening. not enough so to prevent me from using the site, but knowing that a company has every right to use photos of my friends and i to advertise without notice is a little disconcerting.

"we do not screen or approve Developers". yep, that's what they said. basically, all of those nifty applications you add are totally unregulated. scary stuff.

"When we are notified that a user has died, we will generally, but are not obligated to, keep the user's account active under a special memorialized status for a period of time determined by us to allow other users to post and view comments." what i'd like to know is who gets to determine the appropriate amount of time to memorialize someone who has died? i feel like this is probably outside of the scope of a social networking site.

after reviewing facebook's terms of use and their policies on privacy and things of that nature, i've realized that it's really worthwhile to read these documents before getting involved. i know that it's a big pain and most of us just don't want to take the time to filter through seemingly useless information, but it may just be worth it to see how much of your "virtual rights" you're surrendering.

keep that in mind the next time you blindly click the "i have read and agree to..." button.

a quick trip to www.ruckus.com swiftly kicks you in the face with this little gem.

ruckus was a music service intended for college students which allowed you to access over 3 million songs legally and for free. the catch? you couldn't load them to any portable music player.

the main reason i'm bringing this up is that last friday, ruckus network, inc. shut down the service without warning to anyone, including the university. the diamondback recently published an article about the closing, which is where i heard about this.

the article highlighted that many students either weren't aware of the service or felt that the inability to transfer music made it an inconvenient way to listen. personally, i had forgotten about it; the university advertised it, but with the rise of sites like www.playlist.com, it hardly seemed worth the effort of registration and all that hooplah.

to get to my main point, music sharing sites continue to gain popularity and continue to face hurdles. i remember way back in the day when napster began its steep rise to fame and subsequent plummet into obscurity once legalities were thrown in the mix. i'm a big advocate of legal sharing and downloading of music. i completely understand that we're poor college students and music is just too dang expensive. but at the same time, i have far too many musician friends who rely on music sales in order to continue being able to do so.

i'm not sure what the next phase of music sharing will be, but at present file sharing and streaming sites seem to be a big source of joy (for those who seek free access to new and underground music) and frustration (for those who rely on its sales, as well as the riaa).