Being transparent
16 years ago
Learning about...
This year, at the Celsa, our English classes don't look like any other classes we've ever had. No more blackboard, no more chalk, no more sheet, no more pen, no more power point... no more teacher ! Well, at least, no more physical presence of our teacher. Bob Spaulding is teaching us English from his desk which actually is thousands kilometers far from us. Bob is doing class from the south of France, behind his computer, and doesn't have to see our tired faces for hours. It's called e-learning. Doesn't it sound great ? Yes it does, but in fact it's not that simple ! Let's see how we could help Bob improving his long distance teaching.
This year, at the Celsa, our English classes don't look like any other classes we've ever had. No more blackboard, no more chalk, no more sheet, no more pen, no more power point... no more teacher ! Well, at least, no more physical presence of our teacher. Bob Spaulding is teaching us English from his desk which actually is thousands kilometers far from us. Bob is doing class from the south of France, behind his computer, and doesn't have to see our tired faces for hours. It's called e-learning. Doesn't it sound great ? Yes it does, but in fact it's not that simple ! Let's see how we could help Bob improving his long distance teaching.How is this possible for Bob to be there not being here ? Good question. Well we use MSN Live. It works quite well and allows us to see and talk with Bob. Yet, sometimes we have some troubles with it, for example Bob can't see us move or can't hear us very well. I wonder if Skype would be better . We certainly lack of a adapted software and I think the Ministry of Education is a bit late on that one.
Bob asked us to create a Blog - this one for me - and to post articles on several issues and questions every week. I use Blogger but we could use Wordpress too, like my friend Camille did. I think our e-learning class could use many other websites or applications the web offers, like for example Diigo (for more information see my article below). We also use Netvibes for the RSS feeds of our blogs. Bob also created a wiki we will use soon. Youtube is also great for posting videos. The thing I like about the wiki is that all our work can be found in one place. I would like it even more if we created a website together, learning how to make nice pages with various contents.
I also think we lack of real lessons. It would be nice if we had some videos, like video tutorials, teaching us stuff. And to check if we actually payed attention, there could be on-line assessments. The classroom could be represented by a website where we could find all these stuffs and even more.
I also really like the fact that we had to discover new websites this week. I think we should be given more missions on the web. Like Bob, you could tell us to discover websites you found interested and tell us to learn how to use it and write about it in our blogs. I don't know all the resources the Internet offers but there must be plenty things to discover that could actually be used to teach.
E-learning is a surprising and interesting way to teach, although I still don't think it will replace our traditional school. And for one simple reason : it's already hard to catch the attention of kids when you are physically present, so on distance I think it's mission impossible. If the class happens that well it's also because we are grown ups.
Learning about… 
Well I have to admit I’m a bit ashamed because there is something I really don’t know how to do whereas millions of teenagers do : uploading a video on Youtube. Being myself a regular watcher, I never posted anything on this website because I simply never had to. I actually already am in a video on the web, you can find it here, but I’m not the one who posted it. As Bob asked us to make a video resume and post it, I definitely have to learn how to do it. So let’s go !
Step 1 : going on Youtube.com and trying not to be attracted by all these videos. Not this time, come on.
Step 2 : creating an account.
Well for the moment nothing differs from what we usually do in any website.
Nice ! my username is not available. They suggest me "MrLaetitiaarnold" - how am supposed to react to that ?
Well it’s really simple, 2 or 3 questions and voila.
Oh actually no. I still have to give them my email address so they can spam me. My mistake.
Well I have to admit I’m a bit ashamed because there is something I really don’t know how to do whereas millions of teenagers do : uploading a video on Youtube. Being myself a regular watcher, I never posted anything on this website because I simply never had to. I actually already am in a video on the web, you can find it here, but I’m not the one who posted it. As Bob asked us to make a video resume and post it, I definitely have to learn how to do it. So let’s go !Step 1 : going on Youtube.com and trying not to be attracted by all these videos. Not this time, come on.
Step 2 : creating an account.
Well for the moment nothing differs from what we usually do in any website.
Nice ! my username is not available. They suggest me "MrLaetitiaarnold" - how am supposed to react to that ?
Well it’s really simple, 2 or 3 questions and voila.
Oh actually no. I still have to give them my email address so they can spam me. My mistake.
I activate my account after checking my mails… Great, I’ve just joined the Youtube community !
Step 3 : getting down to business - uploading a video. Well I guess I have to click on this yellow “upload” logo.
Step 3 : getting down to business - uploading a video. Well I guess I have to click on this yellow “upload” logo.
I can’t help laughing when I see this : “Important: Do not upload any TV shows, music videos, music concerts, or commercials without permission unless they consist entirely of content you created yourself.” If people did the website would certainly not have so much success.
Since my video resume isn’t finished yet, the only little video I have in my computer is one of my fat lazy cat on her hind legs eating cream I give her. Wow Bob what wouldn’t I do for you ?
So I just look for my video in my files, put a title and some tags. Wow that was SO simple !
Here you go !
Enjoy because this one won’t stay long !
Conclusion : that was sooo easy even more than I had imagined. No wonder why Youtube is such a great success. Too bad the quality isn’t great and the videos can’t be more than 2 GB in size and last more than 10 minutes.
Here you go !
Enjoy because this one won’t stay long !
Conclusion : that was sooo easy even more than I had imagined. No wonder why Youtube is such a great success. Too bad the quality isn’t great and the videos can’t be more than 2 GB in size and last more than 10 minutes.
A cyber crime is a criminal activity on the internet. It can be illegal access, illegal interception, data interference, systems interference, or electronic fraud. The computer crimes we most talk about are child pornography and confidential information interception (credit card pass codes for instance). Cyber crime seems to be a growing trend.
But when it come to cybercrime I instantly think about… well me. I’ve got to plead guilty, I am an addict of peer-to-peer. I download many American TV shows. In peer-to-peer distributed network people make a portion of their resources (such as processing power, disk storage or network bandwidth) directly available to other network participants, without the need for central coordination instances.
Peer to peer isn’t illegal, what’s illegal is that people share files and documents that are the property of someone else.
Peer to peer is associated with some values we give to the Internet, like sharing freely.
Authorities try to stop these practices. The webmasters and the users of these P2P websites are sometimes hard to find and punish. Law varies from country to country. Plus, when a website is closed, it can be re-opened under another adress. Let’s focus on the particular case of Guiks.net. This French P2P website has been infiltrated by the ALPA. Its administrator, Meskalyn, was summoned to the gendarmerie last week. He was told to either close the website or be prosecuted for counterfeit. Meskalyn chose the first option. The community already got organized to take over and open a new private website.
Foreign authorities didn’t get the same answer. Do you know The Pirate Bay ? It is another Swedish website that indexes and tracks BitTorrent (.torrent) files. It bills itself as "the world's largest BitTorrent tracker and is ranked as the 104th most popular website by Alexa Internet. The website was recently raided from Sweden but the famous community moved to the Ukraine, where the threatens of the BREIN made them move again. To France ? Of course no ! They settled in a fallout shelter in a Dutch forest. How exotic !
But when it come to cybercrime I instantly think about… well me. I’ve got to plead guilty, I am an addict of peer-to-peer. I download many American TV shows. In peer-to-peer distributed network people make a portion of their resources (such as processing power, disk storage or network bandwidth) directly available to other network participants, without the need for central coordination instances.Peer to peer isn’t illegal, what’s illegal is that people share files and documents that are the property of someone else.
Peer to peer is associated with some values we give to the Internet, like sharing freely.
Authorities try to stop these practices. The webmasters and the users of these P2P websites are sometimes hard to find and punish. Law varies from country to country. Plus, when a website is closed, it can be re-opened under another adress. Let’s focus on the particular case of Guiks.net. This French P2P website has been infiltrated by the ALPA. Its administrator, Meskalyn, was summoned to the gendarmerie last week. He was told to either close the website or be prosecuted for counterfeit. Meskalyn chose the first option. The community already got organized to take over and open a new private website.
Foreign authorities didn’t get the same answer. Do you know The Pirate Bay ? It is another Swedish website that indexes and tracks BitTorrent (.torrent) files. It bills itself as "the world's largest BitTorrent tracker and is ranked as the 104th most popular website by Alexa Internet. The website was recently raided from Sweden but the famous community moved to the Ukraine, where the threatens of the BREIN made them move again. To France ? Of course no ! They settled in a fallout shelter in a Dutch forest. How exotic ! An endless tag ? I don’t think so. In the USA the repression is way more active than in France, and way more dissuasive. What is to be done against peer-to-peer ? I don't have the solution and I'm not shure I want to find one but France seems to have chosen the path of repression too. The government hired a new team of specialists to infiltrate P2P websites.
I do think that the internet content is ephemeral, even if paradoxically it remains on the web during years. When you created a website or post a commentary on a blog it remains there, month after month, year after year. Even when it’s deleted, there will always remain traces of it that we can’t see.
Another aspect of the impermanence on the internet is the fact that websites can know a great success one day and be forgotten the day after. The choice is so huge, so many websites appear every day that the competition is raging. Moreover, contrary to press for instance, the internet is unquestionably updatable. Its content is changing all the time, that’s even what the internet users are mostly expecting a website to do. When I check a website, I always look at the date of the last post. A website seems to be pointless if it’s not updated – contrary to books, which by the way have been through the ages.
To go on with the story of the website I made in high school, it’s the first thing that comes to my mind when I think about the notion of impermanence on the internet. I worked so hard on this website, I spend so many hours thinking about it and developing it, and one day, it was gone, it had disappeared from the web. Why is that ? Because of my hosting services provider. When a webmaster didn’t log in during six months, the website was automatically deleted. Growing up, my passion dramatically fading away, I just let my website die. I did not want it to happen, not at all, and believe me it’s a strange feeling to lose something that represents so much but is only virtual. Few months of inattention and the death sentence was decided. I wish I could go back and at least copy few pages. That’s what’s so different with the internet. I have this bad habit to keep everything. I try to treat myself thank you but I still have many boxes filled with old stuff, the oldest must be my first drawings, that is to say... I couldn’t live without a attic. But no attic on the internet. I wasn’t able to save my cute little website from its digital death. I’ve been told every website leaves traces, that some people can have access to it, so I wonder where this cemetery is, how it looks like. All those obsolete websites… I just hope mine doesn’t rest next to some star sex tape withdrawn immediately from the web.
Anyway, my point is that people tend to think that the internet is more reliable than paper, that it can overcome time. But the internet is not another dimension. It’s just servers, wires, computers and systems. Material things that can fail.
Another aspect of the impermanence on the internet is the fact that websites can know a great success one day and be forgotten the day after. The choice is so huge, so many websites appear every day that the competition is raging. Moreover, contrary to press for instance, the internet is unquestionably updatable. Its content is changing all the time, that’s even what the internet users are mostly expecting a website to do. When I check a website, I always look at the date of the last post. A website seems to be pointless if it’s not updated – contrary to books, which by the way have been through the ages.
"We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations." - Charles R. Swindoll
An opportunity is a favorable or advantageous circumstance or combination of circumstances. But the problem with this definition is that we can’t see the importance of acting on it. See, an opportunity isn’t something that happens to you and brings you fortune. An opportunity is nothing without somebody deciding to grab it at a particular moment. For an opportunity to become actually one, someone has to see it, to detect its potential. Then, he has to act, to make it real. Nothing is in itself an opportunity. Back to the sixties, when few American students started creating a network, nobody could have predicted that the system would become such a powerful mass media. But some people, one after the other, saw the opportunity and acted on it.
I’m not going to say that it’s a great opportunity for companies to go to the internet and make a website. I will spare you the scoop of the century. The highest opportunity the internet offers, is that it’s not fixed. This media is self developing. To me, the precious opportunity is for one to see how he will use and herewith shape the media. This week is the 11th anniversary of Google and it’s creeping me out when I see what they became – and the money they made - in a decade ! Google never stopped exploiting the media, changing it, making it more useful, making it do everything and even more. They developed advertisement services, an electronic mail service, desktop applications, a cartography application, the OS mobile Android… Well you all know the story. All this was possible because the company never stopped reconsidering their role and dared to take new directions. Of course, Google is far to be the only one making the internet become what it is today, and thinking about what it will be tomorrow.
In the end, an opportunity is only one after having been proved right. Before being grabbed, it’s just a possibility. We never know what can happen. So the advice I would give is not being afraid of creating, testing or trying new things, they can fail, but they can also become a precious opportunity.
Before the apparition of the internet, when someone had information about somebody or something, it was not always easy to be heard. Especially when the information referred to people who had political and/or financial influence. I’m not saying liberty of opinion and speech appeared with the internet but the web seems to give it no limit. Stars and politicians have to be way more cautious than they were before. Gutter press already generated scandals but couldn’t reveal everything because of pressures and lack of space in their pages. They couldn’t either know everything because they had few investigators. Today, if anyone sees anything, he can report it on the web. And everyone can see it and talk about it. In a way, this is a good thing because people have to behave and try to look nice and clean.However, the information we get on the web is way less reliable. On the web, a rumor can spread in an blink of an eye on without having been checked. As internet users we have to be careful with what we read or see.
Moreover, is transparency that good ? I mean, do we have to know everything about everyone ? It’s a tricky path. On the one hand, we deserve to know the man we are giving our vote to, or the people we trust – especially when he is building his campaign on certain values. But on the other hand, that is not really our business ! We are not voting for a good husband and a good father, we are voting for a president, a person who has to have politics experience and who knows the job. Same for a future employee, some pictures of him on Facebook having fun at a party should not be discriminatory. In my opinion, when it come to politics or work, people should not be judged according to their lifestyles but according to their skills.
Politics and companies tend to use this wave of “transparency” as a communication tool.
Using networks like Obama does with Twitter make them look real, nice and trustworthy. But when they tell little details about their lives it does not mean we get to know everything about them EVEN the more personal details. It only means we know what they wanted to show us. Let’s not be fooled by this illusion of proximity.I use the term “illusion” because even if these personal details are real, it does not mean we get to know the person. Transparency does not mean reality. The image we get of someone on the internet is just a part of what they really are. It’s been created by others, by pieces of information.
To conclude, let’s not forget that the internet is a media, a bias, a filter. Transparency is another recurrent myth of the internet.
The internet didn't only changed our lives, it completely influenced a new generation.
My father being a computer scientist, I've always had a computer. But I really felt a change in my life the day I started to get the internet. I remember, I was in Junior high school. My brother had driven my mother crazy to have the internet so one day she came back with a modem and a 10 hours/month connection with Club Internet. I swear these 3 hours a month they gave me totally changed my life !
The sound of the connection was totally surreal and access to a website page took forever but it was working. I associate this time to the transition from childhood to teenage hood. I started to open myself to the world. So many websites, so many information were there, I suddenly couldn’t remember how I had done before. I had a passion for the Olsen twins, but they were quite unknown in
So here is how internet broke my habits. I began to share more, to know more people, to speak and write in English, to focus on a project. My website actually worked very well, I had many visitors - still girls - and was even referenced in magazines. This made me realize how much I loved the media. Without the internet I wouldn’t be here, at the CELSA today. The internet did not only broke my little girl’s habits, it also lead my life right were I am.
Since then, I've always tried include the internet in my habits. I don't do the queue anymore, I buy train tickets on the internet. I don't let myself fooled by a shop, I compare prices on several websites. I don't buy news things all the time, I buy secondhand stuff on eBay or Priceminister. I don't go over the limit on my cell phone plan, I chat on Facebook. I don't copy-paste what I find on Encarta for work anymore, I look all over the web and compare the results. I could go on forever like that but I'm gonna stop. It seems that the only thing the internet didn't change is me being a chatterbox !
