As I’m writing the post (admittedly my first in a while) i can’t help but reflect on the four years that I’ve spent here on Hawk Hill.  It has suddenly hit me as we approach spring break that I have just 1/4 of a school year remaining in my academic career.  Things have changed so dramatically since I came to the university as a scared freshman in the Fall of 2007.  Now I have internships under my belt, and I can truly say I have matured into a man.

That’s what Saint Joe’s does.  Maybe its taken me this long to realize it, but that’s why we all pay the school $40,000/yr. for 4 years of our lives.  It’s because they take us in as adolescents, mold us, and shape us, and craft all 4,500 of us into young adults ready to attack the real world full on.  I realize this is nothing more than a post on a blog that perhaps nobody will ever read.  But it’s my way of saying thank you to a school that allowed me to realize goals that before seemed nearly impossible.

Thank you Saint Joseph’s University.  I made the right choice, and you and I were a perfect fit.  Nobody will ever be able to take these past 4 years away from me and for that I am eternally grateful.

Over the past week I have become absolutely infatuated with the latest story involving new Philadelphia Eagles starting QB Kevin Kolb.  What separates this story from the typical Philadelphia sports story is that it has nothing at all to do with performance on the field, potential trade scenarios, or a playoff race.  In fact, the latest news on Kevin Kolb isn’t even new.  The story about his encounter with a diamondback rattlesnake actually took place far before his time with the Eagles, when he was just seventeen years old.

Still, I just can’t get enough of this story.  Take a look at a section of this piece by sportswriter Anthony Gargano.

 So the quarterback reached down and plucked the rattlesnake by its neck and held it out. With his other hand, he retrieved the .38 caliber handgun fastened to his hip and fired a round into the rattler’s head. He then used his favorite pocketknife to cut off the rattles.

Wow. That is potentially the coolest thing I’ve ever heard.  And better yet there’s more to the story.  As it turns out Kevin Kolb used an trick he learned on the Discovery Channel to win his battle against the rattler.  You can read the complete story on AOL’s Fanhouse website.

As we all sit and wait for the Kevin Kolb era to begin behind center this season one thing has made itself quite clear.  If the young QB can carry himself with even half as much poise on the field as he does away from it, the team will be more than ok in the foreseeable future.  With that said, I don’t think the Birds front office is going to want him anywhere near a venomous snake anytime soon.

On the Way to Comm. Ethics Success

This has been a great semester to say the least.  In my opinion the early stages of the Communications Studies program at SJU have been a success.  Being one of the first people to go through these early courses I would like to offer my survival guide 0f helpful pointers to keep in mind when taking these courses.  I’ll keep it short and sweet and just offer my top 3 things to keep in mind, especially when completing the projects.

1. Take Chances.  I can’t stress this enough.  More times than not we do things that may not be totally familiar to a lot of people.  Always look to do something creative that hasn’t been done before.  These new ideas will translate into success eventually.

2. Let your personality shine.  The projects for the most part give you a lot of freedom to work with things that you enjoy.  You can completely cater the class to your likes and dislikes if you try hard enough.  A project that reflects your personality will most likely be of higher quality.

3. Take advantage of the extra help opportunities.  The class moves quickly sometimes so it is imperative that you utilize the lab hours to make sure the projects get finished on time.  There are enough hours available outside the class period that time should never restrict the quality of one of the projects.

Hope this helps.  Good luck to all those in the future. Thanks again to everyone who made these past two semesters extremely enjoyable!

Well... Sort of

No not a Honda Civic. We are talking civic action.

I don’t think any of us in Communication Ethics are going to be in disagreement on this one.  This class provided us all some sense that we could have an impact on the community to some degree.  We got to go out into the community, for no longer than a few weeks, to follow those who are truly making a difference during Project Report.  I know for a lot of us that experience proved to be invaluable.

But just stop and think for a minute about what we accomplished.  Think beyond how any individual video turned out or whatever grade was received.  In just a few short weeks we all were able to report on a handful of absolutely amazing stories.  All of these stories are stories that needed to be told, and were dying for people to hear them and simply needed a forum.  To me the question “Do you think you can make a difference in the community?” is an easy one.  Haven’t we all already made a difference? Sure those videos weren’t completely groundbreaking in any way, and I realize they aren’t going to solve any of the world’s problems, but I also think it would be hard to argue telling those stories wasn’t at least a step, no matter how small.

The class’ sense of civic action and responsibility is most evident in all of our final projects.  Just think about some of the topics we have already heard about.  One could argue that almost all of them speak to how we can in some way improve our society.  It has become clear, at least to me, that this class has us all thinking the right way.

So here it is.  This is a finished product and powerpoint of my TED talk on Social Media and Internet Privacy.  I hope everyone who was present enjoyed the talk.  I really enjoyed the short discussion we were able to have after.  I hope people at least got to have a little chuckle at the video as well.  Good luck to all those remaining!

One day, PowerPoint... One day

For this TED project I was determined to break the mold and find a new and innovative way of giving this presentation.  I figured there had to be something else out there that I could use as a change of pace and spice things up a bit.  I started looking high and low and found what I thought was the best of my options.

The program that I wanted to use was called Empressr.  It allows you either upload and edit an existing presentation, or manufacture your own online.  Some of the features are really cool which is why I was initially attracted to it.  It allows you to very easily import media from other sources such as Flickr, YouTube, and Google.  It provides a search bar for those sites, delivers the results, and you can add the media simply by dragging and dropping.  Also, the transitions between slides are very unique.  It allows a feature that gives you a random transition between slides, allowing for a unique presentation every time.

However, despite these seemingly groundbreaking characteristics, Empressr seemed to me to still be in its beginning stages.  After playing around with it for a few hours, it was apparent that in the long run I would be sacrificing the overall quality of the project to try to use something new.  The videos from YouTube wouldn’t play, the fonts are very limited, the controls are a little clunky, and the on-screen canvas doesn’t always match the finished product of the presentation.  Good in concept, not worth it in practice.

Long story short… PowerPoint won this battle.  But I’ll have the last laugh one day.

The project is finished and ready for presentation.  In the name of the element of surprise I’m waiting to post it here until after I unveil it for the class.  Per last semester, I am going to post a video that gets at the message I am trying to deliver, and serves as a good summary/precursor for the TED Talk.

The video is of Jonathan Zittrain, a professor at Harvard University, talking about ethics on Wikipedia, and Internet Privacy as it applies to “Star Wars Kid”.  Enjoy!

So far I have to say that all of the talks have been very innovative.  Mnay of the topics are very new to me and I am definitely learning a lot about things that I hadn’t thought much about before.  I think all the talks did a very good job at raising ethical questions, or illustrating ethical development.  Particularly liked the talks that told a story and kept the audience engaged for the duration of the talk.  I think the incorporation of outside media aside from the PowerPoint slides was a tremendous addition for Bridget’s presentation about Roger Ebert, which I enjoyed very much.  With only 6 presentations down I am looking forward to hear what the rest of the class will have to contribute next week.  Surely they will prove to be just as innovative and engaging and this week’s presentations.  I also get my chance to contribute to the discussion next Monday so I have that to look forward to as well.  To all those remaining good luck TEDding, and to those who are finished, well done and sit back and relax.

Join Chris DeBellis as he dazzles with his in depth analysis of today’s social media outlets and examines some of the ethical implications.  It seems to be the case that there are certain times when different uses of these outlets can cross the line between useful social tool and into straight up unethical behavior.  The line is steadily becoming blurred and when does it get to the point where we have taken things too far?  Look forward to this and more as Chris uses a unique presentation method to spark the debate.

So I wanted to post something fun up here because its been a little while and I like doing that kind of thing to keep this blog fresh.  But this video kind of has some relevance to our class as well.  We first watched this video last semester in communication studies.

For those that don’t know about Star Wars kid, this is a video that was posted of kid doing phantom Star Wars maneuvers and was posted by some of his peers.  The ethical question becomes was posting this video to YouTube the right thing to do.  Sure it provides a laugh, but this will undoubtedly follow this kid for the rest of his life and can be really embarrassing if he becomes recognized for the video.  Who knows what effects the video could have on his ability to land a job.  Take a look and see what you think.

Shout out to last semester.

I think taking a look at these consequences raises some serious questions.  In fact, this is what I want to take a look at for my TED Talk this semester.  No not Star Wars kid.  I want to analyze and discuss some particular instances where social media can go too far, crossing over and breaking ethical boundaries.  What implications does such behavior entail? What can we do to stop unethical use of social media? Have we gone too far already? I think it makes for an interesting discussion and there are definitely points to be argued in both directions.  I look forward to elaborating further in my presentation.  Stay tuned!

I understand that hardly any movie that is adapted from a novel of any kind is as good as the original, The Surrogates did very little to break the mold.  This movie had many different variations from the book that could be chalked up to little more than trying to attract an audience at the box office, and follow the trends of typical Hollywood productions

Let’s get the most obvious point out of the way first.  This movie was definitely catered to Bruce Willis.  The plot went out of the way to make him appear as the hero in the end.  The plot twist that had Steeplejack aiming to eliminate the entire human race instead of simply shut down all the surrogates was not only over the top, it was just included to allow Bruce to save the day.  The movie seemed not to care very much about driving home the message from the graphic novel, which is disappointing.

The second point of emphasis is with Harvey’s wife.  The novel casts her character as a shollow and egocentric woman who cares about her physical appearance to the max.  It becomes clear in the novel that their marriage has been destroyed over time.  However, at the conclusion of the movie when us book-readers are getting ready for the gloomy and ambiguous ending, we get the exact opposite.  Instead of committing suicide, Harvey and his wife share a loving embrace in what seems to be a fairy tale ending.  This is just the sort of ending that I feel like we agreed ruins the overall point of the story Venditti is trying to tell.  Overall, this movie was not for me.

However, I will say that I absolutely loved reading the graphic novel.  This was my first graphic novel, and I have to say that I was intrigued by the sensation I felt when reading it.  It was actually like I was watching a movie.  I think it is kind of ironic that a book filled with still frames and hand-drawn images can tell a story better than a multi-million dollar Hollywood production.  I guess the old cliche really holds true that less is more.