Legal and Ethical Issues

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools. Basically it is a copyright tool that allows users to share their creativity and knowledge with other people, but also preventing illegal use of your work. For example, selling your work.

I think information like TV, movies and musics SHOULD NOT be free. The movie companies spend months and million of dollars to produce a movie. If it is free to the public, the company wouldn't make any profit. Eventually, the movie industry will fall. Same with the music and TV industries. Although nowadays many people downloading free movies and music from the internet illegally, some people are willing to pay to see a movie or purchase a music CD. 

I think entertainment shouldn't be free, but educational materials should be free. For example, in the reading Open source textbook program expanding in coming months talks about open source texts are compiled using copyright-free materials from a wide variety of sources and can be edited and updated immediately. With the open source textbook program, students will spend lesser money to achieve a higher education.

Security and Privacy

Security and Privacy are important concerns for anyone and we all know that security and privacy on the internet are not 100 percent secured and safe. Especially the information on our social network sites. Most of our information on Facebook are visible to others, this includes our contact information, images we uploaded, and others. For example, In the article: Facebook Privacy Is So Confusing Even the Zuckerberg Family Photo Isn't Private. Zuckerberg posted her family photo on Facebook which only the friends of her can see, but somehow others can access this photo and post it somewhere. From this example, we know that our privacy on Facebook is not secured. The things we thought were suppose to be private are actually could be public to anybody.  

World Wide Web

I think the world wide web will continue growing in a better way. The reason why the world wide web is growing is because many companies are competing with each other and try to come up with something that's better and more advance. For example. the article Yahoo Wants Back in the Search Game talks about Yahoo planning to return to the search market with their own search engine. With all these companies competing and the new services and products they come up, it benefits the users the most. The user can chose the one they prefer.
Clouding computing means programs can access locally and also anywhere with connected computers. it s the ability to run programs or applications on many connected computers at the same time. The cloud refer to software that are sold as service.

Networks and Communication

Asynchronous and synchronous communication can be used in different ways and it allows you to communicate with others more convenience. For example, if you have questions or problem when doing your assignments at home, the best way to communicate with your professor is to Email your professor. You will get responds from your professor quicker than asking the question during next class meeting. Students can also use blogging to communicate and follow up the class discussion.  Synchronous communication allows you to see people even if they're not at the same location. It is very convenience for having a meeting with people that's currently in another place. Synchronous communications also help people build their relationship. For instance, use Skype to communicated with your friend or family when you're on a trip to somewhere; or Skype with someone that you haven't see in a long time.

Skype in the Classroom, from York to Antarctica
This article talks about the effeteness of  synchronous communication using in classroom. Students are able to talk with a scientist in Antarctica. Also the students can video chat with different people to gain knowledge without the person come to class and give a presentation.

My first blog post

Hi everyone, my name is Xin Chen and I am from China. I am currently a computer science major student at Northeastern Illinois University.
I think there are pros and cons if courses integrate blogs, Twitter, or other Web 2.0 technologies. First of all, the advantage of using Twitter or blogs during  in-class discussion can generate more content and conversation, as well as allow more voices to be heard. ( Classroom technology effective when used as additional tool ). Some students have more confidence in  writing their opinion than speaking it. Blogs can help those students express their opinion more effectively. The disadvantage of using Web 2.0 technology in class is students might be distracted; they might surfing the web instead of focusing in class.