I have used Google Docs on a number of occasions, mainly for projects that I have had to for courses at George Mason University. Google Docs is extremely useful for group projects, it allows you to give access to a document that you have created to a number of people which you authorize to work on the document. For example, rather than having four separate people working on different slides for the same Power point presentation these four people can work on their sections of the Power point at the same time as others in the group. Google Docs is useful for individual projects as well, it allows you to access a document that you have been working on at any place where you are able to log in to your Gmail account.

I have never used the Google Chart Wizard, but after learning a little bit about it and how it can used as a useful tool I will definitely use it at some point in the future. Looking through the templates there were a number of creative options which I myself would never think of using. One chart, for example, allowed the user to chart out information on a map of the globe.

Unfortunately, I was unable to attach the link to the map which I exported from Google Maps in KML format. I chose to create a map from George Mason University to the local park. I attempted to open my KML file on Google Earth, but had some difficulty doing so.

I am registered for Zotero as well, my username is mia.fairweather and my email is mfairwea@masonlive.gmu.edu.

Since I have been in this course I have paid a lot more attention to keeping my personal information secure while using the internet. Unfortunately, I am not computer savvy whatsoever, so my “computer security” methods are mainly based on advice from friends, the university, or general security practices. I use the anti-virus software which I downloaded from the ITU website here at the university. I can say that the software is installed on my computer, but I don’t actually know how or if it is working.

To be honest, I am fairly old school compared to my peers: I like talking on the phone rather than texting and I would much rather go for a walk than check out the pictures recently updated by a friend on Face book. So, when it comes to trusting my computer with my personal information I try to avoid it as much as possible. The passwords I use to access my email accounts and online shopping cites are complicated and I constant change them. When I get e-mails from people that I don’t recognize I delete them immediately. I don’t download media from websites because I am terrified that a virus from the download will destroy my computer. I know a lot of people that use online banking to keep track of their finances; I don’t, I would much rather drive to the bank and check on my account there. My method of computer security is based more on keeping my information as personal as possible rather than securing my information. This may not be the smartest way to keep my computer and my information secure, but I don’t think my computer skills will drastically improve in the near future, so I guess I will just have to make a friend that is computer savvy, and have them teach how me to make my computer a secure system.

Teachers Pay Teachers is an online community for educators. This website allows teachers to share their lesson plans with other teachers and sell these lesson plans to buyers. Paul Edelman is the founder Teachers Pay Teachers and is also a former New York City school teacher. I found an article online from the New York Times (link is below) which talks about Teachers Pay Teachers as well as a number of other websites which offer teachers the opportunity to make a profit by selling their original lesson plans, such as We Are Teachers, as well as online mentoring and tutoring. This article verifies that yes indeed; Teachers Pay Teachers is a legitimate website although I cannot verify the safety of making a purchase on this website.
The New York Times article also struggles with the ethics and legality of teachers selling their lesson plans online by representing both sides of the issue. The article explains that a number of the teachers which use such commercial websites have made hundreds and even thousands of dollars selling lesson plans on such topics as “Lord of the Flies”. The teachers then use the money to buy items for their students and the classroom as well as to pay off debt and mortgage payments among other things. Because the marketplace for educational tools is so new, rules and regulations have not been created to address this issue. For example, the article also talks about a former football coach from Fairfax, Virginia who was selling his playbook and instructional DVDs online for $197, but after an investigation the charges against the coach were dropped. The article also discusses how some feel that sharing lesson plans and ideas is a great idea, but that selling these lessons is “ultimately destructive to the profession.” Others in the teaching field believe that they do not get enough credit for their creative and innovative ideas and see commercial websites such as Teachers Pay Teachers as a way to earn what they deserve.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/education/15plans.html?_r=3&hp&

The historical topic that I chose for this exercise was George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware, which took place on Christmas Day, December 25, 1776, during the American Revolution. The painting dedicated to this event is probably one of the most notable in American history; it shows a courageous George Washington as he heads up a column of troops crossing the icy Delaware River. Looking at the Wikipedia page for this event the sources used for information on the page seem fairly reliable. The sources range from published books to reports from national parks in the area and museums. Most of the sources seem reliable, but there are a few sources that do not seem as reliable. For example, one source on the page is from a television show called Liberty’s Kids, this animated tv show came out in 2003; generally, television shows exaggerate rather than portray history as it truly was.

Looking at the history of the article, and by that I mean that changes that have been made to the article over the years, I noticed that this article was edited fairly often, at least twice a month. I noticed that when changes were made to the article they were often small changes in grammar or specific words and that there were a few people that were constantly making changes to this article. There was one person in particular that changed the article back to its previous form about every two months.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington%27s_crossing_of_the_Delaware_River

The website that I looked up on Whois.com was history.com, which is the website for the History Channel. I found out that the website and the channel are owned by A&E Television Networks which, A&E, is actually another television channel which broadcast a number of reality tv shows. Thinking about the shows that they have on the History Channel, the format is very similar to that of A&E network; many of the shows are based on historical events but are historical fiction, using actors to play out scenarios and scripts which exaggerates these events.

http://www.whois.com/whois/history.com

When reading about the student blog I believe that the sources Jane Browning used were based more on trying to verify information by gathering what she could from local inhabitant and from first hand, in person accounts. Reading through the bibliography, it seems that Browning used Wikipedia and a number of internet websites as sources of information. There were a few stories that came from books or news article, but most of the sources did not seem as scholarly as expected for a senior project. Reading through the blog, I realized that apparently Jane Browning is not a real person and much of the information that she found was fictional. I think the point of reading through this blog was to learn about how easy it is to fabricate believable information and how information can take a life of its own. I think it also makes a statement as to how important it is to use sources that are based on factual information.

The term “Silicon Valley” refers to a geographic location in California, but is also a figure of speech which refers to America’s high tech center, are their developments of other “Silicon Valleys” in other places outside of the United States?

The article that I found on the George Mason University Database, “Is the Next Silicon Valley Taking Root in Bangalore?”, describes the development of high tech corporations in Bangalore, India. The article talks about a number of small start up companies that could grow to be huge corporations within the next fifteen to twenty years. These small start ups employ a number of ambitious engineers and are housed in building that has enough space to house the employees and provide them with a kitchen to make meals and a bathroom. One start up company also had a section in the back of the building that served as a small accounting office that provided services to many Americans visiting Bangalore and provided a large amount of the income for this start up, Read-Ink. What I found surprising about what I read was that most of these employees have degrees from the United States at such highly regarded universities as Stanford. This article also talks about how many US companies outsource to India because doing business there is cheaper and those doing the work were educated at some of the best schools in the United States. American politicians and executives have begun to take notice of the growing appeal Bangalore and generally react in one of two ways: they themselves begin to take advantage of the opportunities Bangalore has to offer or they fight against what they believe to be a brain drain of American technological innovation. There are hundreds maybe even thousands of these start ups around Bangalore and many of them, much lie Read-Ink, are trying to stay under the radar so that they may grow and expand without intervention.
In Article Finder, I found a source, in the Cambridge South Asian Archive, which describes Bangalore in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. I found what I read from this source interesting because it serves as a point of reference in order to compare modern Bangalore with the state of Bangalore over a century ago, and it allowed me to look at how the city has developed. Looking through the information provided by this source in combat ion with my own knowledge of what was going on in the world at this time, the city of Bangalore, and India as its own country, has developed significantly. The most significant featured that I pulled from the reading was that because India was still a colony in the late eighteenth century, many of its resources were exploited, whereas now countries in the Western world still exploit citizens in cities such as Bangalore, but now these citizens are being used because of their knowledge rather than hard labor or resources. Because of this factor, and because many of these people want to build companies and corporations of their own, they pose a threat to Western nations and this is where the problem lies. Western politicians and executives, those who are not outsourcing to India themselves, are afraid that the Silicon Valley will keeps it name but that the United States will lose its position as the hub for high tech innovation to India’s Silicon Valley, Bangalore.
Photo taken of Bangalore at night from Flickr

1.) Calvin Coolidge – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_Coolidge

2.) Calvin Coolidge | The White House
www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/calvincoolidge

3.) American President: Calvin Coolidge
millercenter.org/president/coolidge

4.) Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation | Plymouth, Vermont
www.calvin-coolidge.org/

5.) Calvin Coolidge — History.com Articles, Video, Pictures and Facts
www.history.com/topics/calvin-coolidge

6.) Calvin Coolidge Quotes – BrainyQuote
www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/c/calvin_coolidge.html

7.) Calvin Coolidge (president of United States) — Britannica Online …
www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/136173/Calvin-Coolidge

8.) Calvin Coolidge Presidential Library and Museum | Forbes Library
www.forbeslibrary.org/coolidge/coolidge.shtml

9.) 30. Calvin Coolidge . . WGBH American Experience | PBS
www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/…/presidents-coolidge/

10.) Calvin Coolidge – Internet Public Library
www.ipl.org/div/potus/ccoolidge.html

HW1 Assignment

For the week of February 4th , the assigned material that I find most interesting is the article “Getting Started: The Basic Technologies Behind the Web” and learning about how things that seem so simple for those of us that use the internet are actually extremely complicated to create. This topic is interesting to me because I think that it will help me appreciate all that technology has and can do for me if I learn to use different forms of technology sufficiently. In the following weeks, I am interested in reading the article “The Difference Slavery Made: A Close Analysis of Two American Communities,” because I would like to see how this topic connects to the course and the “digital past”.
Throughout this semester I am interesting in exploring these topics:

1.) The transformation of technology serving as an instrument of function for daily humans needs (for example tractors being used to harvest crops or even refrigerators to sustain perishable foods) to the use of technology for entertainment (for example television or radio).
2.) History of competition between nations/countries on the basis of developing/improving technology
3.) History of technology growth in specific geographic areas, for example: Silicon Valley.

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