Tutorial task week 9

-This is the e-petition that I signed. I signed it because I love animals, and I don't want them to be hurt, even though they're dingoes.

- I responded to Blitzer's blog: Clinton on economy, GOP candidates on CNN.com. http://situationroom.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/20/blitzers-blog-clinton-on-economy-gop-candidates/?hpt=sr_mid, viewed 20 September 2011.

- Barack Obama is delivering a statement announcing his Plan for Economic Growth and Deficit Reduction, in the Rose Garden of the White House.

Source:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/09/19/president-obama-washington-has-live-within-its-means, viewed 20 September 2011.
I chose to reach Barack Obama through his twitter account.

- Clean Feed:
The Australian government wants to make the internet a safer place. They made a promise called Cyber-Safety, known as Clean Feed, that is a national internet filter. They legally mandate Internet Service Providers such as Optus, Telstra and iiNet to implement technical means to filter out certain websites. They will focus on sites containing images of child abuse, and especially child pornography.

I found this in a text file while searching for clean feed australia on google.






- My belief is that you should have as little censorship as possible in a democracy. I've been raised to make up my own opinons and to hear all sides of a story before I make up my mind. Censorship can put a stop to the freedom of speech. In a democracy the public sphere is extremly important, and everyone should be heard without any limits. With that said, I also believe that it's imporant to censor the statements and content that crosses certain lines. I don't think you should hurt someones reputation if you don't have any particulary good reasons for it. You should treat everyone with equal respect and not say anything that defames anyone. The censorship in a democracy should almost be non-existent, so as many as possible can speak and be heard in the public sphere.

- The NBN will reach my place in the second release.

I found these benefits on the NBN site:
Better business solutions
Transforming the way Australians can do business by: • Increasing productivity and reducing the time wasted
waiting for information to be downloaded.
• Providing better workplace flexibility – greater opportunity to work from home with fast, efficient access to information.
• Opening new and distant markets through high-speed interaction with customers.
• Lowering work expenses – instead of work-related travel, broadband offers reliable, real-time alternatives, such as web-conferencing.
• Offering superfast access to market information. From financial markets to agribusiness, the network will allow you to access superfast information to enhance your business performance.
A better education for a brighter future
Helping Australia be a global leader in 21st century educational innovation by:
• Improving the ability of our schools to access information, collaborate and communicate with each other.
• Supporting new learning and teaching practices, such as virtual classrooms, video and audio streaming and high definition video conferencing.
• Preparing students for future education, training and life in an increasingly digital world.
• Providing teachers, parents and schools with rapid access to data.
improved medical technology
Assisting the medical community in a variety of ways by:
• Narrowing the medical gap between urban and rural
Australians and expanding access to care through the use of telemedicine for clinical care programs.
• Improving the quality of care for Australians by linking patients and practitioners to top specialists through real-time internet consultations.
• Bringing more care into the home through remote monitoring.
• Addressing current health shortages through internet- based care that connects doctors to communities where medical resources are in short supply.

Endless entertainment
Allowing you to watch, listen to or play what you want, when you want. Download an album in seconds and a movie in minutes. Spend less time waiting and more time enjoying.
The NBN aims to enable speeds of up to 100 Megabits per second to 90 per cent of Australian premises and up to 12 Megabits per second to the remaining 10 per cent. These speeds are of course dependent on factors such as the retail package you choose from your retail service provider and your chosen hardware and premises connection.
Source:
http://www.nbnco.com.au/our-network/maps.html, viewed 19 September 2011.

Then go to this link to se the benefits:

- Since I'm not from Australia I don't know anything about Australian politics or who's representing which part of an area. I'm from Norway and there we have something called "kommunevalg" where we choose our local representatives that decides everything within a certain area. My area is called Frogn and the local representative is Rita Hirsum Lystad. The federal representative is Jens Stoltenberg, our primeminister. They are both from the same party, but that is just an coincidence.

- I live in Surfers Paradise and the local representative in the Queensland Parliament is John-Paul Langbroek.The last time he spoke in the parliament was Thursday, 8 September 2011.
I figured that out by searching for Langbroek + parliament here:

http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/global/search/, viewed 19 September 2011.

- I sent Langbroek an e-mail.

I chose to not say anything about the actual content since I don't know any background information, and can't really say my opinion about anything. But I though I would give him an encouraging mail to make him happy. He seemed like a good politican and I wanted to give him my support.

I found his e-mail here:

http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/members/current/list/bio?member=Langbroek+John-Paul

Essay preparation

Essay plan:

I have chosen essay topic nr. 2: Does the extensive use of computer/video games have an adverse impact on the health of young people. What are the most recent papers? Clarify what both sides of the argument claim and only then offer your reasoned opinion based.

I will start the essay with an introduction about how many young people who play video games in today's society, if I can find the right statistics. I will then tell a little about when and why the concerns occured. (100-150 words)
In paragraph two I will present one side of the case, those who believe that it has an negative effect. I will present the different arguments I find most interesting and realistic. (250-350 words)

In the third paragraph I will present the arguments to those who do not think video games are damaging. (250-350 words)

In my conclusion I will compare the two sides, and at last present my opinion based on my research. (150-200 words)

Expanding on the lecture - Week 8

Free software is based on an ideology that everyone can use, share, modify, study and improve software. It’s based on the belief that we should share our knowledge with each other and everyone should be able to contribute. If you use proprietary software you are denied these freedoms, and you will be punished with a fine or jail time if you break the license agreement. You can even be punished if you copy the program to another computer in your own home.

The reason why free software is important to all computer users is that everyone should have the opportunity to live in a free society where we can help each other and contribute to improve the life quality of others. Everyone should have the chance to be able to do what they want with what possess, without being restricted by someone who doesn’t believe in the benefits of collaborates. If the possibility to improve the software is limited to the employers of a corporation, you will miss out of other contributors that may have something better to add. Why should you pay a lot of money for software with rules and limits, when you can freely use software any way you want without paying a fortune? It’s just a basic question about the liberties in life, and that you should be aware of all the available options before you settle down with something just because it’s more famous.

Resources:
Lee, M 2011, What is free software and why is it so important for society?, Free Software Foundation, viewed 16 September 2011, <http://www.fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software>

GNU, The Free Software Definition 2011, viewed 16 September 2011, <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html>

Tutorial task week 8 - Audio-visual production

We finally finished our audio-visual production product. We edited it in Imovie, and downloaded a song from jamendo.com that we found on jamendo.com through Creative Commons. The editing went really well, and it turned out exactly as we pictured it would be. The reason why we put the song on was that the chat part on Facebook would be boring to watch without music, and we thought the music gave the movie a nice ending.

We used old-movie-effect on the first scene, and slow motion effect on the last scene. That worked out really well and we thought it improved the film. When we found out that we wanted to add music we searched the music we found on CC, and tried to found a happy song. We had to listed to a few songs, but it didn't take much time before we found the one we used.

We created our own youtube-account, and it was really easy and quick to just upload it on youtube.com. We own the rights to the movie since we produced it all by our selves, but we do not own the rights to the song we used. Since we are not using it for commercial purposes and we achknowlegded the artist of the song in both the video and in the description on youtube, we can not be accused for copyright infringments.

We chose to use the names Romeo and Juliet to let the viewers easily understand that the movie was about two lovers when we didn't have any sound. We don't think that can cause copyright infringements, since we didn't intend to steal the names and to copy the famous story. By obtaining a license from Creative Commons, we are able to “share, reuse and remix their material, legally” (Creative Commons Australia).

NCT - Romeo and Juliet.mov by Nillie, Catherine, Helga is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License.

Based on a work at techknowworld.tumblr.com



Here is our final product:


Created by: Nilushi Warusevitane, Cathrine Tallulah Magelie Smith and Helga Woll Lunder.
Music: So Happy- Bert Jerrad. Taken from jamendo.com.

Source:
Creative Commons Australia, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia Licence, viewed on 20 September 2011, <http://creativecommons.org.au/about>

Expanding on the lecture - week 7

In the lecture we talked about how the internet has developed citizen journalism, and how everyone can be a journalist these days. If you are present to an important event you have the possibility to report the information, pictures, sounds, movies you obtain. You can either post this on e.g. your blog, Twitter, Facebook or send it to a real media channel. Because of citizen journalism people hear and see the latest news often while it happens or straight afterwards. Even though this is a positive development, the issue if citizen journalism is the end of traditional journalism has occurred.

Bentley, C H (2011 p. 103) claims that citizen journalism is no more a replacement for professional journalism than teabags are a replacement for water. Both can stand comfortably alone, but when combined they produce something quite wonderful. I could not agree more. I think citizen journalism and traditional journalism help and complete each other, and will not obliterate one another. Citizen journalists are not trying to steal someone’s job, they just want the world to see what they have to say or show about a specific theme, a recent experience or just an ignored issue. The professional journalist on the other hand seeks information about an issue and has heaps of new resources because of citizen journalists. I’ve learned that sharing is caring.

Resource:
Bentley, C H 2011, Citizen journalism: Back to the future, Geopolitics, History and International Relations, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 103-118, viewed on 8 September 2011, via ProQuest Database, http://search.proquest.com.libraryproxy.griffith.edu.au/docview/887545817.

Tutorial task week 7 - making video

In tutorial week 7 we filmed all our scenes for our movie. We made up our own story and shot the scenes ourselves so we would not have any copyright problems. We filmed with my Canon digital camera. In the first scene we used the color effect sepia to get an older look. Then we used normal black and white in the second scene, and regular colors in the last scene. I think that worked great, and was a clever way to seperate the scenes. When we filmed the Facebook-chat we had to use Word to get the names right and to get the chat big enough.

The most difficult part was to figure out how we should organise the scenes to get out the message that we wanted. It was particulary hard when we shot the scenes without sound. We shot the scenes we were uncertain about several times and tried out different things like angel, situation etc. so we could pick the best outcome.

It was really hard to figure out so many scenes and lines in that short amount of time, but at least we got finished and are ready to edit the movie next tutorial. When we were supposed to upload the films from my  camera we ran into some troubles. My wire did not fit my camera, and neither the school computer or Cathrine's computer had a memory card access. I just have to upload the film to my computer, and bring them on a USB-stick to the next tutorial where we will edit the movie in imovie.