The Facebook help center has extensive amounts of information on just about any question you could think of asking. A lot of questions have to do with likes, friends, and (perhaps mostly) shares. Using Facebook for a few years now, I have learned over time the function of these three things and how/when to use them. For a beginner, the pages they see on the Facebook help center may look similar to these screenshots:
A "Like" on Facebook is a function used to literally show that you "like", enjoy, or agree with what is being posted. For example after a wedding people may post photo's of the ceremonies, by clicking the "like" button, you are basically saying you enjoy what you are seeing, and it is possibly even a small way to say congratulations! Another totally different use of "like" could be something along the lines of a political post, or a status containing an opinion. If you were to agree, or like (for lack of another word) what you were reading, you could show your support by clicking the "like" button!
A "Friend" on Facebook is much more than simply a friend in the way that we think of in people we know and like to be around. A lot happens on Facebook when you and someone become "friends", first, you will now see the things they post, and be able to view/comment on their posts and pictures (if their privacy settings are set to only allow friends to do, which is common), and second, you will now get suggestions for "people you may know" based on mutual friends you have with that person!
Lastly, "Shares" on Facebook are something that is very easy to use, yet not used as much as the "like" function. To "share" something on Facebook is basically the same as a "retweet" on twitter, it is a re-post of something you saw on a particular page to your own page. This has more use on Facebook than twitter since there is no character limit on Facebook, so you can also add text/images of your own to whatever you are sharing, without having to worry about going over a specified character limit.
The IBM articles focus on a main theme that a connection can be made between multiplayer online roll playing video games and the business world. Some reasons for this are that in many online games, "leaders" are developed as well as people to fill smaller roles that contain things that need to be accomplished, much like what is done in a business. Four leadership behaviors were the focus of what to base the connection between games and business on; Visioning, Evaluating, Collaborating and Executing, since both are dominant in both games and the business world.
Here is a screenshot of a popular multiplayer game I am familiar with, Halo 3. This game has a bunch of different game modes that require all 4 leadership behaviors to be in effect for your team to win. I like Halo because it is a simple Red Team vs. Blue Team, and all players have the same equipment and amount of health. In this pic we can see the red person is carrying a flag (capture the flag) and returning it to his base. Teams need to visualize the task, evaluate what course to take, collaborate in doing so (since all players have the same amount of health, no one has an advantage), and then execute.
Another game I am familiar with that requires the same kind of leadership behaviors is Call of Duty. This is another popular series of games, yet more realistic than Halo because it is based on war. Still the behaviors in game modes, such as "Sabotage" where you need to plant a bomb in the enemies base and defend it for 60 seconds until it detonates. Collaborating is a huge factor in his, because one person cannot do it by themselves without an almost impossible amount of difficulty.
Here is a screenshot from http://immersiveeducation.org/minecraft. I liked this page because it related to the Bent's Old Fort videos we watched earlier on this semester, in which the virtual version of the fort was created using Minecraft! This is a very helpful tool for tasks like the one accomplished with the virtual fort, and could be the future of business meetings and things of that nature.
The IBM articles were interesting because I never imagined video games would have any place in the business world. They have come a far way since the days when my grandmother would yell at me saying I had played too much playstation and to turn it off. The highlighted points are incredible in the similarities they draw between what goes on in huge companies and what goes on in online multiplayer roll-playing games. Information cited can be found at http://IBM.com.
The easiest and most convenient way to grow your Facebook followers is the "people I may know" option that it offers. Click on this and you will be given a list of people that have mutual friends with you and similar interests, as well as location. Chances are you will know a bunch of these people! You can then click "add friend" and become friends.
Another great way to find new people is to join groups, or pages that have people with similar interests to you. This is another way to categorize aside from the hashtags, and once you are in a group of all people with something in common, it is easy to network and make friends.
And of course, as with Twitter we have the ridiculous scheme on how to get a crazy amount of people following you in a short time, but really none of these can be accomplished in a short time. Meeting people in groups and things of that nature take time, and most Facebook friends are made from the real world, so "growing your audience" is not really possible unless you meet/know a ton of people on a daily basis which you add on Facebook (assuming the account is for personal use). But none the less there are these "ways" to get 5000 followers in a day. That is impossible, but joining groups or checking the people you may know is quick and easy!
Here is a pic of my Facebook, showing 981 friends to begin with. I have a few groups (such as work and followed pages), which has helped me find people I know over the years. Once in a while I check the "People you may know" link and chances are I'll find one or two new people that I have met in the month or so prior.
This screenshot shows my Facebook connected to a group that is our collaborative computing class. From here I have added kids from our class to be friends with me and it is a perfect example of how to gain friends/followers using one of the previously stated methods.
This screenshot shows what I see when I click the "People you may know" link. I recognize a few of the names, some from my home town! This shows another easy method you can use to find more people you know on Facebook.
This website shows some ways to get more followers, one being the use of hashtags. We talked about hashtags in class and how important they are to a post because they categorize things so well. If you were looking to reach a specific target audience, or target twitter followers, using proper hashtags would be the perfect way to categorize your tweets and get into some conversations with the people you are looking to find.
Another good way to get a lot of followers is to be in INformer! Obviously your personal account would fall into the MEformer category, since it is yours and its use is to post stuff about yourself. But other accounts such as news pages, fitness pages and things of that nature have millions of followers, because they inform us about information that everyone wants to know.
Another "way" to get followers are things like these, if you are dumb enough to do it. These sites broadcast that they can get you more followers if you pay for it! I am not sure how well this works, does not seem good, but it is a method none the less.
Here is a picture of my twitter, with 225 people currently following. I will test out some of these methods (most I already do) and see how it goes.
Below is a tweet in which I used a hashtag to vote for a former BC hockey player to participate in the NHL All Star weekend. This tweet put me in a category where I could easily find hockey fans like myself.
An immersive education summit is an event that takes place every year and is basically a conference, with many speakers where they discuss the impact that certain kinds of technology are having, and how they can be expanded. Topics covered feature all state of the art technologies such as wearable computers and 3D printing.
Here are two highlight screenshots which show in more detail what this conference is, and more specifically who and what universities are involved, because I could not remember them all. Some of my favorite topics discussed are Google Glass, 3D printing, personal robotics, and virtual currencies. The subject of this report is virtual currencies. The most popular, which I will focus on is bitcoin.
Bitcoin is an idea created in the past few years to transfer money electronically, without the involvement of banks! Instead of making a payment through a bank, people could just buy Bitcoins by using a "Bitcoin wallet" which would give you a set number of "currency" to exchange electronically. This works by sending the "currency" as a very complex and secure code from one person to another. The complexity of these codes is incredible, which makes them theoretically very secure.
There are a lot of mixed emotions about this idea, one of which being simple uneasiness; for lack of better terms, it is too risky for some people. Although the codes which the money is sent as are very long and complex, they are still out there, and therefor can possibly be hacked, no matter how unlikely it is. Some people just feel better having their money locked up in a bank, as well as tangible and on their person.
Another massive negative to Bitcoin, and the one that more or less removed it from the map is the ridiculous volatility of the worth. Here is a graph of what a Bitcoin was worth through one year, it is all over the place! People don't want to invest their money into something that could be worth next to nothing a month from now, and for that reason, Bitcoin's initial surge of popularity dropped off, and many people, including myself would never in a million years trust something like this. Apple Pay is an example of a better idea.
This video highlights what Bitcoin is as well as the ideas that did not quite come together as they planned. It is not very long, definitely worth the watch to get some basic information on the topic, and make your own assessment of if it's a good idea or not!
Technology like this is an ever changing/expanding world. Some are fantastic ideas, some fall a little bit short, but either way they are interesting to learn about and see what the next generation of technology might contain. Learn more about all of this at http://summit.immersiveeducation.org/
An immersive education summit is an event that takes place every year and is basically a conference, with many speakers where they discuss the impact that certain kinds of technology are having, and how they can be expanded. Topics covered feature all state of the art technologies such as wearable computers and 3D printing.
Here are two highlight screenshots which show in more detail what this conference is, and more specifically who and what universities are involved, because I could not remember them all. Some of my favorite topics discussed are Google Glass, 3D printing, personal robotics, and virtual currencies. The topic of this report will be personal robotics, which have helped many people in the last few decades.
Technology such as this could make the lives of millions of amputees turn upside down, for the better! Robotic arms are engineered to complete human-like tasks and with each breakthrough in technology, they get more and more fluid with the motions they perform. However, this technology being readily available, and more importantly affordable to the everyday person is still a ways away.
This is a powerful pic that shows another way personal robotics have helped people, and more specifically, those who help us all. A soldier brave enough to put his life on the line for our defense, sometimes returns home with life changing injuries, like shown in the picture. Personal robotics such as robotic prosthetic legs can help make life more normal, and much easier. I support tax money going to a cause like this, to make the life of any injured soldier better.
Below is a video of a man that lives day to day life with not one but two prosthetic, robotic arms, which give him the ability to do things he could never do without having either arm. This video is incredible as well as inspirational.
This is a little more futuristic, and it may be some time before something like this is easily available but personal robotics could be as specific as functioning robotic hands. I posted this because the man in the video has these on the ends of his arms, with incredible functionality for a machine, further development of something like this could change the lives of millions of people. Learn more about technology like this, and other interesting things at http://summit.immersiveeducation.org/
An immersive education summit is an event that takes place every year and is basically a conference, with many speakers where they discuss the impact that certain kinds of technology are having, and how they can be expanded. Topics covered feature all state of the art technologies such as wearable computers and 3D printing.
Here are two highlight screenshots which show in more detail what this conference is, and more specifically who and what universities are involved, because I could not remember them all. Some of my favorite topics discussed are Google Glass, 3D printing, personal robotics, and virtual currencies. The topic of this post will be 3D Printing, which is something not many people even know exists!
3D Printing, to me is one of the most amazing things ever created, which I also did not know about until recently. It is so complex that it is not easy to explain, I think this picture will help; as we can see, there is an Eiffel Tower displayed on the computer screen, and just as you would normally click "print" to print out a photograph of this, a 3D printer literally creates what is on the screen in front of you, which we can see by the little Eiffel Tower sitting next to the 3D printer.
So what is this machine actually doing to accomplish such a feat? It begins by making a 3D digital version of what you want to print, using a program that creates a 3D image of the task by breaking it down into horizontal layers (hundreds of thousands of them), then when you click "print" each layer is printed one at a time. There are so many layers that it is impossible to see them, and the object comes to life.
Originally, a machine like this cost well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, but with increases in technology, prices on these machines is said to drop below $20,000. Still very expensive, but a big change from above $100,000. Smaller units are also going to be readily available (with less capability) for household use, and prices are said to be in the $400 range. More information about this can be learned in the video below!
One of the more serious uses of 3D printing is the ability to "print" functioning machinery, such as guns. Technology like this could help lower military costs, which would in turn lower taxes. I will also embed a video below this of someone shooting a 3D printed gun.
3D Printing could easily be the future of mass production, if things like this continue to go well and can be expanded. Theoretically, in the future things such as cars, phones, and clearly guns can all be "printed" for a cheaper cost than importing them. Learn more at http://summit.ImmersiveEducation.org
An immersive education summit is an event that takes place every year and is basically a conference, with many speakers where they discuss the impact that certain kinds of technology are having, and how they can be expanded. Topics covered feature all state of the art technologies such as wearable computers and 3D printing. Learn more about them at http://summit.immersiveeducation.org/
Here are two highlight screenshots which show in more detail what this conference is, and more specifically who and what universities are involved, because I could not remember them all. Some of my favorite topics discussed are Google Glass, 3D printing, personal robotics, and virtual currencies. The topic of this post will be Google Glass, which is something I have always wanted to try out, because they look incredible in demonstrations.
This is a poster photo advertising Google Glass. Google Glass is a pair of glasses that has a small, yet incredibly powerful computer built into them. The arm that extends out over the eye in the photo projects an image out in front of you, slightly above your line of sight, which you can control and interact with by using the white bar (which is a responsive touch pad) that runs from your eye almost back to your ear.
Some things that Google Glass can do are 1. take photos, which is much easier because the photo that is being captured is what you are actually seeing. 2. Connect to social media, for example, after taking a photo, you can share it to your social media accounts right from your pair of glasses. And 3. Voice recognition, at any time you can say "okay glass" then ask a question or speak a command, such as "share this picture to Facebook" and the action will be done for you. I think technology like this is fascinating. A brief tutorial of how to do things using Google Glass can be seen below.
This photo shows a good example of what a typical use of Google Glass would look like, and is captured with Google Glass (meaning it is what this person was seeing at that time). As we can see, the person has asked Glass to Google search how long is the Brooklyn Bridge, which is displayed in his line of vision without obscuring it, the next thing this person would have seen is an answer!
Google Glass is one of many things talked about in these conferences, yet in much more explicit detail of course. Again, more info can be found at http://summit.immersiveeducation.org/
This screenshot shows that my YouTube account is in fact "subscribed" to iED, which means I will see all videos that iED posts show up under "my subscriptions".
This is a screenshot of me looking at the iED Facebook page, and as we can see I have "liked" the last two posts that we did in class tonight because the link now says "unlike" where it would normally say "like" if i had not yet done so.
This is another tweet that I have taken and reposted to my account (retweeted) it is more or less the same as the first post, but this one contains an image, which will help capture people's attention!
