There was a time when I would click the thumbs up button on videos made by people I'm subscribed to on YouTube when the video started. That's not the case anymore.
My mouse still hovers over to the thumb buttons but I don't click. I watch the video and sometimes halfway through I'll click the thumbs up button. Sometimes I wait until the very end. Sometimes I don't click at all.
It's not that I dislike the videos I've been watching lately, but many of them are not worth the three-ish minutes it takes to watch them. Many of them are of a lower quality than what I watched a year ago. Two years ago. Vloggers get better cameras and lighting. They learn to edit better. But in a lot of cases the content quality goes down.
I don't click the thumbs down button, though. Instead I'm waiting for the videos to be better again. I'm waiting for minutes better spent.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
Content Saturation
Alan Lastufka wrote a tumblr post about being bored with YouTube videos because people are uploading for quantity rather than quality.
His post reminded of Ralph Waldo Emerson's words:
I feel the same way Alan does about some of the vloggers I watch, but I hadn't bothered to voice my thoughts anywhere. For me it's a passing feeling of apathy every time I go to YouTube. Too many videos from the same people in too short of a time for me to care. Then I saw Alan's post on tumblr and realized other people are feeling the same way for the same reasons.
I'm much more inclined to watch a video posted by someone who hasn't updated in a while or someone who updates at irregular intervals. I don't expect regular videos unless it's something that has to have regular updates like VEDA or the Ford Fiesta project from a few years ago. I expect vloggers to post videos when they have an idea for a video. Like Alan said, I don't see the point in making a video for the sake of uploading a new video on a regular basis.
If vloggers post videos only when they have something to say, show, or announce, then I know that when I see their videos in my subscription box, they will be something exciting to watch. Something new.
When I go to YouTube and see a handful of videos from one person, all posted this week, I'm going to assume it isn't worth the time to watch them all. They're probably more of the same instead of a little something different.
Besides YouTube, I've noticed that I've been getting bored with content on other sites as well. I hardly log in to Twitter anymore because it's a lot of noise and very little substance. I've unsubscribed from blogs I used to love because nowadays they update 5 times a day with filler posts. There might be something worth reading once a week.
I let tumblr off the hook because that's supposed to be a stream of a lot of content. Even so, I limit the number of people I follow so that I can actually keep up with their blogs instead of having to dig through a lot of excess content.
Saturation, saturation. Every time this happens, when I get bored with the sites I'm on, I go looking for another site to browse. Last week, I finally joined Reddit, but that's barely keeping my attention. I poke around for a few minutes and then I find something else to do.
His post reminded of Ralph Waldo Emerson's words:
In every work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
I feel the same way Alan does about some of the vloggers I watch, but I hadn't bothered to voice my thoughts anywhere. For me it's a passing feeling of apathy every time I go to YouTube. Too many videos from the same people in too short of a time for me to care. Then I saw Alan's post on tumblr and realized other people are feeling the same way for the same reasons.
I'm much more inclined to watch a video posted by someone who hasn't updated in a while or someone who updates at irregular intervals. I don't expect regular videos unless it's something that has to have regular updates like VEDA or the Ford Fiesta project from a few years ago. I expect vloggers to post videos when they have an idea for a video. Like Alan said, I don't see the point in making a video for the sake of uploading a new video on a regular basis.
If vloggers post videos only when they have something to say, show, or announce, then I know that when I see their videos in my subscription box, they will be something exciting to watch. Something new.
When I go to YouTube and see a handful of videos from one person, all posted this week, I'm going to assume it isn't worth the time to watch them all. They're probably more of the same instead of a little something different.
Besides YouTube, I've noticed that I've been getting bored with content on other sites as well. I hardly log in to Twitter anymore because it's a lot of noise and very little substance. I've unsubscribed from blogs I used to love because nowadays they update 5 times a day with filler posts. There might be something worth reading once a week.
I let tumblr off the hook because that's supposed to be a stream of a lot of content. Even so, I limit the number of people I follow so that I can actually keep up with their blogs instead of having to dig through a lot of excess content.
Saturation, saturation. Every time this happens, when I get bored with the sites I'm on, I go looking for another site to browse. Last week, I finally joined Reddit, but that's barely keeping my attention. I poke around for a few minutes and then I find something else to do.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Flicker In The Night
I've been updating my short fiction blog often over the last few weeks. I'm not sure if that's only because I've been home on break of if it's something that will continue, but it's something.
Monday, December 27, 2010
To write The Time Traveler's Wife
A list of topics Audrey Niffenegger had to know or research in order to write The Time Traveler's Wife:
I don't know if this sort of diversity interests anyone else.
- Neighborhoods, streets, and lifestyle in Chicago
- Punk music
- How to pick various types of locks
- Basics of pick-pocketing
- The Newberry Library
- Paper sculpting/whatever it is that Clare does
- American popular culture and fashion by decades, roughly from 1950 to 2010
- Certain things in genetics so that what's in the book sounds plausible
- Trends in American political activism in the 1970s and 1980s
- Art history
- Pregnancy and miscarriage
- String orchestras and opera
- At least two types of cooking/culinary styles
Friday, December 3, 2010
NaNoWriMo 2010
This was my first time participating in NaNoWriMo, and I knew I wouldn't have enough time to do it. This has been my busiest college semester ever and some days I barely have time to do any homework, let alone write for fun. I wrote only a few days during November...my word count on November 30 was 5,429.
The annoying thing is, I probably had enough ideas to write for the whole month. Lack of time was definitely the issue. I'm going to continue writing over winter break because I like what I have so far and I want to keep working on this story.
Next year, I won't have to worry about homework, and that will be wonderful.
The annoying thing is, I probably had enough ideas to write for the whole month. Lack of time was definitely the issue. I'm going to continue writing over winter break because I like what I have so far and I want to keep working on this story.
Next year, I won't have to worry about homework, and that will be wonderful.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Content Analysis Analysis
I'm taking my senior seminar for Communication and Media studies this semester and as part of the course, each student has to do her own research paper/project. Four of the seminar students (including me) are doing a content analysis where we code some type of media content. Three of us are looking at TV shows and one is looking at video game game play. We have to code our own projects and at least one other student's project. I'm looking at the portrayals of characters according to their age in Nickelodeon programs and I coded the video game project and two episodes of Top Chef for one of the other content analyses in the class.
The funny thing is, comm students get a lot of flak for being comm students. We have it "easy" because "all we do" is watch videos and talk about them in class. Most people don't take communication and media studies seriously, so likewise our work is not considered serious or important.
With content analyses, though, you have to pay so much attention to what you're coding. You have to watch for details and you have to take careful notes about what the analysis is looking for. Then after you spend hours coding episodes and collect notes from students who coded the same content, you have to somehow make sense of what you have. You have to find a pattern, make an argument, or organize support for your idea. All of this on top of regular course readings, essays, and exams.
Maybe it's because I'm at a small liberal arts college, but there's definitely a hierarchy of majors that I see. The natural sciences get the most respect and prestige because they have three-hour labs and independent research projects. The theater students spend hours and hours rehearsing so of course they're working hard. The communication students read a lot and spend some time watching movies and TV.
See how it sounds bad when I say it that way? But that's the way most people think of those majors. Everyone watches TV and browses the internet, so it can't be important that we study them, but the fact that everyone is exposed to and uses media is the exact reason we should pay attention to and understand all aspects of the media.
The funny thing is, comm students get a lot of flak for being comm students. We have it "easy" because "all we do" is watch videos and talk about them in class. Most people don't take communication and media studies seriously, so likewise our work is not considered serious or important.
With content analyses, though, you have to pay so much attention to what you're coding. You have to watch for details and you have to take careful notes about what the analysis is looking for. Then after you spend hours coding episodes and collect notes from students who coded the same content, you have to somehow make sense of what you have. You have to find a pattern, make an argument, or organize support for your idea. All of this on top of regular course readings, essays, and exams.
Maybe it's because I'm at a small liberal arts college, but there's definitely a hierarchy of majors that I see. The natural sciences get the most respect and prestige because they have three-hour labs and independent research projects. The theater students spend hours and hours rehearsing so of course they're working hard. The communication students read a lot and spend some time watching movies and TV.
See how it sounds bad when I say it that way? But that's the way most people think of those majors. Everyone watches TV and browses the internet, so it can't be important that we study them, but the fact that everyone is exposed to and uses media is the exact reason we should pay attention to and understand all aspects of the media.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
In response to Dan Brown's Open Letter to Educators
Dan Brown (pogobat on YouTube) posted a video where he discusses the problems he sees with institutionalized education, especially at the university level. I disagree with some of what he said, and that's good. Few YouTube videos make me think about their content enough to write a full-out blog post. Here's Dan's video and my response below it.
As a second-semester college junior, I understand some of Dan's frustrations. I've sat in classes where professors lecture endless facts that we're expected to regurgitate on the exam. I hate lesson plans that rely on PowerPoint slides. Most of those classes, though, are introductory courses. They lay the groundwork for more in-depth studying. You have to get through the boring, mindless notetaking before you can get to the more interesting parts of your discipline. I've had many more classes that are discussion-based, where the 15 to 25 students in the class are expected to contribute as much as the professor.
A big difference with the classes I've taken is that I attend a small liberal arts college. By small, I mean 2,500 undergraduate students--not anywhere near the 18,500 undergrads at the University of Nebraska (Lincoln, where I assume Dan went). Smaller size means smaller classes. More interaction with professors and other students. Your major matters too. I imagine I would have much thicker, fuller notebooks thanks to hours of lecture if I were a biology or chemistry major. I study media and communication, however, so we read and watch a lot and then talk about it. My class materials are stacks of scholarly articles with my scribbled notes and comments in the margins.
I agree that colleges and universities do need to change in some respects. Dan talks about the availability of so much information via the internet. He says it's no longer necessary to test students on memorized information because all of it is readily available online. In some ways, he's right. There's really no reason for me to know every nation's capital city when I can Google them if need be. It's one thing, however, to look up specific information and another to look up everything. Looking up some information all the time instead of memorizing it isn't practical. I can look up the first 20 digits of pi if necessary, but there's no reason for me not to know pi equals 3.14 for everyday mathematics. Many people in Dan's video comments have said that there's no way doctors can operate without memorizing facts and procedures, and they're absolutely correct. YouTube tutorials are good for learning how to play a song on the guitar but not for performing surgery.
I don't see memorization vs. the availability of information as the most important issue when compared to other aspects of the university system. Publishing companies continue to raise the prices of textbooks without making significant changes to new editions. Grade inflation in the U.S. encourages mediocre qualities of work. Engaged, interested students can get as much out of their college education as they put in, but many students drift through, doing the minimum amount of work required to receive a degree. There are problems on both sides: how universities are structured as well as students' attitudes toward their education. I agree that changes need to be made, but what, specifically, needs to happen?
Dan says educational institutions today need to reinvent themselves or the world will move on without them. Education needs to fundamentally change and go beyond simply using e-mail, online databases, and Blackboard. But he doesn't say what should be done. Online courses? Already in session. Using YouTube for class demonstrations and examples? Happening. I'm all for new teaching strategies, but what other way is there to learn information than to study it? There are different learning styles, yes, like visual, auditory, tactile...but how do you reinvent those? Or where do you go instead? Scenes from The Matrix come to mind, directly uploading knowledge into human brains...
I agree that change is necessary, but I don't envision an overhaul of the system. Change will be gradual because despite its problems, a college education is still worth the time and effort.
Assuming you live on campus, college offers you a unique time to learn. You don't have the distractions of home and family. You've moved past high school drama (hopefully). You have new sources of intellectual stimulation all over campus, both in and out of the classroom. You dedicate as much time as you want to your studies and choose how much you get involved with other aspects of campus life such as sports, clubs, and organizations.
College is a time to grow as a person, not only as a student. Nothing on the internet can simulate four years of living with thousands of your peers. Besides classes, you're in charge of your entire schedule: when you do your work, sleep, eat, do laundry, and hang out with friends. You learn to interact with people from all kinds of backgrounds. You use your time as you see fit and with any luck, still love learning after graduation.
There's room for improvement, obviously, but we don't need to (and shouldn't) scrap the university system.
As a second-semester college junior, I understand some of Dan's frustrations. I've sat in classes where professors lecture endless facts that we're expected to regurgitate on the exam. I hate lesson plans that rely on PowerPoint slides. Most of those classes, though, are introductory courses. They lay the groundwork for more in-depth studying. You have to get through the boring, mindless notetaking before you can get to the more interesting parts of your discipline. I've had many more classes that are discussion-based, where the 15 to 25 students in the class are expected to contribute as much as the professor.
A big difference with the classes I've taken is that I attend a small liberal arts college. By small, I mean 2,500 undergraduate students--not anywhere near the 18,500 undergrads at the University of Nebraska (Lincoln, where I assume Dan went). Smaller size means smaller classes. More interaction with professors and other students. Your major matters too. I imagine I would have much thicker, fuller notebooks thanks to hours of lecture if I were a biology or chemistry major. I study media and communication, however, so we read and watch a lot and then talk about it. My class materials are stacks of scholarly articles with my scribbled notes and comments in the margins.
I agree that colleges and universities do need to change in some respects. Dan talks about the availability of so much information via the internet. He says it's no longer necessary to test students on memorized information because all of it is readily available online. In some ways, he's right. There's really no reason for me to know every nation's capital city when I can Google them if need be. It's one thing, however, to look up specific information and another to look up everything. Looking up some information all the time instead of memorizing it isn't practical. I can look up the first 20 digits of pi if necessary, but there's no reason for me not to know pi equals 3.14 for everyday mathematics. Many people in Dan's video comments have said that there's no way doctors can operate without memorizing facts and procedures, and they're absolutely correct. YouTube tutorials are good for learning how to play a song on the guitar but not for performing surgery.
I don't see memorization vs. the availability of information as the most important issue when compared to other aspects of the university system. Publishing companies continue to raise the prices of textbooks without making significant changes to new editions. Grade inflation in the U.S. encourages mediocre qualities of work. Engaged, interested students can get as much out of their college education as they put in, but many students drift through, doing the minimum amount of work required to receive a degree. There are problems on both sides: how universities are structured as well as students' attitudes toward their education. I agree that changes need to be made, but what, specifically, needs to happen?
Dan says educational institutions today need to reinvent themselves or the world will move on without them. Education needs to fundamentally change and go beyond simply using e-mail, online databases, and Blackboard. But he doesn't say what should be done. Online courses? Already in session. Using YouTube for class demonstrations and examples? Happening. I'm all for new teaching strategies, but what other way is there to learn information than to study it? There are different learning styles, yes, like visual, auditory, tactile...but how do you reinvent those? Or where do you go instead? Scenes from The Matrix come to mind, directly uploading knowledge into human brains...
I agree that change is necessary, but I don't envision an overhaul of the system. Change will be gradual because despite its problems, a college education is still worth the time and effort.
Assuming you live on campus, college offers you a unique time to learn. You don't have the distractions of home and family. You've moved past high school drama (hopefully). You have new sources of intellectual stimulation all over campus, both in and out of the classroom. You dedicate as much time as you want to your studies and choose how much you get involved with other aspects of campus life such as sports, clubs, and organizations.
College is a time to grow as a person, not only as a student. Nothing on the internet can simulate four years of living with thousands of your peers. Besides classes, you're in charge of your entire schedule: when you do your work, sleep, eat, do laundry, and hang out with friends. You learn to interact with people from all kinds of backgrounds. You use your time as you see fit and with any luck, still love learning after graduation.
There's room for improvement, obviously, but we don't need to (and shouldn't) scrap the university system.
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