Networked learning

In the last years teaching and learning a variety of subjects via computer and the internet became very popular. You only need to have access to the internet to be able to retrieve an unlimited amount of knowledge. Teaching by the internet is also sizable business, many people earn a lot of money when someone wants to conveniently and remotely do a course, training or even full studies. You no longer need to be physically present at the lecture room, just turn on the video conference with the teacher. Of course it is difficult for distance learning to fully replace the traditional education because it still has many limitations, but surely it is the perfect way to supplement certain deficiencies.

Remember, e-learning in itself does not contain all the necessary elements, real time learning covers much larger area.

What is e-learning? What are its characteristics? It's different techniques and technologies for learning, it's the teaching in the sense of electronic technology but in a much greater extent then in the past (traditional computer training). E-learning is also the concept of greater importance than current, regular education online. E-learning is is primarily a flexible teaching. Very often it works as addiction and it's combined with traditional forms of learning. Such mixed courses can be very convenient alternative, especially for those who who want to combine studying and working because they enable people to choose between the time for studying and the time for work.

Google, you are scary.

I am fully aware that Google knows almost everything about me. What kind of music do I listen to or what car do I have or where do I live, and so on. I know that because of all these Ad sense commercials. I often explain to my friends how s it that Google knew what advertisement to show to make them interested. Each one of You can see what Google knows about You. But even I got scared when one morning I saw what Google Now showed me. In the morning, when I was getting on the bus to my university back in Poland I turned on Google Now and there's an information that my journey to school will take me 13 minutes, when I was getting back it showed me that getting home will take 5 minutes less. It's a cool thing but I've never told where I was going and which way! What is interesting is that when I travel by bus I travel by the route shown on google but when I go by car I take completely different route. Do not tell me that Google knows when I travel by bus and when by car. I must admit that the data collected by Google is impressive there is really less traffic when I'm going home. I know that I had turned my GPS etc. but it still doesn't change the fact that as for me Google moves too far. Because of these mechanics Google knows almost everything and has a lot of data about me. I'm very lucky that I'm not a terrorist :) 

I don't want to say that it has only disadvantages. I can see some advantages. If we want to keep an eye on safety of our children sharing the localisation option is perfect for such things, or when driving a car, Google can tell me about the traffic jams.

So, what I'm so afraid of? The future! The current question is not "how?" but "when?" Google will write to me "You have changed the route to work, You will be late, but if You already changed it, come by to Tesco for fresh apples, only 55gr for kilo.

Here You can watch very interesting movie about how Google data center in South Carolina works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZmGGAbHqa0

Cyber Espionage

The invention of the internet changed a lot in our world, many organisations want to use this powerful tool on their advantage.Cyber espionage describes the stealing of secrets stored in digital formats or on computers and IT networks. Internet contains unmeasurable amount of information and a lot of people want to lay their hands on it. Sometimes it is a government which wants to steal some valuable intelligence from another government, sometimes it's just some man who wants to read your e-mail or steal something. In 2012, European security researchers reported that a cyber espionage virus found on personal computers in several countries in the Middle East was designed to eavesdrop on financial transactions and perhaps disable industrial control systems.I'ts all impossible because of the viruses (harmful programmes which can break in into our computers or web and do a lot of bad things), overarching monitoring and satellites (used mainly by an army and governments) which can spy on people. These things wouldn't exist without the internet. Such surveillance is often a violation of privacy, and is opposed by various civil liberties groups and activists. But, in my opinion spying is not always wrong. Cyber espionage may be very handy during some crisis situations if used properly, for example, when army use it to fight with terrorism or when police is trying to find some criminals they can use the monitoring of the city and catch some a bad guy. Using espionage in that way is very profitable and helps to secure the society from the criminals
For more information You can watch this movie.

Cyber crime- impact of the internet crime

 Nowadays the internet is a tool which is used by almost all of humanity, most people use it doing no harm to others, but where the humanity goes, the crime follows. Many people perceive the internet as a mechanism to gain something from others not necessarily in a legal way. There are over 550 million victims of cyber crime every year witch gives us 1,5 million victims every day witch gives us more or less 18 victims of internet crime every second. 

Types of the most common internet crimes include:

• Cyberbullying and harassment
• Financial extortion
• Internet bomb threats
• Classified global security data theft
• Password trafficking
• Enterprise trade secret theft
• Personally data hacking
• Copyright violations, such as software piracy
• Counterfeit trademarks
• Illegal weapon trafficking
• Online child pornography
• Credit card theft and fraud
• Email phishing
• Domain name hijacking
• Virus spreading

These are only the most frequent types of internet crime, the complete list of illegal behaviors is much longer.

The impact of the internet crime became so big that the governments of different countries started to make certain regulations and so called "law rules" which were supposed to help people, but in fact they started to be one of the main discussion topics on the newspapers and TV because many people think (and so do I) that any government shouldn't interfere in the internet's structure, any regulations or restrictions would only erode the internet's freedom, any involvement of any government in the internet could mean opening a certain gate to manipulate information or launch censorship and such possibilities are just unacceptable even if that means that people will be defenseless against internet crime. So what should we do? Is there any way to stop this madness? I think that the only way to fight it is to learn what we should or shouldn't do while surfing in the internet, that we cannot trust every person or every webpage which we encountered,  that would help us to avoid certain unpleasantnesses in the future. The truth is that people always find a way to bypass the law and like I said earlier where is humanity there will always be the crime and people should never forget that.

ICT in society- Cyberspace and the definition of cyberculture

Overview

Our way of living, frequent using and relying on the internet shaped our society and culture into something new and created a new term- "Cyberculture". Cyberculture is the culture that has emerged from the use of the web for communication, entertainment, and business. Cyberculture is simply the effect and product of how people communicate with each other and how they exist in the internet. Cyberculture is culture using multimedia, and network connections. Basically everything in the internet is somehow made of cyberculture. The main features of cyberculture include:

• interactivity

• multimedia

• anonymity

• autonomy

• social metacommunication

• virtual reality

• slang

• transmitting information

The effects of cyberculture

We can say that cyberculture is a way of living which is chosen by more and more people. It has it's good and bad sides. The new methods of communication provided by the internet enormously changed almost whole humanity. Chatting, buying, playing, learning and transmitting data by the internet made a lot easier for us to interact and communicate with each other, it gave us the opportunity to find people from all around the world and share common interests, or to simply discuss with them on any given topic. People turn to the computer to find love or companionship because it is easy to understand, simple to operate, and quick, yet still the internet made us more alone.This trend has also many negative outcomes. Many people now prefer to chat with each other on facebook, myspace and twitter than meet face to face, younger in age are more more willing to play MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) games with their virtual friends and spend a whole day doing so than meet with their "real life" friends and play football. The cyberculture slowly consumes real life culture and human communication which may lead to the situation when people won't be able to communicate with real human beings because they simply won't remember how to do it anymore.

Hello fellow bloggers!

That's the blog which I'll be using for ITL117 ICT in society ;))