Emerging Technology Poster and Class Wrap Up

The emerging technology posters were great! It was neat to see all of the different and emerging technologies that are on the market and some that are still being developed. Overall, the technologies represented were really fascinating, and an even better part of the poster presentations was the twitter comments. It was neat to look and see the twitter remarks for each technology that was being presented.

For my personal technology, I will be showing the da Vinci. This is a robot that helps surgeons perform surgeries. It has only been implemented in several hospitals but there are people who have already had surgeries does and who have positive testimonies about their experiences. The da Vinci help doctors be more precise and exact. It is an amazing robot and it is awesome to think of the effects it could have on surgery in the future.

Red Balloon Challenge

#mitredballoon MIT Red Balloon Challenge : http://balloon.mit.edu/harrisnr/

Check out this competition... Win prize money, support charity, and have fun helping MIT track these red balloons that are all over the U.S.

Residence Hall's Got Talent

I am an RA for one of the Residence Halls on Purdue's campus. Currently I am on a team with 5 other indivuduals and we are working to put on a campus wide program called Residence Halls Got Talent. We are starting from the ground up, as this has never been done before, and we are realizing how technology is playing a huge part in making this big idea a reality. We are using BTV, twitter, facebook, emails, etc. to keep our volunteers and participants up to date and to get the word out. It is really amazing to see this transformation happening!

Facebook Family

This Thanksgiving I drove to meet my family in Northern Indiana. While I was there, visiting with my family, the topic of facebook came up. These days my parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins all have Facebook and even my grandparents are familar with it. As we chatted, several of my relatives brought up information that they had seen on Facebook and wanted to know about friends, relationships, class and my socail life. It was cool that they can keep up with me from my Facebook infomation and updates. It makes this long distance family even closer!

Greeting Cards

I have come from a family where you hand write cards and make things a personal as they can be. My mom had tupperware bins that were labeled with different occasions, for example "birthday," "anniversary," "congratulations," etc. I have been writing cards to people since I was little and I think that the world could use a little more encouragement, thanks, and acknowledgment through greeting cards. However, I am aware of things like e-cards and such. But, in my opinion, it takes away the personalization of a hand written greeting card. For Christmas, my family and I send out Christmas cards to keep people up to date on what our family is doing and how life has been treating us. One of my friends families has a blog that they invite people to and they decorate the page for Christmas and tell the same kind of family information that would be in my families mailed card. I guess that this would allow people to be interactive with you and the information that they read in your Christmas card/blog but I just can't get over the fact that handwritten-personal cards are being replaced with internet greetings.

Online Church

Sunday, at my church, the pastor talked about online church. He said as technologies advance and people spend more and more time online, there has been a rise in online churches. My understanding is that people can simply log on to the web, pull up a live cast of the pastor, wherever he maybe. They have their worship and lesson all online, while they choose to be where they may. People logged on to the same church can chat and fellowship. If you think about it, you could be "sitting next to/socializing" with someone in a different state. In my personal opinion, aside from individuals that my have specific reasons to be shut in, online churches are a horrible idea! The idea of church is to build a church body, to fellowship, encourage each other, and learn about God. Church was never meant to be simplified or watered down. Being too lazy to get out of bed on a Sunday morning, is not justified by logging on to the web and engaging in online church. If you'd like to read more about opinions surrounding the online church...check out this link.

http://online-churches.net/

Twitter Love

Today in Com 435 Rec, we explored twitter! To be honest, I don't really like it. I know that this is probably because I am not too familiar with it yet. But, there are so many different facets and options. I believe that options are a quatilty that help define a great technology. But, I have not have enough practice. Right now I am in the lost and confused faze. Time will tell if I am capable of growing a love for twitter or if our relationship fizzles out.