CIS 3810 Lanka Vidanapathirana

I used  https://avatarmaker.com/  to create an avatar of myself. I used the new media tools of personal features/characteristics provided by the avatarmaker website, to create an avatar that looks like me. Through the use of colors, outfit, shapes, and styles, from the website I was able to combine these features to create a unique avatar.

Media fosters creativity by making things easier to take and implement into something new and more advanced. Media allows for distribution of information easier, which then allows one to take that information and make use of it by the use of one's creativity. For example mashups, " Mashups find new uses for current digital technology, a new iteration of the cause-and-effect relationship behind almost every change in pop-music aesthetics: the gear changes, and then the music does." ( https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/01/10/1-1-1-1 ). The media/music allows a mashup to be created by taking two songs of different genres to create something new and interesting. Creativity comes into play when trying to make two different songs sound alike through the use of different instrumentals, sounds, and beats.

Virtual worlds are created to mimic real world instances, and can be perfect for testing. Virtual worlds can be used to test something that is timely and costly to do in reality. Virtual worlds can be used for gaming environments, where the user can play a game and feel the experiences head on while playing. A benefit of virtual reality is that it can also be used for prototyping, which can help visualize whatever is being built/created and may save money than building an actual physical prototype. Virtual world foster creativity in education by giving children a chance to learn through a virtual environment. " Students remember what they’ve encountered in the virtual world, said AIS’s Maxwell, who studied behavioral neuroscience for her doctorate."( https://www.reporternewspapers.net/2018/09/14/the-virtual-world-moves-into-the-classroom/ ). Students are able to remember better when interacting with virtual reality, which can enhance a student's learning experience. Cre

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat are all social media platforms to communicate with a large audience group. They all consist of posts and comments, in Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook the main user posts about something and their friends/followers are able to like the posts and comment. Both facebook and twitter are used to write and comment on something and share videos. Instagram is used for uploading pictures and short video clips where users are able to like comment on each individual post. On the other hand, snapchat is used to post a picture or video to one's story. Then the snapchat user's friends are able to view and reply to the story via messages. In a sense these social networking websites have the concept of blogs because one usually posts informal information, and another person being a user of that social media platform can comment on the original post.

A twitter discussion compares to a blackboard discussion, in the way of post and replies. In blackboard you can create a post, with as many characters as you'd like and other blackboard students are able to reply to your tweet. This is similar to twitter's tweet and comment feature, where a tweet is created and other users of twitter are able to comment on the original tweet. Both platforms are similar to an in-class discussion because the person that is usually in the front usually the professor, who poses questions and statements about a subject. Students raise their hands to comment on what the professor says, which relates to the post and comment idea. When a student raises a new idea or question, it is like starting a new thread in blackboard because it is a post with a different idea. Other students and the professor can comment on the student's statement, which then again relates to the comment features of Blackboard and Twitter.

Blog social networking can be used to speak out to large media companies to fix any mistakes that harms it's users. For example, the case of Amazon saying an error removed it's  Gay and Lesbian book  listings which caused thousands of  sellers to lose their sales rank and sales, harmed many book sellers' selling privilege on amazon. The publishers of the books used blogs to reach Amazon's attention, " In a blog post late Monday, Mr. Seymour wrote that Amazon’s statement was a start, but not sufficient. “It does not explain why writers, like myself, were told by Amazon reps that our books were being classified as ‘adult products.’ ” ( http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/technology/internet/14amazon.html . Of the many blog posts similar to this one, the author's were able to get a response from Amazon stating that it was a system glitch and will implement new measures to avoid accidents like this one.  Another idea that blog social networking can be used is when