WOW!! Week eight already.
Well the website is finally online after a vast number of problems in recent days. Word of advice: If you are creating a website on Frontpage, check to make sure that the features you are using, dont require Frontpage Extensions and if they do, then brace yoursleves for a bit of a slog.
Anyway back to the site. We have completely finsihed revamping the website and as it seems, our problems are beyond us. We are currently working on a couple of major stories which should be online in the next couple of days but after that, it should literally be a case of keeping tabs on the site until the last week of term.
We have installed the Google search bar, Google maps and Google Checkout. We got a jolly nice fellow called Keith to blog for us, we have installed a poll on the homepage and rewritten and updated every single page on the bloody site and still found time to create a host of new ones. There's the shop, blog and media pages which are all new and bring a lot to the site and the newsletter page, which allows members to read the club's quarterly newsletter online.
But anyway I'll keep you informed of any updates or news. And hopefully no more problems.
Tuesday, 18 March 2008
Wednesday, 5 March 2008
Is Social Networking really such a waste of time?
There has been much fuss of late over the loss of productivity brought on by employees multi-tasking between actual work and social networking. One estimate puts the cost to British industry at £6.5 billion per annum in lost productivity and questionable bandwidth usage. Another survey estimates that Britain’s social media fanatics are spending as much as 12 hours per week on these sites, no doubt eating into valuable work time.
But what is the impact of this collective social network addiction on high school and university students, our bright future? A new survey this week by IT specialists Global Secure Systems, says students are also guilty of sneaking in a fair bit of social networking during the school day.
In their survey of 500 English school children between the ages of 13 and 17, 51 per cent confess to checking their social network profiles during lessons. Over a quarter admit their in-school daily social network fix exceeds over 30 minutes each day.
If this sounds surprising, you haven’t been to school lately. Laptop-toting school kids are the norm these days, as are Wifi-enabled campuses. And when the laptop is in the locker, there are net-enabled smart phones at the ready. Add to the equation the rocket-fast texting ability of a typical 16-year-old and you get an explosion of social networking opportunities at the most unlikely points in the school day.
No educator would knowingly allow such a distraction in their classroom, and yet it appears to be happening right under their noses. It’s hard enough getting the PlayStation generation to focus for even a half-hour on a lecture of, say, King John and the Magna Carta. Try competing with the latest lunchroom gossip being broadcasted to mobiles, Facebook and Twitter. The significance of establishing modern-day democracy pales in comparison.
Before you 'oldies' shake your head and mutter something starting with the phrase “In my day…”, admit it – how many of you have shirked off work on an important business project to tend to a personal email, text or, these days, a Facebook query? How many of you have done it today? How many of you are doing it now?
Many of you might regard tidying up your profile, sending messages to friends or contacts, joining the odd group or participating in a movie knowledge quiz to be a harmless distraction, the kind of thing that keeps you sane during the workday. But us teens are deadly serious about social networks. For us, failing to attend to these duties could end friendships, sink reputations and mean missed opportunities to climb the fickle and precarious social ladder of young adulthood.
But surely we should be embracing social media and every other Web 2.0 application out there. Yes, posting photos of you and your semi-clad friends boozing it up late at night could sink your chances with a prospective employer, who will no doubt be snooping around for this very type of incriminating evidence. But the good far outweighs the bad. All this facebooking is helping even if you don't realise it. I know people who have built and promoted projects on fighting poverty and eradicating hunger, organising music gigs, art and photo exhibitions, plus coordinating meet-ups for political rallies.
Being at university myself, I admire the growing number of young students who dedicate hours to designing complicated widgets and applications too. Yes, they’re probably neglecting their history paper to complete it, but the end product is a far more valuable lesson learned in creativity, courage and computer coding. When I look at all the creativity, the collaboration and the activism being generated in these networks, I am hopeful for the future. Perhaps one day lesson five on a Monday will no longer be R.E or Citizenship, it will be facebooking...
But what is the impact of this collective social network addiction on high school and university students, our bright future? A new survey this week by IT specialists Global Secure Systems, says students are also guilty of sneaking in a fair bit of social networking during the school day.
In their survey of 500 English school children between the ages of 13 and 17, 51 per cent confess to checking their social network profiles during lessons. Over a quarter admit their in-school daily social network fix exceeds over 30 minutes each day.
If this sounds surprising, you haven’t been to school lately. Laptop-toting school kids are the norm these days, as are Wifi-enabled campuses. And when the laptop is in the locker, there are net-enabled smart phones at the ready. Add to the equation the rocket-fast texting ability of a typical 16-year-old and you get an explosion of social networking opportunities at the most unlikely points in the school day.
No educator would knowingly allow such a distraction in their classroom, and yet it appears to be happening right under their noses. It’s hard enough getting the PlayStation generation to focus for even a half-hour on a lecture of, say, King John and the Magna Carta. Try competing with the latest lunchroom gossip being broadcasted to mobiles, Facebook and Twitter. The significance of establishing modern-day democracy pales in comparison.
Before you 'oldies' shake your head and mutter something starting with the phrase “In my day…”, admit it – how many of you have shirked off work on an important business project to tend to a personal email, text or, these days, a Facebook query? How many of you have done it today? How many of you are doing it now?
Many of you might regard tidying up your profile, sending messages to friends or contacts, joining the odd group or participating in a movie knowledge quiz to be a harmless distraction, the kind of thing that keeps you sane during the workday. But us teens are deadly serious about social networks. For us, failing to attend to these duties could end friendships, sink reputations and mean missed opportunities to climb the fickle and precarious social ladder of young adulthood.
But surely we should be embracing social media and every other Web 2.0 application out there. Yes, posting photos of you and your semi-clad friends boozing it up late at night could sink your chances with a prospective employer, who will no doubt be snooping around for this very type of incriminating evidence. But the good far outweighs the bad. All this facebooking is helping even if you don't realise it. I know people who have built and promoted projects on fighting poverty and eradicating hunger, organising music gigs, art and photo exhibitions, plus coordinating meet-ups for political rallies.
Being at university myself, I admire the growing number of young students who dedicate hours to designing complicated widgets and applications too. Yes, they’re probably neglecting their history paper to complete it, but the end product is a far more valuable lesson learned in creativity, courage and computer coding. When I look at all the creativity, the collaboration and the activism being generated in these networks, I am hopeful for the future. Perhaps one day lesson five on a Monday will no longer be R.E or Citizenship, it will be facebooking...
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