Making the Grade pt. 1

What to Do

Right away I was impressed at how hip and well organized RateMyProfessors.com is. I guess for some reason I associate professors with plain white web pages from the 90's. Nevertheless, it looks very sleek, almost Twitterish. At the top of the page there is an option to search for a particular professor or just browse them by school. So I typed in Columbia College Chicago and used the drop down menu to select "English."

Sure enough, there he is, Dr. Schiff himself. Of course, there's no photo, but he has been rated six times, and his overall rating is 4.5 out 5. That's just about where I would put him. So let's grade Jeff Schiff together.

That's him on the left (ha ha)

First question: Easiness

Easiness? I would hate to describe one of my professors as being "easy." Now classmates, that would be interesting. Maybe we can start up RateMySorority.com. Hold on, let me Google that...what d'ya know, there are a few results. No definite site, but there is a blog by that name, and it looks as though someone has purchased the domain. Nevermind. Anyways...Jeff's not too tough, but he certainly isn't easy. I'll give him a 3 on this one. I definitely agree with some of the comments people left in regards to this question.

Second question: Helpfulness

Let's give 'em a 4 in helpfulness. Although I am not very timely with the assignments, I would have to say this class is probably my favorite of this semester. It has helped me become acquainted with writing online, more specifically, blogging. This is something I've wanted to do for quite some time, but never had the motivation. Now it's a requirement. I have learned a lot about how to connect with an audience and make your blog more presentable. Jeff's pretty good at constructive criticism when it comes to commenting on the blogs. Other times, I post something he probably has no idea on how to grade. He's a very smart guy, and the most useful information I obtain from the course comes not from the work, but directly from him. I take a lot of notes, and every week I learn an assortment of new and exciting words and phrases, like "visceral," "ineffable," "flippant," or "more than one way to skin a cat." I play a lot of Scrabble, so I'd say Jeff is pretty helpful. The lowest choice is 'useless,' with the highest being 'extremely helpful.' Until he does my taxes, writes me a letter of recommendation, cosigns on a loan and lifts the financial hold on my account, I wouldn't consider anyone "extremely helpful."

Third Question: Clarity

Ah yes, Clarity. My favorite Jimmy Eat World album. Also an essential part of teaching. Teachers must be able to communicate the subject to the students in a clear and concise manner, otherwise, there is no point in showing up. Jeff does this well. I would argue that one of his best qualities is holding our attention, which a lot of teachers at Columbia, especially in gen-eds, struggle with. Sometimes it's because they don't know what the hell they're talking about, but more often then not it's because they're from a foreign country. I've had someone from Kenya, India, and most recently, Russia. That one's not so hard to understand as it is hard to stop imitating. "I must break you." My only bone to pick with Jeff's diction is that sometimes it's too good. He likes to use a lot of obscure words and phrases that small-minded folk like myself have a hard time wrapping our heads around. But because you can never have too much of a good thing, I'll give him a 5 on this one. "Crystal Clear." Great job!

Fourth Question: Interest Level

This one's for the interest level prior to class. It sounds like they mean before the semester officially begins, however I'll grade it on what I think they mean: Am I interested in the course outside of class? The answer would have to be yes--very much so. I am constantly thinking about what I am going to post in my next personal blog. First, I'll come up with a concept in my head. This usually happens while I am at work. So then I'll get a blank sheet of paper and begin writing. That sheet will get stored away in my class folder until I am ready to type it up into the blog. Though I am very interested in the class, I have a lot of other things on my plate, and I cannot consider WFNM "my world." 4 out of 5.

Fifth Question: Textbook Use

Low. There is no textbook! Woohoo! Thank you for not making me go to the Columbia book store halfway through the semester to pay an arm and a leg for a book I might only use once. Thank you sooo much.

And that's all there is to it. The only other questions are whether or not attendance is mandatory, whether or not the professor is still teaching, and whether or not you find them attractive. I have no opinion from a physical standpoint, but just for fun I clicked "hot" because hey, intelligence is sexy.

My Favorite Social Networking Site

Fandemonium

What is the most popular organized team sport on the globe? Here's a hint: it's not baseball. To us 'proud' Americans, this sport is known as soccer. To the rest of the world, it is known as football, aka "footy." And if you're an avid (American) fan like I am, you have to look farther than ESPN.

When the season started this year (most leagues begin toward the end of the summer) I got really excited and went searching for a site that would quench my thirst for goals. There are plenty of sites that list results or review matches, but it is very difficult to find up-to-date video clips from the games. They are not allowed on YouTube, and are pulled immediately.

So I found the the football equivalent (or successor) to YouTube: FootyTube. It is absolute paradise for footy fans like myself. Footy's mission is to create the world's greatest online football community, and if I may say so myself, they've done so with flying colors. Who would've thought that a website based around videos of professional soccer matches could be even more interactive, gratifying and satisfying than facebook? These guys, that's who.

Putting the 'i' in 'Team'

You begin by creating a profile like with any typical website nowadays. After filling out all the usual information, you get to select one club team and one national team that you want to represent you. For instance, I live in the United States, so naturally I chose the US national team. For my favorite club team I chose FC Barcelona, arguably the best football club in the world. (Yes, better than Manchester United) The clubs you choose are the first thing that show up in your profile, preceding even your name! This is important because it will help you determine friend and foe as you gain your 'footing.'

After you've made a profile, you can then customize it by adding a list of all your favorite and least favorite football clubs. They show up as little icons on the left side of your profile, which allow you to go directly to each team's videos with just the click of a button. On the right side of your profile are your stats, or ratings. There are your fan traits, fan valuation, and dream footy. Your dream footy is the British version of fantasy (American) football. Here's how it works:

You are the manager of a football club. You are given a budget to buy players for your team. Players are priced according to their talent, success, and popularity. You will probably only have enough money for a couple really good players, and the rest will all be mediocre. Once you run out of money, you run out of players, so you have to manage your finances.

Your players get points based on their performances in real life. If a player gets hurt in real life and stops playing, he's not going to score any points for you. That would be a good time to substitute him. However, there are only certain points during the season when you are allowed to add and drop players. If you want to upgrade to a better player, you have to make more money. You do this by raising your fan valuation by way of your fan traits. And this is where it gets good.

In order to obtain a good fan valuation, you have to be very social; you have to get noticed. People will judge you not only by the teams you represent, but also the comments you write for the videos, and any messages you post in the forums. Based on these writings, your peers will judge you as being either funny, clever, cool, serious, silly, moody, angry or rude. Whichever trait is chosen the most is what you are labeled. I am currently known for being rude (I may have made some sexist and slightly racist comments in one of the matches for a women's international team). I have 3 rude votes, 2 funny, silly and cool votes, and 1 clever vote. The site then takes your fan traits into account and couples them with all your other activity on the site, and through some incomprehensible mathematical equation comparable only to a credit default swap derivative, decides how much money to give you for your dream team. I currently have $1.2m. That may sound like a lot, but its not. In the high finance world of professional soccer, its much closer to one dollar than one million.

Thank You for Watching. Don't Forget to Write Home.

Any time you watch a video, you can vote on who you thought was the 'man of the match,' and how you felt each team performed. You can then comment on the game and see what other people had to say. If you liked it, you can add that person as a friend. If you didn't like it, you can make them a rival. Just as exciting as watching the games is sharing your passion for the game itself with people all over the world.

FootyTube has a staff of about 12 people. In addition to many other things, they post blogs and new discussions within the forums. This is where the majority of writing takes place on the site. While the writing isn't scholarly, it's certainly better than the drivel on American social networks. Footy may not be a very complicated game, but it is certainly an intellectual one.

Paying for Pixels

Accessorize Me

What happens when you love to dress up and accessorize, but you can't afford the lifestyle of Paris Hilton? Or, if you love anime, but you live in Bumfug, South Dakota, where no one has any clue who the hell Spike Spiegal is? Or maybe you feel like you just aren't marketed to enough on the street or in the every-day social networking site, and you need to find more things to spend your last five (borrowed) dollars on. Well I'll tell you what happens: you leave "the real world" and book a one-way flight to a fantastical realm where anything is possible. Enter Gaia.

Gaia is a social networking site of another kind. It began as an anime linklist site, and then moved on to social gaming and forums. To identify users and give them a more personal experience, they implemented what are called "avatars," a digital representation of one's self. In Gaia, you choose a male or female avatar and then begin to personalize them. Your avatar is also given a car, a house, and even a fish tank.

Hyper Surreal

From there, the site basically attempts to create a dual reality where one can live in a second skin. Your avatar lives in its own little world, complete with different 'towns.' You can interact and chat with other users, and you can participate in games and other special events to collect gold. 'Gaia Gold' is the currency used, and you can spend it to buy clothes and other accessories for your avatar. It is usually given out as incentive for the user to participate in the forums or promote a new product. Gaia actually sells advertising that can be used in the game, so your avatar may want to wear Skittles sneakers or a Stephen Colbert mask.

In 2007, the website took this system to a whole new level and introduced 'Gaia Cash.' This allows users to go to Wal-Mart, Target, 7-11 and Speedway to buy, with real money, currency to use in the game. In essence, its a donation to the company, in return for something completely intangible, or in other words, nothing, hence, "donation." Thank you Capitalism. Something else Gaia put together (in April of that same year) to help promote their sponsors is Gaia Cinemas. It's a virtual theater where you and your avatar can watch anime videos, along with a host of movie trailers and commercials.

Aside from the forums and the occasional chat, there is very little writing done on the site.

I Don't Coo For Yuku

Idolatry

Yuku.com is a social networking site that, like Blogger, basically hosts your website on their servers. So the same way that I am writing a blog that can be seen by anyone online, but that is not saved to my hard drive, Yuku allows you to set up a "community" site that they will hold on their servers for "free." The community is pretty much a page of message boards centered around a group or dedicated to one subject or topic. So instead of blogs, they host messages boards. One topic I found to be very popular on Yuku is American Idol. As soon as you open the homepage, there is a section for featured communities, most of which have to do with television, primarily previous idols.

All About Yu

The only thing that distinguishes this message board site from any other is the option to create a profile. This is pretty standard for nearly all new sites in Web 2.0, and not just social networks. The new mentality is that if people can't personalize it, they don't want it. Either we really are a nation of greedy, narcissistic bastards, or everyone has caught onto Google and is joining the data farming/mining bandwagon. Because Yuku is free, it has to make money from advertising. And that ad space is much more valuable to advertisers if they know their niche market is going to get the message. It's the difference between a billboard and word-of-mouth: you can either get a little for a lot, or a lot for a little. Another way they get that information is by actually giving you the option to choose which ads go on your site. If you don't want any ads, you can PAY to have them taken off by signing up for a subscription. This is to make sure that one way or another, Yuku is getting a return on their investment.

Hullabaloo

Personally, I don't care for Yuku. It's like Twitter: they get all this hype for being the 'next big thing,' but at the end of the day, they are just a 140-character facebook status update. Yuku is similar in that it looks appealing on the surface, but once you get into it, there isn't much to do other than talk about whatever the topic is within that community of message boards. Some people will probably obsess over it, while others like myself, see absolutely no need for it.

Writing: More Than Messages On Board

Ducka Ducka Ducka

Yuku is interesting in that it is a social networking site with writing that actually extends well beyond "hello" and "goodbye." Whereas the average message board is usually filled with clever one-liners or a a couple sentences of dissent, it is possible to find not only poems, but short stories and even novels in their message boards. So while I was tempted to "write them off" as just another cesspool of drek, I took a few moments to give them the benefit of the doubt, and here is what I found...

The Kelly Clarkson message boards don't have anything too "out of the ordinary." The one interesting post I found looks like this:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ducka+ducka+ducka

just a cool thing i googled today...

when I google ducka ducka ducka, the first site it gave me was urbandictionary.com and this is what it says...

Ducka, Ducka, Ducka A quote on Austin Powers. Kelly Clarkson made it famous by saying it on the hit TV show, American Idol. "Ducka Ducka Ducka!" "What the heck was that?" "I dunno."

The Bongler Comes to Willow Down

So then I searched "writing," and I stumbled into The Peaceful Pub. This community is surprisingly well-organized. I clicked on a Forum titled Prose at the Pub, which promised "some of the best short stories to be found on the Internet, and a few top-notch novels, too." Once inside, I was moderated by a man called Willow Down, and then consumed by a barrage of fantasy novels. I quickly scanned the page for the cheesiest title I could find. Ah yes, One Summer Day. It was just an excerpt from a romance story featuring a women named Helen. However it's not Helen's name I'm concerned with; it's the author's: Bongler. The author's name is Bongler.

Priceless.

Crystal Knights in the Twilight

This was fun. Let's try another one. How about The Crystal Knights? Its not a bad beginning to an epic swashbuckling adventure. The writing is solid, as is confirmed by Mr. Willow Down himself (Ugly chap, he. Might actually be a women, but I hanth known too many a woman with a beard so coarse as this). While it may be disrespectful, I can't help but take a few cracks at the subject matter. To any of us not living in the World of Warcraft, it can be quite comical to take things out of context. I do it all the time with my coworkers: they'll be talking about the new Dragon Age video game, and all I hear on the other side of the lobby is, "Did you ever come across the gay elf?" "Yeah, but I'm pretty sure he's bi. He seems to flirt with everyone." ROFL copter. C'mon, how is that not funny? Two grown men talking about gay elves and werewolf guilds in the workplace. And then they still feel justified in taking cheap shots at Twilight. Which, in retrospect, is probably justified. I don't know anything at the moment that might be lower in the lore of pop-culture shame. I mean, have you read those books? Just type "worst lines" into the Google search, and the third option in the drop down menu is "worst lines from twilight."

And now a few excerpts from the Crystal Knights comment boxes (and your moment of zen...)

"Always." The dragon nodded. "Give Natalie the talisman. It will allow her to speak the language there until she acclimates."

"where will Blaadfork take young Natalie, I wonder?"

"Roland is soon to meet Blaadfork and Natalie, setting the events of Orlauf's vision in motion."

"I had a friend in Germany called Roland - a fine old heroic name, like Orlando!"