My first week at Northwest

I've been here at Northwest for a week now. I knew I'd love it here, which I do, but I really do miss being at I-dub. I miss having all my friends. I miss having them to go to games with. I miss not having people drag me out of my room saying that I'm being "anti-social," which I never was, but they didn't think I got out enough. As much as I didn't like it at the time, but looking back at it, it showed they care.

I must say though, one thing I really like about NW is my room. I have a corner room and I love it. I would say it's about the size of my corner room last year at I-dub, give or take a little. Best part, my roomie is like never there so I have it all to myself most of the time. It's nice, but lonely.

I do like it here, and eventually it won't be so lonely, hopefully, but I really do miss Mt. P.

The End is near!!!

I can't believe that there is only a week left of classes in the semester. Where did time go?? It seems as though it was yesterday that I got back from Spring Break, and now I only have 4 days left of class. Oh Em Gee! Let's not even think about finals. Those will be 4 very interesting days, that's for sure.

It's not only the end of the year that approaches, but the end of my time at IWC. As of August, I'll be attending Northwest Missouri State University and I can't wait! It will definitely be different, seeing as how the town is a little bigger and the school has about ten times the amount of students, but that's okay.

I'll miss those friends I've made here at IWC but it's time to move on and go somewhere where I can be around and apart of something I love to do: theater. I miss it a lot.

I also miss writing. Hopefully I'll have more time to write my story now that school is almost over. I haven't been able to write much lately and it really stinks. I miss getting engrossed in another world as I write.

Summer will be here before I know it, and with it comes friends, family, and writing!

SUB microblogs

Iowa Weslayn SGA debate @ 6pm in West Dining Room in dining hall. Also tonight's SUB event: BINGO at 8pm Social Hall 3:39 PM Apr 8th

enjoy the warm weather on the Iowa Wesleyan campus then come play Dodgeball in the Old Gym at 7pm!4:15 PM Mar 30th
is in love with the warm weather in Mount Pleasant!! BINGO tonight at 8pm in the Iowa Wesleyan Social Hall.3:03 PM Mar 18th
Find your family and come play Family Feud in the Social hall at 8pm on Tuesday!
Poker Tournament in the Joint at 8pm sponsored by Iowa Wesleyan Student Union Board!!8:51 PM Feb 17th

thought Where the Wild Things Are was a cute movie. probably will try to find and read the book this weekend to see how bad they screwed it up, if they did that is. (this was a $2 movie which is a SUB event)

Come play Jeopardy @ 7pm Tuesday in the Joint.

12 pictures

Head over heels...

...In school work!

It is first week in April, and with that brings a lot of work to be completed before the first week of May. What does this mean for me? Well I'll tell you. It means that for the next month there will be many nights up late doing the 3 term papers and 1 final project that needs to be completed before the end of the month. This hopefully will be accomplished with as little all nighters as possible, but we'll just have to see how that goes.

The one good thing that comes from all this...SUMMER!!! After this month comes 4 wonderful months filled with nothing but work, friends, family, and most of all: FUN!!

Now, just to get through it all. Good luck to all those like me!

News Release

News Realease

For Immediate Release

April 5, 2010

Spring Thing to be held at Iowa Wesleyan College

(Mount Pleasant, Iowa.) The Iowa Wesleyan College Student Union Board (S.U.B.) will be hosting Spring Thing on Friday April 23, 2010 from 5pm until 8pm on the Main Lawn of Iowa Wesleyan College.

Spring Thing is a carnival that is hosted by S.U.B. every year in the spring time. During this event, carnival games will be provided for those in attendance by different committees on campus, including S.U.B., Student Nurses Association, BAO, and C-SAW. There will also be a Student versus Faculty game of Ultimate Frisbee.

-30-

NSLC video

Michigan State video

Iowa Wesleyan and YouTube

Just like with Flickr, there are several things that Iowa Wesleyan can do with YouTube that can benefit the school in some way. One way is a video tour of the campus. It is true that perspective students can come to IWC and take a campus tour with a student ambassador and meet some of the professors, but what about those students who can't come for a visit for one reason or another? A video tour of the campus could be the solution to that problem. A student ambassador could be filmed giving a tour as though the student was right there with them, and the video could be posted to YouTube and linked to the IWC homepage for perspective students to watch. Schools such as Columbia University, Yale University, and Cornell University already use YouTube for this very purpose, so why can't Iowa Wesleyan College?

Another thing IWC could use the site for is to show clips from our athletic events. The athletic department for the college could tape games, something I think some of the teams do already, select clips from those games, such as the last few minutes of this years MCC Women's Championship basketball game, and post it on YouTube on a channel run by IWC. If we want more people to come to the games and be able to recruit more players, wouldn't it be a good idea to have clips available for what they can expect?

Those are just a couple of ways Iowa Wesleyan could possibly use YouTube. I think they are worthy of thought, maybe others will too.

how Iowa Wesleyan could use Flickr

Flickr is home to main pictures of the Iowa Wesleyan campus, none of which were posted by the college itself. Why is this? IWC has a tool that is already being used by those on campus to post pictures so why hasn't the school started using it for itself when it can be used so many ways to help the school.

Iowa Wesleyan could use Flickr for several purposes, just like they do their Facebook and Twitter accounts. The IWC admissions office could use the site as a place to post pictures of the campus (buildings, the diverse student population, sports, etc.) that perspective students could go look at and see what it the college is like before deciding whether or not to attend the school. A basic search on Flickr showed that there are thousands of universities in the country that use their Flickr accounts for this purpose.

IWC could also use their Flickr account to promote student activities. By taking pictures at S.U.B. events, athletic events, and other events on campus, and posting them on Flickr, current and perspective students can see what all happens on campus.

I'm sure that IWC could find other ways that Flickr could be helpful to the school. By creating an account and posting pictures, they can add it as a link to the homepage so that perspective and current students could see what it is like to be at Iowa Wesleyan.

ISU campus

Originally uploaded by Iowa State University Office of Admissions

I like how this photo shows you most of the building. If I was a perspective student, I would look at this picture and get a general idea of how big this building is.

ISU

Originally uploaded by Iowa State University Office of Admissions

I think this is a great photo of this tower on the ISU campus.

Chi Omega Theater at The University of Arkansas

Chi Omega Theater at The University of Arkansas
Originally uploaded by Kim Rozanske

I decided to show how other schools use Flickr. I chose the University of Arkansas because I grew up in that city. This picture showed one of the outdoor theaters that is one campus. They hold plays and musicals there sometimes.

Oh what a long drive

Yesterday I drove from our wonderful campus in Mt. P to my grandparents' house in Springdale...Arkansas! That was an EIGHT hour drive. Let me just tell ya something, that felt like the longest drive ever! I drove through 3 different states, Iowa, Missouri, and a little bit of Arkansas. I finally managed to see my state capitol while driving through Missouri, that was interesting.

So far this looks like it will be a great Spring Break. I get to hang out with my grandparents, then later go home and see my friends. I can't wait til then.

Poynter Ethics Tips

Evening News and video, are they airing enough?

I was reading an article by Kelly McBride about how news stations cut video they are sent and how it can be misleading and misunderstood. She starts the article by giving the example of a cop in Dallas who ran over and killed a kid that was riding his bike on the street. The cop was responding to a call without lights or a siren and had no time to see the kid; the kid didn't see him until it was too late. Unfortunately for the cop four news stations took the dashboard camera video, which had been released to the public by the police chief, and took a small clip, different for each station, and aired it during the evening news. What these clips didn't show was how fast the entire situation happened and how nothing could have stopped it once it started.

Kelly's opinion in this situation is that news stations should post the video in its entirety online. Doing this would so viewers that the cop was driving too fast and the kid didn't see the cop until it was too late.

I agree with her in this. I know there have been some video clips that I have seen on the news that didn't paint the best picture of the truth. I would have liked to have the opportunity to see the entire video to know what truly happened. It is understandable that the entire video cannot be aired due to time constraints, but that does not mean that it should not be available for everyone to see.

Copyrights

I have read lately about copyrights, what they are, and what is protected by a copyright. After reading this, I realized just how many copyright violations happen on an everyday basis.

One that I realize a lot, pretty much everyday, is that of using words from a song, or the song itself. Under copyright laws, the song is not ours to use, even if the words are uploaded somewhere online. The place I see this happen the most is on Facebook and Myspace, if anyone actually uses that anymore. Almost everyday, or at least every other day, someone has posted a "status" that is some song lyric that they have heard recently, that they like, or even ones they randomly came across. What most people don't realize it that by using those words, they are violating the copyright that the artist has when they wrote the lyrics.

Another common infringement on copyrights on music is using the song for some reason or another. This is most commonly seen on YouTube. Some people have posted videos with songs playing throughout the video. Now there's a fuzzy line between what is legal and what is not, but many videos out there to violate copyrights in some way. Especially those that have the song playing with the words displayed throughout the video; that's illegal in more ways then one.

These are just two ways that I see copyrights being violated on a daily basis, but there is definitely more where these came from.

Toys R Us Meets Social Media

View more presentations from tiffsuz.

Spring break...can't come soon enough

There is one time of the spring semester I look forward to the most: Spring Break. Unlike most people I don't look forward to it for the warm weather or the cool vacations planned. I look forward to it for the simple reason of not having to deal with school or homework for an entire week.

Unfortunately I don't have any fun, cool plans for Break. Well, I'm going to my grandparents' house, which could be considered fun depending on what happens. Mostly I'll just be sitting at home with playing Wii and hanging with the friends I haven't seen in a month. Should be nice.

Well that's my thoughts on Spring Break. Hopefully I'll be able to upload some cool pics from Ozark Mountains. Northwest Arkansas is home so some of the most beautiful sites, if you know where to look.

Social Media Overview

I this one was pretty cool.

Social Media Overview

View more presentations from Greg Tirico.

Explaining Social Media to Those Who Just Don't Get it - Lucas Walker

I thought that this was an interesting slideshow. Sure it's things that we have already talked about, but it was still interesting to look at.

Explaining Social Media to Those Who Just Don't Get it - Lucas Walker

View more presentations from WalkerLucas.

Survey of Iowa Wesleyan

When looking at the results of my survey of students and the media they use, I found that there are some who still use older forms of media.

A trend I saw when going through the surveys was that those surveys I knew were taken by some of the older students on campus, were a majority of the ones that still read a newspaper or a magazine. Of those who read newspapers, most read the Des Moines Register and the Burlington Hawkeye, and read the paper, in print, within the last week. When it comes to reading a newspaper online, a few more people said that they had read an online paper within the past few months.

As for magazines, many people I surveyed said that if they read magazines it was magazines like Sports Illustrated, People, Cosmo, and Us Weekly. Most said that they had read a magazine in print within the last month but not many claimed reading an online magazine.

I was not surprised by the results for those who listen to AM radio. Very few people had listened to AM radio in any way, and those who had, hadn't listened in at least a week.

Almost all those who were surveyed claimed to have listened to an FM station on the radio, with a variety of stations named. About half of those people said they had listened to the radio using an antenna within the past month, most of which was in a car. I was surprised that not more people hadn't listened to music on an iPod or MP3 player, with less than half saying they had listened to one within the past few months.

There were many different TV stations that came up in my results more than others, such as CBS, USA, and TLC. Since the national change to digital stations, many had not watched TV via antenna since that change occurred. Internet videos aren't as popular as I would have thought, but there were several that had watched a video within the last week online.

Overall, this survey was interesting to give out and see the results from. Seeing on paper the difference between the number of those who use newer forms of media verses the number of those who use older forms is a little shocking. It just goes to show you how much technology is changing our daily lives.

Oh...snow.

I have come to realize how lazy I have come when it comes to New Media PR. It has been a few weeks since I wrote a blog, so this is me catching up on stuff.

I have come to realize how pretty, yet rather annoyingly slick, our campus becomes during the winter. I love how beautiful our campus becomes after it snows, how the trees look when the snow and ice is all over the branches. Yes, that may be a crazy thing to say, and may not exactly make sense, but I think it's true.

If only that beauty didn't come with the slick sidewalks that cause people to fall. Unfortunately nothing can be done about it. The maintenance people do all they can to make the sidewalks safer to walk on. It just sucks sometimes when it comes to getting across campus in the snow.

The only other thing I dislike about the snow right now is that it seems to be snowing EVERY SINGLE FREAKING WEEK!!! I don't mind the snow, but I don't like how it seems to be snowing at least once a week nowadays. Ok, well now that I got that off my chest, I won't rant about snow any more.

Let it Ice, Let it Ice, Let it Ice!

I really hate the process of snowing. I know, it sounds weird, but it's true. I don't mind the snow after it is on the ground and not causing me not to see in some way, shape, or form.

I realized yesterday during the ice storm that there is something I hate even more than snowing: Ice storms!! Yesterday really sucked getting around campus. By noon when I left my room you couldn't tell that they had even tried to salt the sidewalks. I can't even remember how many times I almost fell yesterday. So far today, I think that number is about 7 or 8 (3 or 4 were on the way to Media PR class).

The only cool thing to come out of all the ice is how pretty it makes the tress look. All the ice on the branches gives them a nice look. If you don't understand what I mean, I can't really explain it, so just go look outside and take a look at the trees. I may be the only one to think ice on trees can be cool, I know branches breaking and taking phone and electric lines really sucks, but what can I say, I'm just weird like that.

iGoogle screenshot

classes

I've been back in Mount P for a couple days now, and even though I am glad to be back, I wish Break was longer. I thought that I would be glad to be back and have something to do, but I'm really not. I am happy to see my friends, but I would've taken another week or two without classes over seeing them sooner.

The first couple days of class are now over and it feels as though I haven't stopped moving since I got up yesterday. Sure, I actually only had one class yesterday, and it wasn't until 1pm, but until then I had to go to Financial Aid and Verification and lunch; it was never-ending. Today wasn't any different. I had an 8 o'clock class and a 9:30 class, then lunch, a small break, then another class.

I think it's just because I haven't had classes for three weeks. It will all get better once I get back into a routine, hopefully. We'll just have to wait and see.