Claudio M. Rojas

From the last chapters of this book, there was one idea that got stuck in my mind: tell the story of "WE" and not the story of "I". How deep is this concept, and how powerful are its implications. If you think about it for a minute then you will discover that this idea has been around for centuries and many religions includes it as part of the "rules" you must follow to have a healthy and prosperous life. The whole preaching of Jesus Christ is centered around this idea. If we eliminate the individuality and we begin thinking in the community then problems like the egoism and violence can be erradicated from the face of the earth. I am convinced that somewhere along the way in the history of humankind, we have lost some of the values that separate us from the rest of the living beings that exists in this planet. The question here is: Are we going to be able to go back and recuperate those values before it is too late?. Well, the answer to this question i...

I got trapped by this book from the very first page. After watching the videos embeded in the activity for this week my expectation about the book and about the writers were very high. I must say that I was not disspointed at all, actually it caught my attention in a way that I could not stop reading the book, that happens to me every time I read a book that really inspires me and makes my imagination take flight. The whole idea proposed by Rosamund and Benjamin Zander is really interesting and makes a lot of sense. I have heard many ideas and read about many new techniques to be succesful in what you do for a living, but I had never before seen one that it is based in a simple idea that can be put into practice by anyone without doing a major effort from your side. All of the first six chapters of this book are based on examples and results that you can obtain if you change the way you see your problems. I have actually made myself questions similar to the ones mentioned in the boo...

 Here is the TOP EIGHT LIST of things that I learned about Media Creation and Sharing from the Media Asset Creation Class at Full Sail University. 1. A blog can not only be used for sharing ideas or comments over the internet, it can also be used to complement a class. 2.The globalize world is creating new ways to share information in real time, no matter where you are, which means that step by step we are heading to a convergence culture. 3. When you are creating a multimedia presentation for your class, you must avoid a few common mistakes that most of us commit, so your presentation would not be boring and it will serve its purpose. 4.Copyright laws must be taken seriously, fair use is not something concrete, it can be interpreted in many ways. So if you are going to use something that you do not have the rights for, you better ask permission from the owner to use it. 5. There exists good alternatives to avoid infringing copyright laws, one of these alternativ...

In spite of the possibility of using fair use of a work for a not commercial purpose, I'm glad that places like creative commons exists. They are a relief for not being worried about what a copyright holder could consider a fair use of their work. It seems to me, according to what was discussed on the wimba session, that it does not exists a clear agreement of what it is considered a true fair use of something, so you will always be in danger of getting into a legal problem using something that you did not created yourself. It is wise to always ask the permission of the copyright owner to use their work, doing this you might get a good response from the owner who will let you use his/her work for a fee adjusted to your budget or even just giving them the credit they deserve. From now on I will keep using places like creative commons to get material that I can use to complement my works, it will be easier and safer doing that than getting into the trouble of using something that y...

Many of the myths about copyright that were discussed in the wimba session, I have heard them before, and I used to believe in a few of them until I started to get more information about copyright laws a few years back. Every time that I am doing something in which I want to include an illustration, graphic, etc. I make myself sure that it is copyrighted or not. Most of the time if I had the chance I prefer to create it myself, so I don't get into trouble. One of the things that can be copyrighted that I didn't know about and really caught my attention was dance. It was a surprise for me to find out that you can copyright it, and thinking about it, it makes sense, after all if other works of art can be copyrighted then why a dance should be any different. Costa Rica used to be a country were people didn't even think about copyright laws, for the general public, everything was public domain and fair use. This has been changing since the country decided to sign Free Trad...

I must say that this session was really iluminating and very helpful for my thesis writing. I had a few doubts that were clarified during the session, I hope that I can put into practice many of the things that Dr. Sue Bedard suggested to do for the thesis. I still have a few ideas that are going around my head about what the main focus of my thesis must be, but I think that I have pretty much what I need, to do my work. I am really excited to see how all the things that we have been learning in the previous months will fall into place in our final projects. I am also looking foward to see the projects of my classmates, I am sure I am going to learn a lot form their works too.

  The internet has made possible that people from different parts of the country or even from different countries could participate together in daily activities. Two examples of that are the Full Sail online Master's Degree Programs and blogs like the one you are reading now. For me it is really amazing to see all the communication possibilities that we have at our reach today, some of them were only a dream when I was growing up, and now they are part of our daily lives: cell phones, fast computers, text messaging, e-mail, and online video/audio conversations.      When I arrived to the USA in January 1995 to study at Florida State University, the internet was just starting to take shape and become accesible to indivivuals, and in Costa Rica only a few institutions and private companies had access. I remember my first experiences with bulletin boards and e-mail two things that were new for me. Of course at that time most of the services didn't have any icons o...

1. What is the purpose of the New Media Academy at Hollywood High School? The Academy at Hollywood High School is carer focus, their goal is to get students into the entertainment business. 2. What is an ideal situation that you will like your students to have? That after they graduate from high school, they go to College but at the same time they work in the entertainment business. 3. What kind of media do students like best? The like Flash Animation, mostly for websites, but they also do some for video. 4. What do your students like about using the media? They like to be more creative than making things up... 5. What does Ron uses to get his students engaged in his class? He uses movies, sounds, websites, he uses anything that will get his students interested in what is happening. 6. What kind of technologies or media he has used in his class? Podcasting, text messaging, and videos. 7. Why teachers have not adopted completely the digital media in their classes...

As I start reading the book "Convergence Culture, where old and new media collide" by Henry Jenkins, I am getting fascinated with the ideas that the author expresses in the introduction of his book. He gives us a summary of many of the concepts that have been going around for some time now about the use of a single black box that will do everything, and that willl be the entertainment center in our home. I remember hearing and seeing examples of this box from companies like Commodore (Amiga CDTV) and Gateway(All in One Multimedia Center) from the beginning of the 90's, and in recent years from Apple (Mac Mini, Apple TV). I agree with Jenkins that we will continue seeing more and more attempts of this black boxes coming out, but we will never see one that will replace completely the other appliances that we have in our homes, on the contrary we will probably have many of these boxes to use them for the different locations or situations that we have in our daily lives. ...

The Amiga Computer The Amiga ( the spanish word for female friend) was a family of PC's (personal computers) originally developed and released by Amiga Corporation in 1982. Jay Miner was the principal hardware designer, and many people consider him the father of the Amiga. Commodore International bought Amiga Corporation and introduced the machine to the market in 1985. The name Amiga was chosen by the developers specifically because it occurred before Apple and Atari alphabetically. Based on the Motorola 68k series of , the machine sports a custom chipset with then advanced graphics and sound capabilities, and a pre-emptive multitaskingoperating system (now known as AmigaOS). While the M68k is a 32-bit processor, the version originally used in the Amiga, the 68000, has a external data bus so it must transfer 32 bits of data in two consecutive steps, a technique called — all this is transparent to the software, which was 32-bit from the beginning. The orig...

Here I am again, trying to keep up with my life, my job, my classes and my studies. I feel like every day that goes by it is less and less the time that I have to do everything I must do. Sometimes I have to decide between finishing my assingments for Full Sail or planning the lessons for my classes, and I am not mentioning the times when I have to grade homeworks or tests. A lot of people tells me that I am crazy, that not having enough sleep is going to be bad for my health, and they are right, I am already suffering the consequences. The levels of stress that I am accumulating have made me go twice last month to the doctor with infections in my throat and lungs. I have also needed to receive a massage at least once a week, to help me relieve the back and neck pains. In spite of this situations I am convinced to finish what I started, and I am trying to organize my time the best I can, to be able to finish with the last classes at Full Sail and finish to write my thesis. I am looking...

This week was a very hard week for me. I had many things to do and not enough time to complete them. To make things worst my local internet service provider decided to make upgrades to their lines which made the connections ver, very slow at several times during the day. I always try to do my assigments with enough time, so I don't have to rush at the end to complete them, but there are sometimes that your plans fall apart for external influences. It is just not fair that when you need to rely the most on the services that you are paying for, it is when they fail you the most. I just feel fustrated and angry, but there is nothing I can do about it. I just hope to have better luck the next time.

I have been struggling during the past week to find a topic to talk about, and at the same time I have been finishing to prepare my students for the Examenes de Educación Abierta (Open Education Tests). For the first time since I began teaching I was able to see the topics for these test from a different perspective and I have come to the conclusion that these test were created as a way to slow down the time in which a student finishes his or hers Secondary Education.  If you analize the time that a student must spend to study and really learn the information, and the dates in which the tests must be taken you will discover that there is not enough time to be prepare to pass the tests.  Also if you take in consideration that not all the students advance at the same speed then we will have a bigger problem, but what can be the solution? Our educational system must be changed or kept the same? What is the real purpose of education? I will continue this analysis in my next post. 

Hi There! I just started to create my own blog. This is my first time trying this tool on a public service, so I am excited about the possibilities that it will give me to communicate my ideas and thoughts.