Journal #2: Digital Communication

The most surprising thing I found about digital communication would be the ways that people use it, and how some believe it is an adequate substitute for social interaction. This surprised me because I always knew our generation, with our new found technology and such, were very disconnected, but I never could have imagined we were that much. We see digital communication as an accurate form of communication, when really, it lacks all the things that are necessary in conversation.




From the video I watched, I learned that it is actually considered rude to not reply to messages within 24 hours. As someone who has a lot of trouble replying to people, mainly just because I am terrible at realizing when a message is received, it gave me a new understanding of how people may view my responses. As well, I learned that when you send a document under say microsoft word 2007, the person you send it to may not be able to open it. I learned how to fix this problem by saving the document under a Rich Text Format.



BCC or Blind Carbon Copy is when an E-mail contains addresses of recipients of the message whose addresses are not to be revealed to other recipients of the message. It could be used when sending an important message to several people at the same time so that the other recipients of the message would not see the addresses of the other members. This would be important when the others may value their privacy and wish for the amount of people who know their address to be sparse.



I believe it should be considered by young people that your level of respect is greatly affected when using digital communication. When speaking to family or friends, or any level of authority, it could be considered rude to not give the respect of socializing. It is important to remain connected to people socially, so you do not lose that sense of "people skills" or else you will become someone who may even fear the pressure of social interaction. You must limit your usage of digital communication in order to obtain these results.

Acronyms Attack (Assignment Two)

Three more abbreviations that could be used to save time in digital communication could be, TFC (thanks for caring), OMW (on my way), and TBH (to be honest).

Four places you could NEVER use abbreviations when communicating digitally would be when creating formal writing such as a resume, documents to a workplace administration, book reports, or any form of school related homework, as well as when preforming tasks that require proper grammar and sentences.

Communication Compass (Assignment One)

Digital Communication is any electronic exchanging of information.


Four advantages of digital communication would include:

- If you have family/friends who do not live near you, you are able to connect with them in ways that don't involve travel.

- For people with employment that involves a lot of conference meetings, and things that involve expensive travelling, it is possible to use digital communication to avoid this.

- With digital communication it is possible to receive news from all over the world about important causes or events that have taken place.

- It is simpler to complete projects with your group members, with programs like Google Drive and even just Facebook messenger.


Four disadvantages of digital communication could be:

- The risk of releasing your personal information into the hands of a stranger

- Privacy becomes a huge issue when it is possible for anyone to view anything you do at any time. With the invention of camera phones, everyone has the ability to capture moments in an instant to share with anyone.

- Lack of emotion in conversation. You could mean one thing, but it could come across to the receiver in a completely different way.

- Distracts us from what is most important, like spending time with family and friends.


The three most popular forms of digital communication today are:
- Texting, or using cellular devices because it is convenient for everyone involved. You can talk anywhere, at anytime, all you have to do it click a few buttons.

- Social Media and other online connection sites are another very popular form of digital communication used today. People prefer internet related communication because you can share photos, videos, and ideas instantly through the web, without the stress of real social interaction.

- A third common form of digital communication that is used quite frequently would be online video calls such as FaceTime and Skype. This is most likely used more often by people who want to reach their family or friends quickly over long distances. As well, many people use these programs when preforming conference calls, etc.


There are many forms of digital communication that often remain popular for a while, but after enough time passes, become irrelevant due to new types of communication. Some forms I believe will become irrelevant over time, or less frequently used would include:
- For me, I believe Facebook will become a form of digital communication that will eventually die down. I know for a fact, the amount of people who have an account on Facebook today, and the amount of people who use it, are two completely different numbers. There is so many new ways to communicate being discovered that websites like Facebook are no longer as huge a deal as they use to be.

- Texting eventually, as more efficient ways of communication are developed will become a thing of the past in my opinion, because even today, texting is becoming less and less of a fad. Right now, even with things like iMessage, texting is being used sparsely, so in the future, when there is going to be even more technology created, texting will slowly disappear.

- Finally, E-mail is just one more thing that eventually will become irrelevant over time. It is rarely used today, so as time progresses, it will fade away just like many other things already have.


Five locations/scenarios I believe you should not communicate digitally would include:

- In a workplace that involves critical social interaction, such as a therapy office, teaching environment, etc. I believe these areas are especially important to avoid digital communication in because it is more convenient to learn or understand things when someone is physically there to speak/teach you. If you have any problems with understanding it is easier to explain yourself clearly in physical form than digital form.

- During a situation where someone's life is at risk, and help is needed, it is especially necessary for their to be physical attendance for the injured. It is almost impossible for someone to receive assistance over digital communication, for a fatal injury.

- At a funeral, it is completely disrespectful to use your technology during services like such, where you should be giving your full attention and respect to the people involved.

- While you are driving it is actually against the law to use digital communication. You will be distracted by your technology when you really should be focusing on the task at hand to avoid accidents.

- When spending time with family or friends. It would be inappropriate for you to pay all of your attention to digital communication rather than communicating socially.


In my opinion, two of the most dangerous forms of digital communication are:

- Online chat sites such as Omegle, etc, where you speak to strangers through video chat. Especially for younger people who don't really understand the dangers behind allowing a stranger to know personal information. It is possible to accidentally give out private details about yourself that could harm you in several ways.

- Most social networking sites can be quite harmful to a person's well-being. In situations that involve cyber bullying, and things like that, a person could be driven to the edge from constant interrogation, and embarrassment.


I think eventually the children of the future will discover their own healthy balances with digital communication. Even today, the severity of it all is clear to us, and I believe that over time as children will begin to learn more and more about technology, they will start balancing technology with work and necessity. They will find their own ways to handle technology and be taught not to depend completely on it.


If someone passes away or is too sick to use any digital communication I believe the accounts or pages should either be taken down, or given to a close family member to take care of, to save photos or memories for the family, and so on. It should be left to the family or closest thing to family that the person who passed has. I don't think it should just be taken down, but I do think if that happens, then all of their memories and such should be able to be saved or downloaded for the family to keep.

Journal #1: Digital Security

After completing assignment one in Digital Security, I was surprised to find that people still use number sequences as valid passwords.  I thought that many people knew that was far from a good idea, and to create more complex passwords.  Also, I noticed that it does take a lot to create an effective password, that is in fact seen as "strong".  You cannot just use one or two words/numbers/symbols, you should have a complete sentence of sorts before it is viewed as acceptable.

For me, it was slightly confusing to figure out how to create a safe password that computers can't find.  As well, I had difficulty deciding whether or not adults are more prone to using simple passwords.  This was difficult to me because I compared the selections to teenagers today, and I know for a fact that I am very likely to forget passwords.  Along with many other teens, I believe I forget these things because we are too preoccupied with our own lives and business that we tend to push things like that aside and lose them.

I believe my passwords are very secure based on the sections I reviewed.  They match up to the required criteria involving multiple words, symbols, and letters, and variations within those things.  Even so, I have tested out my passwords in the calculator provided which stated that I possessed strong passwords.

In my opinion it is important to consider all of your passwords carefully when choosing one because each and every website we use online holds at least small bits of personal information about us all.  If we do not take it into special account, we could be putting that data out into the wrong hands, without even knowing it.  When you think about Digital Security, it is important to remember what is too much information.  You wouldn't give out your address, phone number, or even your complete name/family's name, out to a complete stranger, so why do we do it online?  It is important to consider that when you give these details about yourself to websites and social media, you really don't know where that information is going for certain.

Digital Security (Assignment One)

In my opinion I would say that the passwords, 123456, password, and 12345678 are all very simple passwords to guess.  Mainly because I feel whenever someone has chosen a password for a site their first instinct is to put something they know they will remember, and since we've been taught numbers since pre-K, that is one thing you will undoubtedly remember.  As well, "password" as a password is extremely obvious, partially because it is written right beside the box where we enter our password, so it's almost impossible to forget it.

As someone who has been using passwords for as long as I can remember, I can't say I do remember ever using these passwords, maybe for a little thing like a locked diary or something of that sort, but never for any of my social media or games.  I haven't used any of these probably because I have absolutely no trust in easy passwords like these, even today, half of my passwords are sentences instead of a simple word or number, just to keep the difficulty level high.

I do believe seniors and adults may be more likely to use these passwords, because they are the main group of people who seem to forget things more frequently.  Since they have more trouble remembering, they likely go to using more simple methods for passwords, than difficult ones.  It's to my believe that we could prevent these disasters by causing better password protection, with backup technology such as using security questions, like many websites do, about things only you would know/remember.

Other terrible ideas for passwords that were not shown on this list would include using your own name, your favourite colour, pets names, etc.  Basically, anything that would be public knowledge, or easily accessible to anyone other than yourself.

I don't believe their should be a limit about the least amount of characters used, but I do think that a password containing only a few characters could be extremely simple to find out.  As long as your password is something you can remember and keep private, your characters used should not matter, in my opinion.  It is stated though, that sentence passwords are a lot more difficult to reveal using computers than one word passwords are, as well as passwords containing variety in symbols and numbers.

Apps on Google

Today in class I was given the task of testing out two of Google's apps.  The first app I tried out was called HelloSign which is used to sign online documents.  Where everything today is done online this app could be very useful.  This app would be especially useful for someone who is having a rushed day, and doesn't have the time to complete all of their usual tasks, this app is there for you to use as quickly as a few clicks.  All you need to do is write out your signature, save it, then you can use it anytime you need.

The next app I used was called PIXLR Editor.  It is an online photo editing app with a lot of interesting techniques and special features involved.  Anyone who is interested in editing photos, or creating them, will find this app extremely useful! There are many features that are difficult to find with other online editing apps, that are very simple to use with Google!

Overall, I would highly recommend these apps!  Although I had some difficulty getting started, they all came out in the end to give an amazing online experience!

Acceptable Use of School Computers