"Never use Wikipedia as a reliable source"

Image via Wikimedia Commons

I feel like all throughout my school career I have heard everyone tell me "You can't use Wikipedia as a reliable source". Not one of my teachers has ever said it was okay to use it. But why not? I feel like as long as you check the references, it should be okay, especially in the cases of subjects like science. Science is just cold hard facts so it would be sort of hard to fake or lie about that, but other subjects I understand. But, is any other information on the internet more reliable? How are you supposed to know what sources you can and cannot trust? This article has many insights about Wikipedia, even saying that there is little difference in accuracy between Wikipedia and traditional encyclopedias such as the Brittanica. Surprisingly, Wikipedia actually has a lot of different people in place that settle disputes between facts and even have "nearly two thousand administrators, who are empowered to "protect, delete and restore pages, move pages over redirects, hide and delete page revisions, and block other editors" according to this article. Wikipedia is basically just a huge conglomerate of everyone's knowledge, whether that be good knowledge or bad knowledge.

Memes

Image via Wikipedia

Memes are probably the backbone of today's society. Where would we be without memes such as the Salt Bae meme or doge? Memes are all around the internet and even infiltrate into our lives. I have even found myself sending memes to my parents who are not 'hip and happening' as they would say. Memes are a way to spread content around the internet in a comical way that has the potential to reach millions of people. For example, I know a lot of people aren't really into politics and do not follow the presidency, but there are some really funny twitter accounts that take the President's tweets and put them side by side so you can see the hypocrisy that is going on. I also think that memes are a universal language and that they are an easy way to connect to people all around the world. Although they are mostly used for fun and games, they also can be used to spread information and spread awareness about different topics.

Reddit- A Plethora of Everything Good and Bad

By reddit.com; SVG version by User:Svgalbertian (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Reddit_logo.svg) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Reddit is an abyss of topics. There's pretty much a subreddit for everything. I was poking around reddit and found a bunch of truly touching stories, one in particular that stood out to me was a story from a man that played the Goofy character at Disneyworld for over 20 years. He posted in the Ask Me Anything subreddit and people started asking him a ton of questions. One thing I noticed that is new to Reddit is the fact that users can verify their profession with a moderator, and when they do, a little badge pops up underneath their username saying things such as "journalist" or "actor/entertainer" and it really brings a quality of credibility to the website. After exploring Reddit for a while, I really started to understand why people spend their time on it. It's a website full of facts, memes, funny stories, touching stories, and sometimes famous people do AMA's (ask me anything) and they answer your questions. Reddit is honestly a really cool, interesting website and if you haven't checked it out yet I suggest you do.

Presentations

Image via Pixabay

If there's one thing I hate in this world, it's presenting to a group of people. It does not matter if the audience is my family or complete strangers, I will freeze up and not be able to say anything. Which is exactly what happened today. In the middle of our presentation I couldn't speak for a minute and I go "oh, sorry". I really could not tell you why I thought I needed to apologize, but, I do think that our presentation and all of the other groups that presented today and on Tuesday did a good job. Our presentation was about the show Friends and we played the intro/theme and at the part where the clapping happens, someone in our class clapped and I thought it was extremely funny. If for some reason you live under a rock and don't know what I'm talking about, you can watch the intro here. I also forgot to mention that in the middle of our presentation, the wifi stopped working so the other members of my group had to basically wing it with no visuals. I will conclude by saying good job to all of the groups and especially to my group!

Copyrighted Work-- To Use or Not To Use?

By Unknown  [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I remember when I was in middle school looking up lyric videos to popular songs and hearing the song be distorted. I always wondered why. It was not until way later that I realized it was because the songs were copyrighted, but if the person who posted the photo distorted the song, it would not be considered illegal. After viewing this Prezi, I learned a lot. The Prezi states, "Here are the rules: If you use your imagination to create it from scratch and put it out there (recorded, on the computer, or on paper) then of course you are allowed to do any of the following with it: copy, distribute, perform or display, or change into something new". I also learned about a little thing called fair use. Fair use "helps keep our society's creations in circulation". There was a lot of things about copyright and copyright infringement that I never realized until I looked at the Prezi. I find it very interesting that someone can get sued for using a song in their video that's not yours.

Friends- The Most Iconic TV Show Ever?

Image By National Broadcasting Company (NBC) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Everyone has seen at least one episode of the show Friends, and even if they haven't they know who Ross, Rachel, Joey, Monica, Chandler, and Phoebe are. It's common knowledge that Ross and Rachel were NOT on a break, and that Monica and Chandler might be the cutest TV couple of all time. What a lot of people don't know though, is that as the show progresses, Tuckman's 5 stages of development are present. The stages are present in almost every group, even if it's just the first few. How did the iconic group of "Friends" become Friends you might ask? This wiki will tell you exactly how they formed. And for the second step, storming, there are plenty of parts where they all fight, because that's what friends do sometimes. I think that everyone is so obsessed with the show still because it's so relatable and the gang gets into fight just like any regular friend group would. They do get through all 5 steps, forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning, however the middle 3 steps are jumbled together. One episode, they could be in the norming stage, and the next episode they could be in the storming stage again. This is exactly why so many people like the show, and if you haven't watched it I recommend binging it as soon as you can. 

Group Dynamics

Image via Good Free Photos

Over the years, I have had to do a ton of group projects. I hate them. To me, they are super pointless because in my experience, one or two members of the group end up doing all of the work while the other members just goof around the whole time. Or even worse, one member of the group gets all power hungry, bossy, and ends up telling everyone what to do and when to do it (nobody likes this person). The only time that groups actually work is when they go through Tuckman's 5 stages of group development. The stages go as follows: Stage 1 is forming where the group comes together and forms. Stage 2 is storming where the group has a little bit of conflict. This stage can be good because it causes the group to all get on the same page. Stage 3 is norming where the group finally comes together. Stage 4 is the performing stage and is not reached by all groups. This is the stage that I believe is vital to have a good quality group and in turn have a good, quality group project. The last stage is not that important, but it the stage of adjourning, which is just when the group parts.