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.

Groups- Intentional or Not?

Image by James MacDonald via Flickr.

There are many different instances where groups come into play. Whether it be in class, on public transit or even at a party, you're always grouped with people whether you realize it or not. There are many different types of groups, which is sort of weird because you would think that there would only be one type of group. The type of group that stood out to me the most was circumstantial groups. These groups emerge when external forces almost force the people to form a group because of the situation at hand. One example that came to mind while learning about this type of group was the showLost. On the show, there's a huge plane crash which forces all of the people on the plane to band together. They all get stuck on an island and have to group together to survive basically. The external force of the plane crash made them all band together for a temporary amount of time to survive. Now that I know all about the different kinds of groups, it's super interesting to analyze people in groups because I know they probably don't know what kind of group they're in.

Collaboration Station

Image by Geralt (own work) via Pixabay

If you think about it, collaboration is everywhere. It's in social media, it's in classrooms, and it's even in our day to day speech. The key to collaboration is sharing your ideas with the world and asking for help/people to collaborate. There's definitely a fine line between just putting your ideas out there, and actually causing collaboration to happen. For example, if I posted a video of me talking about any given topic but did not ask for people's thoughts and opinions, that would just be me sharing my opinions. If I made the video and did ask for people's opinions, that would technically be collaborating. Like I said, collaboration is used in many day to day activities, however it is really easy to confuse collaboration with just regular conversation. This video should give a loose idea of one definition of collaboration, as there are many different definitions. Collaboration has many different meanings but for the most part means that more than one person is working towards a specific goal. This is why collaboration is almost everywhere because even if it's unintentional, humans collaborate every day.