Photoshop Assignment Part 1

Online classes are becoming increasingly popular. Commercials are advertising "college in PJ's." This suggests that rather than getting dressed and going to school, people can now take classes from bed. Here, at Marist, we use iLearn as our medium to teach online. iLearn can be used for students taking classes online, or for traditional students' professors to post class information.

The medium here is iLearn.
Some of iLearn's content consists of/can consist of: Text, Internet Links, Audio, Video, Software, Instant Reply Text (message room), Email, and Databases.

There are actually a lot of features that iLearn has that professors and students do not know about. These features may include the drop box, Marist news, wiki, joinable sites, site stats, turnitin.com, watch function and student preview. Each of these have their own form of content as well. I list these, because these all have an impact on the message that iLearn sends out to its users.

The conveyed messages:
1. People are now able to work full time while taking an online class to work toward a degree
2. Rather than going to class, we have become increasingly reliant on technology so we can stay home rather than attend school in person
3. Technology has advanced our learning. Rather than sitting in class, resources regarding class material can be posted online.
4. Rather than having in person meetings, people are becoming less personal by having online meetings
5. We can watch and listen to a lecture from home rather than having to attend classes- maybe we are becoming increasingly lazy.
6. Everybody is expected to have internet access in order to participate in online discussions
7. Everybody is expected to have the latest versions of software to be compatible with everyone else in classes (new updates and technology are so normal in society now, that everybody is expected to have bought/downloaded it)
8. Everybody is expected to be computer literate
9. Professors have access to site stats to see if students have actually logged into the site. This hints that we are becoming less trustworthy because the internet has made it easier to lie and forge material.
10. Turn it in dot com also notes how there is so much material on the web for us to plagiarize, that we now need a way to check and make sure our work is our own
11. Technology is thought to be so user friendly. Occasionally, there are issues. The student view was granted to professors so that they can see what they are actually posting. We can no longer just hand out sheets of paper in this culture (it is not green, or "cool"), so we have to learn how to make things work for one another online.
12. The drop box shows that assignments are expected to be larger than ever. The drop box allows files to be submitted that do not fit elsewhere. This goes to show that as technology advances, more and more is expected of us.

Overview:
These are only some of the messages that iLearn's content expresses. The overall message is that we are getting too impersonal, too lazy to go to school, or too busy to attend classes. We are expected to have the latest versions of software, and how to use them. We are not trustworthy, because no idea is original anymore; but, we are expected to know more than ever. It seems quite overwhelming.