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Using Your Online Voice

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The internet can be a place to voice your opinions and ideas to share with people or insight change.

One of the most valuable assets of the internet is that it is a free space. Most countries have access to uncensored online platforms to voice their opinions and express their feelings. Using various platforms to express these thoughts can be used in different ways. Social Media can be used to post shorter opinions and feelings about current events topics; for example from a survey (2017) results found that people were more likely to use their social media to post about current political topics, such as the Brexit vote. Other platforms can be blogging sites such as Tumblr and WordPress where people can discuss their topics and opinions in more depth. There are also online petitions and funding like Change.org and GoFundMe where people can do something about their views such as signing petitions and donating money to causes they believe in.

Look below on how to use your online voice:

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As you can see, there are several ways to efficiently get your voice heard online and quick changes to make your opinions have most impact. Creative Ninja said the most effective way to get your voice heard online is by using social media and to be innovative by using new tools. They also said that by engaging as an author and getting your voice known you’ll be more successful. Rave Communications say that posting at the right time and the right amount suitable for the content you’re creating is essential. As well as all this, backing up your opinion with people that believe the same thing as you encourages your reader to listen and trust what you’re saying, when it is endorsed by others.

This can all add up to you having your own identity. Choosing your usernames, blog titles, who you’re in contact with and what you say allows you to form the personality that you want to be online. It allows you to say the things you want to say and associate what you want to be associated with.

Overall, using the internet to express your opinions is a vital tool, whether you’re sharing your TV opinions or trying to insight social change.

Getting an Online Education

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As we found in the last post the Internet is the barer of all knowledge (well… most knowledge); which means that there is a lot on there that we can learn.

The Internet is full of sites that contain useful information for us to discover and learn; whether it is a forced search into the depth of Wikipedia for your history project or ‘Google-ing’ your symptoms to become your own doctor. All this knowledge can be accumulated and can provide people educations on several in depth topics. Saying this, it is where we get the information to write the papers that can be handed into teachers and lecturers within the education we pay for.

These papers that we hand in for our lecturers are within their specialist fields of that industry or subject matter. Meaning that the information we return them to prove our competency could even be written by themselves, and was published online by similar researchers in the field. With authors of all description, fiction and non-fiction, publishing their books and research online is allowing the internet to aid people within their educations.

fixing-tv
Unscrewing the back of the TV to try and fix the power button before Dad came home!

google for an educationThis has allowed us to create the commonly used phrase to ‘Google it’, which everyone in western society will understand as ‘look it up on the internet’ (and more commonly in Britain implying ‘stop bothering me with your questions’!). The knowledge that comes from the Internet allows you to be able to learn anything and this doesn’t just limit to facts, you can learn to DO! If you need to learn how to fix the power button on your TV before your Dad comes home from work because you and your Mum broke it while trying to watch another episode of Greys Anatomy then you can find video instructions on YouTube… Yeah that happened. Or if you’re a student and need some cooking tips, you can check out Sorted Food. Or if you need to know how to paint on your makeup perfectly like Kim Kardashian then you can learn here.

With the internet, you can give yourself a mini education or can actually get a full education with Open University. This is where you can get a university degree via online courses and graduate with a full honours. Or, you can extend your education by taking a Masters online, for example through the University of Edinburgh. There are also online spaces such as MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) which provide affordable and flexible online courses to teach ‘skills, persue lifelong interests and deliver quality educational experiences’.

This access is amazing, giving people knowledge is giving people power and the more they know, the more they can achieve. The best bit, is that anyone with access to the internet, has access to this information, giving people more of a level playing field than ever before!

Access to Information via the Internet

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The internet is this massive cloud of data that allows us to access amounts information that we can barely fathom. You can use the internet to search for recipes to instructions to discoveries, the list is endless.

The computer on which Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web
The computer on which Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web

Having access to online information opens you up to knowledge and information that could allow you to conquer any topic you choose. This online phenomenon started in 1969, when the ARPAnet delivered its first message; this was the first “node-to-node” communication from one computer to another. This online world began to grow and develop leading to Tim Berners-Lee in 1991 creating the World Wide Web, not only allowing messages and information to be sent from one place to another, but a ‘web’ of information that anyone has access to – which makes the internet 10139 days old today! To find out more about the internet’s history click here.

Now, the internet has around one billion websites you can access and visit meaning it can become your reference for anything. In the modern age where you can ‘Google’ anything at the tap of a finger. Each query that you put into Google uses 1,000 computers in 0.2 seconds to retrieve an answer. It’s phenomenal to think that is what goes into the most popular word search being ‘weather’!

That means that if you want to go somewhere and find a location, you can look online. It means that if you want to make something new for dinner but don’t know how, you can search for a recipe online. It means that if you are even trying to decide what career path to take or what university to attend, you can find all this information online.

featureSome critiques have been produced to this fountain of information, such as book sales taking a massive plunge as the sales of ebooks rise due to the access to online information being easier than ever. However, with the easy access to eBooks and saving the paper used as production numbers go down, is it a negative or an evolution of a market?

The immediacy of having the information at your finger tips is something that the generation of millennials are so used to and possibly take for granted. You can lean so many new skills online and some you can even do for free! Here’s the list:

The existence of the internet has given us an unbelievable access into the information of all people, from science to ancient history to the arts, they can all be accessed online.