According to Urban Dictionary, a “Glasshole” is some who constantly interacts with his or her Google Glass and ignores the rest of the world. Glassholes and wannabees alike united to discuss the Glass craze on March 27.

Jeremy Littau, assistant professor of journalism and communications at Lehigh University, visited St. Joe’s to teach students about how Google Glass is used and its relation to multimedia journalism.

Google Glass is essentially a computer that is wearable in the form of glasses. The project is still being developed, but the concept is similar to that of a hands-free smart- phone. The user is able to have access to the Internet at all times, controlling the Glass with their voice.

Littau showcased how the Glass works and the different capabilities it has by snap- ping photos of the audience and then up- loading them to social media sites, among other demonstrations. In his classes at Le- high, Littau often allows each student to take the Google Glass for 10 days and experiment with it. Throughout the discussion, he showed several videos that his students had made with the technology.

Littau went on to explain how pertinent the Glass can be to the field of journalism as it allows one to present their own point of view or perspective and then share that in real time.

“Glass offers us a potentially new way to tell stories in the first person…to tell other people’s points of view,” he said. “[It allows us to] come up with types of stories that we haven’t been able to tell before.”

However, Littau went on to say that he is still somewhat wary of the device and the kinds of implications it could have.

“I am still skeptical of this device. Prob- ably as an older person I just think there are a lot of social challenges to it…[but] whether or not this thing takes off depends on your generation.”

Littau obtained the Glass through a contest by Google in which he had to tweet how he would use the device. He was chosen along with 8,000 other winners to receive the prototype and had to pay $1,500 up front.

“It was a pretty unique opportunity and we had the funding…we were one of the first journalism programs in America to do this,” he said.

When asked what they thought of the presentation, the students in attendance ex- pressed that they felt the presentation was informative.

“I thought it was really cool,” said Kelsey Haberin, ’16. “It’s still in testing, but the possibility is just insane.”

Ellie Paparone, ’14, agreed, saying, “I don’t know anything about it, but in the future it’s going to be a huge deal and I wanted to get more information about it, especially as a communications major…I learned a lot from it.”

St. Joe’s students received a unique opportunity to understand the pros and cons of this new technology that could change the world of journalism.