how much more advanced can we get?

My parents are pretty much complete opposites in their view of technology: my mother just learned last year how to turn on the computer and types at approximately a speed of 5 words per minute; my father builds computers for fun and spends more money than necessary on any new technological ‘toy’ we can afford. I guess I get my love for technology from my father. My mother, as well as many of my older family members, believes that she doesn’t “need” a computer. “I didn’t have it for the first 50 years of my life, I can live without it now,” she says all the time. Its not a matter of needing, its wanting it. On a weekend, or day off during the week, I probably check my email (numerous email accounts) more than 2 dozen times a day. Yes, I know, that probably sounds excessive. I think I’m addicted.

*Hi, my name is Chrissy, and I’m an Internet-addict.*

My concern is that I (we, as a society) am so dependent on the computer. What will we think of next? How much more advanced can we get? Will I become like my mother and stick to the computer that I grew up using instead of the new technology that my kids will be born into? Probably not. Most likely, I will be like my dad and buy one of the first flying cars and robots. We’ll see….

Research Paper

The title of my research paper was:
“Internet English: How Computers Have Impacted Students’ Writing Skills”

I chose this topic because I think that computers have had a HUGE impact on writing skills. Just as I found in my research, these impacts can be both positive and negative. From using IM and writing e-mails, my typing skills have improved greatly. That’s a whole different topic though, because typing skills have nothing to do with writing skills. I do notice, however, that using the computer I can write a whole paper using my own lingo/spelling and then go back and fix stuff afterwards. With paper and a pencil, I have to stop writing (and my thought process) and erase my mistakes. Paper and pencil to me is like a traffic jam; your brain is on overdrive, wanting to zoom on by and get all of your thoughts down, but we have to keep stopping and going. A perfect example was writing this research paper. I typed the whole 10 pages without fixing the spell/grammar check. Only after I finished did I reread the whole paper and fix everything. This allowed me to go at a faster pace and stay in the “zone.”

On a negative note, I can completely understand why teachers are becoming frustrated with the IM-lingo being infiltrated into homework and essays. I remember when I was in high school (circa 1999-2003), my grandma learned how to use IM. It was so weird talking to her on-line because she actually used proper grammar. I would type: “hey grams, whats up?” and five minutes later I would get a message back that looked like this: “Hello, Chrissy! How are you today? Are you having fun in school? I went to Bingo today and won $6.00!” I’ll admit that I have fallen into the IM lingo. Lol is probably my most used phrase on-line. I’ve omitted the ‘-ugh’ from though because ‘tho’ is easier to type. Although I’m not victim to the ‘rofl’ and other unrecognizable acronyms, I don’t use proper capitalization, spelling, or grammar on-line. The difference is that I know when and when not to use this language. I will send an email to friends using IM-lingo and maybe slip up in an email to a professor with the occasional IM lingo, but I would never turn in an assignment or write a paper with that language in it. Students may be using this lingo now in elementary, middle, or high school, but as they grow older, they will know when it is appropriate to use it, as I learned. This is the type of language that this generation grew up with. We will never be able to stop them from using the language on-line, and it would take a lot of work to completely erase this lingo from schoolwork. We can, however, teach students in a way that minimizes these errors. We cannot complain about a few IM typos in papers when in reality, computers have allowed our students to write outside of class, in a way that they have come to love.

technology and its usefulness

I work at Rush Henrietta as the general education representative at CSE meetings. At these meetings, I have been able to learn about how technology is used from a special education standpoint. Students that can barely talk will attend these meetings and present a Power Point project to us describing their lives/likes/dislikes/and goals for the future. It is great that technology can help students with special needs do things that they normally would struggle with. These students are such visual learners and technology expands their learning spectrum. The program we learned about earlier in the semester where it will read back your writing was just an afterthought to me. I knew it existed but I had never seen it used. Going to these schools/meetings and actually seeing technology used for a beneficial purpose, to help these children succeed in life, as opposed to its normal purpose of making life easier for people like me, was very touching.

catch 22

Well, I just finished installing the del.icio.us buttons on my computer at home.  This is something that I can definitely see myself using in the future.  There have definitely been times in the past where I have wished I could somehow get a hold of my “favorites” bookmarks.  Something I noticed on my delicious page is that under your link it tells you how many other people have tagged that page.  At first I just thought it was funny it said that because I could see that 4 other people in our class tagged the EDTS523 web-page.  Then, I began to see the usefulness of that feature.  You can view the people who have tagged the same website as you, and those people probably have similar interests and other useful websites.  If a math teacher has a particular website tagged, it might interest them to view the people who have also tagged that page and the other websites they use. 

I never even knew something like this existed.  That is one thing that scares me about learning all of these new “tricks” on-line.  Technology has expanded so quickly that things go in and out of “style” so fast.  There are millions of things out in ‘cyberspace’ that I have yet to learn (and I’m a fairly tech-savvy person).  I could be using a program that I think is great, but there could be other programs out there that are so much better and helpful to students.  How do we find these programs?  Through conversation…through blogs…chats?  It’s almost like a catch 22; in order to become more tech-savvy, you must search the web.

Bloggedy Blog BLog Blog

Upon entering this class, Blogging had no educational meaning to me.  The only type of blogging I knew about was Livejournal.  When I was in college, I had a personal blog, as did my friends, that kept me connected with people on a daily basis.  It was a great way to update friends that went to other colleges on my life at Geneseo.  Even after starting this blog for class, which was similar to the blog I used to have except talking about class instead of my life, I didn’t make the educational connection until now.  This week’s class and readings showed me just what I can do to utilize blogs in an educational setting.  I thought it was great how the students were able to use blogs to communicate with other schools.  In college, one of my classes became pen pals (e-mail pals?) with a 4th grade class in the same county, communicating through e-mail.  We wrote in a Word document, e-mailed it to their teacher, she gave it to the student, the student added to the word document, and the teacher e-mailed it back to us, and the cycle started over again.  That sounds complicated, huh?  Looking back, it would have been much much much easier if we had used a blog, and just added to the blog or commented on what our pen pal (blog-pal?) wrote.

Even putting the class website together as a blog is something I never would have thought of, but its definitely something that I will use.  Websites (unless there is a comment/contact section) never allow for discussion or comments.  To be able to post the students’ work and have people comment on it is phenomenal; such a self-esteem booster.  Teachers could even use the blog as a place for students to creatively write, no judgements, or corrections on spelling/grammer.  I’ve even noticed reading some classmates’ blogs that people get caught up in the typing when you really have something on your mind, usually causing multiple spelling/grammer errors.  Using a computer, spelling and grammer become pushed into the back of your mind as you let loose all of the thoughts that are being held hostage in your brain.  Since typing is much quicker than writing (well, for most of us), allowing students to type rather than write gives them an opportunity to let their mind run wild for a while, rather than consciously thinking about what word they are slowly writing next.  To me, this is a great way to get students to learn to love to write.