Not until this class have I looked so far into how our technology, culture, and communication work together to form a basis to our everyday lives. I have always known the Internet to obviously be a huge resource of mine, and I have thought about how fortunate I am to live where I do and be able to have access to technology. It is just this class has helped me learn through writing the blogs. I really enjoyed this online class and the topics we covered. I have several blogs that I especially enjoyed. Last week’s blog about a new media article regarding the misuse of the Internet was great because I was able to write about a confronting issue in our culture and helped me learn and explore ways that we can help resolve these Internet misuses.
The blog about joining an Internet community, I feel, has benefited me the most. A few of my fellow peers asked me if I would continue to use the Internet community I joined. To answer to those I did not respond to, I have continued to use this Internet community and am really glad! It is so neat to log onto the community and discuss my career choice with thousands of people, many being all around the world. I also really enjoyed the Wild Card week because I felt that I was finally able to express (on the keyboard) my current situation regarding an exacerbation of my schools Internet program Moodle. It was nice to be able to share my story and relate it to how important it seems that technology plays in our lives and how we have to cope when systems malfunction. Overall, concerning blogs, I felt they were great and had great meaning to my learning.
I enjoyed our reading and forum posts because I liked having a set of questions to narrow our discussion postings. I also really liked the questions regarding the chapter reading and felt I really had a personal connection with the topics. I enjoyed the information available in each chapter of Wood and Smith. I have learned so many tidbits from our culture and technology than I ever knew before. I consider myself pretty computer and technology oriented on the average college student level, but this book helped me look at my computer and Internet on a whole different level. For example, there are so many terms such as pseudonymity and netiquette that I had not heard before, but now I understand how much these terms, and more, relate to cyberspace.
Although Postman’s Technopoly is definitely a huge contributor to the purposes behind this class, I did feel that his reading was more difficult because he did seem to talk about many different topics within one chapter. Sometimes it was hard to follow, but other information was very worthwhile. Overall, I enjoyed every aspect of this class. This includes the fact that this class was online because it helped me greatly with my school schedule. Just like a main topic to this class, the Internet is once again shown to contribute to our expanding uses of technology. America’s culture is seeing more online classes at the college level. The advantages are apparent and I am so glad that online classes are available.
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4 comments:
I would have to agree with you. This course has definitely helped me also with uses of the internet. I learned how to communicate differently via the internet and different terms I can use that relate to the internet also. I also agree with you that Postman's Technopoly was very difficult to read and to understand. He seemed to jump around within chapters and could not stick to one idea. Great post!
I too enjoyed the old fashion exercise. I email people I love on a daily basis but send letters of gratitude through mail as much I as used to. The only thing I use snail mail for is to pay the bills and send special events cards such as birthdays, christmas cards and ect. I never received a card in the mail back but I didn't expect to since I was telling someone thank you. What a good exercise!
It was nice posting with you this term and learning more about you and the program you are in. I agree that Postman was kind of out there somewhere. I would get lost in what the message was, because the stories were more interesting. I think we will all take some new tools with us for our future internet explorations. hearing about other peoples experiences online was very helpful to me because I like to understand more about what the possible threats are about. I do also have to ask if anyone got a chain letter or two this term via regular USPS mail. I did get two from the strangest places. Also the email about threats and a hoax on the OSU ONID email system kind of bugs me.
Casey
I think you hit a point regarding Postman in your blog. Specifically, it is hard, though he makes some current points, to read something written before the paradigm shift made by the Internet age had really taken place. While it is at times useful to see how it has played out, the word is a very different place from what Postman postulated; this leads to some of his commentary missing the connectivity mark which might make it more powerful or guiding. We have integrated this technology so greatly into our day to day lives in efforts to empower the user that his luddite resistance comes across as antiquated and naive.
In many ways, Postman without a modern followup maintains a weakness which is just not addressed by the more modern Wood and Smith text.
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