Reading Post 11/22/10

In the final chapter of the text, the authors of the book, via recorded email shared their final words on digital natives and how they believe  things need to change for the best possible future. The Stone article was about how due to the more rapid evolution of technology sub-generations are developing between  younger brothers and sisters who have a completely different sense of technology. The article mentions a split between the the "net generation" who are born in the 80s and the "iGeneration" who are born in the 90s.

Question: How has being born more than 5 years before or after someone close to you affected the way you use technology? Does whichever of you is younger have a firmer grasp on newer technology or do you have about an equal grasp.

I found it very interesting that there are now what some people consider "sub-generations". I am 4 years older than my brother, but I feel like we come from different technological backgrounds. He seems much more knowledgeable about things like mobile devices than  and my peers and I do. He sees text messages as a replacement for phone calls or instant messages in that they need to be instantly responded to, whereas I see texts more like email in that I send and receive them whenever I happen to check my cellphone.

Future of Higher Education

The assigned reading was a study about how technological advances are re-shaping the way higher education is approached. It listed obstacles such as school size and budget as reasons why some universities are keeping up with technology better than others.

Question: What ways has technology directly affected your education at Towson? Do you think using technology in classes such as this one will make you prepared once you leave college?

Post 11/8/10

Today's readings were about education and how the surroundings of the an individual can determine how the education process works. The reading in the text talked about how for digital natives, the way news and new information is aquired is changing rapidly. In the past learning the news was a more time-consuming task which involved sitting down to read the newspaper or watch the news on television. The new way to do it is to read short articles online and then interact with other readers as well as the authors of the content via comments. The chapter also talked about how it can be a challenge to have technology as part of the education process because it can be a hard ballance between having too much technolgy used and no technology used.
      The Internet Article talked about how learning is determined by the surroundings and people in the group where an individual is learning. it also mentions how the way the person learns changes as their familiarity with the group does.

          Question: What are some of the ways technology in the classroom has enhanced your learning experience? How do you keep up to date on current events/Do you read the newspaper or watch "The Colbert Report"?

I found it surprising that more schools don't emphasize how to use tools such as the smart board in teachers' curriculum. At my high school, Every teacher who had a smartboard was required to take a course provided by the school on how to use them. As far as I know, this included lesson planning.

In-Class post 11/2

I do not consider myself to be a multi-tasker. I can't even listen to music while reading or doing homework. The two tests I took today confirmed that I am indeed not a  big multi-tasker. I scored100% on the focus quiz and missed only one question on the switching tasks quiz. I believe I only missed that due to the complexity of the instructions.

In-Class Entry 10/26

Today Luis and worked together to make a short comic strip illustrating how difficult it has become for anyone to just add information to wikipedia. We both shared ideas about what we thought would make a realistic setting for someone using wikipedia. It was more successful than working alone because we could combine our different ideas to have a more creative comic. I learned that working together can help the individuals in the group become more creative with their ideas.

Blog Entry 10/25/10

The Theme of the assigned readings was information on the Internet and how it comes from a "marketplace" of people. The Chapter in the textbook talked about how the way people, especially young people get information now is different than in years past. Now people just check on popular Internet sites like wikipedia, whose articles can be written or edited by anyone. Before there was this technology people would get it from more traditional sources like Encyclopedia Britannica where the articles are written and edited by established experts in each field. The chapter then talked about way that the information available online can become higher quality.

The article/blog talked more about different technologies that bring together information through different people's knowledge.

What kinds of things do you look for when trying to determine the validity of an online source, either for a school paper or personal research? 

I was pretty surprised that Wikipedia was proven to be comparable to Encyclopedia Britannica in terms of accuracy of articles.

Reading Response for 10/19

The Reading in the text was about the recent trend of music piracy on the internet by both digital natives and digital immigrants. It brought up points about how many of today's internet users don't quite understand the legality of peer to peer downloading vs paying for downloads.
The article by Vaidhyanathan talked about how the current laws about copyright don't hold up as well now as they did when the constitution and Bill of Rights were originally written.
 The two FAQ articles just gave point by point breakdowns on how copyright and fair use work. The FAQ about fair use game several examples of ways you can use copyrighted material while still being legal.

How does downloading music for free harm the artist? What are some of the ways you justify your own illegal music downloading( for those of you that do)?

I was surprised that The Palfrey chapter analyzed the music piracy issue from both sides of the argument. I was really expecting it to preach about how downloading music illegally is wrong and how the record companies were right to sue thousands of their potential customers.