Blog Post 12 T.V. Reed

            In today’s readings of Digitized Lives: Culture, Power and Social Change in the Internet Era by T.V. Reed he asks “are kids getting dumber as their phones get smarter?” and in this chapter Reed is explaining how in today’s schools technology is being incorporated in almost everyday teaching. For example computers can now be found in almost every class room because they can be used as a great teaching tool and can create teaching opportunities for their students. Also not only do computers help with school work it can also help in freeing up a little time for the teacher and he/she can have more face to face time with their students.

            With the computer freeing up more time for the teacher that makes it so the students would have to use a computer and learn at their own pace. With a computer with internet access student can have access to almost all of the information that can be found in a library. But is this making the younger generation dumber? I would have to say a little because now the younger generation has to rely a lot on their phones to find information instead of having to go to a library and look for that info and memorize it. Instead the article they just found will always be on the web and they can always just come back to it if they need it.

Blog Post 11 T.V. Reed

In this reading of Digitized Lives: Culture, Power and Social Change in the Internet Era by T.V. Reed he speaks of the impacts in in video gaming. Reed states that video games can and are being used a form of teaching, but he shows concern on how and what do video games teach. According to the text video games teach us how to learn. They teach us how to learn because every game has its own way of being played and you have to learn the controls of the game to be a good player. Also with gaming has the ability to improve one’s hand eye coordination. 

Blog Post 10: T.V. Reed

                In today’s reading of Digitalized Lives Culture, Power and Social Change in the Internet Era by T.V. Reed he talks about how through the internet many users take on a new identity. A lot of the people that change or lie about their identity usually do this on online dating sites or sometimes even for criminal acts. Due to this the slang term catfish rose quickly. Catfish is someone that systematically lies about who they are online.

                Another thing I found interesting about today’s reading was the section where he talks about our privacy in the internet and if the internet has killed our privacy. According to Reed the internet has eroded our privacy. Due to social media a lot if the information that people would use to keep to themselves they now post it for the world to see. Not only does that make their secrets public but it is also information that can be used against them in any professional setting. 

Blog 9

In today’s readings of Grown Up Digital by Don Tapscott, there is a chapter called “Making the World A Better Place-At Ground Level.” In this chapter Tapscott is mentioning some amazing people that are part of the Net Generation. An example found in the book of one of these great people is Whitney Burton. In her presentation, Whitney Burton gave an estimate on how much it would cost to build enough schools to put all the world’s children in primary school and then she gave the amount of money used just by America alone to make ice cream and that was a total of $20 billion double of what it would cost to make enough schools for all the children. Later in her presentation Burton shares with the audience that she has already raised $16,000 to build and staff a school in Sierra Leone.

Whitney Burton was able to raise this much money due to her being part of the Net Generation. As previously stated in the book this generation is all about being connected through the use of technology or the internet. It is because of this that a lot of the Net Generation can raise enough funds and get the man power to change the world. 

Blog Post 7

In today’s reading Grown Up Digital by Don Tapscott there was a section where Tapscott talked about speed and how today’s generation is all about speed. Some examples he gives was with video games the player will receive instant feedback and how in a google search someone receives thousands of search results with mili-seconds of the search. It is due to this life style that Tapscott states that we assume everyone else will respond quickly back to us when messaging each other.

                Personally I would have to agree with Tapscott argument because my generation and I are all about the speed. For example when we are on the internet we want the fastest internet we can afford so that way we are almost always instantly connected to our friends or anyone. Also when it comes to new technology we want the fasted piece of technology that there is on the market; an example of this would be with computer. Computer hardware and drives are constantly improving by getting faster and smaller, before all computers had a hard drive which was the way the computer could pass information around, now the new type of drive is a Solid State Drive (SSD) in comparison with a normal hard drive the SSD is so much faster and it is the drive that most computers are starting to always come with. 

In this week’s reading of A Better Pencil by Denis Baron it talks about how when writing in text first began it wasn’t trusted by anyone. Writing could not be trusted because of how easily a random person could create a letter that is giving him a large amount of a rich persons land and without proof that the letter was a fake. So to prove that the letter is real signatures would be written on the letter or even a symbol that shows that it is the real person was introduced.

As time progressed signatures became an important part of writing a letter to show it authenticity. You can basically say that the signature or symbol at the end of the letter is the writer’s identity because if someone could perfectly copy the signature then they have access to pretty much anything the person owns. In today’s society any signature can be copied and pasted on any blank document, but its not always perfect because a signature created by a pen as compared to machine has more authenticity to it. 

            In this week’s reading it is mentioned that Plato believed that the creation of writing will cause forgetfulness for those that learn how to write. Plato believed this because due to writing people won’t exercise their memory and rely more on what is written down on paper to help them remember. Also in the reading it was mentioned that writing is not the same as having a face to face conversation due to the fact that anything can be said on paper and you wouldn’t be able to tell what emotion or facial expression they might have. So many things are taken in when talking to someone face to face but with writing one can never know if what they said is truth or a lie.

            That being said, writing is still a very important part in today’s culture and is also useful in helping people remember. Writing is one of the most important pieces of technology invented, without writing anything ever said would change from mouth to mouth creating different stories but the same plot.