Week Four Blog: Wrapping Things Up

Wrapping up week four has been a tough one. I believe researching for my project has been the most difficult task of the class so far. I was so stressed out throughout the beginning of the class wondering “am I even doing this right?” but I learned so much from this class that I wouldn’t trade this class for any other this summer. I found it helpful this week to read all of the extremely insightful posts that classmates have written in the discussion forum part two on my research topic. This made the process of figuring out what specific technologies I should be covering in my paper a lot easier.
This has been a very interesting class. It has increased my confidence in my writing and discussion writing skills as well as my ability to share what I really want to share with the class. Although this was a four week course I feel as though I have learned more than I have learned in some of my complete semester courses throughout the years. Making a class interesting makes all the difference I believe because people are going to be more inclined to learn if they are interested and intrigued by the topic at hand, and this topic of the class definitely interested me.
One of the most interesting things I found this week was how much people responded to our research posts. Although my post in the project discussion forum did not get much feedback, the one in the discussion forum two got a ton of feedback which was extremely helpful. I honestly thought that I would only have one to two comments on my posts but was pleasantly surprised to find that almost everyone commented on my project post. This made me feel even more confident that I was choosing an interesting topic to discuss for my project. One of the most beneficial posts that boosted my confidence was one from Michael when he said “I think that this point can connect back to the first week videos and the discussion about the advancement in technology in robots. Some people may be worried about what could happen (much of this is a Hollywood depiction of robots) in the coming years if technology like Watson continues to advance”. It is so great to see that other people are thinking about what I am thinking about when looking at the focus of this topic. My most beneficial aspect coming out of this class will be the confidence I have gained in my writing. I never thought I would say that I learned to become more confident in my writing from a four week summer course, but I have.

Week Three: Researching

For week three we were able to focus a lot more on our research papers and decide what we were wanting to research and find sources to back up the research. I had a hard time trying to figure out what I wanted to write about because I kept thinking that my topic was way too broad, however, after talking to Joyce I found that starting out broad and then narrowing your topic down a bit was not a bad idea. The readings this week were based on helping us to research and to better understand the effectiveness of an online course. This information was really insightful; however, this was not the most interesting thing I learned this week. What I am going to talk about in my blog today is that ezine.com site that I have been discussing a lot with the students. I am so excited to learn about this site, I just can’t seem to stop talking about.
I found this website fascinating. I cannot believe I had never heard of this site before, but it is most definitely something I wish I would have known about in high school even. I do not know how many paper I have written than I could have used this site for, but it is more than I can count on two hands. This site is easy to access, easy to navigate, and extremely helpful in the researching process of a paper. It makes me wonder why I had not heard of this before. I am so excited to learn more about this site and find out all I can learn from it. The first thing I typed into the search box on the site was "future technology" and the first entry that popped up with exactly what I had been looking for as an article to use for my paper all week. I wish I would have looked at the discussion board earlier because it would have made the researching process that much easier. I am relieved to realize that I never have to worry about looking up an academic-worthy website on Google very often anymore.
Even after two minutes of being on the site, checking out how to do everything and finding the search icon I was able to find a really reliable and interesting article that would really help my paper. This is the website of what I found (http://ezinearticles.com/?Future-Concepts-and-Modern-Advances-in-Technology;-Good-or-Bad?&id=96962). I would urge ever one of my classmates to at least attempt to look at this website a little. Trust me; it will be worth your while.

Week Two: Online Communities vs. Online Dating Sites

Week two has been all about online dating and online communities. At first glance you would think these two were the same; that is what I thought at first as well. However, these two are completely different. Was I found most interesting about this topic was that it was so hard for me to understand and come to term with the fact that I had always thought the two coincided. I’m sure I am not the only one who thought this as well.
As much as I just wanted to agree with everyone on the topic at hand I had to look around the internet myself and see if I could figure out if I could find other articles about it that I could learn more from. I decided that to learn more about the genre at hand I needed to look around on my own; this is also going to help in my knowledge and ability to write a little more clearly about my topic. Even after talking to the students in class about how they saw that these two genres could be so different when they were both used online and used to meet people I still felt like I was betraying my own feelings on the topic by just saying “OK since everyone agrees that these two topics are different I will just believe it as well.” I started to ask more questions and go in depth with my discussion posts to ask why everyone thought these topics were not as similar as I had thought. According to a book I found online titled “Psychological aspects of cyberspace: theory, research, applications by Azy Barak online dating sites and online communities are far from similar. I decided to look up more sites and more information online on my own to see if I could find the connection elsewhere.
An online community is everything I had thought it was before; social networking sites like Facebook, chat rooms, games, and much more except without the online dating sites. Online dating sites have a completely different goal than online communities according to the book by Azy Barak. According to this author online dating sites have a different objective when they use these sites as opposed to sites like Facebook. Someone using a dating site would use this to meet new people, connect, and continue to extend relationships offline. Online community sites like Facebook use the site to connect with people that they already know and don’t usually establish offline relationships with each other.
Beginning to read new articles and searching the web myself was really helpful for my learning process of this topic. I struggled trying to understand how two things I had always thought were pretty much the same thing could be so easy for everyone else to understand how different they really art. Online dating sites and online communities are both online; however, they are very different indeed. As much as I just wanted to believe what everyone in class was telling me was the truth, I needed to search and find out for myself and I think that is a very good lesson that I learned this week.

Week One: Technologies and their Eras

This week has been all about technology. Some of the most interesting aspects this week were the conversations I had with classmates about how far technology is going to go. Some people stated that they can see our generation being the "old" people, someday that have no idea what is going on in the world of technology. That is so true. Another aspect I found extremely interesting about the reading this week was the Facebook reading that we did. I got me thinking a lot about the younger generation and how they are dealing with Facebook, things they do not know about Facebook, and things they should be looking out for. 

From generation to generation, people are learning more and more, and today, although we may think that our generation is the most technology, it is more than likely the generation behind us that is going to bypass us in the next couple of years. Does that mean that everything we have learned throughout college is going to be outdated in the next couple of years? Unfortunately that is the case most of the time. Things we learn in college will more than likely be out of date in the next 5 years. Following up with the Facebook reading, I believe it is mind boggling to think that there are so many children on Facebook and other social media sites that become victims of online predators. This is a big issue right now that leads to the question, should Facebook and other social media sites be shut down, or should they just be monitored and have a age limit to even be able to log in? Would the age limit even work? There are too many sad stories about people giving out their numbers and meeting up with people they met online. I had asked the question in my post yesterday; “Do you think people could live without Facebook?” because I know a few of my friends who are unusually obsessed with the site and got a really interesting answer. Joel Steichen said “I think that we would all survive without Facebook, but I would be very interested to see if and what new platform would be constructed to fill that niche had Facebook not been created.” This brings up a very good question. Would Facebook’s idea drop off the planet? Would we need something like this technology or would something else be created in its place?

Technology is all around us, whether we want to think about it or not. There is the older generation who kind of knows about technology and some that want nothing to do with it, there is our generation who thinks they are extremely technology savvy (growing up in that era), and there is the younger generation that is learning and could become the most technology savvy of us all in the next couple of years. What is the difference between this generations and how they relate to technology. Most of the older generation is trying to learn, some do not like the technology, like the ones who think it is a good idea to shut down sites like Facebook. There is our generation who grew up in the era of Facebook and all other technological sites. Then there is the younger generation; questionable, and waiting to see what the future holds.