Growing up Online was a Frontline episode put out in 2007 by Rachel Dretzin. Being constantly online is the new normal but this is the first generation to grow up online so society is still figuring out how everything should go. The show talked about Teenagers socializing on MySpace and Face Book and preschoolers and elementary kids learning how to socialize in line with Club Penguin. The older generation who grew up without chat rooms or even in home computers, are very concerned. They say it is hard to control what kids are doing online. “[It’s] the greatest generation gap since the advent of rock and roll” the narrator says. Several teens are interviewed and it is apparent that their life is entwined with the internet. Their identity is online and they wouldn’t know how to function if they became disconnected. One kid said if he became disconnected he would just sit in his chair all night and stare at the blank screen. He wouldn’t know what else to do. Kids are unwilling to be out of the social cyber loop for more than an hour. Sagest they leave their cell phone home while in a family vacation and you would think that you had suggested they cut off their arm! The show highlighted teachers and how they are adjusting to the cyber boom. One teacher who had been in the business for a while said she could see that there are more focus problems now then there were 30 years ago. Another teacher observed. The kids today are so used to the quickness and loudness of the internet and cell phones and such that walking in to a class room without media must be like walking in to a tomb. The show touched on inline stokers and the “very public privet lives of kids growing up on line.” Kids feel their online identity is personal and privet and they don’t want their parents interfering. They don’t realize sitting in the safety of their own home how very public things are. Studies show that most kids are street smart enough to recognize solicitations and delete them. Kids should be thought of less as victims and more as participants. With that kids are beginning to be taught good cyber citizenship. They need to know how to use technology responsibly and have good manners online.
What would this show look like if it had been a study of the effect of the internet on my life? The show was showing how connected we are and how much of our personality is online. I’m one of the last kids who wasn’t born with a computer. One of the last kids where for the first half of my life cell phones were not the norm and kids certainly didn’t have cell phones. That was something you didn’t get until you graduated collage and got some sort of business job. When I was a teenager and most kids were really getting into chatting on line and cyber social networking I was living overseas in third world countries. You had to pay to use the internet in little dirty booths and it was so slow it almost wasn’t worth it. By that time though even all the little Cambodians living in the jungle villages had cell phones and I reluctantly got one at the age of 19. Years later I’m hooked. I especially don’t like trying to go anywhere new without my cell phone. I need it if I get lost so I can call someone for directions or just for the comfort of their company while I try to figure things out. I’m one of those annoying people who still likes to turn my phone off or leave it at home on the weekends some times and just be free but then I always have several angry people to deal with who are indignant over me being unreachable. I still think pointless socializing online is annoying and would much rather hang out with someone who is around but the internet is wonderful for purposeful networking and researching.
Welcome!
Welcome to our Eng 100 Blog “Conversations Beyond the Classroom”! The title of this blog refers to the community of active readers & collaborative learners we are creating by sharing our academic writing for Eng 100 with each other + a larger group of students, instructors, academics, and just about anybody who chooses to follow our blog! When you write and post your reader responses here (and, later, as you write your essays for the course), I encourage you to use this audience to conceptualize who you are writing for and, most important, how to communicate your ideas so that this group of academic readers and writers can easily follow your line of thinking. Think about it this way: What do you need to explain and articulate in order for the other bloggers to understand your response to the essays we’ve read in class? What does your audience need to know about those essays and the authors who wrote them? And how can you show your readers, in writing, which ideas you add to these “conversations” that take place in the texts we study?
As students of Eng 100, you will use this blog to begin conversations with other academic writers on campus (students and instructors alike). We become active readers of each other’s writing when we comment on posts here. And, best of all, we are using this space to share ideas! We encourage you to use this blog to further think through the topics and writing strategies you will be introduced to this quarter. As always, be sure to give credit to those people whose ideas you borrow for your own thinking and writing (you should do this in the blog by commenting on their post, but you will also be required to cite what you borrow from your peers/instructors if and when it winds up in your essays. More details on that later…).
Finally, keep in mind that writing to and for this audience is a good way to prepare for the panel of readers (faculty at WCC) who will be reading and assessing your writing portfolio at the end of the quarter. We hope that as a large group of active readers, we can better prepare each other for this experience. But, in the meantime, let’s have fun with it! I am really excited see how far we can take this together!
--Mary Hammerbeck, Instructor of Eng 100
As students of Eng 100, you will use this blog to begin conversations with other academic writers on campus (students and instructors alike). We become active readers of each other’s writing when we comment on posts here. And, best of all, we are using this space to share ideas! We encourage you to use this blog to further think through the topics and writing strategies you will be introduced to this quarter. As always, be sure to give credit to those people whose ideas you borrow for your own thinking and writing (you should do this in the blog by commenting on their post, but you will also be required to cite what you borrow from your peers/instructors if and when it winds up in your essays. More details on that later…).
Finally, keep in mind that writing to and for this audience is a good way to prepare for the panel of readers (faculty at WCC) who will be reading and assessing your writing portfolio at the end of the quarter. We hope that as a large group of active readers, we can better prepare each other for this experience. But, in the meantime, let’s have fun with it! I am really excited see how far we can take this together!
--Mary Hammerbeck, Instructor of Eng 100
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