Week 5- 9/20 and 9/22

Our class had a guest speaker on tuesday: Ray from Ray's weather! He talked to us about the book "Born to Run" by Christopher McDougall. Because the class is about the internet, he told us how the internet and technology can be related to running and exercise. He showed us different sites on the computer that can keep track of how many calories you intake, the amount of exercise a person gets, and how many calories you are burning doing different activities. He also showed us what is the latest technologies for running were; they can keep track of a lot of information. 

On thursday, we had a discussion about RescueTime which is a program that keeps track of how you use the computer and rates the productivity of your time. We had to use this program for one week and the general response to it was negative. Most of the class agreed that it was not a good indication of our productivity for different reasons. In my case, most of the time that I spend on the computer is not on my laptop, but one of the library's computer because I need to use a program for one of my classes that I don't have on my laptop. Also, most of the time, the homework that I have for my classes is not on the computer. I use the computer for entertainment purposes most of the time.

Jessica

Week 4- 9/13

On tuesday, we discussed an article that we had to read for class. It was a really interesting article and could be viewed as opposite of the movie that we watched last week. The article was written by a professor at Duke, and the one year all the freshman received free ipods. The goal was to figure out ways to incorporate them into the class room and come up with different apps to apply it to the class. The article also talked about attention blindness which is when you focus completely on one task and then you miss out on everything else. The article mentioned how multitasking was a good tool for the 21st century.
On thursday, class was canceled because convocation was in the morning.

Jessica <3

Week 3- 9/6 and 9/8

This past week we watched a movie called "Digital Nation" which was all about how technology is influencing us today. The next class we debated the usefulness of multitasking which was talked about in the movie. I really like this topic and find it interesting to hear what others have to say about it too. 

There were many topics covered in the movie: some of which I found interesting and completely shocking. One of the topics that completely shocked me was about a business that conducted everything through a virtual world. The people who work there just sit behind a computer all day and watch a screen to conduct their business. They have characters that look like them and hold meetings in this virtual world. I think that is absolutely ridiculous. I don't think this is the way business should be done. And I can't image looking at a screen for that long. I mean yes I am a college student that is always on my laptop, but I need to take breaks frequently because staring at the screen for a while hurts my eyes. Business should be done face-to-face and phone conferences are good when companies have customers in other parts of the world. I feel that real human interaction is key though not just on a virtual world. It doesn't seem right when there is an office building that is completely deserted or when people are at an office, but talk to each other via virtual world rather than face-to-face.

One of the other interesting things that the movie mentioned was that South Korea has internet cafe's where the entire floor is just rows and rows of computers. This is a good idea if people use it for a little if they don't have access to a computer or game systems, but people will go to these places, sit, and play video games for hours or days on end. This has become a health problem because people who are so focused in the game do not eat and drink properly. I think the video also said that some people may have actually died from playing to much. I personally think this is really sad; do these people not have anything else that they can be doing. I play video games sometimes, but not obsessively. I can normally find much better things to do than play computer and video games 24/7. I also think that gaming this much affects relationships with other people. People aren't focused on real relationships with real people when they are that addicted to gaming. Relationships with real people are very important and necessary. These relationships are no existent when a person is only focus on video games.  

Another topic it covered was multitasking which also happened to be the topic we debated and discussed in class on thursday. There was a study done that showed how people's mind actually processes things  slower while multitasking no matter how good someone thinks they are at multitasking. I multitask all the time. I always have a billion things running around my head at one time and am trying to do many other things at the same time. I tell myself that I am good at multitasking, but I also know it just gets me really distracted. Even now, I have my phone out, Facebook open, am working on sketching some shoe design ideas, have some other windows open, have a different project for art out that I am finishing, and am thinking about many other things not related to any of the things I just mentioned. I am not good at focusing on one thing at a time even though I know I get more done that way.  I think that multitasking is a skill that everybody uses in the world today, and with certain phones now, people can be talking to someone on the phone and be surfing the web and sending a text message at the same time. With our minds going a million different directions it is nearly impossible to give full attention to a task at hand. 

The discussion and debate we had in class was really good. It was interesting to see how different people viewed technology and hear other students experiences with technology, being distracted, and multitasking.

Jessica

Week Two- 8/30 and 9/1

The second week of class was just as interesting as the first week. On tuesday, we were introduced to networking. This was a really fun class because we learned how computers share information while having fun, playing games, and learning magic tricks. We played a game which I think was called the "Orange game" (but I'm not really sure) :-) We played this game in groups of 5 or 6. Every person (except one) started with two colored pins that matched a colored paper they had in front of them (the other person started with one pin and a colored paper that matched it). Then we switched the pins with other people so that we had two different colors none of which matched the colored paper in front of us. The main idea was to end up with the same colored pins as the paper in front of us. The player with one hand free is the only one who can take a pin from someone but it has to be someone to their left or right. It may sound complicated as I try to explain but once we started playing it made so much more sense. The group I was in won both times that we played- the first time we played in a circle and the second time we were in a straight line which makes it a little more challenging. During tuesday's class, we also learned how to do a magic trick involving binary numbers :-) so now I can amaze my family at my wonderful skill!

On Thursday, we had a class in the library learning how to search the school's databases for scholarly articles. This class wasn't as much fun as Tuesday's class, but we did learn a lot how to find good sources and information.

Jessica