Recently in class we have been discussing the idea of online college courses and the value they can have. Within the last few years, though, not only have large amounts of colleges resorted to the use of an online classroom, but now even high school students can earn their diploma online. This may seem to have many of the advantages related to college courses online such as the ability to move at your own pace, freedom of interpretation, and the especially important effect it has for introverts. But because high school happens for most at an age of important development, students could be missing out on key skills they may not have access to through online classrooms.
An article assessing the advantages and disadvantages of an online diploma (http://diplomaguide.com/articles/Online_High_School_Advantages_and_Disadvantages.html) points out that not only do students miss out on opportunities such as prom, senior week, and graduation; they also miss out on important social skills that may be necessary to function in society. Although online classrooms usually include discussion forums and chats between students in the class, online communication, as we have discussed in class, lacks a great deal of social cues that may be needed for both interpretation of the content as well as application of speech skills in a real life setting. High school acts for most teenagers as a time for developing into the adult. Friends, teachers, and social situation are all contribute to the experiences an individual will have during these vital years. If a student spends his high school shut in the comfort of his own home, communicating primarily with family and students strictly through internet usage, the chances of him maturing through new experiences are extremely unlikely.
Now keep in mind there is always the alternative side to any argument. Some students simply cannot tolerate social situations, have had a life stressor disabling them from attending school, or they cannot learn or focus in a traditional classroom setting. In this case, online education is extremely beneficial and important in the learning process for these individuals. There are, though, a handful of students who use the luxury of online learning as a way to simply "blow off" school. Most of these students thrive off the idea that they won't have to wake up in the morning, deal with teachers calling their houses when they misbehave, or having to spend countless hours studying for exams. These students, unfortunately, are another example of the disadvantages online high schools have for students. This disables them from learning to tolerate discipline and instead enable them to avoid rules which could, in the future, get them into trouble with a force must stronger than parents or teachers: The law.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Thursday, September 18, 2008
"MySpace" or everyone's space?
"As we all know, warnings have gone out countless times, in this world that we live in today, there are folks that visit places, social networking spaces such as MySpace, whose intentions are not good. And they come from far away," said Col. James Baker of the Vermont State Police in an interview with CBS News entitled "MySpace link to girl's disappearance?" (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/27/national/main4214510.shtml) This is among a countless archive of related articles dealing with MySpace, among other social networking sites, which put children and adults alike at risk for danger.
I do not want to indicate in this post that all social networking sites are dangerous and all those involved are going to be harmed, but there is the fact that by being a member of a site, such as MySpace, being at risk of an online predator is inevitable despite privacy settings. For example, MySpace has a default setting that those on MySpace, ages 14 and 15, will automatically have their profiles set to private. On the other hand, a large amount of the children registering for MySpace are under the age of 14 (the age you must be to have a profile) so they simply sign in with a different year of birth, leaving themselves vulnerable to open profiles if they are not familiar with privacy settings. My younger sister, Jodi, is 12 years old and is a prime example of this. She cleverly decided to join the crowd of 7th graders and create a MySpace profile. Luckily she was smart enough to put all false information in her profile, but this included her date of birth, thus enabling her to create the profile in the first place.
Another article (http://www.kcrg.com/news/local/15540222.html) explains the case of a 23-years-old predator who met a 14-year old girl on MySpace where he lured her into meeting him and proceeded to sexually molest her. Cases like this are unfortunately endless and it's hard to wonder if we can really just blame MySpace. The website does not intend for these incidents to happen, as it just acts as a site for CMC. It's hard to not place blame for cases involving children on not only the predator but also the parents of the child. Countless tools are available to parents such as WebWatcher and AceSpy to monitor the websites children visit and the things they do while online. But these tools can only do so much though. We cannot rid the internet of some of the twisted people who entertain themselves on it, but we can work to enrich parents and children of the dangers that seemingly harmless websites can have. Lets hope that in time, our space online will really be our space, and not the space available to millions of other people who use the internet as well.
I do not want to indicate in this post that all social networking sites are dangerous and all those involved are going to be harmed, but there is the fact that by being a member of a site, such as MySpace, being at risk of an online predator is inevitable despite privacy settings. For example, MySpace has a default setting that those on MySpace, ages 14 and 15, will automatically have their profiles set to private. On the other hand, a large amount of the children registering for MySpace are under the age of 14 (the age you must be to have a profile) so they simply sign in with a different year of birth, leaving themselves vulnerable to open profiles if they are not familiar with privacy settings. My younger sister, Jodi, is 12 years old and is a prime example of this. She cleverly decided to join the crowd of 7th graders and create a MySpace profile. Luckily she was smart enough to put all false information in her profile, but this included her date of birth, thus enabling her to create the profile in the first place.
Another article (http://www.kcrg.com/news/local/15540222.html) explains the case of a 23-years-old predator who met a 14-year old girl on MySpace where he lured her into meeting him and proceeded to sexually molest her. Cases like this are unfortunately endless and it's hard to wonder if we can really just blame MySpace. The website does not intend for these incidents to happen, as it just acts as a site for CMC. It's hard to not place blame for cases involving children on not only the predator but also the parents of the child. Countless tools are available to parents such as WebWatcher and AceSpy to monitor the websites children visit and the things they do while online. But these tools can only do so much though. We cannot rid the internet of some of the twisted people who entertain themselves on it, but we can work to enrich parents and children of the dangers that seemingly harmless websites can have. Lets hope that in time, our space online will really be our space, and not the space available to millions of other people who use the internet as well.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
an ending like "A Cinderella Story"...
Recently in our Comm301 course we have been discussing online relationships and the ideas behind interpersonal communication. As we all know, life is always working in funny ways. This particular weekend, right before we began our discussion about these topics, I happened to go home and watch the 2004 movie “A Cinderella Story”. While the movie itself was a bit juvenile and comical, it contained some key concepts about the ideas we are currently studying in class.
The movie portrayed the classic Disney story, “Cinderella,” which I am sure is familiar to all those reading. This rendition of the movie, though, uses real life characters and sets the story line to relate to us in the 21st century. In fact, the characters playing Cinderella and ‘Prince Charming’ meet through an online chat room. Sam (‘Cinderella’) is an offbeat girl who works at a diner and dreams of going to Princeton and finding a new life for herself. Likewise, her chat-room-fling (Austin) claims to be a writer who also dreams of one day attending Princeton. Little does Sam know, though, that the boy behind the computer screen is actually her high school quarter back who is Mr. Popularity at school! The chat room provides Austin with the opportunity to be the person he truly is that the kids at school, as well as his father, never allowed him to be. He is able to reveal his true self to Sam in a way he wouldn’t be able to in person because the contact is not face to face.
In this case, the idea of online communication and relationships was beneficial to the characters in the movie as it allows them to encounter people they might not have ever considered otherwise. They would have not been able to do so without the confidence of online communication. Just like the country song “Online” by Brad Paisley, online communication can give people, especially introverts, the confidence they need to say and do things they may not otherwise feel comfortable with. Online communication and relationships can, on the other hand, be very dangerous and impersonal as well. Because you don’t really know the person you are talking to in most cases, the exchange of personal information can be very risky. Luckily for Sam and Austin, though, they found exactly what they were looking for with the help of technology allowing them to reveal themselves to people they may not have even talked to, let alone dated, because the idea of status and attractiveness were never an issue. ...Now don’t we all wish we could have an ending like “A Cinderella Story”!
The movie portrayed the classic Disney story, “Cinderella,” which I am sure is familiar to all those reading. This rendition of the movie, though, uses real life characters and sets the story line to relate to us in the 21st century. In fact, the characters playing Cinderella and ‘Prince Charming’ meet through an online chat room. Sam (‘Cinderella’) is an offbeat girl who works at a diner and dreams of going to Princeton and finding a new life for herself. Likewise, her chat-room-fling (Austin) claims to be a writer who also dreams of one day attending Princeton. Little does Sam know, though, that the boy behind the computer screen is actually her high school quarter back who is Mr. Popularity at school! The chat room provides Austin with the opportunity to be the person he truly is that the kids at school, as well as his father, never allowed him to be. He is able to reveal his true self to Sam in a way he wouldn’t be able to in person because the contact is not face to face.
In this case, the idea of online communication and relationships was beneficial to the characters in the movie as it allows them to encounter people they might not have ever considered otherwise. They would have not been able to do so without the confidence of online communication. Just like the country song “Online” by Brad Paisley, online communication can give people, especially introverts, the confidence they need to say and do things they may not otherwise feel comfortable with. Online communication and relationships can, on the other hand, be very dangerous and impersonal as well. Because you don’t really know the person you are talking to in most cases, the exchange of personal information can be very risky. Luckily for Sam and Austin, though, they found exactly what they were looking for with the help of technology allowing them to reveal themselves to people they may not have even talked to, let alone dated, because the idea of status and attractiveness were never an issue. ...Now don’t we all wish we could have an ending like “A Cinderella Story”!
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Buffy Response
On September 3rd, we watched an extremely entertaining episode of the hit TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The episode involved the cast coming into contact with a medieval demon that gets scanned into the schools computer system. The demon proceeds to possess two boys in the school, telling them in order to receive power, they must in turn give him their love. Doing so entails them carrying out his orders to kill characters such as Buffy. Although the show does tend to be a bit over the top and comical, it carried a very interesting message about the power of computers on our society.
Technology has become so prevalent in our society that we often look past the impact it really has. Although this show was shot in the 90's, it was already portraying how powerful technology is. One character pointed out that computers were not just a fad we were creating but an entirely new society. Here in the 21st century, we can see just how true that statement is. The show pointed out that technology controls all sources of medical information, missile info, and many more essential factors in our lives. Technology is not hard to access, and, just like the demon in the show, if put into the wrong hands, could throw our entire society into a meltdown. Too often, though, we become so enthralled in technology, we completely overlook just how much it controls us.
The old fashion librarian in the show had strong feelings against the internet. He stated that information was no longer available in books, but instead all online. He was very bothered by this as he has never became very technology savvy himself. He saw it as a great threat because there was "no context, its there then its gone. Its intangible." It feels as if the writers of the show are trying to convey just how risky the overuse of technology has become and how controlling it is. Were the writers really portraying a demon in their show or was the demon really just the power technology has come to have over our society? There is a good chance the writers were trying to make the point that the more we allow technology to control us, the less power we will hold as humans. CMC has come to be such a prevalent factor in our lives, and while it is often very useful, it can also come to control us if we don't learn to keep our personal relationships and tangible resources alive, too.
Technology has become so prevalent in our society that we often look past the impact it really has. Although this show was shot in the 90's, it was already portraying how powerful technology is. One character pointed out that computers were not just a fad we were creating but an entirely new society. Here in the 21st century, we can see just how true that statement is. The show pointed out that technology controls all sources of medical information, missile info, and many more essential factors in our lives. Technology is not hard to access, and, just like the demon in the show, if put into the wrong hands, could throw our entire society into a meltdown. Too often, though, we become so enthralled in technology, we completely overlook just how much it controls us.
The old fashion librarian in the show had strong feelings against the internet. He stated that information was no longer available in books, but instead all online. He was very bothered by this as he has never became very technology savvy himself. He saw it as a great threat because there was "no context, its there then its gone. Its intangible." It feels as if the writers of the show are trying to convey just how risky the overuse of technology has become and how controlling it is. Were the writers really portraying a demon in their show or was the demon really just the power technology has come to have over our society? There is a good chance the writers were trying to make the point that the more we allow technology to control us, the less power we will hold as humans. CMC has come to be such a prevalent factor in our lives, and while it is often very useful, it can also come to control us if we don't learn to keep our personal relationships and tangible resources alive, too.
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