At the risk of sounding like a little snot, I didn’t think that the article was really for me. From my perspective, it was too obvious and overly clinical; when I see bullet points and acronyms, I start to get headaches. Most of the advice given here was already apparent to me, but I am a person who uses the Internet far too much for both casual and professional reasons. I couldn’t really approach the article with the attitude of “Here’s the Internet. Now what can I do with it?”
The danger of writing an article about the Internet is that, as the years go by, the changes start to grow exponentially. I wasn’t sure when this article was written, but it couldn’t have been later than 2002. And in comparing 2002’s Internet to the Internet of today, there are some big changes. YouTube didn’t even exist until 2005! I also chuckled at Selfe’s suggestion of using a Zip Disk (admittedly, it was part of a larger list), which is probably the most unreliable piece of technology to be created in the last decade. Luckily, flash drives have killed the Zip Disk.
Another problem with the article – and you can probably all guess what I’m going to mention next – no blogs! I can’t blame the writer; blogs and bloggers really only started to grow in popularity in late 2003/early 2004 (thanks to the Presidential election), but – for me at least – they are the perfect medium for online classroom discussions.
And e-mail lists are the devil.
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2 comments:
Sure Selfe was dated, but I still belive that many of the issues he raised are still relevant. This may be say something about my undergrad university, but my experience with technology directly involving the class is limited. In only two classes did we use Blackbaord, out of the four and a half years of my studies.
As an undergrad, I was always timid in the classroom. The classes were we used message boards I noticed that the more I reponded on the boards, the more likely I was to speak up in the classroom. I think this idea applies to many students, and won't change with the advent of newer and newer technologies.
And, personally, I like bullet lists.
I said I didn't like e-mail lists, which are different than bullet lists. But they can CONTAIN bullet lists.
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