Chie Ginama, G7 409aFall'97 Report 2: Acquiring Cyberspace Citizenship

Instructions
Data Collection Trials and Tribulations of Learning the Internet Conclusion

DATA COLLECTION
LEARNING SOMETHING NEW EACH DAY

Internet is not just fun and games. Surfing the web, reading homepages of your interest, chatting with people online... it seems so simple. However, we all had a time when doing this was not so simple. We still don't know EVERYTHING that there possibly is to know about the internet. When I first started this class, I already knew what e-mail was, and having my own homepage, I already knew the basics of HTML. So when we first started this class with basics of PINE, I felt at ease because everything seemed so basic. But not for long! Here are my ratings of my thoughts and feelings of my online experiences as we progressed through the semester:

Dates: Weeks of September 2 and 9, 1997
Time and Place: Porteus IBM Lab after class lecture
Task: Exercises Parts 1-7

Stressful -3 -2 -1 0 +1 +2(+3) Pleasant
Dissatisfied -3 -2 -1 0 +1 +2(+3) Satisfied
Wasted -3 -2 -1 (0) +1 +2 +3 Valuable
Confusing -3 -2 -1 0 +1 +2(+3) Clarifying
Discouraging -3 -2 -1 0 +1(+2)+3 Hopeful

As you can see, for this class I had a good start. I rated the stressfulness level as most pleasant. The assignments were easy, and I kept thinking that it was a good thing that I new about PINE and the Internet. If I didn't know anything, from the start, I would be really stressed out. Naturally, I was satisfied with the work I was doing. Since the first few exercises were coming straight out of my knowledge, I felt that time wasn't wasted nor valuable. Although there were just a few parts in the exercises I had not experienced before, nothing was confusing. Lastly, I rated these two weeks as being very hopeful; I felt that this class was going to go by smoothly.

Dates:Weeks of September 16 and 23, 1997
Time and Place:Porteus IBM Lab after class lecture
Task: Exercises Parts 8-10

Stressful -3 (-2) -1 0 +1 +2 +3 Pleasant
Dissatisfied (-3) -2 -1 0 +1 +2 +3 Satisfied
Wasted (-3) -2 -1 0 +1 +2 +3 Valuable
Confusing -3 -2 (-1) 0 +1 +2 +3 Clarifying
Discouraging -3 -2 -1 (0) +1 +2 +3 Hopeful

I knew it. A 400 level class can't be this easy. Within one week, my pleasant and satisfaction left me under stress and dissatisfaction with myself. It really hit me when I had to summarize Dr. James' homepage. That doesn't sound hard at all, and it wans't all that difficult. But it was very time consuming. Note that I don't own a computer so I had to rely on the few UH computer labs available. Also note that they do not open 24 hours, so I couldn't work as much as I wanted to. This was my reason for rating my time as wasted. Especially in the Porteus Lab, there are other classes that use the lab. I often heard the teachers saying "If you are not in this class, you will have to leave." But I found myself acting like I can't hear because I had my walkman on. So I would keep doing my work until the teacher would tap me on the shoulder and then kick me out. I didn't just want to finish the MINIMUM, so what I finished for the due date was not all that satisfying. But I did do what was expected, so these two weeks were neither discouraging or hopeful.

Dates: Weeks of September 30 and October 14, 1997
Time and Place: Porteus Lab and CLIC lab, on weekends and after classes
Tasks: Excercises Part 11 and Report 1

Stressful (-3) -2 -1 0 +1 +2 +3 Pleasant
Dissatisfied -3 (-2) -1 0 +1 +2 +3 Satisfied
Wasted -3 -2 -1 0 +1 (+2) +3 Valuable
Confusing -3 -2 -1 0(+1) +2 +3 Clarifying
Discouraging -3 -2 -1 0 +1 (+2) +3 Hopeful

At this point I realized that the feelings I experienced in the first two weeks of the semester would never come back again. For these two weeks, working on both our exercises and our first report was very stressing. Is it just me or when you know you're supposed to be doing something important but yet you start doing unnecessary things? Every 20 minutes or so I would go back to writing to my friends on e-mail, or updating my own homepage when I'm supposed to be working on the class homepage. But I was making some progress. Although I was feeling stressed out, I am still learning new things. From little things such as creating bookmarks to learning the FTP, there are always a lot of things to look forward to. Therefore, I rated these two weeks as valuable and hopeful. As for time, I was in the computer lab most of the time so I don't feel as though I wasted any time.

Dates:Weeks of October 28 and November 18, 1997 (Present)
Time and Place:Porteus IBM Lab after lecture and my own time
Task: Report 2

Stressful -3 -2 -1 0 (+1) +2 +3 Pleasant
Dissatisfied -3 -2 -1 0 +1 (+2) +3 Satisfied
Wasted -3 (-2) -1 0 +1 +2 +3 Valuable
Confusing -3 -2 -1 0 +1 (+2) +3 Clarifying
Discouraging -3 -2 -1 0 +1 (+2) +3 Hopeful

It's been two months since the semster began, and it is slowly coming to an end. But the hours I spend in the labs are not getting any less. One "burden" (the exercises) are now gone, but that does not stop me from spending more time on the computer. I know so much more than what I started with this semester, so I am not as stressed. The work that I do is never perfect, but I am still satisfied with what I am doing. There were times I did not come to the labs although I could have ("I'll do it later, later, later...") and I regret that very much. Out of all the weeks, these two weeks are probably the best for me. Things seem to be clearer now, so I feel that I should rate that as clarifying and hopeful.

TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF LEARNING THE INTERNET
LEARNING FROM OTHERS' EXPERIENCES

PAST GENERATIONS...

Diane Beauchemin was a PSY 409 and 459 student in 1994. Like most students, she had a difficult time learning the Internet. She gives a detailed "journal" of her experiences on the computer. This page is really funny, and I am sure many Internet learners can relate to her tough and not so tough times. For example, being the humerous person she is, she has created some "humor archives" containing links to things she thought is a good stress reliever for those days when you just don't feel motivated. Reading this page made me feel a little relieved; a lot of us are in the same boat. Not everyone is a computer genius. This page is a must read. Oh, are you interested? Then click here!
Enjoy!

Rebecca Ross's lab reportswere similar to Diane's... only a little worse. I mean worse in terms of being much more clueless when it came to computers (that's how I felt anyway.) Rebecca too, is a funny person, and she showed it by her funny experiences everytime she went on the computer. As I read all these reports, I really find it nice that these people had the exact same problems we are having right now. I see that every generation goes through the same experiences we do.

Lori Morita's Lab Reports are pretty detailed, as she has a seperate page for each week. That's nice and organized, but it was kind of tiring going back and forth for each page. But I did look through each page, and there were some parts of her "mistakes" I could relate to, like coming all the way to the computer lab only to find that I forgot my disk at home. Overall, her page is very nice (the first one with background color and pictures so far...) and nicely organized, which is good for me, a neat freak.

Shane Cobb-Adams' page is completely different from the others-- a little less humor. But that doesn't mean it's junk. That's because this page is not about his lab reports, but about A/C/S domains. A is for Affective, C is for Cognitive, and S is for Sensori-Motor. He also touches on his learning of the Internet, and he provides a number of links to related topics.

MY CLASSMATES...
These are the people I can really find similarities in. We were mostly all strangers on the first day, but as we experienced the same stress throughout the semester, I think we all...'bonded' very well.

I think our whole class could realte to each other, but to name a couple, first, I think Dana's experienceswere similar to mine. Like me, at one point she felt completely helpless. (Didn't we all?) But as time passed, we were getting more and more used to the class, and now we're both confident.

Two words I can completely relate to in Ayada's report: FEAR and FRUSTRATION. I know all of us felt this feeling of frustration in this class (especially when we kept our work off for too long), but fear, I don't know. But I sure felt fear. Fear of what? The computer of course. No, not using the computer, THE COMPUTER. When I was very stressed, just hearing 'computer' reminded me of this class and how stupid I was to leave my working hanging for a long time. But that was just the beginning. Like Ayada, I've come a long way too, and looking back, the stress was definitely worth it.

CONCLUSION
For people not familiar with the Internet, I would definitely recommend that you learn it. It doesn't hurt to learn this because it will be useful. For the future generations taking this class, please DO NOT BE LAZY and DON'T GIVE UP. If you are even just a little bit behind, it will hurt you later on in the semester. Unless you love working on a computer for 10 hours in one sitting, don't hold off your assignments until the last minute.

Overall Interpretation:
Learning and experiencing the Internet is definitely something new and brings in a totally new type of knowledge. I would continue to be a cyber-citizen for the years to come, and would definitely recommend it to present and future Internet learners.

E-MAIL ME!