The Generational Curriculum Digital Library

"What exactly is it anyway?!"

*Table of Contents*
Getting to know the Generational Curriculum	History of the Generational Curriculum
The Virtual Book in Cyberspace	Mining the Generational Curriculum
Conclusions & Recommendations	Instructions for Report 1

Getting to know the Generational Curriculum
"So what is is all about anyway?"

What is the Generational Curriculum? Well to summarize it in a word, it's cyber-community. Cyber meaning computer. Community meaning a group of people sharing a common space, cyberspace in this case. The idea behind the Generational Curriculum is to create a virtual "online" community of students and their thoughts. Each semester a new "generation" of students get a chance to add to this ever growing digital library. With each generation, the Generational Curriculum will expand and get richer with ideas.

G4 Students' Report 4:
Travis Abe | Homepage | Report |

"I HATE TOUR GUIDES!!! Yeah, it's cute and stuff, but as a frequent web surfer, I would almost NEVER EVER use a tour guide. I don't know. I think it would make me feel dumb or remedial or something. I recently asked my friends who frequent the web and they too think it is a BAD idea. The only thing I would use a tour guide for is a graphic intensive site like an art gallery, a geographic tour, or a females of the world tour."

Heheh. I thought the same thing. Yes I think that they are a great idea for novice users, but not many novices would explore the Generational Curriculum. When I took the tour guide, I found myself stressing out because of the time it consumed. Also, I just wanted to look through the site myself and explore what I felt was interesting. It's more fun if you get to chose your own destiny rather than be told where to go. I think it's part of our human nature to do that.

"If we are talking about a front end, there is nothing WORSE than an index. Well, when I think about it, if it is a professional site then it may be appropriate, but if you plan on attracting new viewers that may not know much about your subject, you WILL NOT get any new viewers if you show an index. If the first thing I saw on a page was an index, I would submit it to my Chapter 3 Report under "The Bad". In the case of using one for Leon James' page, however, I would not use it."

Well, I kind of felt the same way and I kind of didn't. For the opening page of the Generational Curriculum, I think an index would be unappealing. The table of contents was a good choice, but I think that Dr. James should consider changing some colors. They were really harsh on my eyes. However, for the subparts of this site, I felt that an index is great to have. Once you've sifted though the table of contents and found the section you want, an index is exactly what anyone would want.

Yvette Aqui | Homepage | Report |

"As more semesters pass by, the generations as well as the number of students will expand. This may result in a lot of information that will need to be crowded on to one page. It is important to see the progress from the first generation to the present generations in order to get an understanding about how things were at the beginning and how far technology has grown since then. Now, the question is how to make all of this information available without overwhelming anyone who visits the site."

Wow! Greatly said. Reading this paragraph gives you a great accurate explanation of the Generational Curriculum. Damn, I wish I could've said it first. The Generational Curriculum is an interesting phenomenon. It grows every semester with new knowledge and insight from it's students. And like Yvette says, "It is important to see the progress from the first generation..."

The homepages of G6 is exactly what we did for ours (G7). It's a summary of all the links included in the Generational Curriculum. Seems very organized, but some pages are hard to read. If you need/want to know about the links in the Generational Curriculum, you should check both generations.

History of the Generational Curriculum
"Ok, so what's the scoops?"

The Generational Curriculum was started in the 1970's. Back then students turned their reports in on paper. They were later collected, organized, and called the Daily Round Archives (DRA). The following semester's students (generation), used the previous students reports as references and added their own thoughts and ideas to it. Then in 1992, publishing it on the World Wide Web began. The DRA are maintained by Diane Nahl and the Generational Curriculum continues to flourish each semester under the instruction of Dr. Leon James.

The idea of the Generational Curriculum is to create an online library of students works. Each semester, the Generational Curriculum will be enriched by its new "generation" of students/authors. Currently (fall97), there has been seven generations, but that will increase with every semester. Right now the topics that are focused on are traffic and cyber psychology.

I feel privileged to be apart of this on-going project. It's kind of fun to be apart of something that will be used for years to come instead of disappearing after it's done. The idea of constantly expanding and enriching the library is very innovative. I hope the future generations will understand this and appreciate it too. One thing that I hope to see someday is a Generational Curriculum with all sorts of topics. That would be cool.

View History

The Virtual Book in Cyberspace
"What the?? What is that?"

The Virtual Book is an article on building WebPage. Its explains how a WebPage is looked upon socially and psychologically. Also, it tells you that there are two ways to look at the web, internally and externally. Internally as a builder and externally as a user. One thing mentioned in this article that I could relate to was that not everyone appreciates a WebPage. In the beginning my dad didn't even want to take a look at some of the pages that I've made. Fortunately after seeing how much works goes into making a page, he has changed his opinion.

The Virtual Book is what you are reading now. Yes a WebPage. It is much like any other book you may pick up whether it be from the bookstore or library, expect for the fact that you need a computer to view it. One cool thing about a Virtual Book is that you can choose where "you" want to go next. It's almost like those "chose you own adventure" books that we popular about ten years ago. To create a Virtual Book, you have to be both an artist and an author. Both content and appearance are important in creating any WebPage. If one is lacking you might as well not have put one up. They are all kinds of WebPages out there, some elaborate and some plain. There is no real guideline to creating a WebPage, but just make sure that you would want to visit it yourself.

Nowadays it has become a lot more easier to create WebPages. It is no longer necessary to know how to code in HTML (hypertext markup language). Programs like Microsoft FrontPage and built-in editors on web browsers make it a lot easier to create a WebPage. However, with benefits also come setbacks. Many pages that are on the Internet today are just thrown together. Things like download time, navigation, quality have plagued the Internet. Navigation is a key instrument in browsing the web. The easier it is to browser a page, the less time you take online. To create a good WebPage, it is important that your page is easy to navigate through. If you don't have some means of navigation for your WegPage, your readers may get frustrated and your page then becomes useless. The biggest problem I feel with WebPages, though, is the download time. There are too many pages on the Internet that take way too long to download. This is my biggest frustration. I don't think it should take more than five minutes to download any page. It is really ridiculous how long some pages take to download. If more people take download time and navigation into consideration when creating a page, there will be a lot less angry people on the web.

Comments on G5 409b Students' Report 2:
Scott Chang | Homepage | Report |

"Dr. James is right on about this. For some reason, the home page is a part of us and we love them. I know that when I made my first home page, I was so proud of myself. I was so proud that I wanted all of my friends to come and look at it. Some of my friends thought it was great, some didn't. The people who didn't find it neat hurt my feelings. I'm sure many people feel the same way I do. For some reason, that home page is a part of you. This is why Home Pages are Loved."

I felt the same way. Creating a homepage is something that is a part of you. When it is criticized, you feel criticized too. The way you design it reveals a little about yourself. People like enjoy making homepages. It allows people to express themselves and show the "true you." I guess that's why people put a lot of work into making a homepage than any other webpage that they may make.

Skye Nakayama | Homepage | Report |

"The style of a page is up to the designer. It is up to them if they want to put their links close together or far apart, have a lot of neat icons and pictures or reduce loading time and keep basic. However, one good word of advice is to keep the load time down to a minimum. By minimum I mean the least amount of time you can cut your page down to. So, if you just have to have that life-size portrait of your head on your page, go ahead. Just remember, you might be the only one ever looking at it."

If you read my third paragraph under The Virtual Book you'll understand why I chose to highlight this paragraph. Indeed the design is up to the creator because it reflects themselves. However, it is ALWAYS important to be aware of your download time when designing a page. If you don't, then you page is a waste because not a lot of people will actually wait long to see page that takes forever to download.

Mining the Generational Curriculum
"Problems and Solutions"

Though many of the page in the Generational Curriculum (GC) are easy to navigate through by themselves, the entire site isn't. It's like a tress with beautiful leaves, but an ugly trunk. As the GC grows, this problem will too. If we do not come up with a way to organize the GC and improve it's navigation, all our hard work will go to waste. If the GC becomes really huge and without any easy way to manage it, it's life will be in danger. Right now it is not too bad because the maps (version by Conrad Moreno) drawn out are still current, though lacking full details.

Generation Three created a database called the WIB (World Ideas Bank). Here's a short description by Dan Hamamoto of G4: "WIB is short for World Ideas Bank. It is essentially a database of human concerns; containing specific topics, unlike a library. In this WIB, a particular topic is given concerning a social issue, and a brief opinion is included. The idea of this WIB is to attract opinions from people throughout the world, concerning the specific topic. These opinions are posted on the page, others read and respond, and so on. As one could see a WIB is supposed to be a site that naturally expands on the response of others. In addition, this site is a useful tool to one who needs to express his or her social experiences. I could also see a site like this one being used in creating solutions and ideas for others." It was a great idea, but failed due to lack of exposure. Only a few people knew of its existance and therefore was under used. If there were more people contributing to it both inside and outside of the course, it might have a chance to blossom. A good way to start getting the WIB exposure is to submit it to several Web Search Engines.

As for an overall solution for the Generational Curriculum, I propose the all future generations include "meta tags" so the CSS (College of Social Sciences) Search Engine will have an easier time sorting through all the pages on the server. That the authors of the pages can catagorize their page accordingly and the task wouldn't be so tedious. As for the privious generations' pages, it could be a Psy 499 project to insert these tags. Then eventually the GC will become easier to sift through. =)

Conclusions & Recommendations
"Last Words"

Here are some links and comments on other students reports.

Quincy Tan: He's the "A" student of our generation. I think he took this course for fun or something. All of us in G7 always took a quick look at Quincy's pages to see what we were missing. I don't think any of us could really keep up with him though. Anyway, for his proposal on "Mining the Generational Curriculum" was to impliment a java applet called tree browse. Told you, "A" student... must be some kind of computer geek. Just Joking Quincy. Heheh. What this does is organize all the files in a directory, much like a file manager, so you view the pages within it. The page is setup in frames. On the left side you have you directory structure and on the right you'll see the selected contents. This was a pretty cool idea. Go check it out.

Earl Cachola: I felt that Earl's pages had some of the best content from our generation. His comments were very insightful and influenced some of my own opinions. His solution for "Mining the Generational Curriculum" was a little weak, but the rest of his page is very rich in content. If you need to check out one of our generation's report one's, here's a go place to start. His background is easy on your eyes too.

Alfred Basioa: Alf's pages were also great on content, slightly hard to read due to background. His opinions also influenced me at times. At the bottom of his report he has a top ten list of advise for this course. Told you, he has some great ideas. Heheh (see below and you'll understand). From this, I decided to add my own too. I like his proposal to make the GC more public, though it may be hard to do.

As the Generational Curriculum grow with every student's ideas, I feel that the future generations will be able to add a whole lot more. The more ideas that are put into the GC, the easier it will be for students to add to it. Hopefully they can finish some of our unfinished thoughts and ideas with new information. I also, hope someone will be able to solve the problem of "mining" the GC.

Ok, now for my top five (I know, what a cliche) for making this course a little less painless:

5. Take a course like ICS 101 or have some prior knowledge about computers and the Internet. (Trust me, you'll thank me later. Psstt, btw the monitors in the CSS lab aren't any help.)

4. Get a computer or make friends with someone who has one. (It's way better than sitting in that stuffy lab and probably faster too.)

3. Make sure you'd want to read your own webpage. (If you just throw things together, you're just taking up space. Take some pride in your pages.)

2. Don't procrastinate! (Big no no. If you're having trouble putting up a webpage, make sure you at least collect your data.)

and the Number One Tip for this class...

1. Help each other out. (You're all a part of a generation and should stick through this together.)

Got any questions or comments? Send me