Cyberpsychology Generational Curriculum Summaries

Generational Curriculum Summaries

Each one of us in Dr. James' psychology 409b class has written a summary of our responses to Dr. James' home page. These are the summaries that we have written….

_{From: Kendra
Morgan kmorgan@hawaii.edu}

: _{I found that searching through
Dr.James' homepage provided a lot of information about this class
and how it had evolved through the last several years. I still
have a lot of questions about what our contribution is going to
entail. One thing looks sure though, it looks like this is going
to involve a lot of work! The previous generations covered a wide
range of interesting topics and introduced me to a lot of new
ideas.}
: _{The CyberPsychology link on
the main homepage connects to an index that has a lot of information
about the topic of cyberpsychology and some of the principles.
I really liked the section on Cyberspace and Mind, it actually
made a lot of sense. I used to think that spending hours in front
of a computer surfing the web and participating in on-line discussions
was a waste of time. The past couple of semesters I have started
to change that opinion and this helped to reinforce that. On-line
communities provide access to a much broader range of topics and
allow a person to more easily explore areas of interest. There
I also the opportunity to find others who share their beliefs
and experiences.}
: _{The possibilities that are
provided through on-line communities are virtually unlimited.
This is part of what makes it so fascinating and continually exciting
to millions of people. The Generational Curriculum provides us
all with a small glimpse into a vast world that we have essentially
only begun to explore. I'm intrigued, if not a little daunted
by the work that is ahead!! I just hope that I can keep up with
all of these assignments!}

_{From MayRose
Isnec isnec@hawaii.edu}

: _{As I went through the different
generations, I noticed that there were significant changes between
the first generation to Generation 4(s). As the generations progressed,
the web pages grew more elablorate, colorful, animated, and most
especially, interesting. I think the most recent generations have
the better pages because of their contents and are more visually
appealing. I am not trying to take away from the earliest generations'
effort and work, but I think the quality evolved with the technology
and growing knowledge of the internet. The effort put in by the
students in generation 1 and generation 4 would most likely be
equal, but I'm sure generation 4 made their pages more appealing
by using software, scanners, visuals borrowed from other pages
(graphics professionally done), etc. - the things that were not
available to generation 1. I had more fun looking at the most
recent generations' home pages because they were attractive, so
I found myself looking more at their home pages than G1-3.}
: _{Students should not only look
at the students' home pages, but they should view Dr. Leon James'
Page and his articles also. I read Dr. James' articles on Cyber-psychology
and cyber-communities last semester and used it as a reference
for my own home page. His viewpoint is very interesting and thought
provoking. His opinion on the "art of clicking" has
been especially interesting and controversial. After reading his
article, I paid better attention to my "virtual presence"
in the cyber-community. It's very interesting (as well as fun)to
be a netizen.}
: _{It's good to go through the
different home pages. I know I'll be referring back to the previous
generations for guidance, ideas, and places of improvement. Hopefully,
generation 5's home pages will be just as good or better. :)}

_{From: Mike Carroll
carrollm@hawaii.edu}

: _{When I began searching through
the Generational curriculum, I have to admit I was a little afraid.
seeing the complexity of home pages that previous generations
have made frankly frightened me. To add to my fears of failure,
in this class the expectations are even higher. Whats a computer
illiterate student supposed to do? All the students did such outstanding
web pages in previous semesters I don't know if I can compete.
It took me about 50 hours to make a practice web page, so I'd
estimate it would take me about 50 years to make a real web page.}
: _{Reading through the generational
curriculum really made me think about how important learning to
work with computers are. More and more jobs are requiring you
to be able to work on a computer and more information is becoming
available. Just watching TV now I notice that every show and company
has a web page. The internet is just growing so fast that if I
don't learn how to use it I'll get left behind. The computer is
beginning to replace the TV as a leisure tool. Instead of watching
TV for news, entertainment etc.. people are now turning to their
home computer for everything. It's amazing what the computer can
do now. Right now you can work from your home computer, shop,
and pretty much do anything. People are even meeting their wives
over chat lines. There is no telling how popular computers will
be in just 5 years from now. The technology is developing so rapidly
that every day it is a new system. Just when you look at the Generational
Curriculum you can see how the technology has improved from generation
to generation. The pages started out very simple in generation
1 and developed to very elaborate designs in generation 4. It
makes me wonder what our generation will produce.}

_{From: Ryan Shintani
shintani@hawaii.edu}

: _{I just finished doing part 3 for
the other class and I really don't want to do it again so I am
importing my summary from the other class into this mail. my feelings
in haven't changed so I don't think that anything that I have
typed before is incorrect.}
: _{I just finished reading prof
james home page. I guess I was putting it off because it looked
like so much information to try to digest. At least my prayers
were answered because it wasn't boring and I didn't fall asleep
when I was reading the articles.}
: _{I found that if you don't use
a system to keep track of where you have been you can find yourself
going over the same links. I know that when you use a link that
it changes color and that should be a easy way to remember where
you have ventured before. The thing is that I don't use netscape
a lot, so I didn't know that it keeps a record of the site and
what links that you have clicked on already. so when I first found
prof leons home page I just clicked on most of the links to see
where it would take me. thinking that it would revert back to
the original color the next time I visited the site. WRONG VERY
WRONG!!!!!!!! so I found out the hard way that it keeps a record
of your movements. so I had to use a pen and paper to keep track
of what links I had already been on. I think that it would have
been easier if I had gone in a clockwise fashion in using his
links. I didn't do that either I just went to the topics that
I though would be interesting first and left the borings ones
for last. I learned from that experience so I will try to use
a more logical search pattern when I visit other peoples sties
from now on.}
: _{As for the home page it's self.
I thought that it was constructed in a way that made it look well
worked, but it was simple to use. everything was a button to click
on and the titles on the buttons gave a good idea where you were
headed. the page loaded up rather easily, even form my home terminal.
I have gone to a few home pages that take have a year and a day
to load up. I mean they had a lot of cool stuff on there pages,
but the time it took to load really didn't make it seem worth
the wait. one girls site that I went to made the wait a little
easier to bare. She had loaded midi files to play while you waited
for the page to be loaded on your screen. So the thing that I
learned is to keep your home pages simple.}
: _{The other thing I liked about
prof james home page is that you can source his page and it gives
you a lot of the stuff that he is asking for in the assignments.
So I just had to read the script lines and copy the ones that
I wanted to practice using in my own home page.}
: _{I really enjoyed read all of
the things on prof james home page. even though it was a good
page it still doesn't compare to espn's home page. Now that is
the best home page on the internet today...}

_{From: Kaihilei
Pimental kaihilei@hawaii.edu}

: _{It took me a long time to finally
get to this part of the exercises, but I'm here! I wasn't sure
what to expect from Dr. James' home page. I was a little nervous
because I'm so new at using the internet, and learning as I go
along. I guess Dr. James has enough faith in his students to learn
these programs without much assistance. I'm definitely learning
by trial and error.}
: _{I was truly fascinated when
I got to Dr. James' home page. There were so many places to visit,
and so much information to read. I was excited to read about the
many different topics covered over the last four generations,
and look forward to adding my own views to that of the generational
curriculum. I was also surprised to see so many different sites.
One site that I visited talked about the symptoms of technophobia.
I wasn't sure if perhaps that's what I've been suffering from.
I read a little bit about it and made a self-assessment that perhaps
technophobia isn't the right word. I'm just confused!}
: _{Dr. James' home page is so
big, and filled with so much information. That's good! But for
someone like me, who's visiting the page for the first time, it's
possible to feel slightly overwhelmed by the ease at which you
can access information. As I browsed through many different sites,
I realized how much information I've been missing out on. Although
overwhelmed at times, I look forward to the work we'll be doing
this semester, and only hope that I can keep up!}

_{From: Naoyuki
Maruya naoyuki@hawaii.edu}

: _{Impressions of the Generation
Curriculum}
: _{At first, I felt that there
was a vast amount of information and I thought to my self, how
would anyone find anything? I especially felt this way when I
visited the "Complete Topical Index." But as I started
to explore each of the Generation's homepages, I noticed a system
of organization, and was very impressed. A page that really caught
my eye was Edward Sugimoto's. It was very well organized and had
a lot of nice graphics.}
: _{I took some time to read the
article on Cyberpsychology and was also impressed. The article
had personal relevance to me. I agree with the statement that
the computer is a extension to the human mind. It is not anti-social
to spend time on the Internet. My friends and I all have busy
schedules, and we all have a hard time getting in contact with
each other.}
: _{Many times, the only time we
can talk to each other is when we are on the Internet during work,
where we can talk to each other electronically, over the "Net."
As for Virtual Communities, I have seen this phenomena first hand.
I work at the English computer lab in Kuykendall, we run a program
that creates a Virtual Community, allowing students to critique
other students essays and reports in cyberspace. Even though they
have no "persona name," they do develop a "virtual
identity," and interact more freely that they would if they
were not Online.}
: _{I also enjoyed reading the
traffic psychology pages, with people's opinions about tailgating,
the stages to a driving persona makeover, the taxonomy of driving
behavior, etc.}

_{From: David
Jackson jacksond@hawaii.edu}

: _{One thing I enjoyed about browsing
through the web pages of other generations was reading about their
reactions to learning on their computers. I guess I felt sort
of relieved that so many people were feeling the same frustrations
as I was and having similar problems. Some of them knew as little
about computers as I did so it gave me reassurance knowing that
there was hope for me in surviving this class. I think I developed
a cosmic connection to these past students and their feelings
of confusion, frustration, technophobia, and anger! Sometimes
I get really close to annihilating my monitor, but I just try
to think of the past generations who made it and that someday
it will all be worth it.}
: _{I was also amazed at some of
the web pages created by some of these students. Some were very
well organized and include eye-catching pictures and backgrounds.
On the other hand, I couldn't access some of the links and it
seemed like some weren't finished or something, maybe because
of something happening over time. But all are good sources of
ideas and information for future generations.}
: _{Dr. James' page and the other
generations' pages created a pretty complex network and I found
it very easy to get hopelessly lost. There were so many links
on every page that I would totally lose track of where I was.
At least I learned the importance of "go" and "bookmarks".
Dr. James' page contained an enormous amount of information and
I don't think I could ever get through all of it. I have a hard
enough time doing our regular work! Although it is very complex
it is really well organized and easy to use as long as you keep
track of where you are. I thought his ideas on traffic psychology
were really interesting. I've never thought about the psychology
of traffic before, but it has such an impact on our lives. Hopefully,
I can get to reading more of it later, when I have more time.}
: _{I think some of the advice
of previous generations is something we should try to follow-especially
in keeping up with the work and not getting too far behind, like
I'm starting to do. As for me, I missed the first week of school,
so I tried to catch up on all the work as fast as I could. I got
really frustrated and on top of that, my computer keeps freezing
on me which really makes it unbearable sometimes. So I started
to slack a little, but I know that could really hurt later. I
guess most of us are in the same boat, so don't give up and hang
in there everyone!}

_{From: Kristin
Evert evert@hawii.edu}

: _{Well, after I finally got to this
section of the exercises, I think it's very easy to say that it
looks very overwhelming. I saw a lot of really cool homepages
and a LOT of reports written by past generation's students. I
think it's very easy for me to say that this class is going to
be a LOT of work, but it's still really exciting to me since I'll
be learning so much. I guess another of my first impressions was
how connected all the generations really end up being. We all
go and look at other generation's pages and reports. We see how
things have changes, maybe for better and for worse. But just
the fact that we are creating these reports and pages for other
future students is very exciting to me.}
: _{I am very impressed with the
amount of writing that each one of the past students has put into
this class. I am very aware that this is a writing intensive class,
but I guess with everything together, it just really has made
me realize how much it all adds up to. It's also exciting and
frightening (at the same time) to think that all of our papers
are going to end up here, on the World Wide Wed, for everyone
to see. At first I thought to myself, "no one will ever find
this stuff...I'm safe." But now, as I think about it more
and more, people will see it. If no one else, all of thoses students
in the future that will enroll in Psychology 409 will stumble
through the reports, just as I did.}
: _{Right about now, I am really
wondering what I have gotten myself into. I really hope that this
all will get easier with time, but if it doesn't, it seems (from
the other generations) that we'll have a lot of support from each
other. There are probably others in our class that are in the
same boat I am, overwhelmed with the amount of information that
is trying to get into my brain and function. But, as everything
else that causes stress, it looks like it will be worth it. There's
a lot of really interesting information found in thoses reports,
and it's not all boring stuff, either. Each report has a personal
spin, and that's what makes everything so diverse and so readable.
Well, here we go. Good luck to all!}

_{From: Scott
Chang scottcha@hawaii.edu}

: _{I just finished looking at the
Generational Curriculum. It was pretty fun and interesting. The
home pages of all of the students are extremely well-done. Hopefully,
I will be able to do the same amount of work as they did. Because
their home pages looks like a lot of work was put into them. Some
of the pictures are very nice and I think I will copy some of
their images. I will also try to make my own images. It will take
time, but I am willing to try.}
: _{Dr. James expect our generation
to be better than the other generations. But, that is a hard thing
to do. Some of those pages are so beautiful. To top them will
be a hard thing to do. I guess I will have to stare at a computer
for a long time. I'm glad that Dr. James does have the generational
curriculum because it helps a lot. Just looking at the pages and
the document sources will help me a great deal. Whenever people
are talking in class, it is difficult to understand. When looking
at the reports of other people, it makes it easier to for me to
understand. But I guess all of the students before us had to do
the same thing.}
: _{My impressions is one of relief
because I feel that the home pages and reports will help me a
great deal in writing them. The length of some of the pages are
intimidating but not impossible. With help from those pages and
hopefully from everyone in the class, I will be able to do it.
It is very scary, but I think that learning this will help me
understand the internet better. It is important. Learning these
things are difficult, but they aren't impossible. Well, that all
I really have to say. Hope you don't mind my message.}

_{From: Leslie
Ann Francis leslie@hawaii.edu}

: _{I had already started to look at
the General Curriculum Navigation Table (i.e., Dr. James Home
Page) in order to get some ideas for my home page. As most of
you have noticed, my table looks very much like Mr. Kai Hansjurgenss
from Generation 4. I had already printed out a copy of the Cyberpsychology:
Principles of Creating Virtual Presence for our assignment, so
I didnt bother to go back into there. What caught my eye was the
explorational tour, which I immediately went to. Most of the links
were to pages from other generations (mostly Generation 4 I think)
which I had already seen, however the whole tour process was great
in that it leads you in a logical progression. My tour was cut
short, however, by a page which locked up my computer. I think
it had a midi driver and midi files attached to it, which some
people dont have on their machines -- so it bombed! That was when
my tour ended.}
: _{I also looked at Diane Nahls
Search Index page, which had some really useful links. I especially
liked the U.S. Postal Service Zip Code Searcher link. You can
put in any city and state, and it spits out the correct zip code
for you. Very handy for those of us who dont remember zips (and
half the time dont write them down -- like ME).}
: _{All in all, Dr. James page
was packed with information, maybe too much (in reading some of
your summaries I see that we all agree). However, in trying to
think of how I would logically organize my numerous studies and
interests, as well as my colleagues and friends related numerous
studies and interests, I would probably do about the same thing.
Maybe rather than a table with lots of wasted space, I would simply
use text and create interest by using an icon or two -- like our
409a, 409b, and 459 home pages (except I would use the same size
font at the bottom). But then, thats just me...}

_{From: Glen Acierto
gacierto@hawaii.edu}

: _{Upon first exploring the past and
present cyber-psychology classes' homepage sites, I was amazed
at their ability to create homepage sites that looked so attractive
and interesting.}
: _{Being new to the internet,
I didn't know making something like that would have been possible
after only a semester of instruction. It was overwhelming to think
that I would be doing the exact same thing when this semester
is over. When I read the course description for psychology 409b,
it specifically stated that no computer experience was needed,
so I expected it to be a course in which I would learn the basics
of computers and it's relationship to psychology. Even that sounded
vague to me but it still sparked my interest.}
: _{I have always had an interest
in computers, but never quite had the time, finances, or access
to them. This class was the answer to that problem. Since the
begginning of this semester though, it has been a struggling battle
for me. I still have limited time, finances, and access to them.
After reading some of the past generations experiences', it was
nice to know that I am not the only who had experienced these
problems. The stress involved in going through this course is
the same as the stress I experienced in learning a foreign language.}
: _{It was very comforting to know
how many other people had suffered through this and offered words
of advice for the future generations. The way I look at it, "If
they could do it, so can I!" With each succeeding generation,
it was obvious of the improvements that had been made. Later generations'
homepages seemed more dazzling and fancy (Not to "put down"
the older genrations because all the home pages were very impressive.)
This only adds on more pressure for my generation, especially
for me. I feel that I have to come up with a homepage equal to,
if not better than the past generations. That's a challenge that
I will have to undertake. We'll just see at the end of the semester.
NO FEAR!!!}