REPORT SIX

Creating Generational Development


Improvements Through Generations

I am part of the fourth generation of cyber-psychology students. I noticed that each generation has improved in some way from previous generations. For this report, I chose students at random from each generation to compare and contrast. Looking at Allison's report page, of generation one, I first noticed that there was no background, and no pictures. In addition, the subheadings were hard to read. They were in regular print, like the body of the report. Besides that, some of her links did not work properly. On her home page, I also noticed that there was no e-mail button. Only an address was given. At Joleen's home page, also of generation one, I noticed that there was no clear organization in her structure. Again, there were no pictures or background. She did not even have an e-mail adress posted. Both of their reports had a decent length to it, but was limited in information. But, I thought that they both fulfilled their requirement well with the information and technology they had at the time (1994) here and here. Being the first and experimental generation, I don't blame them. Technology has increased significantly since then. And information on the web today is abundant.

The second generation evolved significantly. I chose Christina Kealoha as a representative sample of generation two. As I scrolled through Christina's homepage, the first thing that caught my eye was the sight of color. She had nice pictures and a background. I also noticed that she used a table to organize her links. Also notable, is a convenient topical index. An index helps one significantly in navagating through a site. Christina's site also contained a link to e-mail her. A sample report, also from Christina, showed some improvement from generation one. One obvious improvement was the use of bold sub-heading. It made her reports seem more organized than generation ones' reports.

Next, I searched through generation three. I viewed Sherman Lee's home page and one of his reports. I thought that his home page was more attractive than that of previous generations. He used some nice graphics, and matched it with a good background. The presentation of his reports were about the same as generation two. Bold subheadings were present, in addition to his excellent reports. I did not use generation 3a in the comparison, because I thought that the criteria of their reports and homepages were very similar to that of generation three.

Mainly technology advancements were evident in generation four so far. Looking at Conrad's home page and my home page, one would be able to discover an array of animated gifs. This technology breakthrough did not become popular until this term. Another aspect that separates us from the other generations is the use of java applet. At Edward's report one page, one could view uniqueness of this feature (scroll to the bottom). Besides these features, I thought that it was difficult to compare generation four to the other generations. This is due to the fact that all of the reports and home pages are not complete yet. I am sure that there will be students that will wait till the last day, before turning their rough drafts into a masterpiece. But, as you can see, each generation has surpassed the previous one in terms of design, technique, links and ideas. This was possible due to the great improvements in technology over time. Overall appearance of the generations improved in time, as backgrounds, graphics, icons, and this term, animated gifs, became available. Links became more frequent in time, because there is more information to link to now than before. Generation one had only outside documents to link to. While this generation has three previous generations, in addition to millions of other sites to link to. Our techniques improved, as we learned from other generations what works and what doesn't. Besides that, this term, we were able to learn organization and structure techniques from a book called, "Large-Scale Web Sites", by Darrell Sano. Other generations were not able to benefit from this excellent book. Ideas have expanded significantly since the first generation, due to the fact that the information on the Internet has expanded enormously.

In terms of scholarship, quality, depth and richness of the reports, I thought that each generation are on equal terms. Each generation was presented with a set amount of information at a particular point of time. Therefore, a generation could not possibly expand on information that did not exist while they were taking the class. I believe that each generation completed their reports to the fullest extent with the information presented to them. Thus, I thought that each report contained about equal amounts of depth and richness. I did not consider length of the reports as a criteria, because length displays nothing. I believe that quality cannot be measured by quantity. From what I've read, I thought that each generation had competent writers that could express themselves well in terms of scholarship and quality.

Rise of the Generational Curriculum

The Generational Curriculum is a program upon which It came into being by Dr. James's search for oral and written communicative competence. He believed that college students needed to obtain more instruction on basic literacy skills. Through this journey, Dr. James came to realize that authenticity is the crucial element to communication. Posting a child's work on a bulletin makes it public and official. Thus, the act of posting it made it authentic. Parents look at the child's work and accepts it, "the student is validated, the learning experience assimilated, and growth has taken place".

Dr. Leon applied this theory to focus a class, of Spanish and English students, from bilingualism to biculturalism. The class activities and assignments were based on collaboration and authenticity. Work within the class was completed as a team (collaberation), and required daily experiences of the students' lives to make it "real". This led to the principals for the Generational Curriculum. The principals of the Generational Curriculum are given here. The Generational Curriculum works in the same aspect as the bicultural class. In class, all of the students work together, helping each other in building the community. Besides that, all of the reports are based on our personal experiences we had with the Internet, or driving on the streets. The Generational Curriculum was taken one step further, as these reports are posted on the Internet. So like the little child's work in the classroom, our reports become authentic too. If our parents wanted to, they could search on the Internet and locate our pieces of work. They will then be able to validate us, and allow growth to take place. In years to come, our children and grandchildren will also be able to look to us with a sense of validation. All of the information above was summarized from the Generational Curriculum Area.

Feelings About Being in the Generational Curriculum

To tell you the truth, I thought that it is pretty neat to be part of the Generational Curriculum; to know that I am part of an evolving community. Although contributing to the community was hard work, I think that it was all worth it. During this class, I have learned the most useful information, compared to all of my other classes. Who is ever going to use Spanish in their occupation? What good is knowing how many electrons there are in a chlorine atom, when I plan to go into law enforcement? When I leave this class, I will take with me something I can use forever. Imagine, the Internet has expanded so much in a few years. There are online education, online malls, interactive games, promotions and online banking. Just think of what the future holds for the Internet.

I think that there are many cyber-psychology students who accept the hard work due to benefits of taking this class. Joleen, of generation one gives her ups and downs about the class here. Allison shares her "roller coaster" feelings here. Here is how some of my classmates feel about being part of the Generational Curriculum:

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