Generational Curriculum Summaries

This is a complilation of all of the summaries that our Psychology 409b Class has written in regards to our reviewing of the Generation Ciriculum of the past. These summaries are our first impressions of what we felt was going to come about in the semester. I find it very interesting now to look back, and read what I wrote then, and see how I feel now. Enjoy!

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From: Kendra Morgan (me!!!) 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: 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: 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!!!

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