Hi! Don't forget to save this for the later assignments!! 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!
Mike Carroll
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 devveloping 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.
Ryan Shintani
i just finished doing part 3 for the other class and i really dont want to do it again so i am importing my summary from the other class into this mail. my feelings in havent changed so i dont 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 wasnt boring and i didnt fall asleep when i was reading the articles. i found that if you dont 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 esy way to remember where you have ventured before. The thing is that i dont use netscape a lot, so i didnt know that it keeps a record of the site and what links that you have clicked on already. so when i first found prof leaons 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 orginal 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 hadgone in a clockwise fashion in using his links. i didnt 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 thougth 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 didnt 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 whiel you waited for the page to be loaded on your screen. so the thing that i learned is to keep your home pages simple. teh 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 doesnt compare to espn's home page. now that is the best home page on the internet today.
Kaihilei K K Pimental
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!
Naoyuki Maruya
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 orginzation, and was very impressed. A page that really caught my eye was Edward Sugimoto's. It was very well orginized 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 idenity," 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.
David Jackson
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. Atleast 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!
Kristin Evert
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!
Scott Chang
Hey Fellow Classmates, 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.