Before I start rambling on about my travels, I should first say that If there are any computer words or other such terms in my report that I may have used incorrectly I do apologize. Prior to this class I really had no formal training in the use of computers other than microsoft word and E-mail, other than those practical programs I guess one could say that I'm computer illiterate. Along with this condition comes "Technophobia," which is a fear of technology, and in my case is computers. It not so much that I am afraid of computers as an object but the fact that I get intimidated by things that I am not used to. Luckily for me I have an opportunity this semester to face my fears by learning about the use and the need for computers and hopefully by the end I would have rid my self of this crippling ailment. Well enough of "My Confessions," I should start telling you about my travels now.
I started my travels by first going to the Mac lab in Keller Hall. I turned on my assigned computer and clicked on the icon Netscape. The first thing I did when I was on Netscape was type in professor James' address to his homepage which was on the "Getting Started" handout. This led me right into Leon James' Homepage where on the top left side of this page was a picture of a man working on a car and next to this icon said traffic psychology. I clicked on it and on this next page there were the generations one and genaeration two to choose from. Initially I choose generation one and it brought me to the traffic psychology page which had a car icon there. This unfortunately brought me back to the generation page where I started so out of frustration I decided to just start in generation two.
G2
In generation two there were the list of the students in that class so I started on the first name I saw which was Nancee Aki. In Nancee Aki's homepage it said "Hola!!!Welcome to Nancee Aki's Hompage," and there was a picture of the sun in back of the earth which was pretty cool. I right into reading her first report but I was more interested to see what kind of stuff she had in her homepage so went back to it to see. I choose her Fun Stuff link to see what was there. There were many links to choose from but I choose to go straight to the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers link. There was the logo and some other things but I really don't care for them, so I just went there just to go there. I went back to the Funstuff homepage and went into the Las Vegas link. I decided to go back to reading some of her work. I started with her report 2.
In this report Nancee talks about a concept I learned in a personality psychology class. That concept was "self-actualization." This was a term made by a popular social learning psychologist (whoms name I cannot recall) which means: Fulfilling ones potential as an always growing human being. This concept was brought up because Nancee was speaking of reasons why people should want to alter their driving behavior and self-actualization was only one of the many great bennefits that one can have if one decides to seriously alter ones driving behavior.
As I continued to read on she mentioned a three step process of that allows an individual to alter his or her driving behaviors.My question was why?But then I remembered in a class discussion that one should alter their driving behaviors out of love for oneself and out of love and safetly for your love ones.The first step Nancee say's is for one to recognize the problem or fault.We do this so we can pinpoint exactly what the problem is so an emphasis can be placed on it.She then talks about the second step which is the analysis of both external and internal factors.But Nancee's big problem was that she failed to explain the third step which kind of left me hanging until I read it later on the middle of the next paragraph.So I guess the third step is to try to alter it.As continued reading on I found an error in her thinking. Nancee was talking about altering her tailgaiting problem but in the process she was becoming more angry and more of a menace on the road then she was when she was a tailgaiter. I think she needs to reevaluate why she decided to alter driving behaviors in the first place.To me it seems rather silly to change a maladaptive behavior in trade of many more worse ones. After that I decided to stop looking through Nancee's stuff and decided to try the next person in the class. Overall I really liked the appearance of her Homepage.It was playful but to the point, I guess I'm biased too because I had a lot of fun in her funstuff links.I also liked her writtings.I think that they were pretty sincere so it gave me a good feel of what kind of person she was.
Then I went into Berna Collado's homepage and the first thing I noticed was not the blinking "Psyched Out....It's Da Thinking Part" Heading it was the Hawaiian petroglypghs on her background. I thought they were pretty neat, I hope I figure out how to put my own background like that soon. I also thought it was pretty funny how she made all her letters different sizes it made her homepage really playfull.The major criticism of that was that it was really hard to read especially if you have been staring at a computer screen for as long as I was. The only thing I could really remember looking through in her homepage was her Do Tell. The stories were interesting.I thought that Abe's story was really strange.I mean according to his story his father was very impatient to the point where he would destroy other peoples property because of it.I think his dad needs a traffic personality make-over however, I he may be far from any kind of therapy!Then the next story by the LouMan was pretty outrageous, because I really don't think the cop was a mile and half away because how would he be able to see his blinker lights?I guess a story is just that a story.It's funny how people will arrange events in their mind to fit what they want it to be.
So now I was on to my next homepage which was Allen furukawa's homepage. This homepage stood out because of the bright bluish background and the blinking title. I thought that the picture of the man working in a car was a cool concept, after all it is traffic psychology! As for the content , the only part that I could remeber reading was his brief definition of traffic psychology.This definition was the same definition I heard in class so it was nothing new but it is nice to have it written down like that so people who don't know what traffic psychology is all about could understand.
Then I was off to the next person in G2 who happened to have been Bryan Yucco. Byran did a pretty neat thing that I am not yet able to do. He was able to change the background and the color of his text to fit it. I'm only able to do one thing and that's choose a background that is compatable with black text, which is really limited. Hopefully after careful examination of his "Source" I will be able to figure this out. This will open many more options for me as far as "looks" are concerned!Being as tempted as I was to look for pictures or cool links I tried to read over some reports like the team reports but after reading the first few reports it seemed as if they all sounded the same so I went back to his homepage and saw that he had a link to his favorite cartoon character,so I looked at it and went back to G2's home page and then back till I finally got to a list of GI students.
G1 doesn't have a very attractive homepage and that's why I might of missed it before.Anyways I started with first persons name which was Jo Allen.Her Heading was rather strange because it read "Jo Allen disciple of Jesus Christ," I thought I was in a different place, but as I read on I realized she was traffic psychology. Her background and Giffs made it look very high tech so it kept me there. The first link I went to in her home page was traffic psychology procedures which was a an article written by Professor James because she said that it was really good informative reading so I decided to check it out myself. After reading this I learned that the goal of traffic psychology was to carry out and maintain long-term behavioral self-modification at traffic behavior improvement. In other words being aware of how you drive and then correcting yourself by using various behavioral techniques in order to become a better driver.
The next person I visited wasShane Akagi.I think that his homepage was pretty blank as compared to G2 but what do you expect, they never had the edge that G1 had. But as far as organization goes he gets a "B+" because his files were well organized and had many options but his choice of a small font was too hard to read and he never used any kind of line or "hr" to seperate his files.His appearance was, what can I say, "blank" I did however find a big problem. Upon reading through his lab reports I was not able to get to his lab report 1b called "children killed" because the link in his index file didn't take me there. Instead I ended up reading about how great Jae isa is? The only child who was killed in that article was me looking through all the bad links! Well, enough of the vented frustration, back to the report.
I then went on to read his weekly homework. I found it funny that he would as in his words, mentaly cursed the instructor for giving him such frustrating homework. He does find an outlet for being so agitated. He says that taking a long hot shower does wonders for him, then he is able to go back to work. I think I would too unfortunately for me I don't have a computer at home so I guess I don't have that convinience. He even says the same thing about feeling pessimism except the theme is relaxation. I too believe very much in relaxtion therapy, if you want to call it that. The mind and the body cannot function to it's full capacity if it is irritated on top of being exhausted. Think about your muscles for once. Can you lift a heavy box if you are tired and your back hurts? Probably not, so why try to do computer work that is just as hard when your'e tired and irritated.Doesn't make much sense but neither does sitting in front of a computer for more than five hours.Oh well, just roll with the punches I guess. Oh, and do it with a smile.
The last thing I read of his was his "My Comments on Others Reports". In this report I got a sense that he was trying to compete with all the other students in his class like Ota for example. I guess he feels as if he should be equal to or greater than her as far as their reports go because they were supposedly the first to get started out of the class. I think people in my 459 feel that way also. I know I do, especially if I am behind but if I am ahead I feel this obligation to help those who are not that far because I know that if I were in their shoes I would hope to god that someone could and would take the time to help me.I guess it all stems from that community concept that I learned in class. Professor James said that our class is a community where we help each other through the way and if everyone helped just a little bit than the world would be a better place!
The last person I visited from G1 was Michelle Ota. The first thing I would like to comment on is her home page which to me is very orderly. I like that a lot and I also like her Opus!The first place I went to was her report 1a. In this report she makes a comment on how interesting it was that people supposedly turn into different types of personalities when they get behind the wheel of their car.As far as this comment is concerned she is making the assumption that people in general already a certain kind of personality; trait. I personally don't subscribe to that school of thought which personality psychologist call the Dispositional Strategy.
After reading through her reports I decided to look at her Glossary. I liked her updated defintion of a link. A link is a connection between two different ideas which can create new information and knowledge. I never really thought of links in that manner but she's right, thats what they just are; connections between two different ideas. My suggestion to her on improving that glossary is maybe to bold and/or change the font of her words thus making it more ledgible.
Overall I liked her content the most. She is very insightfull in an economic sort of way. I also thought the appearance was rather bland but so was the rest of G1 so what can I say. I really do respect the work that G1 has put in so I hope that I am not sounding like I'm shooting them down it's just that I can see the mistakes and/or rooms for improvement. I think the only way I could have done that was from learning from theirs.
