My day starts when I’m turned on and all of the notifications on my lock screen are read. Usually when I am unlocked, the weather is checked first. I hate how I am shoved into a pocket, and then shoved up against a door. The door always makes a loud beeping sound right in my speakers. I hear this beeping a lot because I think I have a room key in the pocket on my back. I am always carried around and never left, or forgotten, because of the key. During the day I sit in a dark pocket or back, but at night I am always out or in a warm hand.
I have so many social media applications and games. Other phones are jealous of me sometimes because there is so many fun things to do when you are bored. My person must be bored a lot because she spends a lot of time switching from games to many different social media applications. She communicates with a lot of people from home and people here at UNE.
My favorite thing about myself is the thousands of pictures that I store. I have about 3,000 pictures and I love every single one of them. The reason that I have so many is they are all special in their own way and can never be deleted. There are pictures of people, scenery, and animals. Mostly pictures of cats though; those are my favorite.
[Topic] In the article, “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Nation?”, Twenge discusses how teenagers in the generation iGen have grown up depending on technology and it has negative affects on their lives. [Restriction] These kids have spent their time growing up with the tv on, being photographed by their parents constantly, and getting their own technology at an early age. [Evidence] My parents had flip phones, then blackberries, and then eventually iPhones and I saw how handheld technology completely evolved and changed throughout my life. [Analysis] I saw my parents depend more and more on technology as I grew up. I grew up influenced by that and when I got my pwn technology it became a big part in my life like many other iGen teenagers. I feel as though we as a generation do depend on our phones for things like our morning alarms, for directions, and for all of our communication. [Conclusion] Todays teenagers are very reliant on technology and it is because they get up learning from their parents about how technology can be important in everyones daily lives.
When I was at home this weekend I decided to do my 15 minute quiet reflection. I was in my room and I was home alone. It was midday and it was sunny out and good weather. As I sat there I thought about how nice it was to be home and have some quiet time for myself which I don’t usually get when I’m here at school.
I was thinking about Turkle’s views about how we as a society are addicted to out phones and to technology and I did have a strong urge to check my phone and text people back. I also was thinking since I was sitting there and doing nothing that I wanted to watch some Netflix instead. But I really sat there for the 15 minutes and thought about some things in my life instead of giving in to the technology cravings. I thought about which places in my room that I needed to spend some time cleaning because some German exchange students would be staying in my room in the next few weeks. I planned out what had to be cleaned and how I would do it. I also decided that I would condense my clothes into just a couple drawers to give the exchange students some empty drawers for their clothing.
Sherry Turkle is a psychologist and has already done a TED talk before about technology. Although when she did one before technology was in a much different place where online chat rooms existed and people were just beginning to stray from desk top computers. Turkle’s main argument is that we as a society are getting too involved into our mobile devices. Her evidence is that she surveys and studies people and she’s finding out that people are texting during board meetings, funerals, family breakfast and dinner and many other things.
My view, however, contrary to what Turkle has argued, is that technology allows people at a distance to connect as though they were right next to each other which is uniting the world in a new and unique way. It might seem like we are becoming more distant from the people around us, but in reality we are just becoming closer to people who are not with us at the moment.
Although, I do agree with Turkle that people sometimes prefer to have conversations over text instead of in person because it allows someone more time to think about exactly what they want to say without the pressure of having to say it immediately. Online communication is a way that people can communicate without being nervous about the person being right in front of them waiting for a response.
You used way too many filters, everyone knew that you weren’t really tan. Also, the colorful borders around your pictures did not add anything to the duck face selfies.
I downloaded Audacity on my computer and I was able to successfully record myself reading one of my ePortfolio posts. I was also able to download the audio file onto my computer as a .wav file. I made an account with sound cloud, too.
In Ken Bain’s book, What the Best College Students Do, Bain mentions that “These “surface learners,” as the psychologists call them, looked for facts and words they could memorize, attempting to anticipate any questions someone might as them.” Bain is discussing how when given an article the students deemed “surface learners” reacted by trying to look over the article and commit to memory anything they thought was important in order to do well if asked any questions about it. I feel like this is how I constantly view my learning. I prepare myself to learn just enough to be able to perform well on an assessment or to be able to discuss it with someone. Sometimes I struggle with finding the deeper meaning to something that I am learning but I am trying to change that by being more of an active learner. One of the drawbacks to this type of learning is that people often become “routine experts” and learn how to constantly perform well but maybe not learn as much as is possible.
“The Editor” is a podcast that truly captures the attention of the listener because it is full of action and a fascinating story about a man who went to prison for warehouse breaking and entering. The man’s name is Robin Woods and the crime that sent him to prison was committed in 1988 in Cumberland Maryland. He was sent to Maryland Correctional Institute after someone turned him in. It was his second time in this prison which he said was one of the worst prisons that he had been too.
The inmates were unhappy with how they were being treated and caused a riot that Robin assisted in. The inmates were beaten because of this and more time was added onto Robin’s sentence. Since Robin was going to be there for so long he decided he would take out a book from the prison library to read. The issue was Robin never finished high school and could barely read forty percent of each page. He soon became dedicated to reading and looked up words he didn’t know in dictionaries.
After a while of teaching himself how to read he became the go to with the inmates if they needed help reading legal documents. His time soon was devoted to reading an encyclopedia that he got and one day he found an error in an entry. He sent a letter to Mark Stevens the editor of Merriam Webster’s encyclopedias and got a positive response back. Soon Robin and Mark emailed frequently with mistakes Robin found in the encyclopedias.
Eventually Robin was going to be moved to a new prison, but they wouldn’t allow him to bring his collection of books with him. He went on a hunger strike and lost a lot of weight. He told this to Mark and Mark sent a letter to the prison telling them how cruel this was to Robin and how helpful Mark had been with the encyclopedias. The prison guard was surprised by this information and told Robin that if he did not get in trouble for a year he would be released four years early and they restored his book collection.
After Robin got out of prison he and Mark stayed in touch and Mark assisted him with living costs. Robin and Mark finally met and during this Robin’s house was broken into and stolen from. This made Robin feel like it was life showing him what it felt like to be stolen from.
I have listened to a few podcasts in my life for classes, but the difference about “The Editor” is that I actively took notes throughout it. I had never used this strategy when listening and it helped me stay more focused. I often have trouble just listening to things because I am a visual learner but writing notes down and being able to look at those helped me with being able to focus on what was happening and retain the information more.
One of my favorite subjects has always been science. When I was younger it was science as a whole and then as I got to older grades I realized that it was biology that I loved the most. Ever since I was little I was interested in the natural world around me and I would walk around my yard and the woods around my house and pick up bugs and plants. I always wondered how plants grew and how animals survived on their own outside. So when I began learning these things in science I was so excited to finally find these things out. This caused me to always have a growth mindset with science classes. I never wondered how to write a good paper or how good books were written so I never got excited about English subjects which caused me to have more of a fixed mindset in those classes. I did the work for the outcome of a good grade for English and histories but I wasn’t as excited for these classes as I was for science classes.
As I got older I found things that I liked about English and history and I have worked on more of a growth mindset for these classes. My high school English teachers helped me find good books that I enjoyed reading which changed my learning habits and I was able to learn more and absorb the material rather than just worry about the good grade. I do notice when I am doing homework that I could read endless chapters of biology in a short amount of time whereas it takes me a little longer to read an English textbook because I have to focus harder on those.
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