...Missed Class...

After a long and trying last week, and of course the weather change, I ended up sick...AGAIN. Luckily for me, we have this ingenious invention called...the internet, which actually was the topic of lecture today if Dr. Tuggle went along with his lesson plans. Gone are the days when you miss class and miss out on everything. With the invention of the internet you can not only get ahold of the day's lecture notes ahead of time, Blackboard at Chapman, but you can also email every classmate in each class with a few clicks to get more information on how the day went.

Since I am older that most people, I remember what it was like in high school missing one day of class and not knowing what the hell went on unless I called someone on the phone and asked, or waited until the next class day. Being that my school did block schedule with odd (Period 1, 3, and 5) and even (Period 2, 4, and 6) days, missing one day was the equivalent of missing two days.

People now in school have no clue how incredibly lucky it is that the internet is available to everyone. When I was in high school 1994-1998 only few people had and knew how to utilize the internet. Imagine having research projects and having to get all of your information out of encyclopedias and books which you borrowed from multiple trips to the library. No such thing as Google or Wikipedia, or any other mechanism in which you could receive all of the information that your heart desired within a few minutes. I remember my freshman year, we had to do book reports off of a book list, and then make a poster to go along with it. My friend, Amy Knebel (now Larsen), had the best project by far, which quite a few people jealously stated was because Amy had the internet at home. I believe that they were far overlooking the fact that Amy was such an overachiever, and that the fact that she had the internet and knew how to utilize it, just made her all of the better student.

On the flip side, I believe that people learning the internet at such a young age, actually disables them from being able to learn things out of books, and discourages how to do things as simple as navigate through a library's card catalog and dewey decimal system. One of the first things that I do when I have research project is to go to the Huntington Beach Public Library, one of my favorite places from when I was younger, and take out quite a few books on the subject. Not to say that I do not use some online sources, but I still find it a lot easier to look at a book right in from of me, as opposed to clicking through site after site.

I do, however, like that if there is something I need a quick answer to, I can have said answer at my fingertips in mere seconds. Whether it be a recipe, price of shoes, what time my favorite tv show is on, whatever my heart desires. I believe that there are goods and bads to having everything that you would and could ever need in one place, but if we teach people how to utilize other sources as well, that we will not be so heavily dependent on the internet, and more independent of ourselves and others.