Growing Up Online

1. Living Their Lives Essentially Online

This chapter introduces the topic, and talks to a few people of our generation, they mention that the internet can be 'addicting, a great way to speak to your friends,' but they also talk about a girl who mentions she's a 'completely different persona' on the internet.

They talk about how about 10 friends set up camp in a basement to throw what is called a LAN party, where they get together and play different video games together for excessive amounts of time, using a lot of caffeine. It then shows a bunch of children watching different videos on the popular video website YouTube. They also mention MySpace, a social network program. She explains how MySpace works, and they talk about another social networking program that usually much younger kids use, called Club Penguin.

They also talk about how the internet can be an outlet for complaining, self expression, and a means to connect with each other. They talk about how dangerous it is to let our children live a virtual life out of the reach of their parents. They are 'living their lives' online, one woman says. She talks about how the digital world and technology used to be something that was dominated by adults, and now its something thats definetely become a 'province for teenagers around the world.'

"You need to have the internet on because everybody uses it, it's like a currency. If you don't use it, you're at loss."

They talk about a teenager called Greg, who lives with his parents and they talk about how he'd have a better chance at getting his attention by emailing him rather than calling him, because then he knows for sure he will see it. They also mention how Greg is constantly texting his friends when away on holiday, and refuses to be 'out of the loop' for more than an hour.

Greg's parents once tried monitering his internet use with the AOL parental control program, but Greg could tell when his dad was tracking him so he could mak eit look like he was, in his words "researching monkeys, when I can just go off and do whatever I want and he wouldn't be able to see it."

2. A Revolution in Classrooms and Social Life

"We have to cut through that Media, and get their attention."

A school talks about how they have to use all kinds of technology, with making every single computer have an LCD projector, and use smartboards, and the teachers would even use podcasting so the students can then revisit the lectures and classes later. They mention that walking into a classroom that doesnt have all of that technology must be like walking into a desert. A teacher talks about how the technology makes her feel like "a dinosaur." and how she is a little confused about technology because her students would walk into the classroom knowing more about what she's doing than she is, so she'd just let them take over.

"There are more students who struggle with the ability to focus than there were 30 years ago. They are so over-exposed to the quickness of things, and the immediate responses. It's just all at their fingertips."

They mention Sparknotes, a quick study guide that'll get you the summary of any book, and you'll have practically read the book in a matter of pages. These kinds of websites are not allowed to be used in both our school and theirs, and I'd imagine it to be the case with a lot of schools. They talk about how alot of teachers try to avoid having their students cheat by making them write the assignments actually in the classroom, which is something even students at Qatar Academy do, it's so that they can't go online and borrow other sources. For certain assignments, students have to sumbit their assignments to turnitin.com, which is a website that checks any assignment for plagiarism.