Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Introduction

Some Facts About Me

  • Hometown: The Woodlands, TX (suburb of Houston)
  • Major: Social Studies Education
  • Minors: International Studies (Asian Studies specialization)
  • Campus Activities: I am involved with various Christian groups on campus such as Intervarsity (IV) or Reformed University Fellowship (RUF) and used to serve on the executive board of Trinity Multicultural Network (TMN)
  • Technology Background: I know the basics, but I would like to become more polished
  • Interest in the Field of Education: I have a special affinity toward middle school kids, and I am excited to start working with them!
Reaction to Time Magazine's "Person of The Year" Article:
  • The article captured a lot of the good aspects of the internet: how we can be active in buying and selling through amazon, how we can get all creative and upload videos of ourselves doing strange things on youtube, and how we can share different facets of our personality with programs like myspace. The internet is just another place where human creativity shows up. In the past, it was in great cathedrals or paintings or poems. I am not sure you could call the stuff produced on youtube art, but it does show how spirited man truly is. And that's cool. Let's just hope the internet would continue to be a safe haven for that creativity and not become corrupted by too many hackers or abusers of those awesome privileges.
  • It's sad to see hackers going after regular people, molesters going after children, and governments such as China placing unwarranted restrictions on the internet. I know for myself when we got the internet when I was just 12 years old, I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I logged onto AOL (back when people used it), and often went to the chatrooms. If I had a kid, I would be worried about that. It's scary what can happen these days and who is out there. And kids can often just be so pure of heart that they don't think anything bad will ever happen to them (though this can happen with adults too). I remember one kid I was tutoring at Haley Elementary accidentally started clicking on pop-up ads, not realizing they were ads. So while we might praise the internet for showing man's creativity, I think that we also need to show the dangers that are inevitable in its use and that like anything else it has the ability to be manipulated and corrupted, and we need to defend this precious gift.

2 comments:

sara said...

I liked how you talked about a little about both sides of the issue. Most people only see one side which can lead to a lot of ignorance.

R. Jungman said...

You're certainly right, Emily. A parent's role and a teacher's role (where she is "en loco parentis") in guiding her students to evaluate and safely use the many opportunities the web offers is staggering. With great gifts come great responsibilities.