IST 1100 Module 8

I decided to go back to school at the end of 2011 after an extensive period of indecisiveness and confusion about my future. I had gone to a few semesters of school several years before this time and had taken all of my classes on campus. When I decided to go back things had changed quite a bit and more and more classes were offered online. I purchased a very nice computer with the intention of using it for school. Over the past several years I have gotten more use out of it than I ever thought I would, it is definitely one of the best purchases I ever made.

Since then I have extensively implanted myself in the Google way of life. They offer just about everything I would ever need, in regards to school and personal productivity and entertainment, as a cloud service. I write every paper for school on Google Docs, I have google spreadsheets I use for various things, and it is all accessible from any computer I pull up my account Google on. It really is quite amazing.

Taking courses online is really a dream come true for me. I love the ability I have to be able to sit in the comfort of my own house and watch a lecture online. If I need to get up for something I can pause it, or if I miss something I can rewind it. I can read and re read everything that is given to me by a professor and I feel like I am in more control. Plus I don’t have to make the long and expensive commute to school several times a week and park half a mile away from the building where my class is.

So in a nutshell, my entire education, at least since I have taken it very seriously, has been on my personal computer, and as an extension my iPad and my phone. Without a powerful computer and high speed internet, my educational life would be much different than it currently is.

Another very important role that computers have played in my education is the ability to access the world's resources by means of the internet. I think even as a kid how we would have a giant stack of encyclopedias and look up a specific topic to write a report. They would become outdated so quickly, and they weren’t cheap. Now with online dictionaries and the constant flow of updated information, the world is so different. Everyone is so connected, everyone can be as smart as they want to be, or learn as much as they want to learn. I can look up any topic on anything and read about it for days, I have the worlds information literally at my fingertips. It almost seems like magic, if we explained this concept to someone from several hundred years ago they would probably think that witchcraft was involved.

We have been reading The World Is Flat, I can’t help but think that it’s more like the world is tiny. I could take a trip to China and post everything I do on Facebook, it’s like all of my friends and family are there with me. Two hundred years ago a trip from Utah to China could have taken half a year.

I am very grateful to live in such a technological age and have the tools I have to further my education and improve my life. I don’t know how I ever got by without my computer, Google, and the internet