WORD OF THE DAY

blogging; a combination of web and log :)

Friday, December 17, 2010

Impact of Cell Phones on Society

Mara Bertelsen
Hour 2
Impact of Cell Phones on Society
Cell phones have become just as important to carry with you as your own head. When we forget our cell phones, we feel lost without them. A cell phone used to be chunky and a hassle to carry around. Only the wealthiest people had cell phones and it was a real treat. But now-a-days, a cell phone is common and 90% of 11-15 year olds have their own cell phone. Cell phones have advanced over the years, and are now not only for talking but for texting and the internet. They also are becoming less of a burden in school and teachers are adapting to using them as resources.
The first cell phones were plain and large, and quickly were given the name “the brick”. The brick weighed about two pounds and offered only half an hour of talking time for every recharging. Over the years cell phones have gone from “the brick” to ones that are about the size of an Altoids box and even smaller. I know my phone can offer me three to four days of talking time before I have to charge it again. But each phone is different when it comes to charging, and it also depends on how much talking time or texting you do on your phone. Cell phones have evolved so much now that most cell phones offer internet and email access. Company workers often have Blackberry’s so that their work emails go to their phones. This way they are always connected to work and never miss important information. When cell phones first hit the scene they were similar to credit cards in that people only used them for emergencies. Now people’s cell phones are their lifeline. They can be very helpful when there is a problem or emergency and they have often been able to help people in times of need. I read a scary story in someone’s blog on blogspot.com where her cell phone really did save her life. She was driving somewhere and had to use the bathroom so she stopped by this dog park where she often would take her dog for a walk and walked to the restroom. There was a man in his car that was just watching her and she was getting nervous, so as soon as she got into the bathroom she decided to leave and when she opened the door the man was waiting there for her. She quickly shut the door and locked it and luckily she had her cell phone so she called a friend that lived near there to come and get her. The friend showed up 15 minutes later and the man was hiding behind a wall waiting for her. He quickly ran away after seeing her friend and they called the police and reported their experience. Without her cell phone she could have been stuck in that bathroom for who knows how long waiting for that guy to leave. Her cell phone really came in handy that day and possibly saved her life.
For years, as cell phones have become increasingly common, teachers have fought to keep them out of the classroom and from distracting their students, but now there is no fighting. Nearly 73% of students in a classroom have their mobile phones on during class and 13% say that they received a call or message during that class. Those statistics are from 2001, and being a high school senior myself I would correct that statistic and say that closer to 95% of students have their mobile phones during class and more than half of them receive a call or message during class. The teachers have a hard time trying to keep our attention with all of these distractions but I believe the best way to keep our attention on the class is having us put our phones on our desk during class or being stricter about seeing cell phones during class. One of my teachers has a system that for every five cell phones she sees we have to take a pop quiz. I think that that is a good way to motivate us to not have our cell phones out or visible. More and more teachers are also using cell phones in their lessons to include them. Teachers aren’t oblivious to the fact that most teenagers are addicted to their phones, so they are incorporating them into their lessons so students might not be as tempted to text during class when they get to use it for other activities. History teachers especially are using them to take class surveys. This is a smart way to connect learning to the cell phone and also get the point across. Also, after school activities and even some classes depend on cell phones to send out important messages. Teachers have discovered that if they get each person’s cell phone number and carrier they can send out text messages from their computer to their student’s phones. Just yesterday I received two text messages from my teachers; one telling us about a test that we were going to take today and the other saying that we have a meeting after school on Thursday. This is a more convenient way to get information out because students always have their phones and rarely check the internet for updates.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Blogging:

Over the past few days we have been watching the movie Julie and Julia. At first it seemed like a boring movie and the character Julia's accent was incredibly annoying but the message behind it was good and it was entertaining. The character Julia is living in France and wants to experience french cooking but she doesn't have the money to hire a chef. She takes up on cooking lessons and works really hard and finally decides to write a book about it. She makes a book about french cooking for an american without a servant. The movie was about a newly married woman who is unsatisfied with her job and enjoys cooking. A friend of hers starts writing a blog and she decides that she could write a blog too. Since she loves to cook she decides to write the blog about a famous cookbook. She is going to cook 543 recipes in 365 days and blog each day about those recipe. Overall I liked the movie.

Today we also read about people who get fired about blogging. It is a dangerous thing and we need to be careful what and who we post about.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Social Media

I think the video was interesting. The most surprising thing about the video was that if facebook was a country it would be the 3rd largest country in the world. Thats a lot of people. It also talking about how long it took new things to get to 100 million viewers or buyers. All the other items that were shown took years to get to 100 million people but facebook only took 9 months. That is incredible. The other thing I liked was the twitter section. It said that Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres (?) have so many people following them on twitter that they could fill up those people with 3 country. One of the countries it could fill was Iceland. Thats how many people are following Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres on twitter. It is very true because now everyone has internet on their phone and everyone has at least one computer at their house, if not more. I have the itouch as my ipod and I go on the internet all the time on that thing. Recently my mom joined facebook and so now a ton of peoples parents and grandparents are joining it. Its a way to keep in touch with people you dont see or people who live halfway across the world. Facebook is an incredible thing that is becoming more and more powerful.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010