Foot: Little Brother

When I first started reading Little Brother, I had a hard time getting into it. I was taken aback by the technology jargon. However, once I got fast the first few pages, I became much more interested in the book. I couldn’t believe that the government would act like that to American citizens. It made me so mad to think that people in our government could treat their own citizens like that. As I was reading Little Brother, I had a hard time believing that some of the technology could actually happen. Overall though, I really liked this book. The plot line kept my interest and I didn’t feel lost in all the technology terminology.

I do think I’ll use this book in my own classroom. I think I would offer it as a choice project reading rather than a mandatory text. I think for some students who aren’t that interested in technology or those who don’t know that much about technology, this book would be challenging for them. I did have a chance to look online at Cory Doctorow’s blog. One of the things that I found interesting was the news section for Little Brother. There was a small blog about a girl who wrote a song based on Little Brother. There was also a small blog that talked about a teacher who was trying to raise money to buy a classroom set of Little Brother to help his students better understand their rights. I thought it was really interesting that the author posted news information about his books on his blog.

This book also made me think of a show I used to watch. The show is called Big Brother. A group of people live in a house together and someone is constantly watching them. I hadn’t made the connection between the title and the reality show until I started to really think about Little Brother.

Foot: An Oral History of the Internet

I really had no desire to read this article about the history of the internet at first. I thought it was going to be filled with a lot technology terms that I wouldn’t understand and I really didn’t expect it to keep my attention. I was surprised that after a few paragraphs the article started to grab my attention. It shocked me that the building blocks for the internet started back in the 1960s. I was also surprised that the United States government had a lot to do with the origins of the internet. I had always assumed that the internet was created by some genesis one day. I just assumed the idea was something that came to someone over night, which is a little silly when you look at how complex the internet is. I liked when the article talked about the emergence of the internet into everyday life. It made me think back to how my teachers started to incorporate the internet into projects at school. I remember when I was first learning to research and write papers that I had to have so many sources and out of those sources two of them had to be internet sources. I remember thinking that it was such a pain to use the internet because I would have to either use the school library or go to my community library to use the internet. By the end high school, a lot had changed. My teachers were then telling me that I had to have at least two book sources in my papers. The internet had become the new source of information on everything.

Another thing that stood out to me as I was reading was how relatively new most of the internet is. Goggle, Ebay, and Craigslist are all a huge part of the internet and the oldest of the three was created in 1998. I think this article did a good job of showing me how the internet has changed over the years. As teachers, I think it is important for us to remember that as the internet changes, we need to change and adapt with it.

Foot: History of Facebook

I actually enjoyed reading this article about Facebook. I knew a little bit about Mark Zuckerburg and how he started Facebook, but I didn’t know that there was such a controversy over it. I was a little surprised and at the same time not so surprised to read that so many people were filing lawsuits against Zuckerburg. With any huge company, I would expect people to try to lay claims to some of that money; however, I was surprised that so many of Zuckerburg’s early friends ended suing him later on. Also at one point, I remember the article talking about Zuckerburg’s early interests in computers. In the article, it said that by ninth grade he had created a computerized game version of Risk. I couldn’t even imagine thinking up these types of programming ideas, let alone actually completely them. When I try to think about how huge of a project that would be, I can’t even comprehend the amount of work put into it.

I also liked this article because it made me think about the different ways I could use Facebook in a classroom. For example, I think Facebook would be a good way of hosting literature circles or study groups online. Facebook is such a huge part of people’s lives because it offers people another way of communicating. I think it’s important for teachers to recognize that Facebook is another way they can adapt the way they teach their content material to connect with students.