Internet Addicts Anonymous

"Getting information from the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant." -- Mitchell Kapor

My name is Kelly, and I'm addicted to the Internet.

Okay maybe not, but the Internet is awesome. Seriously.

Last night, my phone wasn’t working so I googled the problem I was having and voila, I fixed it. A couple of weeks ago I wanted to make a cheesecake but didn’t have a good recipe, so I googled it. I find out what’s going on at school, what’s going on at home, what’s going on in the world all in one place. Internet = awesome.

This semester, I had the pleasure and advantage of taking Jour289i: Information 3.0. This, of course, is the reason I’ve been blogging all semester. I’ve learned about blogger, twitter, secondlife, picasa—so many social media sites and apps that I cannot remember all of them. But I think that one of the most important things we’ve learned in this class is fact checking and analysis.

Some of my favorite posts to write this semester were those where we read an article, and were told to comment on it (think gender & video games or cell phone use and dependencies.) I never had enough info from my one reading or in my personal repertoire to successfully analyze and respond to these articles, so I was always forced to do further research. This not only expanded my knowledge on the specific topics, but it taught me to read critically. I’ve learned to find a second source, to compare and to contrast, and to learn from all of the available information on the web (which is a lot.)

So what have I learned? To consider things from all points of view. To take what I know and use that as a launching point to learn more. To utilize the resources that I’ve been given to find and use new ones. This class was not only about using the Internet or about new technologies or social media; this class was about taking all of these things and expanding your knowledge, learning to use these things to think critically.