Module 8

The first time I laid eyes on a huge beige electronic box (also known as a computer), I was about five years old.  It was my dad’s computer he would use for work purposes, although it would run extremely slow and very loudly.  Basically I was born into this crazy technologically advanced world, but I do remember my first interactions with computers.  Once I reached fourth grade my classmates and I were allowed to play a game on the computers, after finishing our math. The game consisted of a purple rectangle space ship that you would have to move using the arrow keys on the keyboard to avoid the small green squares “astroids”.  I think it was interesting how as the years added on each classroom would have an increasing amount of computers for the students to use.  Now you walk into almost any school and their are computer labs.  A room filled with enough computers that thirty or so students can use all at once.  Also the changes in the computers were drastic.  Starting has huge blocky machines with little pixilated screens, to 20” high definition flat screens.

From sixth grade, to my junior year of high school I had a computer class.  Even a few in my first years of college.  We learned how to type on the keyboard most of these years.  Learning our hand, wrist, and posture positions; and figuring out which finger was supposed to push each letter and number key.  Then we moved on to learning Windows software, such as MS Word, Power Point, Windows Live Mail, Photo Gallery, MS Excel, and for fun we would use MS Paint.  A lot of the software have improved over time, making them more user friendly. These basic learning tools helped me advance my knowledge in other ways as well.  Almost every book report, essay, thesis and other assignments I had to turn in would have to be typed. When you use a computer to write your assignment, most programs offer spell check, proofreading and so on. This was an eventful way to help me and others in learning grammar, punctuation, and even the English language it’s self using the “define in dictionary” tab.  Even the use of computers that were not hands on were educational.  Teachers could project something for the entire class to see using their computer.  Emails, grades, academic calendars and assignment updates can all be checked online.

If I had never learned how to use a computer many of the things I do today would be much different!  Personally I use a computer based device for almost everything I do. From checking the weather, to figuring out a crazy math problem.  I’m very grateful that the computer classes I’ve had were mandatory, because a few of them were very boring to me at the time. Looking back at it now I am very glad I learned such technology at the age that I did.  Now that I am older and putting this technology to use, it makes it much easier to learn new things when you already know the basics.  My entire educational experience would have been different without the use of computers.