Cyber life

          For contemporary person, technology is like an air; we cease them, we use them, we can’t image our live without all technological innovations any longer. Some of technologies are used for pleasure and entertainment; some of them are important to facilitate our life to reduce amount of work every day that we do and in the negative way it even makes us lazy. However, some of technologies are created to be not only helpful tool but also a great teacher.  I consider myself pretty diligent student when it comes to industrial science innovation. Down below, I tried to remember all of the main episodes of my life that would involve technology impacting on me since I was very little.

          My mother is engineer and it used to happen that she worked on weekends when she had approaching deadlines and all projects had to be finished up immediately. That time she would take me to her work place. I was actually lucky I that she is engineer because I could already started learning about technology from very young age. And that time, I am talking about 1994 – 1995, she was working on computers that barely 10% of people nowadays could recall, at least not a young generation, is Commodore 128. She was leaving me in the room in front of one of those computers and would go to the other room. Having that all at my command,  I played Boomberman, I could be playing all day long. 

I can’t say that game itself was developing some skills in me, except for challenging myself to do to the next level and after that to the next; but communication with that computer was pretty unique experience.  Small, extremely  pixeled, poison blue screen  was unknown for the 6-years-old me but in the same time I was eager to discover it. That is why I was browsing how to utilize menu, going back and forth from folder to folder; I tried to open images,  attempted how to type and of cause how to play all games what I could possibly find.      

That time it seemed to be progressive technology and I felt almost part of world leading group of engineers because none of my friends could have access to this blue screen miracle.  From my first experience of literacy development that involved computer, I have been sure that technology will become essential part of my life.

          When I was going to 5^th grade, I remember that my reading was not very good; honestly, it was not good at all. IN our literature class teacher has been always force each student read aloud, as fast as possible. And again, Russian school does not give easy lessons to its students, even they are ten and eleven years old. That’s why to make our life harder teacher would give us to read some ballads and folklore tales that are written in old Russian language. Having hard time even with regular Russian, I wanted to kill myself when my turn would come. But there was no way to escape and I had to, through suffer, with delays and stumbling, read out load in front of other class mates. I can’t say that I were the worst reader, probably average as most of other students, but being very critical to myself, I wished the ground would swallow me up so the audience would not  hear my shameful recitation. I even dislike my own voice and how it sounded on public. I assume that my only problem was being timid and diffident child. That’s why to fix this problem me and my uncle who is just years older than me, were playing around with tape recorder.

I don’t remember exactly what we were talking about, possibly trying to make some sort of jokes that 10 and 12 years old kids could do. But no matter what has been said or sang, we made sure that our voice was recorded to old tape device. Surprisingly, this silly method worked just right: after hearing myself from the speaker, with time I got to be more self-confident about what I say and the way I say it.

          When I have reached 7th grade, for the first time in my life I took Informatics class. School has decided that it is time for its student to learn how to use Microsoft office programs such as Word, Excel and Power Point. The only thing they have not thought through is the fact that there were too many students and twice as less computers in the class room. So again, it was challenging to learn new technology, when we were sitting two or even three people literally fighting for the opportunity to move the mouse and create a table or colorful chart. I can’t stop smiling now looking back at those times but our class looked like this: one geek per computer and the rest of the class of slack students, who tried to close all the programs in any moment and turn on some game application instead. Even though, I have been introduced to the Microsoft Office, the main point of computers and student is ability to collaborate.

          When I entered 9^th grade they offered us classes of speed typing – the most useful skill that I can recall. Teacher gave us piece of paper  with printed keyboard on it and restricted to look at keyboard while we are typing. Moreover, from now on we have to use all ten fingers to type instead of habitual two.

Previously, we didn’t know nothing about typing and we didn’t know that it is not that easy. We have been given a few different templates how to write  requests and declarations, something that I have never come across before.  It was very challenging in the beginning, because I were not accustomed to type with ten fingers. Therefore, task has got more difficult when teacher took timer and let us type for one or three minutes in a row. The only person who types more with less mistakes could have good grades. I actually liked this competitive exercise and always try to be the best. I have been taking typing class for one semester and at the end of it I have reached progress. To get even getter in my free time I have been using typing program that requires boring typing. I can’t say that I really liked the process but result definitely pleased me.

          Besides typing classes, my high school offered advanced study of science such as chemistry, physics, maths and programming. The last one was probably the most difficult and innovative compare to all others. Our teacher  gave us elementary knowledge of few programming languages like C++ and Pascal, different problems to solve in those programs and relatively short timing to do it. That we force everyone to work harder. Some of my classmates who was really good at it, were helping the rest of the group. That collaborative activity was very helpful not only for successful completion of tasks but also for communication between students that united me with all of my class members and created our school networking. By the way in free time between classes or during the breaks we would sit in the labs and explore new social networking technology such as Facebook, Myspace and Vkontakte using internet. It has been more than ten years ago by now, so  in that time fast internet was luxurious privilege that none of us would have at home. Meanwhile school could offer fair internet speed and students would take advantage of it.

          Being freshman student back in Russia, I have suddenly realized that I did not know any other language besides my native. In middle school there was some poor class of English where I have barely learnt the basics. Moreover, when I went abroad that year during summer break, I have finally seen how much I am missing not having ability to communicate with people from different countries. That is why soon after I have been searching for various options to learn foreign languages and I have found  two very powerful tools for myself: Rosetta Stone and livemocha.com.

 

It was whole new world opening for me. Rosetta Stone has turned out to be very informative plus with different approach to studying process. The reason i could not recall anything from my school language class is dull memorizing of unrelated to each other words. Teacher had us to remember articles or short poems so after getting grade for it I could relax and forget it forever. However, Rosetta Stone developers help the user to escape such a problem by making one to see the picture and to hear how to pronounce the word. They don’t start with the grammar like regular school teach would do. They make you to remember through visualization like kids do while they learn their native language. Principe of learning here is based on game.   Here it comes again –  the same collation with children and their natural ability to learn through the game. Livemocha was the another “wonder of the world”. Beside learning any possible foreign language through similar structure like Rosetta Stone offers, I could also have my homework to be graded by native speaker of that language! Therefore, that random person might revise my work and suggest what mistakes are needed to be fixed. Finally, Livemocha offered great feature that could connect me with anybody on the website. I could chat with American, Turkish, French, Spanish students to practice my speaking and develop more fluent communicative ability. All I had to have is internet that open door to the great opportunities.

          Second year in the college, I had to work on the project of website development. As I see right now it was one of the most useful projects I have done. Teacher gave us couple months to create entire website, without using any sort of templates; he expected us to write every simple page of the website on our own. That time I had no clue about WorldPress so the best solution I could find was Dreamweaver.

 Learning how to write codes for designing various types of pages might take long time and couple months was not obviously enough. However, Dreamweaver is accommodating most of the beginner coders needs. When I opened new file, the only thing I had to do is to transfer into the review window all content of the every page and It appeared in coding version in the other opened page. This way of learning was very convenient; even though most of the features I still had to google and find samples of HTML codes for peculiar pages, this program would interpret all content in the coding version. I would compare it to the online dictionary: writing in one language would be translated into other with no delays.

Still studying in university in Russia I was concerned about moving to the United States and one of my main goals was entering college. Due to I am foreign student I had to pass TOEFL exam to prove my ability to understand English, to speak clearly and to have good grammar.

          Preparation for TOEFL takes few months and probably I could not do so good on my own, but I were lucky to have one instructor from English center. She was happy to assist me in preparation especially for something that huge and significant. I went to take her classes twice a week for two months. But before taking actual exam she found me TOEFL emulator that made whole the difference in my routine studying. From that period till exam day I would turn on that program  and go through all four parts of exam: reading, listening, speaking and writing. Every section also has time frame and once I started it I had to accomplish all four parts. That is why it is not possible to stop for break whenever I like, it made me feel the same as I would be taking real exam. Process of preparation this way taught me how to stay focus for long hours and how to use my time wisely. Day after day “my rehearsal” would not stop and when the day has come I felt confident and stressless because it all become part of my life, daily routine like brushing teeth after waking up.

          How many times in my life technology accommodate my needs? The only few examples above, can definitely show that me and technology of any sort tight up together. And as I grow older, cyber life around me gets more complicated. I don’t stop wonder what changes as a cyber society we will observe in hundred years from now.  Unfortunately, people don’t live that long, but who knows? Maybe innovative technology will let us to experience it one day. We will see…