List of Commonalities

Upon reading the stories of the people that this student is following, a patch of common ground was often found. With Jackson's blog, common ground could be seen in that when little, this student too was originally unsure of a computer's capabilities (i.e. thinking that a computer was a new television, which--thanks to sites like YouTube nowadays--it sort of has become, among other things). With Brent's blog, common ground could be seen in that both persons originally started out with slow dial-up computers, only to move on up to faster connection speeds. In short, due to a lot of these students being bred around the start of the digital age, this student in particular would not be surprised in the slightest if many a student could find common ground with each of their classmates.

For Computer Media Communications (as a class), this student utilizes the capabilities of a computer in the same way done outside of a scheduled class. But first, a little historical recap may be needed.

This student’s family started out without a computer at first, shockingly enough. Then, as the new millennium rolled around, the folks finally received a computer. Unfortunately, it ran on dial-up, which meant that there wasn’t much to do with it, due to how slow and complicated the whole system was. Thankfully, the use of dial-up didn’t last, the folks would later get DSL, which is—by far—loads better and has sustained the folks to this day (considering they’re not as computer-orientated as this student is).

This student himself though just recently acquired a high-speed laptop that runs on Windows Vista Home Premium, which is even faster than DSL (at least when somewhere with wireless connectivity) and a welcome sight for this student, considering that a lot of schoolwork and even things done for fun (for example, social networking, online gaming, online communities, etc.) are done via the computer and so, as such, a relatively fast computer was desired to keep up the rapid expansion and growth of technology in general (or at least, desired to keep up with the demands of the Internet when this student utilized it).

In terms of usage, this student uses computers for both work and play, considering that assignments can be finished quicker if they can be emailed to teachers (especially so if the teachers find that a complication arises and they cannot be physically present to teach), that teachers themselves are also starting to use the Internet to help them do what they do (that is, teachers are using online capabilities more and more to help themselves and the students they teach by placing important assignments, course documents, syllabi, and other important school-related documentation on online systems such as Blackboard), and that fun online activities occupy a lot of this student’s free time. Such fun activities would include having a part in an array of online communities dedicated to this student's interests, playing online games, checking emails, and keeping up with accounts on DeviantArt, YouTube, and various other online places, among other things.