Insight on Ito's Report

Youth today are communicating in so many different ways, and before reading Ito's report I didn't think about all of these types of communication. I have a 12 year old sister and as I observe the ways in which she communicates with her friends I realize that her ways of communicating are far more advanced then the ways in which I communicated with my friends 10 years prior. AIM was popular when I was her age but I was not face with text messaging, Facebook, Myspace, email, etc. Though there may have been similar blogs on the internet that were available, we weren't privy to them yet, nor were they as popular as these blogs are today.

Though I agree that Ito makes a good point when he explains that youth are still communicating the same things to each other but just in different respects of media, I have to disagree with the fact that it may be for the better. The questions is...are todays you ready or mature enough for advanced sources of media? This question is largely based on the age of youth and what type of media they are most widely participating in. However these types of media are becoming increasingly more available to younger crowds. I have first hand experience with my little sister, who signed up for a Myspace page and a Facebook account. At the age of 12 she clearly lied about her age, because you have to be a certain age to sign up for these accounts. Is this what our youth is resorting to? Though I think that she should be able to self-express, I think that some of these forms of media are a simple connection to bad behavior. Myspace is littered with pages that are inappropriate and I would hate for some young impressionable youth to think thats what self-expression is.

I do see Ito's positive argument as well. I think that todays youth has a whole new way of communicating with each other and they can meet people with so many similar interests. I stress though that maturity plays a big factor in these types of communicating because it is so easy to get carried away with misconduct when you aren't right in front of someone. Though this ties into Ito's idea of media as learning experiences. My sister learned a valuable lesson when she couldn't txt message her friends anymore because her school grades were down. Now using the media to teach lessons to our kids may be affective, they're certainly learning experiences within the media themselves. Youth are able to learn advance they're learning of technology and computers. They can navigate their way around the internet and find so many different things to learn about. I think that this is extremely positive because you never know what you are going to run into on the internet and get captured into reading. I am always learning new things by getting captivated in some website that I can't stop reading.

My Insight on Service Learning

Though I am not entirely sure anyone will care about my intake on service learning, I am certainly ready to give my view! I love service learning and I think it is really important in today's world. Service learning can teach real life experiences which I think are more valuable then hypothetical classroom experiences, plus its a lot more fun! The Mt. Zion project is a service learning project that has a lot to offer and we can learn from first hand experience what it will take to make the Mt. Zion program grow, not to mention we get to help kids in their own learning experiences.

That being said we get to go through the learning process with Mt. Zion which is what service learning i all about. We break away from the institutional structure of learning and get to experience each process that service learning has to offer. Like in the reading this is a very important part of service learning. Also by documenting progress, ideas, and tasks we can experience and learn through each other.

Through the end of this project we will gain first hand life experience through service learning. we will come out with much more than just a letter grade, because we will have the necessary tools that one needs in the community. Technical Writing is about so many different aspects, and I think that real life experiences make you a better writer. It is all about gathering knowledge and writing it down for other people to learn from so that they can have their own experiences. Service Learning is about an experience that you can not get in the classroom

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