Week 3 Tech. in Ed. AEDU209

Making Connections or turning a deaf ear and a blind’s eye to it all?

I clearly remember going to an open house eight years ago for my then first grader, and watching a screen presentation on how the students were using the internet.  The teacher put up an e-mail address for us to get in contact with her and I froze…. instantly, I turned a deaf ear and a blinds eye to it all.  I could not grasp the necessity of it, knew absolutely nothing about e-mail or internet, did not even have a computer and felt outraged at having it shoved down my throat….until I became very ill a few months later. 

The internet became my best friend when I was recovering from surgery, chemo and radiation due to cancer in my throat, and lymph nodes.  In fear of not being able to speak, or communicate via the phone, I relented to not only allowing a computer being brought into the house, but also to a whole bundled package that included internet, and cable.  That, in itself, was huge for me, and after the Comcast service man sat down and showed me how to navigate through the internet and e-mail; I had indeed, or so I thought, “made it” into the world of technology!

After reading “How Does the Internet Work”, by Jonathan Strickland, I somewhat froze again.  Starters, routers, servers and packets?  How does one make a connection to all this?  The diagram shown looked like New York City, vast and powerful and like New York City, if you don’t know your way around, you are lost.  But then I kept reading and came across “hypertext transfer protocol”.  I thought it might be something I already knew about?  And it was; as the article stated, “it is what we use to view Web sites through a browser - that’s what the http at the front of any Web address stands for.”

As I continued to read over “How PCs Work”, by Jeff Tyson and Stephanie Crawford, and “How Computer Memory Works”, by Jeff Tyson, I had difficulty picturing it all, and piecing it together.   I decided to Google "packet switching",  for a more simplistic explanation and found a wonderful site called ExplainThatStuff!   It was explained, and I will quote here, “Packet switching is like breaking your house into lots of bits and mailing them in separate packets.  Because the pieces travel separately, in parallel, they usually go more quickly and make better overall use of the network.”  I liked this explanation and found a lot of valued information in the site. It also had diagrams to go along with the explanations.

I have a lot to learn on  how technology works, but because of the internet, I can find out anything I want, and that makes me feel very encouraged!