Unit 3 Report

The Unit 3 material was familiar but still interesting. The everything2 website was absolutely amazing! From that, I learned several things. For one thing, I knew that Americans value independence, I just didn't realize that this means we spend less time with our friends than other cultures. Although, I guess it's true that oftentimes my friends and I find ourselves too busy with other things to spend time together so it makes sense. I have no other culture to compare myself to at the moment. Also, the concept of having 'friends at work' or 'friends at school' was interesting - I know that I tend to develop friends in these patterns but I never thought of it as a cultural thing. I think this website does a really good job of describing American culture. The 'dating rituals' were strange to think about, but I think they did a good job of stressing that dating habits depend on the people involved. Finally I would like to say that they did a good job of describing culture shock and adjusting to culture - when my friends came back from Italy and Greece my freshman year of undergrad it took them quite a while to get back into American culture. In fact, they still talk about how much they miss spending time in their study abroad countries. The steps that the everything2 website described seem right on target.

The Beloit College Mindset List was fun to read. I think that the list is right on target - I think the new freshmen on campus this semester are very different from when I was a freshman at UNC (which was only 5 years ago). I didn't get an email address until I was 12 - my little sister had one at age six! She also played neopets online - the pets that you take care of virtually. I never understood her need to do that - I always wanted the real thing! The credit card thing is really scary - I don't think 18 year olds are as wary of the dangers of running up credit cards as they should be. I just got my first credit card and it rarely gets used! Reading over my list (the class of 2005) brought back warm memories - ahhh, New Kids on the Block :). I also did not realize that I was born the same year as the Mac and the PC - very exciting! I will say they were wrong about one thing - I DO know what cc: and bcc: mean!! I think these lists give huge cultural insights into the US. They're not as laid out as everything2's lists but you can intuit a lot about people based on the year they graduated from college. Especially when it comes to technology - the class of 2005 can't text message nearly as fast as the class of 2010. We also haven't had access to 'high speed' Internet the way current 18 year olds do. Just thinking about the amount of information that is available now is astounding - the class of 2010 can get their hands on information about anything they want to know. I also just thought of another difference - Google didn't come out until I was a teenager; before that we used Yahoo and Dogpile for searching. When I was in high school we got warned about faulty information online and I'm fairly certain that the class of 2010 doesn't get this same speech, they simply already know not to trust everything they read online.

I love the Library of Congress website; particularly their ‘kids portion’ - it seems very kid-friendly. The incredible thing is that kids can get this kind of information online. Also, the classroom collections are amazing! The teachers that use these resources have to very appreciative. Their born digital is my favorite tool. I started flipping around on the website and looked through all their pictures on women's suffrage. I've seen some of these pictures in textbooks but to think that I can access them for free (and from a trustworthy source) astounded me! As a side note, if anyone has seen the movie 'Iron Jawed Angels' you should look at these pictures - they did an incredible job in the movie.

I also took a look at the European collection - this seems like it's going to be a wonderful source for the upcoming units. Take a look at the picture below - it's amazing that I can look at this online!

Then I found a webcast on Science and Technology in Japan that was really cool; it's long and I haven't made it the entire way through yet, but I am very interested in Japanese technology just because they're so far ahead of us in the tech race. Yukio Sato talks about information and technology use in Japan and using these tools to promote business, education, etc. He is a little hard to understand online, but it's a really interesting topic!


Needless to say, this was a great unit. I enjoyed reading about the familiar even though I learned a lot of cool places to find information and I even learned a little about our culture! Watching the Rogers Park video (I made some comments about it on Blackboard) was one of my favorite things in this unit. Knowing that people do respect each other's cultures in this part of America gives me hope for other areas!