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September 5, 2006
Internet and organizations
This topic takes me back to memories i have of my father. Growing up my dad was the director of SAMS (South American Missionary Society) and within his job he was always communicating and meeting people from all over the world. I remember once finding a voice recorder in his desk..like the ones we use for the Setonian. I pressed play and he had memos playng. Nowadays my father doesnt work for that organization but has a new one that also requires many international connections. he is the kind of guy who is always hooking up his laptop at a restaraunt or messing with his treo ( his little pal pilot). So i asked him how exactly he stayed connected to the people in his organization years ago. He told me that regular mail and normal phone calls were the only way he was able to stay connected. He said writing a letter to Colombia oe Argentin was a long process. With the invention of email he and people in his organization now connect so much faster and to so many more people. His organizations website now allows people from all over to donate money to a cause they could not have seen years ago.
Even my fathers treo 650 allows him to write and send emails while sitting on a plane to sudan. He has even learned how to send me and my brother text message and writes to us when he is unable to talk on the phone. With1000 contacts in his treo he is able to text email and send pictures to any one of his colleagues in any country. I feel that the internet and other technology has really made some organizations such as my father visible to the entire world in a way they could not have been seen 15 years ago.
Posted by RachelPrichard at September 5, 2006 4:23 PM
Comments
Well, now, I guess it's neat to track someone's life being woven into technology as it changes, huh? How interesting, Rachel. If I could have afforded the Treo... mm, I wouldn't have needed a Palm AND a cell phone... :-/ Oh well. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I'm glad I didn't get it. Although, I have noticed that Treos and even Blackberries are popular more with the business types. (I interned on a political campaign this summer, and EVERYONE had a Blackberry... it was hilarious. Naturally, I blogged about it ;) http://blogs.setonhill.edu/KarissaKilgore/016004.html)
Posted by: Karissa at September 5, 2006 10:54 PM
That's amazing stuff, Rachel. While I completely understand the good motives of high school administrators who restrict students from Facebook and similar sites, the wild popularity of these sites is a sign that the traditional educational system lacks opportunities for networking that will help students develop the very kind of skills that are in demand in the 21st century workforce. (Teachers continue to work mostly in a traditional hierarchical environment, where the student's job is to submit work to the teacher when and how the teacher wants it. That doesn't require the same set of skills as getting noticed and being effective in a network -- unless, of course, the teacher wants you to submit your work in a manner that involves the network. Which brings me to one of the things I want to talk about today....)
Posted by: Dennis G. Jerz at September 6, 2006 10:54 AM