Billy Kavalos

SLM 521

Jona French

 

Silicon Snake Oil

 

 

  1. On Clifford Stoll’s website, he proposes that “Information available over the Internet is often stale, incomplete, misleading, unreviewed, or simply wrong.”

 

While this statement has some validity to it, there are a great number of sites on the Internet that provide very accurate and constantly updated information on just about every topic.  Teachers can easily find sites that have been reviewed by professionals and approved for children and in turn use them in the classroom.  Also, there are some sites out there, such as Yahooligans, that actually only return search results for reviewed pages, assuring that their content is appropriate for children. 

 

  1. Stoll suggests that email is “clumsy, inefficient, and impersonal. It appears to be free, yet is actually quite expensive, and can be much slower than ordinary postal mail.”

     

This statement totally contradicts all my feelings about email, its ease of use, and its speed; I have no idea why he feels this way about email but I completely disagree.  Email is much faster and easier than regular postal mail, allowing for instantaneous transmission.  The only negative aspect of email that I feel is a problem is the junk mail that is rapidly being passed around to thousands of people, although even this can be cut to a minimum with today’s advanced filtration methods and tools.

  1. Stoll also questions, “Does the internet really bring us together ... or does it isolate us from each other?”

 

The Internet does a little of both, but ironically its does these things in a way that is very complementary.  What I mean by this is that while the Internet may separate and confine us to our own personal computer screen, physically separating us for other individuals, it is at the same time allowing us to connect to the thoughts, views, emails, and messages of millions of others all around the world.  While students and people in general should not spend all their time in front of the computer as their way of socialization or sharing thoughts and ideas, it can help people, including students, access people in a way that is otherwise impossible. 

  1. An author of an essay written about the book quotes Stoll stating that he “senses little love for this technology [from kids].”

 

From Internet browsing to emails to instant messaging to other immediately available resources, children are very excited and eager to learn and use the Internet and its many applications.  My experiences have proven to me that children absolutely love and are in fact motivated by the Internet.  Teachers who use the technology correctly in their classroom can use this to their advantage, allowing children to do their research on the computer rather than do a very time consuming and sometimes boring search through thick and out of date books in the library.

  1. In his book, Stoll expresses his feeling that “few aspects of daily life require computers … or massive connectivity.”

 

I agree that the essential parts of life do not require computers, but careers, school, and the work that accompanies them is becoming increasing dependant    on the Internet.  We can definitely state that the Internet makes many aspects of daily life much, much easier; I often question how some things were done in the pre-computer era.  While education can go on without constant reliance on computers, preparing our children for the technology savvy world will only benefit them in the long-run.