Research Project Process Paper

Laura O'Reilly

April 20, 2007

Computers and Culture

Research Project Process Paper


Grandpa V.S Granddaughter Blogging Experiment

I chose to do my research project on the comparison between teaching my seventy-two year old Grandfather and my eight year old sister how to blog. I have seen my Grandfather struggle to figure out how to turn his computer on, and have watched my little sister grow up using the family computer. I thought it would be interesting to compare the learning gap between the ages, and record their progress through filming the blogging lessons, the blog posts themselves, and interviewing them before and after the study. Doing this study has been very entertaining and rewarding, and with no surprise my hypothesis has been proven correct. My little sister is learning how to blog with much greater ease then my Grandfather is. Children interact with online content on a day to day basis, sharing your favorite video on YouTube has become a family matter. When asking my little sister what she wants to post on her blog the ideas are endless, when I ask my Grandfather he doesn't know where to begin.
I started the research project with interviewing my 8 year old sister, 12 year old sister, 9 year old brother and 72 year old grandfather. I asked them the same ten questions: 1) How do you feel about computers? 2) What is your favorite thing about your home computer? 3) What is your least favorite thing about your computer? 4) How do you think computers have changed the world? 5) Do you remember a time before computers? 6) Can you draw a picture that embodies how you feel about computers? 7) Could you live with out your computer? 8) Are you scared of the computer? 9) How old were you when you first used a computer? 10) If there was one thing about the computer that you could change, what would it be? Their answers were interesting, and related to the course material in our class. It was very ironic to hear my little brother say he was afraid of the computer because "You could get raped", after my co-facilitation topic was focused on cyber rape.
When my 13 year old sister Briana was asked the one thing she would change about her computer, she said "The Parental Controls" which made me think about the guest speaker we had who spoke about the flaws of parental control settings on computers, and how kids learn how to get around them. Briana said that she couldn't live with out her computer because that is how she communicates with all of her friends via instant message. She's not aloud to have a MySpace page yet because she is too young, but she's constantly on MySpace looking at other peoples profiles. I think it is interesting to see how an adolescent use's the internet to construct their sense of self in this day and age. When you deal with so many insecurities as a young adolescent it is a relief talking to people online, you don't have to worry about what your appearance; you can hide behind the words.
The mythology around computers and the way that children interact with them deals with complex issues that need to be addressed. To hear that my brother was afraid of the computer shows that he understands that it is connected to other people, what he's been taught is that it's connected to strangers who can find him and hurt him. Children are being programmed to consume media on their computers, eventually buy things, communicate, learn, and play. To hear that my brother was afraid of the computer, shows that he understands that it is connected to other people, what he's been taught is that it's connected to strangers who can find him and hurt him. The fact that my little brother said that he is afraid of the computer because of rape means that the way he conceptualizes what a computer is has many implications beyond just playing computer games. For him at 9 years old to be afraid, to internalize a fear of being harmed because he's afraid he could get raped because of his computer was the most complex issue that came up while conducting this study.
When I asked him what he would change about the computer, he said that he would install a lie detector so you can tell if people are telling the truth or not online. I found this to be interesting because of our class discussions about identity and the internet, about people making up these fantasy lives and living a lie online. I lied when I was 13 and said I was 16 to flirt with an older boy, some of my earliest interactions on the internet where playing out the make believe, playing out power and control over my own fantasy. The concept of having a lie detector in the computer is quite clever. It enforces again that my brother Henry has a fear of people not being what they say they are, that some one could harm you, deceive you and that he doesn't trust computers. At the same time when I asked him how he feels about computers, he said "They're cool" and that his favorite thing to do was go on YouTube. He may not trust the computer but he definitely uses them often, and consumes media like many kids his age on the internet.
When asked how computers have changed the world all three children mentioned something along the lines of "information". They have grown up with all the information they could dream of being at their finger tips. My grandfather George on the other hand, only had formal schooling up until the fourth grade, and was on his own when he was 14 years old. He is self taught, and has worked with his hands his whole life as a super of different buildings in Manhattan. After my Grandmother passed away my Grandfather has felt very isolated and alone. Now that he is able to connect to the internet it is something he's enjoying, but he still struggles with being able to navigate web pages. There is a severe technology gap with seniors, and they feel like the computer is so foreign they don't know where to begin and it's very overwhelming to them. I want to interview a few of my grandfathers friends that live in the building to be able to compare the different responses seniors have to the interview questions. Grandpa George's responses were the extreme opposite to his grandchildren. George feel’s like computers aren’t relevant to him because they are such a mystery to operate.
My grandfather George has disdain for the computer because it doesn't make sense to him. If the computer freezes, or he clicks out of a window by accident he'll wait until someone can come over and fix it. Trying to teach him how to blog has been a very drawn out process. My little sister is much quicker with understanding the directions I give her. This week I wasn't able to go film and give a lesson so tomorrow I am going to try to instruct them on how to blog over the phone, which should be interesting. I went through and wrote out directions for both my sister and grandfather so they can try blogging when I'm not there, and neither of them has done so yet. I think they are both still getting the hang of it, and my goal over the next two weeks is to get them both interacting with the blog on their own. Emily is very enthusiastic about learning how to blog, and is making excellent progress.
The first lesson I gave Emily I showed her how to post any video on YouTube she wanted, which she loved. YouTube is very popular with kids, they all try to find funny videos and show each other their favorites, so when I showed Emily how to put her favorite video on her blog she was thrilled. For Grandpa George's first lesson I simply got him to do a basic text blog, which was an accomplishment. For Emily's second lesson I showed her how to set up a photo bucket account and upload pictures from her computer into photo bucket. Then I taught her how to take the code from photo bucket and put it in her blog to publish her own pictures. For Grandpa George's second lesson he was only able to do the text blog again, which was still an accomplishment. Both Emily and Grandpa George are very slow typists, so they haven't written very much. My goal is to get George to be able to upload his photos into photo bucket and post them on the blog, and to get Emily to write text along with her videos and pictures that she's been posting.
The biggest struggle with trying to teach George is trying to explain it in terms that will make sense to him. When I was trying to explain how to enter an internet address for a website I tried comparing it to trying to locate an actual address. I did my best to explain what the server was doing and how the internet works as a network of connected information. He really seemed to appreciate me trying to explain what was actually going on with the computer, because it just represents the unknown to him. I also had to play around with the written directions to come up with a set of instructions that he would actually be able to follow. I drew pictures, and circled all the key words so that it would be very visual and easy to execute. Emily wanted to write the directions out her self, and then she taught them to her "class". She's into teaching her make believe class of students, and has a dry erase board that she draws on when teaching her lessons. I filmed her explaining how to set up your own blog, and it is very cute and entertaining.
Emily has wanted to be very involved in the study, she wanted to ask my other sister and brother all the interview questions, write out her own directions, and review them. She also drew a picture of her with a computer, and I am going to have her draw another picture at the end of the study and have her scan and post it on the blog. It has been a nice family experience to teach them how to blog, and I hope that the blog can bring Emily and my Grandfather closer. The use of a blog is varied and I think family blogs are a way that different members in a family can interact, share pictures, videos and amusing stories. A blog is an online log, a way to keep track and record life. I think it is very healthy for individuals to create their own content, and I hope that Emily uses the tools she is learning to express and develop her own voice. It is important for members of a society to be creating media along with consuming it. The ability to create and share content online is an exciting one, because it is open to anyone in the world to interact with. All the kids seemed to really grasp the concept that the internet allows them to interact with people from all around the world.
Based on Emily's answers to the interview questions she seemed to use the computer for educational purposes the most out of the three kids. She said that she uses wordsearch.com, the calculator, and search engines. I'm sure that Briana and Henry use the computer for similar reasons, but when asked about it they said their main uses are for play and chatting. When I asked Grandpa George how he would like to be able to use the computer, he said that he wanted to try and locate his old girlfriend from when he was 21 years old and see if she was still alive. His answer surprised me; even old men want to use the internet for romantic reasons. This topic was not explored with the kids, but to see it come up for my grandfather was interesting, to say the least. When I asked him if he was afraid of his computer, he said "Yes!" with an exclamation point. When I asked him why, he said it's so foreign to him that it's like he has an alien sitting in his bedroom staring at him. Just getting him on the computer at all was a triumph and I think he really appreciated having someone help him try to figure it out.
When I asked the kids if they could live with out their computer, they all said "No!" and Grandpa George said "Yes!" which was no shock. The kids said they couldn't imagine the world without computers, and my Grandpa went on about the old days before there were computers and how much simpler everything was. The issue of seniors and technology is a serious one, and it has made me question why there aren't more programs teaching seniors how to use computers. I suppose it is just part of evolution, but at the same time there is a certain responsibility that a society and it's government has to make sure that technology is being integrated into a society equally. Nobody seems to care about seniors because they don't want to spend much money, they are the end of their life, what good is it to teach them how to use computers? I think they could contribute a lot to the online world if more of them knew how to use it. My Grandpa did say that when computers first came out in the early ninety's my grandmother showed him how to gamble online, which he enjoyed.
The way he explained it to me was that my Grandmother was the computer savvy one, that the computer was her escape from him. When he was the super at a building on 96th and 2nd ave, he worked and lived in the same place and they saw each other 24/7. My grandmother would go on the computer to research politics and play games, and he never really tried to learn the computer because that was her domain. After she passed away last year there was nobody to teach him, and the computer seemed even scarier to him. Being able to do this blogging experiment has brought him closer to Emily and I think it's made him feel like a cool Grandpa. It's been a hard year for him since my grandmother passed away and he's been very depressed, I think doing this experiment has helped cheer him up even if he doesn't know how to show it. The internet could be very resourceful for senior citizens who feel isolated and have lost their spouses. I researched many of the senior citizen internet resource sites and none of them are designed in away that it would be easy for a senior citizen to actually navigate or be used as a resource for seniors to be able to teach themselves how to use the computer. There should be pictures explaining everything and all text should be in a large font, because most senior citizens don’t have good eye sight. I know this can be manually adjusted in the browser, but it should also be taken into consideration by the designer.
It has been very rewarding to teach Emily and my Grandpa George, I've enjoyed spending time with them and it’s been very interesting to watch the differences in their learning processes. Children are on their computers and interact with electronics so much that they are like little cyborgs themselves, it comes naturally to them. It makes sense that children are going to be faster learners because they are constantly absorbing information. My Grandfather George has a switch that went off years ago, where he believes you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Hopefully by the end of my experiment George will feel more comfortable on the computer and Emily will continue to create her own blog content when the research study is over. Computers can isolate people to the constraints of their own private computer, and in this case I was able to connect a grandfather and granddaughter to create a common ground through their blog. I have hopefully succeeded in making steps towards bridging the technology age gap that is ever so present in our society, and have introduced two unlikely candidates because of their ages, into the future of participatory culture.

2nd Second Life Blog

My experience in second life last Monday was hellish. I had serious lagging problems, and kept getting knocked off and 2nd life froze up my computer 3 or 4 times. I did catch a good portion of the class discussion before I got kicked off again, and 20 minutes later when I finally was able to log back in I caught up with the group I was supposed to be leading, yet followed along hoping for the best. We went to some interesting places, my two favorites were the gay dance club and the wedding island.

In the gay dance club there were icons for expensive muscle men avatars on the walls, and a dance floor equip with laser lights and all. I found a very fun pose ball that made my avatar dance, it was entertaining to watch. The wedding island was very relaxing by the water, with some very beautiful views. The whole place was very funny, because the concept of a second life wedding is very ironic. Cyber marriage, it reminds me of when I married my friend to my life size big bird doll in Ruppert Park behind the bushes when I was 5 years old. Fantasy all grown up. The penis cake topper was very cute, and the phallic art around the island was in the brides maid party spirit.
As far as gender goes, gender swapping is interesting in second life but I almost feel genderless in second life because no body is necessarily the actual gender they are portraying. It does give insight into role playing and gender dynamics. Being able to change your race, gender, and status- it is interactive story telling. You can be anyone you want to be. It is definitely engaging the imagination- I haven't seen any fat people in second life yet. How body image oriented second life is, is no surprise- that's how we are in real life- "Same shit, different world"
Here's a picture from my first trip in second life: