Sunday, October 7, 2012

My personal network - Information and Attention Feeds


After hitting snooze at least three times on my cell phone alarm clock, I wake up and start my day.   In the process of still trying to wake up and avoiding getting out of bed, I check my phone and respond to any missed texts from the night. I also check my phone calendar for anything important I need to do that day.  While getting ready for class, I put some music on from either Pandora or my itunes on my computer.   At this time, I take a quick look at facebook, just for a few minutes because time is always short in the mornings.  I check the weather app on my phone before deciding what to wear. I then head to the kitchen to scramble and make something quick to eat and grab some coffee.  At this time, I will usually find my other three roommates rushing around trying to finish getting ready.  This is my first in person interaction of the day.  It’s usually very rushed as we’re all scrambling to get out the door on time.  Once we’ve all made it out of the house, it’s on our 20-minute walk to class when we actually have time to catch up and talk about our day.  Once we get to campus we split ways and I head to my first class.
 After getting situated in class, I usually take the first few minutes to check my emails on my phone.  I just skim them over deleting any spam or advertisements and checking for anything urgent. I wait to reply to my emails until I can use my computer.  Once I’ve finished this, I put my phone away until the end of class.  For the next hour and 15minutes my attention is focused on my lecturer, besides the occasionally daydream or distraction.
On my way to my next class, I check my phone again for any notifications and take time to respond to them.  I arrive at my next class usually right as it is starting and my teacher has usually already started the discussion by the time I am taking my seat.  During this class period my attention is focused on the lecturer and the class discussion we are having.  We do a lot of scenario work in this class and are broken up into teams.  During this time, we are allowed to research on our smartphones if we need more information to answer the question assigned to our group.  During this group work, my attention is focused on gaining useful information from the book or article, my notes, and my phone as well as discussing with my group members about our potential solution.  Each group shares their response, and we ask questions for clarification.  My next class is in the same room, so I usually take the 15minutes break to go get some coffee from the café downstairs.  I check my phone again during this time and reply to anything I missed during class.  I have a quick interaction with the person working at the coffee shop as I place my order and then head back upstairs for class.
In my next class, I use my laptop to pull up the PowerPoint notes for that day and any excel practice problems we will be doing from D2L.  While on D2L, I look for any new information that may have been posted.  At this time, I usually open another tab to respond to my emails and also another tab to check my online banking.  In the beginning of the class, we go through the powerpoint slides where I still attempt to mult-task by following along but also checking my emails and facebook.  Once we begin working on the practice problems, I work with the people around me to solve the problem or ask questions if I’m confused.  Once class is over I usually head to the library to finish up any homework.  I’ll put music on while I’m doing my homework. 
On my walk home, I’ll usually make a call to someone in my family to catch up.  After getting home, I’ll have to time to talk with roommates while making dinner.  I’ll look at the news app on my phone for any interesting articles for the day.  I usually finish up my homework in the family room, where some of my other roommates will be doing the same.  I waste at least 30mintues on facebook before starting any homework.  This is also when I talk with friends about anything exciting that happened during the day, or about anything we currently learning.  Since we don’t have cable at our house, the only shows I watch are on Hulu.  As I’m going to bed, I usually put on an episode of the Daily Show and watch it until I fall asleep. 
I lot of my attention is focused on personal interaction, either with my friends, classmates, or lectures.  A portion of my attention is also focused on my cell phone, where I get calls, texts and notifications from facebook or email.  I also gain information through conversations I have either in person or digitally, the applications on my phone like weather or the news, my email, and certain websites of the Internet like D2L, ATLS2000class website, the USBank website ect.  

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