On Virtual Socialization: The Good and Bad

Facebook, myspace, twitter,tumblr,yahoo messenger, multiply. Are you familiar with this names? Maybe you also know friendster? Well that is a very old one. I guess you know most of the names mentioned and most probably you have accounts in two or three of those. That is not a surprise. Those websites are used by majority of the people in our society right now. Even the lolo's and lola's and some of the younger generations (as young as elementary students) with an access on the world wide web can easily create their own account. Moreover, the websites mentioned are the social networking sites where everyone is familiar to use. We can access and connect with different people residing in different places all over the world. Cool right? Through this social networking site, especially facebook, you could connect or reconnect with your old time friends who you lost contact with for several years.

Reconnecting with old friends is not the only purpose of this sites. It also helps us in meeting people with the same interest and hobby just like us. Would you believe that sometimes through this sites, you can make a friend even if you had not met them in person? That is what I've experienced in an old social networking site, which is friendster. I joined a group ,where in fans of my favorite author in precious hearts pocket book (a romance novel here in the Philippines) created. In that same group I had a chat with "Kathe", a girl with the same interest and same age like I am and she is living in Cebu. It was 2009 when I first talked to her yet until now we maintain to have our communication through facebook (we haven't met yet).

This sites made our world wider through making friends. Some of the account users can express or even change their personalities when they are in the web. For example, a shy and plain girl can express her jolly and fun side in the internet when she talks to other users of the site. A guy could also have a courage to talk to the girl he likes through social networking sites. Technically, this virtual socialization made it easy for everyone to socialize with each other.

It also helps us in expressing ourselves and our thoughts. However, this also increases the chances of getting us hurt. Other people uses this materials to deceive or hurt innocent people.If bullying is present in school and other work place, you could also find it in the social networking sites.With good things, bad things also accompanies it. Some even uses personal information and pictures of other people and use it on their own gain (identity theft).

Many things could happen in online social network, we just need to be careful and be cautious in selecting the information that we will encode in the web to prevent harm in the future.

Missing the Snail Mail: The traditional way of communicating

What is snail mail? That was my question 6 years ago when I watched myx Philippines in the television. Some of us might not be aware of what it is, like I was. So before we continue, let us define what snail mail means.

Snail mail is used to refer to letters and missives carried by conventional postal delivery services.  Technically, it is a postal mail and not the literal snail delivering mails. Funny, but I really thought it was like that. I hope you learned something from this blog. 

So again, snail mail is the term used to letters being sent or delivered. It is also the term used for penpalling. When we say pen pal this are people writing to each other. Most of the youths nowadays doesn't engage themselves in writing letters through paper and pen. Instead they sent e-mails or text messages when communicating with their family and friends. Well, e-mails and text messages are faster to receive than snail mails. Plus, it is the most common medium in sending messages in our current time especially if someone dear to you is in far place (other country perhaps). 

But do you know that snail mail has more advantages than emails? Maybe you wonder why. Well this is according to an article I've found here in the internet written by Mr. Ryn Gargulinski. Although it takes time for us to receive snail mails, we could have a guarantee that we can have our privacy and security. According to Mr. Gargulinski's article, it is a federal offense to steal or open other people's mail while emails has no such laws. That is why, if our emails are not secured there is a high risk that other people might intercept and read the emails that we sent and received. The worst thing is if someone use our personal information, present in our emails, to hurt other people.

Moreover, mail carriers are responsible in delivering the mails in in worst cases which is not the same in email. In some cases, if our computer crushed or our email access is down, we will lose all the file or messages. With snail mail, we could have a hard copy of the important letters or documents that we want to save. The snail mail item is also limitless. It can accommodate anything as long as it fits the box or the envelope that can be shipped. In the case of email, some of it only accepts text files or there is a size restrictions on files that you will send. 

After explaining the advantages of snail mails, it made me realize that doing things in an easier and faster way is not always a good thing. Sometimes taking things slowly and waiting for the right moment (like waiting for the letter from someone important) can also give us an excitement and treasure its message even more.

Education and Technology: The continuous evolution

John Dewey described education as a form of learning in which knowledge, skills and habits of a group of people are transferred from one generation to the next through teaching, training, research or simply through autodidacticism. Technology on the other hand was described as making, modification, usage and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems and methods of organization, in order to solve a problem, improve pre-existing solution to a problem, achieve a goal, handle an applied input/output relation or perform a specific function. These are the definitions of education and technology that you can find when you browse these words in the internet.

According to Nelson Mandela, education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. And I do believe in his statement. Why? Because if we will compare the education system or the way of teaching from the past to present, I could say that it changed tremendously. Let us look back on how education in the past looks like.

Before technology was introduced, internet to be exact, humans already knew how to read and write. They used this method in order to transfer information from one generation to another. People in the ancient times used stone tablets, clay, tree barks or metal sheets to write information before paper was discovered. And after Ts'ai Lu discovered the paper in 105 AD, it had been used for writing and served as a material where informations are being stored. Books were then produced and used as a source of knowledge and even entertainment.

People started to write more about their thoughts and discoveries when books are introduced. Because of this, more books were published and bookstores or libraries were build. Bookstores sell a variety of books that customers would like to read. Libraries on the other hand were built to accommodate people who would like to read a book for free. Books can also be found in schools and used as a source of knowledge to the students.

Humans strive to discover and learn new things thus computer was discovered and internet was introduced. Slowly, technology is taking its part in the evolution of education. From reading books, people started using computer to gain data while others encode in it.

Through technology learning has been more easy for the current generation. We don't need to go in libraries or bookstores in order to find the books containing the information that we seek to learn. Instead, we simply search the information through the internet just by typing it and the data will pop-up in the screen in just seconds. With this technology, it gave us an advanced knowledge in order to discover more things in the future.


That is why, the combination of education and technology will have a continuous evolution. Thus, provide a higher knowledge in the future generations.