Re: Fwd:INET98 answers

Toni Alatalo ([email protected])
Sat, 18 Jul 1998 00:04:52 +0300 (EEST)

Thanks for the discussion, I showed it to my friends that are also coming
from Finland (Heikki <[email protected]> and Markku <hentiel#ori> and they
also thought you're dealing with interesting topics! I wish I had more
time for this now.

A couple reactions still before heading travelling over the weekend.
The other Finns will be in Geneva by Monday morning - I try to make it too
but have still this to do and am not sure yet how to go. We'll see latest
on Wednesday.

---cut--

1. style

Nadia mentioned "looks" when responding Lisa about teens, "Somebody who is
all geared out in FUBU might not even think of talking to somebody who has
the skater look."

What about looks on-line? I mean, the writing style, the way we react to
things other people say etc. do define some sort of "looks" also in chats.
Old people often make stupid mistakes and kids try to look older than they
are, that is ;)

At least in huge public spaces, like the Usenet and WWW, style meaning the
look and feel of a message / site or page defines how we approach it. Just
like clothes etc. work on the streets.

2. skills, the net in school

Nadia also told the following: "We have Internet access at my school, and
I never use it unless one of my teachers makes the class. Another reason
some students might not use it is because they don't know how and they
don't want to go in there and end up looking stupid. So in addition to
having access in school, there should be somebody or some people without
attitude there willing to help...maybe even a class, who knows?"

I think the Internet should be taught in school and I guess it already is
happening in some schools. It often depends a lot on the teachers, if
they're interested / experienced or not etc.

Sometimes schools organize courses so that net.experienced kids teach the
basic skills for the teachers. That was my first summerjob back in '94. In
the computer room, where the kids where mostly by themselves, everyone was
mostly helping each other if they could. That is great but can be
troublesome also as the kids often are quite crual to each other, gangs
tease some unfortunate ones etc. .. often in school in can be one group
that takes over the computer room so that others don't even want to go
there. For example in one school close to Oulu, my hometown, it once
happened so that the Internet became a "girlie thing" so that boys didn't
even go to the room for a while.

+ an + ~ Toni ~ : (t . !