3 page paper- due in 24 hours

Reflection Paper 1

Due Tuesday, September 26 (uploaded to BeachBoard before start of class)

Technological Autobiography

Write 3-5 pages exploring your own relationship to new communications technologies and practices. In this response paper, be sure to tie this in with relevant readings and lecture material.

There are many valid ways of approaching this assignment. You might describe a particular program you use regularly and how it impacts your day to day activities. You might trace your evolving relations to computers from elementary school to the present. You might describe a specific activity that is important to you and talk about the range of technologies you deploy in the pursuit of these interests. In each case, the paper is going to be evaluated based on the ways you deploy your personal experience to construct an argument about the nature of new communications technologies and practices and their impact on everyday life. The more specific you can be at pointing to uses of these technologies, the better. You do not need to make sweeping arguments about “Today’s Society” but you do need to argue how they impacted specific aspects of your own experience.

While the bulk of your grade will be based on your autobiographical argument, you will also be expected to tie in class material. There are many valid ways of doing this. For instance, you may explain how your experiences support or refute one of the readings from the first day or class. You may explain to what extent your experiences embodies the various perspectives on technology Baym talks about. You may discuss how you experiences relate to common reactions to new communication technologies. The possibilities are endless, but the key is to tie your experiences into class materials in an appropriate manner (by appropriate manner, I mean that the class material should be seamlessly integrated into your paper and should not just appear at tacked separately as if you are adding class material at the end for the sake of adding class material). Not everything we cover in class will be relevant to the assignment, so you need to reflect on class material to decide what should and shouldn’t go in your paper. Furthermore, you only have 3-5 pages.

Your reflection paper should be uploaded to a BeachBoard dropbox (which will be analyzed using Turnitin) as Microsoft Word file (Pages, PDF, etc… will not be accepted). The document should be 12-point, Times New Roman font, double-spaced, 1 inch margins on all four sides, and in APA or MLA format. So that I can grade the assignment blindly, please do not include your name in the document or in the file name; save your file as your “[CSULB ID number] – Reflection Paper 1” Failure to follow these instructions will result in points being deducted from your assignment score.