New Means of Communication

I guess I'm pretty much in tune with the ways students communicate these days. When I read this quote in the online text, I can't even remember these days because I grew up in the days when research for papers was done online and communicating with friends was done through instant messaging after school. "He represented, for me, a world I could scarcely remember—a world before driving directions on MapQuest, book buying on Amazon.com, and making plans on Instant Messenger—a world when tasks were managed one by one instead of all at once on multiple Web browser windows (Chapter 5, page 5). Even now, MapQuest is getting old because most people have GPS.
The reading states that staying connected is a central part of students' lives. I think that today, that can be applied to almost anyone. I feel completely lost when I leave for the day and I realize I left my cell phone lying on my bed. I honestly feel disconnected from the world. I don't know what's going on or who's trying to get a hold of me or the plans for the evening. I think that so many people are used to having technology in the palms of their hands (literally) that when it isn't, they don't know what to do. Almost all communication between friends is done through text messaging these days. I work for the YMCA and all of our directors text because we are in and out of meetings where we can't answer our phones and if someone needs to get a hold of us, they can do it instantly through a text message. To students this is a part of their everyday life; being connected to everyone, everything, everyday. Older generations never had these means of communication, so they don't feel that staying in constant connection with others is an essential part of their lives. In a way, the Net generation has some advantages. My mom has lost contact with many of her friends from the earlier years of her life. That could be partly due to the fact, they were still hand writing letters at the time and it took time. She got busy and didn't have that extra time to sit down and write a letter to friends or vice versa. My generation gets to stay in constant contact with friends through various means of technology- facebook, text messaging, skype, etc. The communication and language is changing. Language is becoming so very much integrated with technology that parents who want to keep in touch with their college age children, are sooner or later going to have to learn to facebook, skype or text to communicate and stay in touch with their children.
I really liked using google docs. At first I didn't like it. I got 2 or 3 of my lessons done and I couldn't figure out how to save it and I was scared I was going to use my work but I eventually realized that it saves automatically., which is very nice for people like me who sometimes forget to save their work. I thought that it was easy to share it; it was much easier than adding an attachment. All in all I will definitely use google docs in the future.