Stumbled upon the Facebook post below, which reminded me of the urgent need to look more deeply into what I called, in my talk, Gen Z’s Friendship Paradox: Having more (Facebook) friends but possibly less emotionally satisfying friendships compared to earlier generations.
Jean Twenge, in her 2017 book iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy – and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood – and What That Means for the Rest of Us, notes that Gen Z youth are more depressed than those of the past, and suggests that this might have to do with the number of hours they spend online:
I plan to work on this (among so many other topics!) after I get my PhD in Ed, which I hope and pray will be this December. 🙂
I’m profoundly impressed by people with disabilities who study, work, compete in sports, or simply bring joy to others by not giving up.
Take these two Asian athletes. The first, Maya Nakanishi, lost half of her right leg in an accident at a paint factory in Japan when she was 21. Now 27, and after visiting so many companies to talk about sponsorships, to no avail, she decided to pose in the nude for a 2013 calendar. Everything was done in good taste, her calendar sales reached 5 million yen ($50,000), and Maya is now in London for the 2012 Summer Paralympic Games. Poverty and disability definitely did not get in her way.
Maya Nakanishi. Photo from The Atlantic (see text for details).
The second is 28-year-old Thin Seng Hon, who was born without a fully formed leg. She doesn’t expect to win a medal at the Paralympics because her “lucky leg” (as she calls her sole prosthetic) isn’t even built for sprinting and is therefore infinitely less comfortable than those worn by other first-world rivals (including Nakanishi). Nevertheless, as the sole athlete from Cambodia to qualify for the Paralympics, she said she would try her best. Another stunning example of triumph over disability and poverty.
Thin Seng Hon. Photo from The Atlantic (see text for details).
My interest in the Paralympics began a couple of years ago, when a group of students and I worked on a computer simulation of the game Showdown, which is like air hockey, but for the blind and visually impaired. The players of our prototype game used a Nintendo Wiimote as paddle and had to pay attention to audio (e.g., sound of the ball rolling toward them) and vibro-tactile cues. I’ve another couple of groups currently working on a simulation of boxing, in which blind players also have to pay attention to audio and tactile cues in order to know when to hit and when to block punches of an AI opponent, which in turn reads the blind player’s actions using Microsoft Kinect. There are so many research issues involved, but we hope to produce a robust product within a year or two.
Hats off to all the valiant persons with disabilities in the Philippines, Asia, and the world!
I’m a Wikipedian! I made my very first edit of a wiki page just now, when I created a link from Mario Vargas Llosa’s page to the Lasallian wiki. Mario Vargas Llosa, recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature, studied at the Colegio La Salle in Lima from age 11 to 14.
This (i.e., my editing a Wikipedia page for the first time) in turn prompted me to reflect at how I’m becoming more digital. I then created my “digital time line” (see below), which indicated a couple of things:
Compared to digital natives (but not necessarily to digital immigrants), I’m a late adopter of social digital technologies. What is interesting is that I’m a computer scientist! But…
My interest in social digital technologies is picking up, as a result, perhaps, of my pursuing the PhD in Education. You see, technology, especially social digital technology, cannot be absent from any discussion of 21st century education. Therefore…
Whereas at first I used social digital technologies because I had to, recently I have begun using social digital technologies to share something that is important to me with those who are important to me around the world.
This year’s World Teacher’s Day was especially significant to me because I received only a month earlier the Metrobank Foundation Outstanding Teacher award.
I was going to teach a course on e-learning so of course I had to set up an e-learning module. I think that my university’s subscription to IVLE was still free at that time.
2003 Feb 21
Created my Yahoo account
I had to continue leadership of an ASEAN University Network collaborative project (on software engineering practices) while enjoying my service leave with my family in San Diego. The university e-mail service at that time was not so convenient to access from outside the country.
Late 90s
Wrote my first web page
I maintained a site on Broadway Musicals (and Gothic Cathedrals, too) which had hundreds of weekly visitors!
Early 90s?
Wrote my first e-mail
Studies
I have a feeling that my next foray would be into socially immersive games, being the new head of the Game Lab. 🙂
Transformed by Love 
