Abbey Smith – Week 6

File Not Found by Monica was a very interesting read for me. The overall idea that the students of my generation can study very complicated and intricate concepts, such as astrophysics, but not know how to correctly organize their files is so fascinating. I’d like to think I keep all my files very organized, and I think I could be even more organized. However, after reading about the way some students go about organizing their files, I’m not too embarrassed of my organization skills anymore. I found it interesting that some students had only one folder for all schoolwork, instead of folders for each subject and the classes within those subjects. Even though I am more experienced in file organization, it isn’t because I learned it in school. I had to teach myself how to go about organizing files and realize how important it was on my own. Not everyone can go about teaching themselves, which is why it’s something that should be taught in all schools.

 Basically, I think it’s important to learn file organization skills because it can be very important to your work one day, as shown in this reading. For example, certain code programs need organization to be able to function. It’s important that our future coders like correct organization. I also find it interesting how my generation’s teachers are sort of to blame for this phenomenon. As mentioned in the reading, students today are supposed to rely on google drive, dropbox, etc. For organizing their files rather than thinking of it as an actual file cabinet. I think it would be best to maybe limit this and teach correct organization in order to prepare students for college.  

The Lo-Fi Manifesto was a more difficult, and maybe even boring read but there were definitely some important concepts within there. From my notes, what seemed to stand out to me the most was that “technologies shouldn’t prioritize ease over expertise.” It feels like so many people want their technology to be quick and easy nowdays, without even thinking about how it could be better and more beneficial. I agree with this statement; I feel it’s more important to create a technology that has better quality over the quantity.  

I really enjoyed the HTML training videos. By accident, I watched more chapters of the videos than was required, but I still found it extremely beneficial. A lot of the things discussed felt like they should be common sense but were things I hadn’t considered or didn’t know were as important as they were. And if I was aware of certain concepts, they were nice refreshers. Overall, I don’t know as much about HTML as I thought I did. I think the training videos were very well organized and extremely helpful.


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3 responses to “Abbey Smith – Week 6”

  1. LKSOC1004 Avatar
    LKSOC1004

    File not found was really interesting to me because, for a moment, I couldn’t believe that kids had no ideas about file directories and how to navigate this stuff. Once I thought about it more, though, I realized that my knowledge of file directories is a result of my own exploration of it. Through modding games, doing OS reinstalls, cleaning up registries, and general bug fixing I have come to know the Windows system somewhat well. That being said, outside of Reddit and YouTube, no one ever actually sat me down and taught me how to engage with this stuff. Its no wonder why kids today are struggling with it. No one has taken the time to help them and by the time they are introduced to it, they have years of inefficient habits and assumptions about file systems they have to unlearn. It makes me wonder about the thought process of younger generations. There must be some larger psychological system at play when we see kids dump everything into a single folder or on their desktop. I think of the file system as being an expression of how categorized and ordered thinking is in the mind. File systems are a digital analogue to thought and consideration/orders of importance. What does it say about the thought process of the younger generations that their file systems are so disordered yet able to be navigated despite that disorder?

  2. ipadbaby22 Avatar
    ipadbaby22

    I totally agree that file orginization skills should be stressed more in school before college, now students are working closely with laptops in middle school, maybe even late elementary school. I think part of this issue is that schools typically dont want students saving files locally to class sets of computers, because of this students rely on services like google drive or google docs. And often students learn how to work systems like Google Drive and Docs on their own; if you are lucky you may get taught how to properly indent on Docs.

    Your takeaway from the Lo-Fi Manifesto also highlights the file orginization issue. Its easier to just have some keywords in the file name, click save, and worry later; even though issues may pop up later. Systems like google drive make it easier to just search for a doc, or the date it was made, to find it so many people ignore the more involved route of carefully sorting files. Which can definitely cause issues when it comes to coding, as you point out.

  3. goosefeet22 Avatar
    goosefeet22

    I also found File Not Found to be really interesting. Even now that we are at the end of the semester, I can’t really say that my filing skills have gotten much better. I have become more descriptive in my naming style, but it almost feels too late to change it all now. I have had my computer for four years and my OneDrive for much much longer, so it feels almost futile to go back and work through all of the files I have made over that time period. I agree that this is something that should be taught, and I think that classes like University 101 or gen eds should put some emphasis on this, because technological skills cannot just expected to be passed from one gen to the next without anyone putting in the effort to teach those younger than themselves. It stood out to me in that piece how this skill was assumed, because I don’t see why it would be. Yes, there were things like computer classes while in school, but I think this slips through the cracks because there is just so much to learn about computers and tech that not everything can fit into the curriculum.

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