Fun with New Media Technologies

One of my favorite classes to teach at Fresno State is actually a GE. It's fun because it is vastly different than all of my other classes, which tends to be hand-on (which I love, but a little variety is the spice of life, right?).

I run the course as an asynchronous online discussion course. Each week is a new topic, starting with legacy media (print, radio, tv, film) and moving into the digital realm (internet, social, mobile, "smart stuff," etc.).

The lessons surrounding computers and the internet tend to be ones that really get the conversations going. My more traditionally-aged students don't remember a time without high-speed internet, iDevices, or even cell phones. I enjoy my role as the dinosaur, although I often have a few nontraditional students in the class who can laugh at my old school jokes.

ANYWAY...back to the internet. I poked around online to find a simulator for some of the slow-speed connections many of us remember from back in the day. While it did not hark back to the 28.8k era (sigh), it does hit 256k DSL, which seemed like lightning at the time!

Here is my commentary as we wait for a simulated 3.5mb YouTube video to "download."

And for giggles, our friend, the dial up modem.