Back to Basics

Research Questions:

1. How does this affect your schoolwork? Assignments?
2. What leisure activities are available to you?
3. How do you communicate with family and friends?        

Today’s technology allows us to communicate and gather information through the click of a button. But what was it like before all this technology? The first gateway to the internet, America On Line, was commercially available by 1990s. With the advent of the internet and cellular phone technology we are able to communicate not only by email but also audio chat and file sharing. This increased productivity in the business sector. Many businesses rely on the internet and basic telephone communication lines. Students are able to access a wealth of information from the web instead of searching through library catalogs and stacks. In this project students will live without technology while documenting their observations.

Experimental Procedure

1)     Choose a time frame in which you would like to live without technology.

2)     Since it is impossible to eliminate all forms of technology from our lives we can base our "no technology" from a period in history. For example, the 1980's. There were no cellular phones, computers were few and far between, and the internet did not even exist!

3)     Keep a journal and document the issues you face while living without technology.

a)     How does this affect your schoolwork? Assignments?

b)     What leisure activities are available to you?

c)     How do you communicate with family and friends?

Terms/Concepts: Time line of technolog; What year did cell phones come into the mass market?; When did the internet start?; What year did computers become a common household item?; What did people do before today's technologies?

References:

• http://www.webhostingreport.com/learn/aol.html

• http://gizmodo.com/tag/timeline/