GEDI Post 2: Ten years challenge: How did my learning process changed?

If you are a social media user, you have noticed that in the last weeks many people are posting then-and-now profile pictures: the ten years challenge. Even though many might believe that this is a movement created by Facebook to train their facial recognition algorithm, I think it is a nice opportunity for me to reflect what changed in my learning process in the last ten years.

Before College... 
I got my first computer in 2011 during my first semester in college. Up to that time, learning for me was basically an offline process. At my high school, we did not have PowerPoint classes. If we were lucky, maybe in one of our classes the professor could show some pictures in this old projector. It was the closest thing to PowerPoint that we had:

Old Projector 

Because we did not have PowerPoint classes, some professors did an effort to give us some handouts so that we did not have to copy too much from the black board. However, the handouts were not photocopied. Does anyone remember this machine?

What is the name of this machine? 

We did not have books for every class. Even the classes we did had books for, most of them were borrowed from our school. Therefore, we needed to copy in our notebooks most of the subject taught in class.

Some part of our grade was based in our notebook. We did not have smartphones to take pictures of the board that we would never look at. In fact, we had to practice handwriting a lot. At some extent I believe that this process made me a better writer as I was able to learn a lot of the subject because I needed to read it as I wrote it . Last semester at Virginia Tech I remember one of my classmates complaining to the professor that we should have extra time during exams, because handwriting was a slow process, and everybody was used to write using their computers.

Schools did not have electronic resources

Project Cover: written by hand

I had more opportunities for "hands- on" learning. This is an example of a biology homework we used to do at school. 

Example of a biology homework 

Do not get me wrong! We had internet on 2011. However, not everybody had easy access to the internet and the school did not have computers in any of the classroom. I remember we had to be really creative for presenting projects. Nowadays, I am used doing a nice PowerPoint presentation for any type of project presentation. Not too long ago, we used to create songs, dance, perform or find new creative ways to present something.

The most common way of presenting projects besides PowerPoints

I have made so many cardboard TV's to present project's and homework:

Cardboard TV example

This book collection was my google up to year 2010 or so:

Barsa Collection

In college ... 

When I went to college, everything drastically changed. I went to a good private school and so, they had many resources that I was not used to. It took me a while to get used to the "PowerPoint class idea". Even though my whole life I was exposed to the traditional lecture-oriented classroom, the lack of technologies forced us to find creative ways to engage students. In college, learning became quite boring. The creative ways were always based on "showing videos" or "PowerPoint presentations". I had to learn basic rules to write academic documents. I did not even know what a citation was. It was a difficult change and I had to start taking computer classes and start accepting more about the idea behind computer programming. However, not everything was more difficult with technology! Doing homework and projects became an easier process. Google reduced immensely the time I spent looking for references.

However, I feel that I learnt more how to Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. Because I did not have to handwrite anything, I could only scan read most of my references. In fact, in less time, I had more information (But, do students really read the references? ). Also, I basically did not need a notebook for school as I was used to do my whole life!

Exchange Program  ... 

In 2014 I came to the US in an exchange program and I started learning English. The way that I understand learning drastically changed. I had came in contact with many technologies, and I started to get to know basic tools that could make my learning experience more interesting. Also, there were so many games in the classroom that the same subject I learned in Brazil taught me something different.

From this phase of my life, the most important thing that happened to me was learning English. Up to that point, everything that I knew was taught to me in Portuguese. In this sense, my references were limited to my language. There were many important things related to my major that I could not find in Portuguese. For the first time in my life, I had no limit to things I could learn. In English I could find just about anything I wanted. Also, I started to realize how manipulative the news I was getting in my country were.

Now  ... 
Nowadays I am surrounded by far too much information. I am connected to many social media and I spend a lot of time keeping up with them. There are times that I feel I should delete some, but even my school duties here in US obligate me to keep them. Not too long ago, I did not have a smartphone and now I have trouble focusing in the classroom without getting distracted by other things on my phone. I still feel like I am behind on the understanding of some technologies that are common in the US but not in my country. I have access to many resources, but I do not fully know how to effectively incorporate them in my daily learning life.

How about you? What has changed in the last ten years?