“I must have been about 8 or 9 when my dad bought our family its first computer, a Hyundai with an XT processor. It only accepted the big 5-inch floppies and had no hard drive.
Delen
At some point my dad upgraded and bought a 30MB hard drive. This was all before Windows — we could run software like WordPerfect on DOS. I remember my older brothers started trading video games and software at school, and we ended up getting infected with a computer virus. Some of the games we played were Spacequest and Leisure Suit Larry, which was a hilarious game about a loser trying to seduce women. It was sort of an ‘adult’ game, but it helped me learn English because you had to type in all the commands. My dad tells a funny story about me coming into the living room and asking him how to say ‘I want to buy a beer’ in English.
From this point on we always had a computer in the house, and my computer skills advanced along with the technology. In 6th and 7th grade we learned Logo, a program where you write codes to draw shapes. When the internet came out we got a dialup connection. I used the internet a lot to get free software —mostly cracked games.
Senior year of high school my friend and I built the school website because we were pretty good at computers. I remember we had access to the school network, and we started downloading and ripping as many music mp3s as we could, storing them on the school server.
At the end of high school I was also a computer consultant, helping older people learn how to use computers. My first client, when I was 16, was about 70. He was a doctor, a friend of my uncle. I built a computer for him and taught him the basics of how to use it, like email and word-processing. From him I got referrals to a large network of interesting people in Colombia, including politicians and one past president of the Colombian oil company.
In college, my friends and I used to organize LAN parties where we would play networked games in the school’s computer facilities. But then I discovered real parties, and I stopped playing games. Somehow beer and girls made computer games seem less interesting.
Nowadays, I pretty much Google everything. I also use Google calendar and pulse for my favorite rss feeds – engadget, good, inhabitat, fast company and wired. I’m used to traveling a lot, so Facebook allows me to find people who are based where I’m going and get advice about where to go and what to do. Facebook has also allowed me to reconnect with people who I haven’t seen in over 10 years.”
My favorites:
engadget.com
beta.good.is
inhabitat.com
fastcompany.com
wired.com
Op dit moment kunnen studenten zich bij veel opleidingen tot 1 oktober van het betreffende collegejaar inschrijven. Van de late aanmelders valt een veel groter percentage in het eerste jaar uit. Het ministerie van Onderwijs wilde weten of het zinvol is de inschrijfdatum te vervroegen en liet een beleidsstudie schrijven.
Volgens de onderzoekers zou 1 juli – vlak na de eindexamenuitslag – de meest ideale deadline zijn voor opleidingen zonder numerus fixus. Weifelende scholieren worden eerder gedwongen na te denken over hun studiekeuze en opleidingen hebben meer tijd voor een kennismakingsgesprek. Wie een verkeerde keuze heeft gemaakt, kan dan nog switchen.
Instellingen hebben bovendien eerder zicht op het aantal eerstejaars dat ze binnenkrijgen en kunnen hun onderwijs daardoor beter plannen.
Middelbare scholen wijzen er wel op dat de druk op scholieren niet te hoog moet worden. Volgens sommige decanen hebben veel scholieren de zomermaanden nodig om te kiezen omdat zij daarvoor te veel gefocust zijn op hun eindexamen. Maar volgens DUO en Studielink schrijven de meeste studenten zich al in de periode april-mei-juni in.
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