MEDIA & TECHNOLOGY IN MY LIFE

NAME:
Directions: Think about 5 pieces of media and/or technology that you have seen over the course of
your lifetime (at least 10 years.) How have they changed? Did they have an impact on you or your
friends/family? How? Have they become obsolete?
1) Paste an image of the media/technology in the left hand column
2) Write an explanation/description in the right hand column. (2-3 complete
sentences)
3) Include the date
4) Turn into google classroom
Image

Date and Description

The first iPod Classic came out on October 23, 2001
with its signature click wheel. It was, spiritually, the
ultimate successor to the widely-used mp3 player. It
could play videos, games, and, of course, music.
The iPod Classic brought upon the standard of
iTunes as a music-purchasing service. It was
succeeded by the iPhone and the iPod Touch and
discontinued on September 9, 2014.

The first iPod Touch came out in 2007, revealed

along with the first iPhone. When it was released, it
was widely used as an alternative to the highlypriced iPhone, which was above the price threshold
for a phone for many. In the coming years, it was still
mostly used as an iPhone alternative, often for
children or teens. The iPod Touch continues to be
used and maintained by Apple, with its most recent
generation (6th) being released on July 15, 2015.
The Amazon Echo came out on November 6th, 2014
for Amazon Prime and invited members. It came to
the US on June 23rd, 2015. The Amazon Echo, also
known by the name Alexa (as that is the default
name to activate it), is a voice-controlled assistant
that can control lights, temperature, and almost
anything you can have it hooked up to. At the Google
I/O event in 2016, Google announced Google
Home, which appears to be a reaction to the
success of the Amazon Echo.

MEDIA & TECHNOLOGY IN MY LIFE

NAME:
HTC Vive

Rift by Oculus

The Rift, developed by Oculus, was made available

for preorder on January 6th, 2016, and was
scheduled to arrive on doorsteps by March 28th at
the earliest. It was not the first virtual reality product,
as there were multiple VR catastrophes attempts in
the mid to late 1990s. Oculus had also released the
Developer Kit 1 and Developer Kit 2 beforehand.
The HTC Vive, using software developed by Valve
Corporation, was released on April 5, 2016,
seemingly later than the Rift. However, most who
preordered the Rift did not receive their product until
months later. (My Rift arrived in August.)
These two products are the first commercially
available VR products on the market (excluding the
Gear VR, as that doesnt include positional tracking),
and they are both in their CV1 (consumer version
1) stage, leaving the door open to innovation in the
future.
The first-generation Raspberry Pi was released on
February 29, 2012. It is a single-board computer
designed mainly for children to learn basic
programming and computing, and it has been widely
adopted by hobbyists.
The product is useful for building retro arcade
machines, learning to program, learning GPIO
(general-purpose input output, AKA the pins sticking
out), and it is also great for experimenting with Linux
and its different distros.
The success of the Raspberry Pi was surprising to
the Raspberry Pi Foundation, who never expected
the product to be so well-received. In September
2016, sales surpassed 10 million. The Foundation
compares the Raspberry Pi and its usefulness for
tinkerers and hobbyists to the Sinclair Spectrums,
BBC Micros and Commodore 64s.