Michael+Stuart+Introduction



Hello everyone! My name is Michael Stuart – I was born in Royal Oak, Michigan and spent half my life growing up in metro Detroit and the other half growing up in Weston, Massachusetts (a small town outside of Boston). I attended Michigan State University for one year, and New York University for three years for my undergrad, where I studied history with the hopes of one day returning to school to become a high school social studies teacher, which I am currently pursuing here at Fordham! One of the reasons I love history as much as I do is because of my love for traveling. I’ve been to Australia, Japan, China, Ireland, Italy, Switzerland, Romania, Mexico, and Turkey. I studied Chinese at NYU because of my infatuation with East Asian culture, and although I can barely speak it, I still remember most of my writing skills.

The one thing I might love more than traveling to visit new places outside of the United States is my love for New York City. I constantly find myself stopping in front of a building, or on top of a rooftop, or in a museum and on how lucky I am to be living in this city. Having culture, cuisine, politics, and a great nightlife in one location is something I will always relish as long as I live here.

The first computer I ever used was my dad’s original Macintosh, which we still have in our basement in my home in Michigan. Growing up I was influenced a lot by my older brother who instilled in me a thirst for advanced technology. I always shared computers with him, and from the time I was very little we used PCs (first was the family Compaq, then his HP which he got for his 15th birthday). Once I got to high school, I started taking some computer design courses and got familiar with Macs and the Mac OS and the first machine I ever bought was a first-off-the-line Intel-based MacBook Pro in January 2006. Since then I’ve upgraded my Mac twice to newer machines, and I bought my first iPad when they came out in April 2010. The first time I started using PCs again after 2006 was when I started working for a software company based out of Needham, MA (which I still currently work for doing marketing) in June 2010.
 * My Life as a Tech User**

My cell phone history is a little more disjointed than my computer history. I got my first phone in 2003 when I moved from Boston to Michigan, and it was a Nokia where about all I could do was text, call, and play Snake. Once Apple came out with the iPhone, I immediately jumped on board and bought it a week after it came out. I replaced my iPhone with a newer phone once, and then switched to Blackberry (big mistake) for a year. After my disastrous year with the BB OS, I moved to Windows Phone 7, and can proudly say that it has been my most enjoyable couple of years with a phone since I first upgraded to the iPhone from my feature phone. I see myself sticking with the Windows Phone OS for quite some time, and actually recently upgraded to the new Nokia Lumia (back to Nokia for the first time since 2003!).

I’ve always been an early adopter of new technology – first with MySpace, then Facebook when it was first available to high school students, Twitter when it first came out (and I had 4 people following me for a year), but now I’m finding it difficult to keep up with all of the latest social media fads. I am still fully connected to my friends at all times, however, and my favorite tool to stay in contact with my friends across the globe is WhatsApp. In the past two days I have spoken with friends in Italy, Australia, and England – all for free!

I’m excited to learn how to bring some of the communication tools that people use every day into the classroom environment, and how I can get my students interested in the class in a way that resonates with them. We’re all constantly connected, and I feel like it’s time the classroom shared in the fun.

[|Copyright Clarity e-Poster]

Statement on Digital Literacy

Michael Stuart Portfolio