Reflection #2

You may have noticed as well as I have that my posting slowed down a bit during October. I had a lot of personal things going on then but I'm trying to make up for it this month. Here's my reflective blog post for the second portion of class.

Historical Content
I feel like I've improved quite a bit in this area compared to the first section. A big part of it was with the mini book clubs, but I also did a better job writing about our topics from class. My post on Nietzsche, Hitler, and Modernism does a decent job of showing some of the connections I've made to additional historical events or people. I've also had some traveling experience so I've seen some of these key historical locations such as Hiroshima which I shared some pictures from. Most of all I've really enjoyed the discussions we have in class. This class has really helped me to see the bigger picture and to make connections between various historical events and the present.

Computing Concepts and Digital Culture
Rather than write formal "Digital Labs" like I did last section, I instead tried to blend them in with my historical posts and then briefly share how I did it. The post on A Logic Named Joe was a good demonstration of this. I had seen Sarah do it on her blog which made me want to learn how. I ended up, however, finding a completely different way of doing it. I also incorporated both Wordle and Prezi into my book club creation (I had originally just done the first but then felt that it wasn't enough). Of the class discussions, I really enjoyed learning about both the "Romantic Hacker" and Game Theory. I'm still trying to choose my major, but at the moment Computer Engineering is at the top of my list. Prof. Zappala's fun demonstrations and Prof. Burton's never-ending enthusiasm have both contributed a lot to my appreciation of Digital Culture.

Self-Directed Learning
As I mentioned before, my posting was a little lacking this section. My activity on Diigo has also been mediocre at best. I'm the type of person who, for the most part, thinks through what he's going to say before opening his mouth. This type of personality combined with being a minor perfectionist makes blogging on a regular basis difficult. I am still working to overcome this for this class. As you can see I already have almost as many posts as I did through all of October. I haven't been commenting much on classmates' blogs but that doesn't mean I'm not occasionally reading them. I've really enjoyed using a variety of different sources for learning. The book club was a nice break from the internet. I've also shared and made connections to past experiences that I've had and even learned more things about stuff I thought I already knew. If there's one area I need to work on the most, however, it's this. My primary fault is postponing writing about an idea I get until it's either irrelevant or forgotten.

In conclusion, I feel like I've improved greatly in both the Consume and Create aspects, but I simply need to Connect or share those ideas with others. I continue to look forward to our class discussions and learn as much as I can from them. I like it when people ask me what classes I'm taking this semester because their next question is almost always "What's Digital Civilization?" This is a class that I think everyone should take. Its principles can be applied to nearly any area of study and the skills it teaches are virtually invaluable to this day and age.