Fingers Ready? Computer on? Ding Ding: Blogging, Round II

            In fall of 2010 I took a class called Digital Civilization at BYU. IT was a very unique class that aimed to teach us post 1500 world history, but also to make connections with any given movement or event’s modern digital counterpart. For example, when we talked about the printing press and the informational revolution that followed we then drew parallels to the recent Internet revolution and the splash that it caused. The class was one of the most interesting I have ever taken and it was certainly the best history class I have ever been a part of.

Now, why am I talking about a history class? Well, you see, in said ‘revolutionary approach to learning history’ our teacher required us to keep a blog of our research and thoughts on the subjects at hand. At first I was very reluctant to keep a blog (you see I thought blogs were only for teenage girls who needed more space to tell about their feelings, or for stay at home mom’s who didn’t have anything to do with their days). I was clearly above that lowly form of media. However, as time passed I found my regular blog keeping to be quite engaging, and, at times, even therapeutic.

And so as I begin my second leg of blogging I do so with a better attitude: excitement and willingness. Enjoy the blog!

One Last Reflection

Well it is with a figurative tear in my eye that I write this, my final reflective blog post. I looked back on my first blog post “we are no longer the center of the universe” wherein I concluded the internet and the ptolemic model of the universe both make us realize our place in the world is not as high as it once was. And I feel after a full semester and nearly 50 or so posts that I am now even smaller in this huge digital universe. But because of this class I also feel empowered and ready to take on my education like I never have before. Here I will reflect one last time how I met the learning outcomes for this class.

Digital Literacy: Google Voice

In order to round out my digital literacy labs i chose to do google voice. It is really neat. it takes all the voicemails from my cell phone and transcribes them into text and then sends it to me in email and text message versions. this makes it really easy for me to stay connected when i am in a meeting or something. and i dont have to ever take the time to log into my voice male or play stupid voicemail tag with others.
But it seems that the transcribing still has a little room for improvement. here is the first message ever recorded on my google voice. it is from my sister: "Hey. I hope. Brother, I am in the bookstore. Currently, I just went on that date. Bye. Milly. I guess up with them and sleep late it good, although he had a Pepper's i meani'm not a big covered fans of the reference of the last. And tell you as planned. Sorry to give you some really really this okay bye bye." you can see how this may be difficult to really get to the bottom of what the person is saying. but i think that it has a lot of potential. 

Final Project update

We are cruising. We have all of our raw footage including a video made from a prezi about the class. i have made rough edits and now i just have to do a lot of final editing. i am excited to block out a bunch of time for this because i find video editing calming and relaxing. tomorrow we are going to record maggies voice for the narration. and then lastly we are going to just provide a brief summary of the project and how it appropriately reflects the outcomes of the class itself. also there is a chance that making a five minute cut will be very difficult and so there will likely be two versions: a full version and a five minute 'attention grabber'.

Best Blogs Nominations: Too bad I have no envelope to open.

1. Historical Content: for this outcome i have nominated Parker Woody's post Evolution: On the Origin of Species as an excellent example of an effective blog post. First of all he does an excellent job of laying out the issues at hand. he summarizes a few important points from the really, really long document which makes it easy for us as consumers to take in useful info fast. but also he connects his post to a slideshow that he found which gives a good introduction to the topic also. if it weren't already good enough he improves the post by listing out other topics that he would have studied had he had more time. this gives the consumer a platform to leap from and also organizes his learning. great post.

Final Project: Teaser

Check out this teaser for the DigiCiv Documentary we are making. Let me know what you think.

Web 2.0 The machine is Us/ing us

This is a video that Dr. Zappala showed in class a while ago but when i was researching more about the subject of Web 2.0 i found it again. i thought it was a really great representation of what we are talking about here.
what i found most fascinating about the concept of Web 2.0 is that the web has become much more than just a way of "getting information".  instead the web has exploded into a user directed method of creating  information. i'll go through the six points from Jim O'Reilly's article and explain more of my thoughts: