Honors 212: A Semester in Review

O, Hai!

For my not-so-local viewers (if there be any), the class this blog was focused on is ending. Part of our final evaluation is a simple reflective commentary on how we've met the learning objectives over the course of the semester.

As a bit of a foreword, this has been a fun class, and I have learned a lot. My leadership skills are still a bit iffy in my mind, but leading a group has shown me ways to improve. I now know more about Descartes than I ever thought I would, and I'm glad. I've seen a 50-person class somehow crank out 350 pages (that's what I heard) of actually pretty good content.

Anyhow, to the learning objectives! First a sort of sorting of my various published efforts over the semester (sorry if some of the G+ items aren't shared :(...

1. History
1. Modern Hieroglyphics
2. Various Group Brainstorms
3. Descartes Post
4. Various Ideas of Infinity
2. Core Concepts
1. control
1. clock domain analogy
2. Power of the Aggregate
2. information
3. participation
1. White House G+ feed spam
2. Amateur Radio
3. commenting on White House post
4. openness
1. some help with Gov't group presentation
3. Digital Literacy
• What is Digital Literacy?
• Applying These Four To My Droid
1. consume
1. XKCD on Encryption
2. Slashdot on Online Voting
2. create
3. connect
1. request for encouragement on class project idea
2. Discussion on usefulness of blog posts for large ideas
3. Call for Kindle Libraries
4. Defining "Social Proof"
5. request for assistance in deciding on blog topics
6. request for Tweethis assistance
7. Analysis of "Connect" efforts for event
4. self-directed learning
1. Why I Like Real Books
2. Facebook Geography
3. My brother and Tesla
4. Reading "Descartes: A Very Short Introduction"
5. Reading  "Networks and States"
6. Countless tabs opened while researching any of the posts mentioned here
5. collaboration
1. Class Project Proposal
2. partial analysis of class collaboration

My largest efforts in the realm of learning history have been centered on Descartes, as he was assigned to me at the beginning of class. This gave me a springboard with which to dive into the 17th century. From his troubles with the Church to sickness and medicine in his life, there was a lot to see from this thin crossection of history.

When combined with Descartes, my independent learning activities in previous classes, previous summers, and the efforts of other groups in this class, I feel I now have a fairly good understanding of history from the Renaissance down to the present. (I might even understand something about the future of digital civilization... *gasp*)

As for the core concepts of digital civilization, I thoroughly enjoyed our class presentations. At a superficial level, I am now aware of the [lack of] control I have when sharing things on social media. Google+ is my friend that way. Digital Glasnost is a current tendency I was only partially aware of--emphasis on the past tense, and I have actually participated in processes that I wasn't aware existed (I'm looking at you, White House stream!). One of my favorite parts of our chapter was the one involving openness, government, participation, and NOT democracy. We can participate in our local community and help improve our bureaucracy in ways I hadn't imagined (Code for America).

Digital Literacy was a broad, gradual topic for me to grasp. The most effective (and critically constructive) activity I did for it was not really related to class: I organized my cell phone's apps into these three categories. (A "hardware utility" classification arose from this, though I also classified my camera under "create.") While I don't think it is an end-all-be-all breakdown, Consume-Create-Connect has given me a different perspective on my activities on line. I think of it every time I pull up Blogger or YouTube, and I smile, knowing that I know what I'm doing...most of the time. :)

Blogger and Google+ were great tools for this class. I wish we had used them last semester. Exponentially multiplying my number of accounts right at the beginning might not have been so great, but I think I'll still go take a look at Goodreads. One suggestion here would be to use the communal blog model from last semester fused with the G+ model we used this semester. Give a good model for tagging posts for later reference (learning outcomes and people) as well, as that helps with writing reflective blog posts...at least, it did last term. I didn't even think about it this term.

Learning on my own has been a challenge. This has been a fairly hectic semester for me, and I'm now realizing I could have done better. I read most of "Descartes," the first chapter of "Networks and States," and I have about twenty bookmarks that I want to go back and read that are left over from Google and Wkipedia binges I went on looking for more information on a topic. I learned a lot and it was fun, but it is by no means complete. I definitely had to do some research to polish our eBook chapter for submission, especially for my not-so-ample sections. Then again, I brought a fairly broad spread of experience to the table in my groups due to past independent learning and was so able to help direct and focus others' studies.

For Collaboration I will call on the eBook experience, as I imagine many others have. (My Control and 17th Century groups definitely had amazing experiences in this regard, but they're not as recent and so harder to write about.) I got picked as a team lead. It was fun to try to come up with a direction, build a consensus, and start moving towards it. While the lateness in the semester led to less group interest in our goal, we were still able to divvy out assignments, converse amongst ourselves, and (sometimes) incorporate the constructive criticism we were given from outside sources. In the end, we produced something cool. Perhaps not Awesome, but definitely cool.

These are my two cents on how I met the learning outcomes. I did well, but I definitely could have done better.