Of Late I've Been, Reflecting Once Again

Now that it's the end of the semester, it's time to take a look back over what I've done and what I've learned. I'm not a big fan of public self-reflection. Oh, well.

All of my posts are fairly self-reflective. Recently I've reflected on how much I have not posted, and about my digital exploration habits.

Self-directed learning/Personal Blog Posts

• Most of my blog posts reflect on what I know about myself and digital culture, rather than exploring brand new ideas. But simply putting that knowledge into words is something. My post on fanfiction is my most thorough discussion of my knowledge.
•  I spent some small amount of time reporting on the nonfiction book I read for this class. The most immediately interesting idea was the passage of time. I wasn't interested enough in that particular subject to look any deeper though. I planned to discuss some of the assumptions about religion made in Age of Distraction and the fiction book I read, To Say Nothing of the Dog, but my plans don't always come to fruition. It's true that there has been an overall trend of decline in the public's outward religiousness since somewhere around the Renaissance and then the Enlightenment Era. As people grow more accustomed to trusting science and their own intellect they put less stock in knowledge gained in faith. But I'd like to point out that the Church of Jesus Christ is not fading in this highly digital world. No, it's thriving. Some of the digitally related parts of this are the digital missionaries, the I'm a Mormon videos, and the level that they reach for in being a presence online (tech stuff, twitter, various YouTube channels, and other online resources). The leaders of our Church know what's going on in the world. They're digitally literate (despite how old they are).
• I read a lot of posts, all the recommended read/watch before coming to class stuff that I can think of, and I commented on a goodly number of posts and discussions. I also read several fiction books that people have related to digital culture such as the Hunger Games trilogy and the Ender's Game books.

Collaboration

• I was part of the Chaotic Connections book project, the collaborative novel. Heather Anderson, Jason Hamilton, Christina Holt, Hilary Ulmer, and Ashley Barnes also worked on this project. I helped develop the original ideas, and developed the character Micro. I created a Twitter account for him (and a Facebook account too, though I took that down fairly soon afterward, there was something unsettling about having more than one Facebook account). I also looked for people to contribute and recruited some people from Professor Horrock's class.
• I presented a summary about what I know about fan culture to the class. I also commented on people's posts on the Google+ stream.

Contribution from Others

• I found Sarah Talley's blog very interesting (when she posted), largely because I'm also an introverted person.
•  I also enjoyed Jalena's blog, since she talked about a lot of topics that interest me, and she said it in interesting ways (copyright, remix, family, etc.).
•  In my group, I found Heather's drive to get things done quite helpful, and it was fun to talk to Hilary and Christina (and talking to them almost made up for the fact that I hate working in groups and knowing that I have to talk about groupwork in class every day made me constantly dread coming to class).

Digital Literacy

I'd always considered myself pretty digitally literate. I already spent most of my life online. But, I did realize during this semester that I tend to assume that I know everything I need to know about a site just at first glance, or that I have all of the online tools I need. As it turns out, there are quite a few tools left for me to finish learning.

•  I got a diigo account, though I'd never thought I needed more than a vague memory of a site to help me find my way back. It proved useful in researching for a term paper, and finding (at least one) blog post I wanted to get back to, and as a fun nice place to put intriguing information and favourite quotes.
• I learned how to use Prezi, which I had previously thought was just a more complicated powerpoint tool and therefore probably not worth learning to use. But it just seemed like the appropriate way to show a presentation on fan culture. Since it changed since I finished making that, I've yet to fully figure out how to use it all over again.
• I'm still learning aspects of how to best consume, connect, and create well. I'm pretty good at consuming stuff online, I read a lot, and I'm on YouTube a lot.  I just need to learn to manage that time better, and to consume a higher proportion of useful and intelligent articles. I have some connections (usually through Facebook or Skype, and mostly just with close friends and family). I also have made some loose connections to other fans online. I create creative things online just fine. I still need to practice contributing to the serious discussions of stuff.