1)
Self-Directed Learning
While class time provided basic outlines of digital culture
elements, we only truly scraped the surface with many of these things. My first steps in my efforts of self-directed
learning were mostly based on the side effects of digital culture. Being advertising major, I feel my
communication classes have expose to me a lot of the good, but also a lot of
the negative elements of digital culture.
My first blog looked at the very nature of creativity and popularity on
the interweb (see http://www.attackofthemachines.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-catastrophy-of-youtube.html).
I realized that creativity and popularity could be best friends or worst
enemies online. This lead me even deeper
down the path of media side effects, looking at facebook depression (http://www.attackofthemachines.blogspot.com/2012/09/weve-all-got-plastic-surgery-in-digi.html),
and internet stalking (http://www.attackofthemachines.blogspot.com/2012/09/if-you-havent-done-this-go-ahead.html). Along the way, I read the book Niche Envy:
Marketing Discrimination in the Digital Age, that showed me how personalized
digital market could be a blessing or a heavy curse. I also studied heavily Theories of Human Communication by Stephen Littlejohn and Karen
Foss, a helpful book that discussed the many different theories of
communication embedded in digital culture.
After proposing and executing the media fast, I quickly realized digital
culture was more than just negative side effects (http://www.attackofthemachines.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-last-media-fast-i-will-ever-do.html). I turned instead, to the issue of copyright,
specifically looking at the works of Lawrence Lessig (a revolutionists in Remix
Culture). In an attempt to understand
how to complete our group flash animation, I spent around 20 hours a week
creating and coding the animation to work properly. If you’d truly like me to list all the
different tutorials and books I looked at for coding and animating I can, but
frankly I feel you’re not interested in looking at 200 sources on action script
and target objects. My learning with
copyright and Remix Culture helped me understand digital culture had a positive
and progress side.
2). Collaboration
Our project
took a bit to get it off its feet. I
work in groups a lot, but not with English majors. In advertising, everyone has their own role,
they know what it is, and they do it. In
English, everyone’s a good writer, everyone has good ideas, and no one thinks
alike. At first, I did everything I
could to contribute to the different ideas we came up with. I made the proposal video—minus the audio (http://www.attackofthemachines.blogspot.com/2012/10/proposal-remix-project.html)
and did a lot of the proposal document. When
our group failed to create a unified idea, I begin working on my own project
(at the suggest of you, Dr. Gideon, to split the group up). I’d never had a teacher suggest or even give
the option of splitting a group up (in advertising and the business world, this
creates all sorts of legal issues), but it did allow me to specify exactly what
I wanted to do for the project and get working on it without having to worry
about other group members. After creating
a prototype of the flash animation, the rest of the group got on board. As I mentioned, from then on I was spending
around 20 hours a week getting this flash animation working. More problems than I could have ever foreseen
arose, but in the end we managed to finish part 1. The actual animation I did completely by
myself (although the rest of the group help storyboard the animation and plan
how it would be executed).
As far
as other groups were concerned, we offered as a group a lot of assistance based
on copyright. In fact, the day you had
to leave for a funeral, we spend the entire time answering different groups
questions about copyright (most of the groups had projects dealing with
copyright and many of them didn’t know what that meant). I also did social proof on the LBP and CCC
groups (see http://www.attackofthemachines.blogspot.com/2012/10/die-sackboy.html
and http://www.attackofthemachines.blogspot.com/2012/10/ccc-evaluation.html).
I never
missed a single class period and made comments or ask questions when I felt
they personally applied. I also did the
media fast, which involved the entire class.
3) Other Assistance
I often
looked at Kasey Dean’s blog. I found his
optimism about gaming a fresh-breath from my own views and he pointed out many
important facts about gaming (see his entire blog, that’s what a large part of
it is about). I also looked at Tara Pina’s
blog, and Gwen Hammer’s blog. I
particularly found interest in the way that Gwen was able to compare Remix
Culture with so many different literature pieces (see http://hammergwendolyn326.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-horror-of-transformation-remix.html).
4) Digital
Literacy
More
than anything, this class has been not about learning, but about
experiencing. Truth be told, I’ve
already had plenty of classes on media, digital culture, theories of
communication, the importance and safety of blogs, social networking, twitter,
and klout. What I lacked was a class
that pushed me to actual experiment and experiences these things. I’ve been attempting to start a blog for over
a year. I just never had an idea of what
to blog about. Suddenly being forced to
blog made me quickly begin consuming other bloggers’ post to see what they
found was important. Still feeling quite
unsure, I threw myself into blogging.
Based on the connections I made with others, I began slowly tweeking
what I wrote in order to create a more effective blog. I experimented a lot (see http://www.attackofthemachines.blogspot.com/2012/10/why-gideon-told-me-were-all-going-to.html). But in experimented, I discovered so much
more about digital culture I’d never learned just by studying it. This same process was repeated every time I
begin something new within the class.
The project for example. I was
forced to consume other’s interactive media, to accept the pros and cons of
gamification. I then created my own
prototype, and connected with others in understanding how my experimenting was
affecting them and their environment.
