Reflective Blog Post

            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.