The End is Just the Start of a New Beginning

So I am going to frank. The whole reason that I started this blog was because it was required for my class. Its pretty simple. But now the class has come to an end and I am really going to miss all of it. I wouldn't say that I have fallen in love with blogging and I think that I would classify myself more as a person who likes to listen to conversations rather than a person who initiates them or plays a major role in them, but I will say that I have really enjoyed the things that I have learned because of my class and maintaining a blog.

#1- The process is just as important as the final product. I always bought into the dogma that the final result of something carried the most benefit. Now I am glad to say I have realized that the process that we take to reach a goal, whether that goal is a school report or some other object, is just as helpful to people as the goal itself. I am not talking about the intrinsic benefit that comes to a person as they learn but I am saying that as we include more people in the process leading up to a goal the outcome is better and those people also benefit.

#2- A man is not an island. This is not necessarily a new view of mine but merely an altered one. The ability to connect with people with new digital tools almost limitless. I think that Kristen taught showed me possibilities the best with her research in India.

#3- Its not about what you know. Its about who you know, what they know, what you know that they don't know and how you both can teach each other what you both don't know. Knowing something is only meaningful if you share it with those around you and don't worry if yo do not know something because you probably know someone that knows tons about that one thing that you are trying to figure out. Get connected and learn.

Just to wrap up I want to say that my Digital Civilization class has been amazing. I have learned more in this class that I can readily apply to my life than any other class I have ever taken. Here is a list of the digital tools that I learned how to use that I will continue using:

-Google Reader

-Skype

-Wigits on Blogs

-Use Google Sites

-Alternate Search Engines

-Spreeder

-How to embed Video

-How to write a blog

-Prezi

-Photo Editing

And the list continues. So in the words my friend:

To infinity and beyond!

Song of the Week

Blog Post Nominations

Historical Content http://heartofapaladin.blogspot.com/2010/10/lost-generation.html
   - Kristi does a great job of summing up some of the ideas about Modernism. Quick to the point and uses good examples and ties in different aspects of the period together.







Self Directed Learning http://technologyinexile.blogspot.com/2010/11/to-establish-rapport.html
   - I really like this post from Kristen. I was unsure of what to categorize it under but I decided on self-directed learning because it shows how she learns something about interacting with people and then applies it to her research. She took advice from Jay about her interview questions and then incorporated it into her discussion with Norbu. Shows how she uses connection with others online to learn.





Digital Concepts http://jeffreywhitlock.blogspot.com/2010/11/web-20-networking-effect.html

   - Jeff shows a great understanding of digital culture in this post when he talks about the network effect. I also really like how he is able to show how digital culture affects his own personal life. The examples he uses from his own life make it easier for me to understand the concepts and see how they are applied.

Citizen Journalism: By the People for the People

I want to put up some quick thoughts about journalism. The internet is an amazing thing and it is revolutionizing nearly every aspect of our world. Journalism is definitely at the center of that revolution and over the past years there have been considerable growing pains associated with all of it. Tradition media and news sources have been rocked by all of these changes. I am going to discuss just one of the new frontiers that has emerged because of the new technology, citizen journalism.

The basis for citizen journalism is that it is news created by the normal citizens. People that are not trained professionally in journalism but still make efforts to report on events in their area or give opinion on what is happening in their nation. This has appeared as an economical way of presenting news especially on a local level. Since many news corporations are feeling the money pinch(newspapers taking the major hit) that has come with free media available online, they have cut news that does not appeal to a wide audience. Essentially they are eliminating unprofitable news in hopes of staying alive and in the black. So citizen journalism as stepped in to fill these gaps, or at least says that is doing that.

Citizen are able to become journalists themselves because the amount and effort required to be published has be reduced to almost zero by the internet and other tools. Virtually everyone as a digital camera of some sort, whether on their cell phone or in their purse. So when news 'breaks' they can just take a picture and upload it instantly to the internet. So when a mysterious missile appears in the sky off of the California coast, why wait for the mainstream media to tell you what it is? Just snap a photo and put your own conspiracy theories online via Twitter.

The digital tools that make this possible are endless.
-Facebook-
-Twitter-
-Blogs-
-Comments-(when you comment on anything online you participate in journalism)

So at the core of citizen journalism is the conversation that goes on about the current topics. Instead of listening to everything that someone tells you is important you decide what is and then write about it. It is the dream come true of every America. We have long since thought that we control our own destinies, now we even control the media because we are the media. Its perfect, right? Maybe, maybe not.

There are definitely things that are lost without professional journalism. Citizens just do not have the same resources that a professional journalist would have. A citizen based news group cannot travel to other countries and cover news there and I don't think that we can replicate the quality of news that professionals produce. At the same time I think that professionals often overlook opinions of the people and focus too much on making money. There definitely needs to be a healthy balance between the two. It is just going to take some time to get there.

More opinion:
Leaning more in favor of citizen journalism
Leaning more in favor of professional journalism

Media Influence, The Fourth Branch of Government

The mass media's influence on America is huge. We live through media in one shape or another. We grow up on it and whether we trust it or not we are greatly affected by what is said in the media. From the time we are little the media that we watch colors our lives. I grew up on Disney movies and anything that Harrison Ford played in; I listened to NPR on the weekends with my dad and to talk radio in the mornings on the way to school with my mom. I had most songs by Cat Stevens, The Beatles, The Eagles, Bob Dylan, James Taylor and John Denver memorized by the time I was ten and I enjoyed reading Calvin and Hobbes comics. My opinions were greatly shaped by the media I took in and by the media I continue to ingest. Pandora Radio and Google News feeds direct much of my media consumption today.

I want to take a step back and make some brief observations on how media affects politics. I would say that media is the unofficial fourth branch of government. There are a branch of government in that they provide a huge check on what the government does. They do not check the other branches directly but they scrutinize almost everything that the government does and then report that to the people. Government officials are always worried about what their 'public image' is and many of their actions are dictated by how the media will interpret those actions to the public. Will it help them win approval and reelection? Or will is reveal all of the scandals they have been involved with over the years (Bill Clinton?).

This can be a too-edged sword. It can keep government official accountable for what they do but it can also cause them to become so engrossed in what their image is that they fail to do their real job or to keep the nation's best interests at the fore front of their minds. They are under a huge microscope 24/7. I do not envy them in the least.

The media also has great influence on the government because it has a great influence on what the public is interested in. Lets take the legal drinking age in the states. Did you know that every individual state has the right to establish its own legal drinking age? Then why is it that all of the states have uniformly adopted a minimum drinking age of 21? Long story short they were many studies in the late '70s and early '80s that showed an increase in auto accidents in states with lower drinking ages. Much of the public became interested in establishing a uniform drinking age in order to cut back on alcohol related accidents. The media reflected this sentiment and the government to notice. They passed the Uniform Drinking Age Act that restricted federal funds to states that had a minimum drinking age lower that 21. They couldn't actually mandate a uniform drinking age but they felt the pressure from the media and did the only thing they could do, they withheld money from the states that would not conform. And you all know that it worked.

This aspect of the media can also be good and bad. It can help focus the people on the issues that are most important but it can also distract people from the actual important issues. I would consider media that follows celebrities to be a huge distraction.

Some people say that mass media is all really just a conspiracy and that it is run by the 'man' but I would say that media, when used correctly, is a huge benefit to our society. It is up to us to decide what we will watch.

Medical Advances

So the past century has been characterized by huge advances i technology in every imaginable field. I would like to take a different approach to the discussion of how technology has affected our society. I am going to share my own story and how medical technology has affected me personally.

So the Sunday before I was going to start my sophomore year in high school I got out of the shower and I passed out on the bathroom floor. I had passed out before but this time was very unexpected. My mom freaked out when my dad found me on the bathroom floor. I didn't really understand what was going on and the only thing that I was really focused on was the growing pain in my neck and head from colliding with the wall. My mom took the initiative to take me to the hospital which I did not think was necessary but ended up being the right decision.

At the hospital they ran various tests and the one that ended up being the most intriguing was the EKG. The test turned up an irregular electrical pathway in my heart, a condition called Wolff-Parkinson-White. I will not go into to much detail but this visual represents something of what the doctor would have seen when he looked at my EKG in the hospital.

So the next year of my life was spent trying to figure out how serious my condition is. The effects of the disorder differ greatly between people and the doctors were (and still are) unsure if my passing out in the bathroom was related to this condition. I spent a couple days wearing around a portable heart monitor called a Holter monitor to monitor my heart over the course of a full day. (example on left) The information that they received from these tests was apparently not enough to make any final decisions about what they should do with me so we scheduled heart catheter surgery for that March and got ready for that.

So a couple days before surgery I went to the hospital and they ran more test one of which was the echocardiogram which I thought was really interesting and fun, mostly because I could see my heart in live action on the screen. I think that most people are familiar with ultrasounds that are performed on pregnant woman so that they can see if the baby is healthy. An echocariogram uses the same technology to map out the heart. It was really sweet.

The plan for the surgery was then set that they would go up through the veins in my legs using a catheter. They would then induce my heart into an irregular rhythm and then see if they could ablate the region of my heart that is responsible for my problem to remove the irregular beat.

The day of surgery came and I was at the hospital for over 24 hours but I was able to go home early the next morning. (Pretty incredible for having heart surgery!) I was in surgery for about 8-10 hours and the medication they gave me kept me out of commission for about a week. They were not able to solve my irregular heart beat but they did found out that I am low risk for any further problems and that I can live my life normally. I share my story because it highlights many of the medical advances that affect everyone's daily lives. How many people do you know that have had some form of catheter surgery? I bet you know someone who is a ultrasound technician. More importantly, do you know someone whose life was saved because of technologies similar to these ones?

Reflection #2

Historical Content:
- I have made improvements on researching the historical topics and time periods that we are studying. I am incorporating more informations from the periods and it has helped me understand better our discussions in class. (ex1, ex2)
- I still need to improve on reading material that is not on the internet. I have been reading A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and I can see many correlations in that book to social issues we discuss in our class but I need to bring in more printed information.

Computing and Digital Culture:
- I understand all of the computing concepts that we have gone over. The only one that I did not fully understand was the difference between problems that are computable and those that are not but after Dr. Zappala's explanation in class I was able to grasp the concept much better.
- I am using lots of interesting digital tools that are helping me but I need to do a better job at reporting them. I have reported a few but not all of the ones that I am using. (ex) I have learned to use Google Reader, widgets on my blog, search engines other than Google, and various other ones.

Self Directed Learning:
- I think this is the area that I have improved the most on over the past months. I have really improved my reading and scanning skills so that I can process information faster. I also have made more effort to follow what other people are looking at online (mostly through Diigo) which has helped me find meaningful information faster without having to sift through a ton of material. I have found especially helpful Connexions and other similar education websites.
- I have also learned much more by asking people outside of class about the historical topics we cover. I am able to accomplish much of this through Facebook and email.