Reflection

This six-week course has been intense, but exceptionally productive! I personally think that this extreme immersion has been a captivating experience. We have learned so much about so many tools and different strategies for becoming effective prosumers. There has not been a single class in this program that has added this much to our toolboxes.

During the first week, I was extremely nervous about starting a personal blog and sharing it with the world – I am now writing my 21^st blog post! The idea of putting something out there for others to evaluate is daunting, but fortunately, we have a supportive group in this class. I have been pleased with the overall feedback and everyone has been quite positive. This has helped squelch a lot of my previous trepidation.  Over the last six weeks, my nerves have settled and I feel a lot more comfortable writing and sharing online. It is a great feeling to know that I can jump out of my comfort zone and I have learned that experience can mend anxiety better than anything else can.

Spreading my wings in Twitter was an interesting experience, but I am still not certain that it is for me. For some reason, I feel a bit less comfortable sharing on Twitter than on other platforms. I believe that Twitter is a place where you really need to put in a lot to gain a lot – I am aware that I may be hindering plenty of benefits from this platform by being a less active user, but I just don’t feel completely prepared to share a lot at this time. I am working to change my attitude and I hope that I can eventually become more active.

The Digg RSS feed is one of the coolest tools I have used. It is a one-stop shop for viewing and reading all of my classmate’s blog posts, and I feel like I have gained more from this than anything else. It is wonderful to read about my classmate’s unique experience as we are all in the trenches learning about these tools at the same time. The act of reciprocity and collaboration in this class has really created the best moments over the last six weeks.

The Voice threads and Periscope were cool tools and seemed function a lot better than Skype. I have a feeling that I will be using these tools in the near future and I am excited about upcoming advancements in these web conferencing technologies as well.

Youtube and Reddit were two platforms that I had experience with, but this course really pushed me to interact more and learn more about the different intricate functionalities. It was an exciting experience to be able to build my own personal subreddit. I am now working on building my network and I hope that I can continue to build my personal community after this course ends. I had no idea that Reddit allowed users to add the wiki functionality, so this was a major breakthrough for me in this course as well. I am a huge proponent for wikis, and I am going to work harder to contribute to content in several areas that I am passionate about.

My favorite overall activity was the community project. The act of comparing and contrasting lurking and active participation in two online communities was fascinating. I truly enjoyed the freedom of being able to select subject areas that garnered my personal interest. It was neat to take a step back and create sort of an ethnography of these communities.

Overall, this is just a brief overview of the most memorable points from the last six weeks. I have gained an immense appreciation for the use of Web 2.0 tools for educational purposes. It is a lot to keep up with, especially since these technologies are changing so quickly, but that is what makes it all so exciting. It is incredibly important for people in our field to stay abreast of these new technologies and I feel like this course helped put us right on the frontier. I am interested in learning more about managing online identities within these various tools/platforms so I am looking forward to conducting some supplemental research in the near future. This six-week class has been absolutely fascinating! I hope to keep in touch with many of you and look forward to taking these new skills with me wherever I go.