Self-directed Learning
Some Topics of Personal Blog Posts
Kinds of Interactions via Google+
d. Posting links to my blog with a question to get discussion going on Google+ and generate interest in the actual post (hoping people who saw it would want to read the full article).
Other Materials I’ve Looked at in My Self-directed Learning.
Others’ assistance
My Menagerie group—They helped me figure out
elements of digital culture and helped Menagerie become a reality (especially
Sarah Talley on the website design—I wouldn’t have gotten very far without you working
through stuff out too).
Tara—lots of posts, some of which caught my
interest, so I wanted to make my own posts (some of them I was actually
glad/interested in)
Rebecca—commented on several of my Google+ posts, which
encouraged me to continue posting on Google+.
Collaboration
My group’s project—I contributed by putting together some google docs, by starting menagerie and making menagerie websites, facilitating discussion during our planning meetings, and posting assignments so everyone could figure out what was up.
Other group’s projects—I commented on Digital Sweet
Home, Mormon Badges, and the LBP groups’ Google+ posts and also gave them
feedback on their ideas.
Digital literacy
Consume
At the outset of this class, I
thought that I was pretty good at consuming. I knew how to navigate Google and
the more closed searches in the library database systems. I would watch funny
videos on YouTube, informational talks on TED, and watch movies with my
roommates on Netflix. I used Google Reader as an aggregator and would check
product reviews online (usually starting on Amazon) before buying the product
(whether in-store or online). It was my mindset that the Internet was mostly
there for me to consume information from.
During this class, I learned that
consuming is just part of the use of the Internet. I learned to consume smart,
such as looking for curated lists that other people have made (people-sifted
lists, which can be much better than algorithm-created lists). I became aware
that just using Google may preclude me from finding the things I want to, so I
tried Bing and other search engines to try to get out of the Google algorithm.
I also looked to social sources to help find the kind of information or
services I was looking for online. Net
Smart reminded me that we need to be aware of what we’re paying attention
to, and how much time we’re spending on things that have little consequence.
Create
Before taking this class, I was vaguely
aware of the option to creating things and posting them online, but this really
didn’t seem like my kind of thing. I thought that people had to either be
fantastically talented or very conceited to post things online. I didn’t feel
like anything I would create would be valuable to complete strangers, and I
wasn’t sure I wanted to figure out how to get around copyright restrictions in
order to post something that had even remote ties to previously-copyrighted
things. I also didn’t want anyone to steal what I created and claim it as their
own.
Over the course of this course, I
rethought some of those approaches—stuff on the Internet doesn’t have to be as
polished as other formal published material. I learned that you have to just
get stuff out there and not worry too much about getting it exactly “right.” I
started to explore the Internet as an area of discovery by just getting your
ideas out there. I wrote blog posts, some of them without finished sentences,
just to see what it was like to publish something obviously unfinished. I got a
comment on an unfinished (but still published) blog post, and the person
reacted to my ideas, not to the incompleteness of the post. Other creations I
participated in were the Google+ posts, Menagerie, Making Menagerie, and a book
I’m going to eventually finish and sell on Amazon. I wanted to try out how hard
or easy it would be to create a book to sell in print and as an eBook—there
were some hitches along the way, and I’m still working on getting it actually
published, but it has been an interesting process. There are a lot of resources
out there for people who want to share their creative projects.
Connect
As wary as I was of posting my
creations online, I was much more afraid of posting information about myself
online, and even more of talking with anyone I didn’t know on the Internet. My
Facebook account was pretty locked down, and I rarely posted on it. I avoided
any site that said it was designed to help its users connect with other people,
be it dating sites, online forums, or “collaborative” endeavors (although,
after watching the TED talk about them, I liked doing the reCaptchas, and I
liked the possibilities that opened up with crowdsourcing indexing and family
history work).
I learned that, although it’s
important to be careful about some information you disclose online, putting
information about yourself in profiles and such gives you some credibility. The
ideas of reciprocity, social proof, and currency all gave me reasons to create
an online presence. If you show that you’re not afraid to show who you are, you
can connect with some pretty cool people that can help you with projects you’re
working on, and you can give them feedback and ideas to help them work on the
things they’re working on. If you follow someone’s blog or Google+, they may
reciprocate and follow you or direct people to you. The most eye-opening thing
I learned about connecting was how much it can help you create online interest
communities to address issues that you’re interested in. It hadn’t occurred to
me before that you can use the Internet to create friendships, not just keep in
touch with ones you met in person. And some digital things can help create
another dimension (ha,ha) with the relationships you already have—I can see my
friends’ recommendations for books on Goodreads, and they can see the
bookshelves I’ve created.
