Hindsight- 20/20 Foresight ?

September 1, 1939- If you'd asked an American high school student what was going on, they would have probably responded that it was an average day for them. But today a high school student can tell you that this day was the day Germany invaded Poland, thus starting World War Two.

And October 1. 1949? The day Mao declared the formal establishment of the People's Republic of China . It may not have seemed significant then, but now we look back and see how it changed everything.

It's the same thing with technology. When the first cell phone came out in 1973, it was laughed at. Who would want to carry about that thing, when there are payphones and work phones and even your home phone. Today we are glued to our cell phone, many have discontinued their home phones, and think it is the greatest thing since the tractor. We look back now and say "Duh! How could you not see that the cell phone would be life-changing?!" But they didn't know.

Just like we don't know today how this digital revolution is going to end. Is the digital language going to replace the formal written language? Are some tools going to die out? Could Facebook possibly stop being popular at some point? What tools are going to replace the old ones?

What of all of it is going to matter twenty years from now?

I don't know the answer to that yet, but I know that there is a Digital Revolution and Reformation sweeping the world. The likes of which we have never seen before. I'm still trying to figure out what changes that will bring to me.

The Click Heard Around the World

We all have our favorite gadgets and inventions- like sliced bread (which isn't as good as homemade, but to each his own), the toaster (I'm not sure why I'm on a bread train of thought), the iPod, cell phone, laptop, etc, etc. I think you get the point.

Many technological advances have catapulted our world into a digital era full of immediate communication. We got tired of waiting for a reply by handwritten mail (which, if you didn't know, is the coolest thing still) or, heaven forbid, we needed to walk across town to ask someone a question. The radio, television, the telephone, and the computer are all ways we've created to obtain information quickly and effectively. But there was one that seemed to start it all.

The telegraph.

Invented by Samuel Morse (yes, that Morse) in the 1830's, it predates the telephone, radio, and many other early technologies. Not to be confused with Guglielmo Marconi's invention of the radio telegraph system. Here's a prezi with more details about the development of the telegraph.

Samuel Morse on Prezi

To me, the telegraph represents the desire we had to start connecting to each other. It started the ball rolling, or the clicking started.

Glogging...?!

So I've just gotten semi-adjusted to blogging. Now there is glogging. That's right. Their slogan? "Why blog when you can glog?" Glogger: Poster Yourself.

Basically, glogging is creating "posters" with images, sounds, text, and videos to express yourself. A more visual way to blog I guess. It's kinda fun. Here's one I created.



Here's a screencast walking you through some of the designing features.

http://www.screencast.com/t/DmhV8YlOvf

Reflections (Take Two)

Coupled with the two midterms of the Digital Civ class, we are asked to post a reflective blog post as a self-evaluation of how we are doing in the course. My last reflective post has a great list of things I had learned up to that point and many of the points are still true, even more so as I've expanded further.

I need to take into consideration several things as I reflect including the historical content of the class, the computing concepts, the digital literacy labs, and self-directed learning through consuming, creating, and connecting. The course learning outcomes are decribed here on canvas. I am going to separate the material by strengths and weaknesses with links to examples from my blog.

Strengths:

• Since I love history, that section of the class has been fun and relatively easy for me. I have worked to expand my knowledge from what previous knowledge I had of these historical events and people by researching ideas or aspects of the time that I knew little about or what would hace normally ignored. For example 1 2 3
• I feel that I am continuing to make quality connections between the histoy and digital concepts as well as outside of class. Examples 1 2 3
• I am doing well with keeping my posts short, but also more of a synthesis than a re-stating. Examples 1 2
• Sifting through piles of information has become second nature to me and I find myself comfortable finding the relevant and interesting ideas and information.
• I am so excited to share the new tools and resources that I am finding that I told my hairdresser the other day, my employer, someone I met on the bus, and the kid who sat at my table in the library to name a few. It's so cool I can't keep it to myself!
• Probably the one thing I am most excited about as far as my blog goes is that I've found a good balance that is "me" with my blog. I can post about the Digital Civ class history and computer concepts, but I can also post samples of my writing, express frustration, talk about other classes, play my music, and share fun news. I feel more comfortable and less stiff with the format now.

Weaknesses:

• I need to improve the amount of media that I am including in my blog and make sure that most posts have a link for more information.
• I need to increase my efforts in the area of computer and digital concepts. While I am learning at an unprecedented rate in those areas, my posting on those has been dreadfully lacking.
• In some areas I still need to go deeper and wider on a subject to really find something that engages me completely. I need to look for other ways in the class to challenge myself.

Overall, I feel excited and challenged by this class, always wanting to learn more and often running out of time to do so. I have found many tools and resources that I plan on using after this class and semster and which have changed the way I research and study. I find myself continually evaluating my learning algorithisms and making adjustment. Now I just need to push harder, climb higher, and discover more!

Free Education...just a glimpse

So I've mentioned before that I write for the Insight Magazine for the BYU Honors Program. This year I've been working on several articles including one one free education. I couldn't resist sharing a small bit of the research I've done for the article with you all. Hope you enjoy it.

193 Opencourseware Consortium Members including John Hopkins, MIT, Notre Dame, University of California-Irvine and universities all around the world with material available in 10 languages.

44 Webcast classes available online for free with more being added every semester at Webcast Berkley.

16 full languages courses and Quick Phrases and Words in 36 other languages at BBC Languages.

iTunes-U has over 350,000 free lectures, texts, and videos from universities available.

I've been a bit hard on digital technology in the past, but free education goes a long way to smooth over differences I have with the internet.

Man in Space

I have long been fascinated by the space race and rockets. Apollo 13 and October Sky always pull me in. So just for fun, Disney had a little show about Man in Space. I was able to find it on Teacher Tube and YouTube, but the latter are easier to post. Here are the first two and you can go search out the rest.






Enjoy!

Google In General

Can I just say that I love Google? That might come back to bite me when a new and un-thought of system as of yet develops and flips Google, but I think that is a bit in the future still. So I will enjoy Google for now.

Beyond the general search ability, email, and image searching, I have discovered a multitude of tools that I actually use consistently, for my daily life and other classes. Plus a couple that are just fun and kooky. Yes, kooky.

Google Documents: I started using Google Docs for my magazine class to save articles so I could edit and work on them on any computer, anywhere. Then, in my church ward, my bishopric uses Google Docs to put our Sunday program together, so the music can be put in by the music committee, the talks by the conducting person, and any announcements from various organizations and committees in the ward. Beyond just word-type documents, you can also do spreadsheets and to-do lists, powerpoints and budgets. Never. Ending. Possibilities.

Google Reader- At first this was just another way for me to keep track of classmates blogs, but then I discovered the other little secrets of Reader. Such as Notes, where you can place notes (similar to Evernote, but attached to everything else on Google!) and the Explore section. That section suggests items and sources you might like based on what else you have in your reader feed. It's almost like Google knows what I need. I'm trying not to get too emotionally attached.

Google Calendar- Though I lack the time to sit down and really put down everything in this tool, it's extremely useful to help coordinate schedules with family members, classmates, fellow employees, etc. Plus it will message you if you have a certain event or deadline coming up. Personal assistant? Yes, thank you.

I'm sure many of you are already on to more complex things, but for me it's the simple, but widely applicable tools that keep me coming back. I've explored and used several other Google tools including Sketchup in my book review project. Sites is another Google feature that I've found recently through class project formulation. I've been using GoogleTranslate for quite some time actually as I've worked on learning multiple languages. Also, Google Health is a feature that keeps your medical records online so you can readily access test results, medication, etc for yourself or someone you are caring for. Quite helpful.