Consume, Create, Connect: A Midterm Reflection

CONSUME: I feel as if most of my time was spent here. I mean we attended lectures, But I think that’s supposed to be the way it is. Think about how much information the average student gets at BYU, and how much information they actually put out. I feel as long as our minds are constantly going through that healthy process of sifting through ideas, the consumption of knowledge is a good thing.

-Browsing Blogs: I’m an illustration major, and one of my favorite past times already is checking out the french illustration blogs, where young artists are putting out some incredible stuff. However, my knowledge of non-art blogs is significantly smaller, and having teachers, classmates, and diigo to help us find some of those was really neat. Some of my favorites since this class started: 

http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/ - good for catching up with the US’s economy.

http://journal.davidbyrne.com/ - Talking Head singer David Byrne’s travel blog. Extremely cool and just really neat posts.
http://digitalcivilization.blogspot.com - I hate to sound like a sycophant, but this truly was a great source for our themes.

And many more.

-Google Reader: The fact that my whole class was automatically put under a folder without me having to organize things was awesome. Learning how to use this and to look up key topics quickly with the search bar has been enlightening.

-Printmaking: I especially connected to the historical content about Martin Luther. He was an inspiring leader and such a voice of reason in a time of so much religious oppression. It also helps that I’m learning all about printmaking right now, so I had a great time being very involved in this process and posting about it.

CREATE: To create is my purpose, my passion. I love the power of creating visual imagery more than anything else, and I have been putting these creations on my illustration blog for sometime already, so there was definitely some things I had background on already. However, this class had me look at different ways of creating meaningful media and blog posts.

-Embedding videos: I didn’t know how to do this before, so having a class where I wanted to make my assignments more interesting necessitated that I look it up and know how to do this once and for all.

-Garage Band: With my new mac, I know there are many tools and systems that if I simply was acquainted with, I could try some cool things. David Potter was one of my partners for the group activities, and he taught me how to use Apple’s Garage Band audio recording system. I successfully learned how to create track and to use the instruments on garage band! It was pretty streamlined and simple, but I wouldn’t have taken the time to learn it without this tutorial!

-Also, I have created and scanned in some of my own illustration work to show students and have created topics relevant to them.

CONNECT:

-Posting: The largest part of my time was spent consuming and creating, but only because those steps were necessary to get a good blog entry out there. I tend to like looser blog posts, than ones that stick firmly with the subject, so I’m glad that Dr. Zappala and Dr. Burton encouraged this. I would attend lectures, write notes, and brainstorm ideas by looking through our class websites and looking through some of the blogs I knew of. I always decided on a post that I had very real interest. For example, I am taking an intaglio printmaking class, so I am creating

-Diigo: I know this part of the learning might seem to fit under connect, but I feel as if this is a good create system for me. I can create these links and put my own systems. I have added a few of these links relating to our class and just for the heck of it as well. I will even continue to use Diigo for my own personal use after this class. 

-Comments: I received some good comments and followed up with them in conversation, which helped me feel as if I was integrating myself more into the digital blogging world, and understanding the very real connections and growth of knowledge that can happen here. Students have been making some great comments, recommending sites or prompting new ideas for me.

I know this isn’t part of the prompt, but I’d like to think about my future expectations for the class. I feel like this first section of the class was a bit of testing the water. The class expectations were defined in some ways, but in some ways looser, so I think this time around I will have a little bit more of an idea of what I should be looking for and boomarking to, posting about, etc. I really do believe that I can incorporate my life more often and make this blog entry more of a few times a week thing rather than just every time the assignment is due.I am taking a creative writing class, so I plan to post some of my poems on this blog, and I have learned how to write more effectively in that class, and hope to carry it on to Tame Sequels!