Reflecting on a Semester of Digital Culture

Before this class, I thought that I already had a pretty good grasp on digital culture, but in reality, I had just barely been skimming the surface. I was already familiar with the basics like blogging from writing my own blog and managing one of BYUs blogs, and I thought that I was already pretty internet savvy, but there are so many resources, curation, and research methods that I had never even thought of Like using Twitter to research? That one kind of blew my mind a little big. I really just saw that as a place to say silly and witty things and hope for a few "favorites." But, then with the idea of using it as a tool of research and connecting with those outside of your circle I was able to contact the author of the book that I read for this class and get some information from him (I texted my mom right after he tweeted me cause I thought it was that cool...). 

I also found myself liking Google+ a lot more than I would. I had gotten a profile with them when it first came out really more out of curiosity than anything, and then got bored and deleted it, but now that I have been introduced to the communities on Google+ I think I may still hop on every once in a while after this class is over.

  

So I guess thinking about it, what amazes me most about digital culture is the way that people are connecting through it. I’m glad that I chose for my final topic to research something that is relevant to me (editing in the digital age), because it made me much more aware of what is going on in the editing world, what type of people are in this field, and how I can get more connected. In the beginning of the class, I was mostly feeling a little hopeless about what digital culture is doing to our society as I expressed in my blog post “Connecting or Disconnecting?” But, as I started to see the positives, the negatives seemed pretty outweighed. The opportunities for growth, creativity, and connection that the digital age has created are amazing. I especially started to feel more positive about the way things are headed with the class lecture/blog post "Collaborative Creative and Crowdsourcing."

I learned a lot from this class that is going to be very applicable to my future career, which is hopefully doing web based publishing and editing, but other than that I think I just have a better understanding of what is happening online and how I can be a part of it.