Reflective Post

As I have been thinking about my experiences in this Digital Culture class and in my experiments in blogging, etc. I have realized how often I am lost. There are different kinds of lost that I'm talking about. One is similar to this blog post, where I get lost in my thoughts, and I forget what I am supposed to be focusing on. When I am lost in this way, I stumble on things that aren't necessarily what I was looking for, but they sometimes help me in creating new ideas, or tying together others.

On the other hand, I realized that I really do legitimately get lost in the digital world. I have no idea what I am doing, where I'm going, what I'm trying to accomplish. It is a vast sea of information that always changes, just like how Sam talks about in this blog post. This class introduced to me entirely new ways of learning, researching, connecting, and I had to start from scratch in learning to use them. I have never been so out of my element in a class in my student career here at BYU. Usually, my classes are like Dr. Burton's Spiral, (I feel like I mention this in every post!) and I can draw upon knowledge that I already had as a foundation for the new information that I am receiving.

I had to start from nothing in this class.

So, as I tried to learn the concepts for this class, I had to learn the basics of the digital world. To learn the correct way to do something, start at the basics, and then you will be able to find meaning in what you are learning. But I still felt like I couldn't ever grasp the concepts in ways that were expected or described in class. So I started avoiding it. I became an Edupunk in this class (a concept introduced to me by Derrick). But as Derrick talks about in his Edupunk success story and project, he gained his education while avoiding the things he was "supposed" to do.

My Edupunk/Digitical Culture success:

I am definitely not the greatest blogger to ever life, and I am still struggling to really understand why and how to use all of the different tools that are available for curating, connecting, researching, etc. but my success came because I now have the foundation to build on. I had to learn new way to think in order to complete this class, and now I have that skill to enhance the other skills that I already have. I have already started to incorporate this new type of thinking into other aspects of learning.

Now I just have to remember to not get used to it! As Sam mentions in his post mentioned above, the digital world is ever-changing. I have to get used to being shaken up. I have to get used to things changing. That is part of using the digital world. It is a new facet of humanity that I have learned about and become part of.

I have been remixed.