Final Reflections

Self-directed Learning / Personal Blog Posts
I feel like I have always been pretty hip on digital culture. This course helped solidify my knowledge and helped me to see everything I know. I feel like blogs and G+ posts were not used as much in the second half of the class as they were in the beginning. However, I am always reading up on Cnet, Android Central, and watching for new interesting topics. I also always read up on lecture topics after class. I think that this furthering of my knowledge really helped my husband and I connect more on his techie level because he is much more hip than I am. The documented self directed learning I have done can be view in my blog archive to the left and G+ posts can be seen on my profile stream.

Collaboration
I acted as the "group leader" of sorts. I handled all of the management and coordinating. I also did the most of putting together the blog. I contributed to the planning of the project and the blog. I acted as a consultant to other groups for the English Society being an outlet. I feel like I was a vital part of the class contributing opinion and most importantly knowledge and experience.


Others’ assistance
I have mentioned how Katie and Greg have been inspirational, informational, etc in the past. I also have to add that I have really gained respect for Casey. I feel like he has taught me a lot in many ways and most importantly contributed in my gaining of more respect for video games in general. I also feel like Curtis has been a vital part of helping to teach copy right. The rest of my group was also very helpful in learning the same material that I was studying at the same time. I feel like everyone in the class had something "assisting" to say at some point as well though.

Digital Literacy
I fee like I have always been pretty digitally literate. More this semester I feel I have become aware and confident of my skills. I have tried to be more conscious of my consuming in making sure I use digital media for positive things. I have tried to follow the news and new happenings more. I have also started using e-books and audio book recently which is something i have been pretty anti in the past. I have become digitally literate in creating with my blog, status posts, etc. I also have downloaded several photography apps and started becoming more of a cell phone photographer. Connecting has always been a huge part of my life. This is the main way I keep in touch with my family and friend not around here. I also have helped connect with my sister as she is looking for a college. I have also taken Facebook, Instagram, etc more seriously rather than wastes of time. I also follow many blogs and I feel like that connects me with the blogging community that makes me feel connected to that little family.

I feel like this was a good semester. There are a lot of things that I would change, but I am glad I took the class-- I suppose. 

Digital Culture Questions.

1) According to The Break Up 2.0, how relationships are effected by new media is:

• negatively because boys seem to be too much of pansies to break up in person
• undetermined because there is no consensus or standardization of new media manners
• positively because now girls can not only stalk  their boyfriends easier, they can also talk to the 24/7 now as well. 

• Find answer here

2) E-books have increased the purchase of print books.

• True
• False

• Find answer here

3) According to Ayesha Dawood, why does "the Internet [have] the potential to make us lose our inhibitions":

• We become less restrained by norms and conventions that then allows us to indulge in conduct that we would ordinarily not feel comfortable in.
• Anon makes us.
• We have no inhibitions 

• Find answer here

4) While most professionals are formally educated in a college setting, the self-taught enthusiast can provide equally comparable experience and expertise and will begin to flood the job market thanks to our new digital culture and tools at our disposal. 

• Find opinion here

5) While completely withdrawing from the media and technology of our society is more harmful than positive, a media diet providing balance and moderation in all things can help to keep our digital culture from over running our lives. 

• Find Jalena's opinion here

Why this blog is lonely.

Our group has finally made progress
and we are working and producing
away!



Thus, this blog is lonely and
does not get posted on very often.

For current work and happenings
please see:

http://themonstermashup.blogspot.com/

Our Monster Mess

Dr Burton asked for us to reflect on Frankenstein.

I see the connection between Frankenstein and remix
as very very clear.

when the discussion of choosing something
that has been
less remixed 
to bring emphasis to the remixing
was discussed

i see this as very possible

but i think our holding to Frankenstein
as stronger

because of how out of control
Frankenstein has gotten

you have your tons of different types of remixes
some good and adding to the community
some bad that we could do without

you also have how
the monster of Frankenstein
in the plot line
line up so nicely 
with what we are trying to push with remix

there is the good and the bad
with the monster
and with remix

and the monster evolves
and remix evolves

really it is coincidental
and lucky
because we never planned this

we picked Frankenstein
on happen chance

and it all worked out

like this is all working out

despite all the problems

Semester Reflections

I cant believe this semester is almost over
in fact I am rather sad
but only for this class.
my other classes can come to a screeching end

I suppose why i am so sad this class is almost over
is because i feel like our group hasnt done anything.
it is hard because i have been encouraged to just start doing something
anything
just to get other people on board
but every time i try this i feel like there is no interest
and perhaps i am just frustrated
because i just feel at loss and like all i have been doing is complaining.
but i dont know what else to do...
*sigh*

for my individually assigned nonfiction book
i read The Breakup 2.0
which i was rather disappointed in, however
i have found the idea of the internet and new media
being unable to be regulated and standardized
that the author concluded upon
a huge and important thing
that i now try to relate into everything
when i think about new media

my literary work(s)
Red Badge of Courage and Ethan Frome
both helped me see insight into
the power and wildness of the technology
as well as the downsides

this is one thing that i wish i would have perhaps
looked more into because it has been a theme that
i have drawn upon in every post
however, i didnt see it or realize until now

i just love this empowering tool we have
and i think people need to grasp it.
and people often see it as a bad thing

as for my self directed learning
i have tried to be more open in learning of course
having taken a Dr B course before
i think i have integrated this into my life
through habit and through inspiration.
i wish that Dr B's Brown Bag from beginning of the year
had been recorded and broadcast

but specifically
i have always been kind of anti video games
my husband being HUGE into them
i have tried to be more open and learn from him

i have also tried to integrate different social medias
that i havent already been using
and be more open to using them in productive ways

as for the influence and role of other students in my learning process
there are a few students that have really inspired me
i would love to learn more about graphic design
also photography
both just from students' examples

also i think connecting and sharing on g+
things that students have shared has been helpful

as for intriguing concepts
the idea of the long tail is so interesting
of course anything in education
remix is interesting of course...

i would like to learn more about

photography and photoshop

the effects of technology on people

yes.
i feel like it has been a good semester
just need to find a plan

further projection

after sleeping on it several nights
dreaming about it
etc

this is the stand i would like to take with a remix project:

Without remixed projects of literary classics, our digital society, that is growing away from the time old tradition of reading, faces the chance of losing the value and worth of literary classics in our new culture of computer based interactions and technology. However, by the creation and lasting impression of remixed literary classics, the second life and existence of masterpieces in these new remixes will bring further importance and renewed interest to the great works of our time and society. 

with that stand,
i hope to create, as stated before,
interesting remixes of classic work(s)

my thought process is that if one
reads or sees one of our remixes

this will harbor more interest in the original work
furthering the reader to want to explore the original classic
to better understand the remix project

i also found a great article about using remix in the classroom
which i think we can draw off of
for the further importance of remix
in understanding literary work

Remixing Old and New Literacies = Motivated Students by Jesse S. Gainer and Diane Lapp 
(you will have to authenticate through BYU)

there has been some discussion of using Romeo and Juliet

if we take the Shakespeare route
there are a few advantages

1) Shakespeare is highly globally known and respected
2) there is a lot of traffic from students studying shakespeare
3) there is already a lot of initiative and others interested in remixing shakespeare
4) we could possibly make the argument that shakespeare was never meant to be read anyways

or we could possibly remix several classics in several ways

drawing from the Center for Social Media nine common types of re-appropriation practices
types of remixes we could do:

• minecraft/ machinima as proposed by Gwen
• comics
• some sort of diary
• products based off of the classic (how cool would it be to make a product line based on classics)
• poetry
• songs
• recreation with the text (black out poetry, cut and pasting)
• art
• memes
• songs
• "fan fiction" meaning recreation of the plot

I think you get the idea. 

but i was really unsure for a while of what direction i wanted to take

but now i feel confident

and excited!!

digital badge of courage

i should have posted my expanded thoughts on
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephan Crane sooner

because my relation of it to digital culture keeps growing.

and now i feel like i want to move on past this onto other things

to begin the expansion. or explanation. (more cause i am ready to move past this unfortunately)

in The Red Badge of Courage (to be referred as RBOC here out)
there is this theme of war being glorified
Henry wants to go to war because he has this romantic ideal
of the war being  this great glorified thing

i think we have much of this same thing with video games
i know my husband wants to be a sniper.
and would probably enroll if i would agree
video games give their players this false sense of how war actually is
which cause people to enroll without realizing what they are going into

As a RBOC can be seen as a naturalist text
there is a theme of man being at conflict with nature

It has been a couple weeks since i read this
so i refreshed on sparknotes.
they explained this theme of man vs nature best i think:

"Henry’s realization that the natural world spins on regardless of the manner in which men live and die is perhaps the most difficult lesson that Henry learns as a soldier. It disabuses him of his naïve, inexperienced beliefs regarding courage and manhood. Shortly after his encounter with the squirrel in the woods, Henry stumbles upon a dead soldier, whose rotting body serves as a powerful reminder of the universe’s indifference to human life. As the drama of the war rages on around him, Henry continues to occupy his mind with questions concerning the nature of courage and honor and the possibilities of gaining glory. Death, he assumes, would stop this drama cold. Yet, when he encounters the corpse, he finds that death is nothing more than an integral and unremarkable part of nature. As he reflects at the end of the novel: “He had been to touch the great death, and found that, after all, it was but the great death.” Together, Henry’s encounters with the squirrel and the corpse form one of the most important passages in the novel, for it is here that Crane establishes the formidable opposing forces in Henry’s mind: the vain belief that human life deserves such distinctions as courage and honor, and the stark realization that, regardless of such distinctions, all human life meets the same end."

I think we often feel this way about internet, computers, etc
in the sense that we dont want the "bad," or the privacy crossing or any other negative thing
to continue and be the truth
we expect and hope for technology to change for us
when all reality it doesnt stop, it doesnt change, it keeps on keepin on
it all ends up the same in the end

depending on how you look at the novel,
Henry has a huge transformation of understanding war
he goes from this romantic ideal of wanting to go to war to be "cool"
to the stark realization of death no matter what and more understanding of war

with this I think a transition in the thought about our digital culture is coming
there are a lot of people who see this integrated technology as something "bad"
when in all reality it really is a great thing (kinda the inverse of Henry's experience)

this connection between RBOC and digital culture is kinda a hopeful one
in the sense that i hope people come to a good realization
and understanding of technology and such

with this same idea of Henry's thoughts and ideals transforming
there is a huge focus of his lack of understanding
which draws in the idea of man vs nature above

he has this lack of understanding about death, war, etc
which is a focus in the novel and one that we see change

this reminded me of beta publishing.
this idea of a focus on perhaps a lack of understanding per se
or more a lack of perfection

RBOC is also seen as a hugely influential war novel and transitory piece

i think this can just be tied to the idea
that what we have going on now is a transition
we are in a weird spot of not knowing how digital culture is going to play out
and ultimately replace the traditional
and everything that is happening now is going to influential to the future.

lastly, there is a interesting fact about RBOC
that Stephen Crane never actually went to war
yet he wrote this great and hugely influential novel
that has been accurately described as the most realistic

this brings up an interesting topic in digital culture
of not having to actually experience an event
yet still being able to experience it
are we really actually being able to experience it?

it is strange because we have Stephen Crane who becomes
a sort of expert and veteran of war yet he never went

and we can do the same thing through the internet

yet now i feel that there is more importance of actually experiencing things
because everyone can find out about it on the internet

which makes you wonder if had Crane published now
would the novel hold the same merit?

just some thoughts