Time to get started again!

I haven't written anything on this blog in almost a year - but have thought about it a lot!  I've even downloaded an app for my iPad to blog with (although I am currently typing on my laptop instead).

So, today, while checking my email. I found a diigo message linking me to Dear Students: Don't Let College Unplug Your Future written by my teacher from last year's DigiCiv class.  As always, his blog was well written and greatly linked to other wonderful works online.

My guess is that other students from our class last year have continued to blog while they are learning.  One of the requirements of that class was that we had to keep a blog - partly about ourselves, and partly about whatever we were studying that week.  I had several favorites that I loved to read - way too many to list here - but I admit that I haven't read any for way too long.  How do you choose which of the gazillians of great blogs in my favorites to read??  It has been overwhelming!  And then, how do I choose which of the flurry of my ideas to write about???  Oh well, instead I will waste time looking at lolcats!

OK - I actually have been working on a couple things:

The End is Near!

As our semester draws to a close, so does my directed learning in this blog - from here on out, it will be just my meanderings through learning.  I am thrilled - as any student is - at the prospect of Christmas break; however, I will terribly miss our DigiCiv class.  I have grown comfortable with the course of study & the digital lessons.  I have learned to be amazed at the wondrous things my fellow students have taught me.  I will miss them & hope to see them in future classes, as well as around campus.

Finally!!! My nominations for Best Of...

... I was busy ... life is crazy ... um... OK, I was involved in other things and just didn't get to this yet!  BUT, I have the advantage of using some of the latest blog posts to choose from!


We were asked to cruise through our classmates' blogs and choose the best ones that exemplified the things we have learned this semester.  WOW!!  What a wonderful bunch of blogs I got to read!  And how difficult it has been to choose the best!  I must admit, that eventually, I simply stopped reading, because I had filled my categories, and simply didn't want to be any later in getting this particular blog post completed!  Besides, if I continued, I would be horribly pressed to choose from among the gazillions of wonderful, fantastic, and amazing posts that my fellow students have posted!


So, without further ado ...

Our DigiCiv Showcase event

Please come to the event of a lifetime - it will broaden your view of the digital world & wow you all evening!  Read more here about what we will showcase!

12/9/2010 7-9 pm at 3108 Jesse Knight Bldg, BYU


View DigiCiv Showcase event in a larger map


If, for some sad reason, you cannot attend, you can watch the event on Justin.tv/DigiCiv

Being Connected

When I went on the course calendar to find our required reading list, I discovered that our good professors had taken a much needed Thanksgiving break, just as we had - nothing yet listed.  So, I put "Being Connected" into a search box & found tons more articles, blog posts, and church listings than I expected.  While I read through them, I copied into a Word.doc my favorite bits and quotes from each web page - I finally quit after 4 hours, fuzzy eyes, lunch, snacks, and 16 pages of stuff!

It will be interesting to see what the Profs add to what I found! 

Some of the articles were more advertisement than opinion; some were anti-connectedness; many more church-y articles than I noted; and a couple of Dr Burton's sonnets even made it into my list!  Here is some of my favorites - each bit of article is interesting in its own right, not to mention the entire articles that are referenced!

A Smart Army

Back when my Civ II class looked at evolution, I read part of the book, Future Shock.  This week, as we discuss Media Theory, we returned to author Alvin Toffler and read a magazine interview article, Alvin Toffler: still shocking after all these years (New Scientist, 19 March 1994, pp. 22-25).  When discussing his 1993 book, War and Anti-War, one of his comments made me smile:  

"The generals we met researching this book, are super, supersmart. They have studied everything from aerospace to computer sciences to international relations. That came as a revelation to us. Never having had much contact with the military, we shared the common stereotypes."

Why, you may ask, did this make me smile?!  

Technology & Modern Inventions

Life is good!!  We are SO blessed to live in this day & age - when modern technology & inventions make our lives healthier, happier, and easier!  As a reinactor once told me why he was thankful he lives today instead of back then: "Modern Dentistry"!!

The newest & latest has always been a part of my life.  My mother loves technology - she doesn't understand the inventions most of the time - but she wants it!  When I was 16, I worked for Burger King (& used microwaves), so my Mom figured I knew all about them.  She went out & spent a fortune on a microwave oven, brought it home, unboxed it, & turned to me to find out what it was good for!  Today, too many years later to mention, she still uses that old, huge, expensive microwave!

Since my brother was always tinkering with a car, radio, home applicance, or something, it didn't surprise me very much when he & one of his sons built (& fired) several rockets... just because it was cool!

OK, so I'm into inventions!  Little wonder that I chose Engineering for my major!

Catching Up

In going over my blog posts, and comparing them to the calendar of topics, I see that I am missing several posts.  I hope to catch up here, & call myself "up to date" on them all! 

Peer Evaluation

Since I was assigned to read Autumn's blog, I took the opportunity to read every post she had written.  It was interesting, insightful, thoughtful, informative, and fun! 

Over the course of her 16 posts, I read about her personally, the books she was reading, digital tools she was learning about, one of her group projects, and some of the  historical content that we have talked about.

Understanding that this class - & blogging in general - has been a HUGE leap into technology for her has helped me to appreciate her few words for more than what shows up on a cursury glance.  I get the strong impression that she reads & thinks about far more than she blogs about (& therefore, what meets the reader's eye). 

I hope she will continue to blog about what she is learning - she is a wonderful & interesting young woman that I hope to get to know better!

Midterm #2 - Reflective Blog Post

As part of our 2nd Midterm, I am required to write this blog post.  The specific instructions say, "evaluate how well you have been meeting each of the course learning outcomes".  So, here are the Learning Outcomes & my self evaluation of each:

Historical Content

In our DigiCiv class, we tend to focus on the Digital aspect of our class - reading the blogs, writing the blogs, using this class as an exuse to play on the internet with all the cool new tools instead of our other school work - I think we've all thoroughly enjoyed it!

However, Dr. Burton reminds us that we need to address the historical content as well!  Though it is certainly not tedium, it IS familiar.  So how can we play with the historical content appropriately enough to show mastery?

Romanticism or Modernistic?

Throughout our DigiCiv class, we have touched on various aspect of world history - some are pleasant, interesting, exciting, fascinating, and fun; while others are less so.  Two topics that we have discussed have particularly been interesting to me: Romanticism and Modernism.  But what are they, really?

Romanticism was an "Artistic movement emerging from Germany emphasizing appreciation of nature, creativity, individualism, imagination, and beauty (as a response to Enlightenment rationalism and intellectualism). Romanticism idealized the past, reinforced nationalism, and explored the darker part of the human psyche"

Open Source Economics TED talk

Another great TED talk - this one about Economics & Open Source

The Atomic Age

The Atomic Age in the United States caused not only a plethora of scientific inventions, expansions, and new knowledge - it also brought about new ideas, new styles, and new ways to do old things.

Check out this clock from the 1950's - typical of the Atomic Age style that was prevalent in those years.

Or who could forget those glasses - who ever thought that THIS was a good idea??!!

There's an app for that!

Yes, Digital Literacy is crossing the generations & spreading to all!!

Comfort Foods

I tried a new recipe today - BRAISED BRISKET WITH CARROTS, GARLIC, AND PARSNIPS - and the intro paragraph said it was a Comfort Food.

(I love this blog intro - it looks like something out of "Julie and Julia" or some sort of fancy cooking blog!)

The roast is delicious!!  The recipe is easy, the food is good (especially if you add some homemade mashed potatoes!), and your family/friends will be wowed with the amazing meal you prepared!  Try it!!

Psychology

A couple of years ago, my sweet Sister-in-law told me that she wants to return to college and study psychology.  While it's just not my thing, I am thrilled for her that she is interested in continuing to learn!  However, she later told me that, "Psychology is one of those majors that people snicker at.  And even with a PhD, you can't get a job."  How sad that she had been given no encouragement by the educators at ASU (near where she lives) and psychologists she had been in contact with!

School is half over!

Tiz the season for midterms, papers to be written, and end-of-semester projects to begin in earnest!  Of the 4 class I am taking this semester, I have projects in 3 of them!  Happily, they all will be group projects, allowing me to get to know my fellow students a little better while delving into some aspect of my studies a little deeper!

Microsoft attacks OpenOffice

An interesting video - I couldn't find the original source to imbed it, but here is the link where I saw it.

http://www.wimp.com/attacksopenoffice/

Some of the articles I found in the process of looking for the original wondered if Microsoft is feeling the heat from OpenOffice.

Personally, I like having Office - I like that I already know how to work it.

The life of an evolution biologist

My step-dad, Lorenzo Lisonbee, was one of the "big-wigs" in the argument of whether schools would teach evolution in Arizona. As a biologist and scientist, he argued that evolution SHOULD be taught to the high school kids. There were others, who argued that evolution should NOT be taught to the kids.

Lorenzo was a good man -