Merry Christmas, everyone!

A Christmas 2.0 version! a fun digital view of Christmas! Enjoy!!

Digital Revolution

The big event! well worth your time to watch!


Watch live video from Digital Civilization on Justin.tv

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

Is this the end?

It's all a matter of perspective!  Be sure to watch BOTH halves of this video!

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!

Learning is fun!

I knew it all along! Learning IS fun!! Today, while looking through the Prezi Explore page, I came across this presentation. ... and you thought I was just goofing off on my vacation! LOL!

Playing to Learn? on Prezi

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 at its best

Two of my all time favorite YouTube videos - A True Marvel of Engineering and the High Power Worker!!

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:

Fighting Bullying With Babies

A friend of mine posted this on Facebook - an interesting read!

The story - along with links, etc - goes that bringing a baby into a classroom for monthly one-hour visits, and encouraging the students to empathise with the baby, has drastically reduced bullying from those students!

the Future of Rock Band

Cool new stuff in the world of Digits! For all you Rock Band fans!

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??!!