Reflections of December

My first semester of blogging is over. Reflecting on the past months I can't remember what learning was like before this semester. I remember spending money on books just to sell'em and forgot'em after a couple months. I remember spending lots of time in Microsoft word trying to perfect my assignments for lots of classes. Everything I did was based on fitting professors requirements and getting the grade.

Now learning is very different to me. I like doing homework because there is something I can do to better the world around me. My education is fading from the me-centered, impress-the-teacher-to-get-the-grade sentiment to an attitude of improvement that lasts longer than the deadline. Case in point, to study for a final exam, I translated content from a PowerPoint lecture to a Prezi that I can invite my professor to edit. The Prezi will make his lectures a little more visually appealing, and it helped me study for the test. (I got a 95% on the final; I haven't completely got past caring about grades.)

Digiciv was a remarkable experience because it taught me to learn in a whole new way. The focus of a civilizations course is the history of civilization and at times I feel like a normal civ course would have been easier. In my other civ course, the grade was decided by three written exams that hurt my hand and the lectures beat my brain with boredom. However, I didn't have to do hardly anything, and I got the grade. Digiciv has taught me to keep on learning and to spread my knowledge. Education is not about stuffing my head with soon-to-be irrelevant facts just to dump them on a paper and forget them; education is about learning to make a difference in the world through whatever path I choose. I can't say that I have mastered all the historical content discussed in the course, but I've learned how to skim works and decide if it's worthwhile to share.

There is so much that I've been thinking about in context to this class so I made a Prezi to map my thoughts.

So what does the future hold for me? I plan to use this blog as a launch pad to further collaboration with Backpack 2.0 and other educational ventures. I've just got into a lab for the winter semester which will afford many blog posts as I learn what novel research in Bone Morphogenic Proteins is like. I feel like the blog format is nice because I can publish my ideas from the start and ask for reviews from my research advisor and other professors with whom I have a relationship. Digiciv opened my eyes to what the real world holds and I know that the principles that I've learned will govern my profession as I collaborate with peers and strengthen professional relationships through openness.

And to finish, I want to link to my favorite posts and tell a little bit about why I felt they were good posts.

1. MCAT Reformation - I really liked this post because it shows my efforts towards social discovery. I haven't published the group enough, but I figure that can come later when I'm not bogged down in finals. Just making the group was the first step and I really like the idea of saving a couple thousand dollars and helping other people do the same.
2. Web 2.0 Project continues - The post wasn't absolutely amazing, but it had an applicable screenshot to make it a little less boring and it examines my opinions between two web 2.0 formats (blogs and wikis).
3. Stupidity is Science + Sweet Stupidity - I liked these posts because first I like science; it's where I feel most comfortable. Secondly, I revisit an old idea on my blog in "sweet stupidity" and show an application of that idea (rereading research materials). It was nice to see my application of my own ideas.

I think the greatest thing about this course (and especially the blog that it requires) is that I can see myself growing from post to post and blogging for this class has helped me make connections in other classes. I know that I have grown from this class because I am accountable forever (or at least until the internet crumbles) for the things that I wrote. Accountability has made my education a sharing experience instead of just a learning experience. Thank you for reading this post and for growing and sharing with me this semester.

Education from the Bottom Up

I just watched this awesome video that Kristen Cardon found and published through Diigo. Sugata Mitra spends 17 minutes showing how kids in developing countries are teaching themselves via the internet. If you're the type that wants to bridge the gap and make things more equal, then watch this movie.



This video shows the internet to be the most powerful means of teaching children what they want to know. I think it validates Marshall McLuhan's idea that "the media is the message". Students around the globe are hearing the messages that interest them and if Sugata Mitra is right, then we really can change the whole world in a matter of years, in a single generation.

Create: A digital resource for digital students

My life is so easy. I'll restate that: my life is easier thanks to google.docs.

I've got this project for my Civilizations class to create an online resource for students, so they can learn digital tools to help them in their education. Though we've got a group of dedicated students to hash this all out, making a good site takes a lot of planning and execution.

We're just finished our data mining stage and now we're going to make sense of it and try to make a quality site out of all the information we've obtained. Each group member spent a couple hours finding links on the internet to dozens of new tools like Prezi and google.docs. We posted all of these tools on a google.doc and it was a mess of information. Their was some order since the tools had been put into a table as shown.

I wanted to do some organizing, so I used copy and paste functions to move all the tabulated info into a google.doc spreadsheet. One of the nifty tools (under the "Tools" menu on the toolbar) is a sort Column from A to Z.

What took possibly 12 hours of collaborative work took 30 seconds to sort. It still needs some clean up, but the worst is over. Thank you google.docs for saving me enough time to write this post and a paper.