Self-Assessment!

I want to start this self-assessment by thinking about what goes through my head in preparation for an assignment like this. This self-assessment allows me to reflect on my effort over the course of this semester. As the saying goes, “A for effort”, I honestly feel like that applies when thinking about the structure of Digital Networks this semester. I have viewed this class as an experiment over the last couple months. Merriam Webster’s definitions of experiment are “a tentative procedure or policy” and “an operation or procedure carried out under controlled conditions in order to discover an unknown effect or law, to test or establish a hypothesis, or to illustrate a known law” These definitions mean to me that the results of an experiment are unknown, but that’s why you experiment, to see what works and what doesn’t. At the beginning of this class, there were twice as many people in the class as there were at the end, but I think this answered some questions about this endurance race already. First, those who weren’t in it for the long haul jumped shipped before the experiment really started. To me, it’s like reading the terms of a binding contract, and not committing to something they’re not ready to get themselves in to. If I am the professor, this tells me that the ones who were not committed to trying something new chose they’re fate and that those who decided to stay were not necessarily going to reach the end, but were at least had the courage to try.
My thoughts on going into this semester of Digital Networks was probably different than most. Taking a quick trip in the past, this was my second go around with an experimental class. In fall of 2008, I took Politics and the Internet which was similar to the current class. Personally, there are several factors as to why my effort has increased since the first time around. First of all was my maturity level. When I say maturity level I mean the fact that I procrastinated a great deal that semester and this was a larger factor as to why I couldn’t handle a loose class structure such as that. My mindset was that I had all day to do it; I could do blog posts and other assignments right before they were due. This was a deadly mixture, and it did nothing but lead to my eventual doom in the class. Fast forward three years later, I saw taking this class again as a blessing and an opportunity masters the experiment. Going back to my rant about effort, I feel like a class such as this, effort is a big thing because I feel it speaks volumes to how hard a student works in an unfamiliar class setting.
On the subject of effort, I feel like I exerted all of my energy towards getting into the class during the first week. This situation is relevant to my success in Digital Networks because it is a testament to my maturation process in being prepared for this class and excelling as a college student. During the first week of the spring 2011 semester I wanted to get into a Cultures of Advertising class that I needed to finish for my Major. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I had to be put on the waiting list, but I was eventually promised a spot, and it was pressing that I get in because this is the industry I want to be involved in for a career. I believe it was divine intervention or some kind of sign, but three years after I crashed and burn in this class, I was searching classes and saw that it was open. Though I was promised a spot in the advertising class by the end of the first week, without hesitation, I added Digital Networks as a class. My reasoning behind this was that I felt I needed to start something I did not finish. The opportunity arose and I accepted it with enthusiasm. I knew this was a privilege and I was going to have a positive outcome this time.
So, failed experiment, smailed experiment, second opportunities don’t come around frequently and I feel I had no choice to but to take advantage and succeed. With this said, I want to start assessing myself with what I think is one of the most important parts of a classes success, participation. I felt from the start, it was quite clear as to how I could earn points for participation, I could give my thoughts in class, and I could also use my as a way to express myself and encourage others to keep a steady flow of conversation going. To be more specific, blogs were my voice in class; they allow me to contribute my thoughts on lectures, my feelings about other class matters, and to comment on my peer’s contributions to the blog spot. One of the most interesting days for blogging day was Thursday March 24, 2011. Little did I know, the professor would not be present and we as student needed to conduct class in its usual manner which involved discussion. When I entered class, and realized there was no professor, I thought how students would respond. Would some students leave knowing she was not there? Would some students grab the reigns of class, and conduct class in its usual manner? Would students think it was some trick, or test to see how we would react? Surprisingly it was a little of each. The test for myself was not worry about what others were doing, just be concerned with how I handled the situation, and how I contributed to class that day. During this class I was giving my reactions to reading Mark Andrejevic’s iSpy, chapters 6 and 7. What I got out of chapters 6 and 7 of Ispy is that the government is trying to look more into our private lives in order to persuade our beliefs as a consumer. One example of this is when President Bush was in office, the government was encouraging civilians to buy war products as a way to support the war. I think the government is trying to have a say in what we buy in order to control us. We think we are in control because we are the ones who buy and do things based on our own beliefs, but these beliefs are actually influenced by others. Chapter 7 talks more about the internet and surveillance. I think government monitoring or any kind of monitoring is a way of getting control. My problem is, it has not been made that big of a deal. I will never forget the scene in the movie Men In Black where the guy is spying on a past love through video surveillance on a computer. Thinking about it now, that is quite disturbing, because our government does have that kind of technology and we would be naive to think that they wouldn't use it on their own people. Here, I felt like I intertwined my understanding of the chapters with personal perspective. On this particular day, the absence of my professor was a litmus test to see how committed to the class. I actually thought my professor was spying on the class somehow, and was taking note of how each student reacted to her not being there.
My feelings towards blogging are strong because it makes since to use all resources that you have access to succeed. The class is called Digital Networks, and I feel that the bulk of my work should be done online. I believe in quality over quantity. I feel that for my blog grade, my effort on and understanding of the readings/discussion should be rated as opposed to the amount of posts I did. I feel my best blogs were the ones where I connected what I read to my generation. The first of these was Tenzina Terranova’s book Network Culture. Chapter 2 of Terranova's book has been quite interesting for several readings and in my opinion has been easier to sift through than chapter 1. The first thing is when the author talks about establishing a connection, getting from point A to point B in cyberspace. Going off of my previous post, I don't think it is this easy. When we talked about noise, it makes the process of one connection difficult. IF eight people are standing in a room and they are talking about different things, but at the same noise level, how is it possible for someone to fully comprehend an individual’s conversations. Relating this back to the internet, it is impossible. There is always more than one possibility when it comes to getting information, and hearing opinions and ideas. When I read the first few pages of this article, I thought of the telephone game I used to play as a kid where I had a cup with a piece of string tied to it, and on the other end a friend had a cup with the end of the string tied to it, point A to point B.
Terranova's interpretation of the internet as a "hyper network" got me thinking...something that is constantly accelerating can attain this acceleration by the amount of traffic in this universal address space we call the internet. Let's look at the net like real estate. The infrastructure provides acres of land to a limitless amount of people, and they never run out. That to me is amazing. A space that will never run out of room, and will never turn away another member. It's like a hyper club, a nonexclusive collection of hopefuls looking to spread ideas, and manipulate it to a certain extent.
Lastly, the real time of the internet allows people to connect on the same time, though they are separated by time zones in real life. Fifteen years ago, virtual reality was something used to describe a world that a human being could not live in, but in reality, the virtual aspect of the internet has been embedded into the DNA of society so deep that it is hard to establish what is "real" or "fake". If you’re talking with someone it's real, so I guess virtual reality is reality in this present time.
The title of Terranova’s book Network Culture was the most important book to me because it relates to my generation. The title is symbolic because it describes the interconnectedness of my tech savvy generation. There is always a need to be connected, a need to be seen, heard, and talked about. I would call our class a network, an experimental network. I am making a conscious effort to make sure I am connected. The only full proof way to do this is contribute; this is why I feel blogs are the crown jewel of this course. I compare blog posts to free throws in basketball. The one thing you can always control in the class is the amount you participate. Though everyone may not be contributing in order for things to circulate, at least my voice is in the clutter. A blog I posted a tow months ago talked about my feelings on keywords such as network that draws people in. During discussion of the so called grass roots organization called movements.org, I felt their play on words, persuaded the youth demographic they were targeting to feel they were making a difference, but their pitch was coincidentally cross promoted with products and brands that my age group is interested in. My blog said: After thumbing through the Movements.org site, I began to think what exactly they are trying to do. Identify, Connect, Support. It seems to me that people are being swayed by networks these days, which I think is a clever idea. When you hear the word network, most people think that there are thousands, maybe millions of people connected. Maybe or maybe not in the case of movements.org, but I think people are being swayed by key words without fully looking into what the organization or company is about. Let's think about the keywords on Facebook: Connect, Share, Life, this is a more realistic network because you are connecting with people that you actually know. My question is: if something sounds right, are people more likely to join an organization because they are throwing products at them that are associated with their demographic, or is it because they have read into what they are about and want to get on board?
The second reason why blogs were an important communication tool for me is because I was able to have my professor comment on my posts. This provides me with incite, and a quick critique of my post. I feel this helped my comfort level with the class knowing the professor was available in some form or fashion 24/7. One interesting comment she left was on April 11, 2011, when she stated “Bifo’s point regarding psychopharmaceuticals is that capitalism today relies on brains and so brains have to be functionalized for capitalism”. This comment spoke to me because it was centered on my feelings of how the internet is making us network drones. Thinking about my comment and Mark Andrejevic’s iSpy, I feel that companies are trying to control our brains and be a machine for capitalism. I am always thinking that, wow, look at this limitless internet we as users are able to use, but at what cost? Several topics discussed over the semester have caused me to come up with some overall points. The first is that I feel the material that the authors I have discussed are foreshadowing an internet dominated future. I think of Mark Andrejevic’s two visions as a fork in the middle of the road. If you go left, interactivity will disempower citizens politically, if you go right, you will feel active and involved. What he is saying here is that there is no going straight, moving forward our only choices are one, the other, or both.
What I believe they are foreshadowing is a world that is overly dependent upon the internet, but users can’t wean themselves off of it because it is their life support. Some key words that I feel are relevant here are, network drones, cross-promotion, dependency, demographic, control. These are all relevant because they are what the marketing machine known as the internet uses to keep a constant flow of consumers interested, engaged, and locked in.
I believe my largest contribution to the class was my group presentation on Wikileaks. I felt a good part of my effort for this class came from putting together and presenting on this topic. I felt my presentation was most meaningful, because unlike the presentations before ours, it contained material that had not been discussed over the course of the semester. Wikileaks, which is a non-for-profit media outlet that provides users with breaking news and information, I felt was the most presentation for my group and I to get the class interested. As I said, other presentations that contained information about Google, Twitter and Open Sources were easier conversation starters because we had already discussed them as a class, and this was only continuing this conversation. I felt our game plan for having a successful presentation was our research. Compiling sufficient information so that we could meet the time requirements, keep the class interested, and relate to the class. During our group meeting, I suggested to my presentations partners that we should have a debate as the engaging activity component. These questions were meant to be debated and are one’s that people would have several opinions on. Some of these were” Is WikiLeaks ethical or not?-Should the people releasing the information to WikiLeaks be seen as criminals?-How credible do you feel the information released on WikiLeaks really is? I felt this was largest contribution to the class because I was introducing something new.
The most tedious work I did in Digital Networks was the way I went about writing the papers. I had a methodical way as to how I approached each paper. First, I will make an outline, so I will have the scaffold to my paper. This outline is important for me because it gives me guidance and allows me to have enough talking points to write a sufficient paper. Next, what I will do is find the passages and quotes that I need in order to thoroughly answer the question. These two steps are my prep work for writing the actual paper and allow me to write with hitting speed bumps. Usually at this point I am able to write the paper with minor distractions. I feel my only problems with writing papers is that I sometimes give too much of my opinion and I believe that takes away from the sources I am using to help me answer the question. Though the papers I have done so far, have received grades of B’s and C’s I feel my effort on both of these were deserving of an A. The way I prepped for the papers ensured that I had a good foundation and a full proof way to not only answer the question in depth, but to also include some of what I think, especially if I’m writing had been discussed in previous class sessions.
At the beginning of this class I was frustrated. I didn’t have a strategy as to how I was going to succeed in the class. The approach I took was week by week. During the second week, when I enrolled in the class I was a bit frightened as to why so many people would drop the class after one or two sessions. Were they scared? Were they scared of the freedom? Were they afraid of blogging? Since I questioned the actions of others, I asked myself the same three questions: Was I scared? No, I don’t dear anything except God and know if there was anything to fear, it would be letting myself down. Was I scared of the freedom? No, I felt that at this point in college, if I was not mature about my studies, I would never be. Was I afraid of blogging? No, I like exercising one of my rights of the constitution, freedom of speech. One saying that has always passed through my brain waves is “A closed mouth doesn’t get fed”. If you don’t contribute, there is no reason for wasting your time, and a seat that could be occupied by someone hungrier. Giving my opinion and ideas on things is how one learns. Merriam-Webster defines learning as the act or experience of one that learns; knowledge or skill acquired by instruction or study, and modification of a behavioral tendency by experience (as exposure to conditioning). My point is though everyone learns differently, experiencing learning as a class is more beneficial because you gain more insight and some of your thoughts and ideas are molded around other’s unique takes on subject matter.


I feel each way of learning in the pyramid above describes how I contributed to class.
Lecture- I feel like my WikiLeaks group presentation allowed me to spread my knowledge of something new to others. It proved to be effective by the heated debates between students on the topic of raw news vs. biased, mainstream news
Audio Visual- This kind of learning took place during clips we watched as a class such as the Movements.org pitch, and the video about why Google is keeping our personal information. My contributions were wondering why Google need our information when they are a search engine, what are there purposes for storing this sensitive information.
Discussion Group- My contributions for this were helping my team argue that open source is a good thing. My contributing points were that we need sites such as Wikipedia because they encourage peer to peer learning and allow others to continually contribute to the constant flow of information on the site.
Teaching Others- I felt I taught others through opinions and experiences I used to make my points on the blog spot. On April 5, 2011, I used my experiences with using the internet to make my about perpetual gratification. I said “Touching more on the freeness of Google and the internet, I feel like there are less safe guards now then there were ten years ago. Take for instance the comment about porn on the YouTube page, that person is kind of right when it comes to material on the internet that young teenagers and under should not be seeing. Whether this is porn, vulgar blogs or what have you, I think our ability to file share has made anything and everything free on the internet. It's more than just instant gratification, its perpetual gratification.
Reading- They say knowledge is power, well so is peer to peer learning. Honestly, I read about half of the readings thoroughly over the course of the semester. There were some that I did not read such as the first assigned passages from Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows, but hearing about the text from a peer motivated and encouraged me to read it afterword. This is why I think peer to peer learning is important.
Demonstration- I demonstrated my understanding of the readings and class discussion by my effort put into my papers, and take home exams. Though I did not get the grade I felt I deserved, I don’t believe it can be argues that I didn’t have enough content. For instance, with paper #2 I used several quotes from Mark Andrejevic’s iSpy to answer the question I picked.
Practice by Doing- I feel this was the risk I took taking Digital Networks. I am not sure of the outcome of this class, especially knowing my previous demise, I didn’t know what to expect. I did instead of didn’t. Practice is using past shortcomings and achievements to improve, so I won’t make those same mistakes again. Life is a learning experience, and so is college.

Given the evidence I have above, I feel like I deserve an A for my effort. Merriam Webster defines the word effort as the total work done to achieve a particular end. If I didn’t believe I deserved it, there is no point in arguing for. People don’t go to trial if they don’t think they’re going to win, you play a sport to lose, you play it to win. Sure, there were times during this semester where I felt like I wouldn’t reach the end. I felt a bit discouraged after I received a C on my first paper, but I kept trekking. What actually gave me motivation was those who jumped shipped before we got to the destination. I felt that if they had given up, I need to proceed because I wasn’t going to let this class defeat me; it’s not its purpose. With a class such as Digital Network, there are expected to be some bumps along the way, but if you stick it out, and reach the end, and you feel you’ve given a quality effort, I think that is admirable. Honestly, I am somewhat glad I failed round one of this class, because I wouldn’t have gotten another change to succeed. In life there are few second chances, and I am glad I had the opportunity to take advantage of this one.