Reflection Time--Where this class is taking me

This is week 5 of the semester, and looking back I can see how much I have learned from this class and the opportunities it provides. 

Being a civilizations class, Digital Civilizations definitely has taught me about the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.  I have also come to see that there are significant parallels between those times and now.  One example of this is a blog post done by Jake C., one of my classmates.  He blogged about Descartes and then asked the question, who are the Descartes today?  This made me realize that there is so much discovery and learning going on around us today and in many ways it is very similar to that which was happening centuries ago. 

Taxi Driver's

I read a BBC article that Brandon McCloskey posted titled, “How Good Software Makes Us Stupid”.  It talks about how taxi drivers in London and other big cities used to have to pass a test showing that they knew all the streets in the city and that they could get around.  However, now thanks to navigation systems this is all changing and more reliance is being placed on the technology.  This really made me think, because I have been in taxis and experienced this first hand multiple times. 

One of those times was last year when I had the opportunity to go to Sydney, Australia where I had my first real experience with taxis.  One day my sisters and I had been out sightseeing but then we needed to get back to our hotel. We had been walking everywhere, but we ended up getting really tired and so we decided to take a taxi back to our hotel.  Since we hadn’t planned on taking a taxi back to the hotel we weren’t very smart and didn’t have our hotel address with us, since we knew how to walk back.  When we told the taxi driver the name of the hotel he knew right where it was and how to get there even without us showing him the way.   He explained to us how they are required to know the city so well that they can get people wherever they need to go, and he did just that.

That was very impressive to me.  I think that in the case of taxi drivers that a human being will probably be able to navigate better than the GPS, with the exception of if they are going somewhere that they have never been and never heard of.  I think that taxi drivers should still be required to pass that test, but then they should also have a GPS in case they need it sometime, but it shouldn’t be their only way to navigate.

Google Documents--Access to your files around the world

Google offers online file creating, saving, and sharing, in the form of Google Documents.  If you already have a Google Account you can use your same login, otherwise you can create a Google Account for access.  Visit docs.google.com.

Google Documents allows you to create and save online new word documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, forms, etc.  Google Documents also lets you upload ones that you have already created on another computer.  These documents can then be saved in your Google Account and you can access them anywhere that you have internet access.  Also, you can change the privacy options on the files so that you can control who can view them. 

Google Documents have a wide variety of uses from personal use and group projects to collecting wedding address. 

I had the chance to teach a few of the students in my Digital Civilizations class about Google Documents last week, and I found that as I taught them about it I continued to learn more about the options available. 

Google Documents allow us easier access to our files no matter where we are.  In today’s world we continually have the need to be able to share what we are working on and to access it from another computer.  Google Documents makes it so that you don’t have to email files to yourself or always have a flash drive on you, because you can have files saved online.  In the past it was sufficient to just have your ideas committed to memory or possibly written down so that a few other people could see them, but today it is important to be able to have our files and documents travel with us, since we live in a world that it digitally connected.

Diigo--Helping us learn through the learning of others

This semester I had the opportunity to learn more about Diigo, which is a social bookmarking tool.  I was immediately fascinated by the options that Diigo offers. For example, I always wanted to highlight things I read online. Diigo offers that! I wanted to be able to add little comments to things I read online.  Diigo has sticky notes that you can add to pages.  I often read something amazing online, but when I later try to retrace my steps to find it I am not able to.  Diigo solves this too!  Diigo has options for bookmarking pages, sorting them by tags, bookmark searching options, etc.  Diigo even lets you create groups and then you can share what you find among your groups.  Diigo has some amazing options for connecting to other people and seeing what they are studying and keeping track of your own research. Diigo is free to sign up for and it has so many options for how you can use it to your benefit. It is free to sign up at Diigo.com. 

After teaching Jeff, one of my classmates, about Diigo, I had an opportunity to apply it in another one of my classes.  We have a group assignment where we all have to read these articles and then right a paper together about them.  I saw this as a great chance to apply what I had learned, so I taught the members of my group about Diigo and we started a group. 

Even though Diigo is a highly modern tool, it also closely relates to what we have been talking about in our Digital Civilizations class.  In the 15^th century, the printing press enabled the printed word to be spread rapidly among the people.  The printing press made possible learning and understanding that had previously been unavailable.  Diigo is a different kind of printing press, but it is accomplishing some of the same things.  Diigo makes it so that people can expand their learning and understanding by seeing what others are studying and what they are thinking about it.  Diigo is a great tool and it provides so many opportunities for us to expand our views and knowledge.

Are we willing to challenge the norm?

“As the sciences which we now have do not help us in finding out new works, so neither does the logic which we now have help us in finding out new sciences.”

This quote from Francis Bacon relating to The New Scientific Method really made me think about how important it is for us to be continually trying to see things in new ways and to increase our understanding.  As college students I think that we are especially prone to just looking at everything the way that we have been and are taught to look at it. What if we approached each class with an excitement to learn, but also a willingness to question what we are being taught?  Throughout history we see that it takes someone who is willing to fight against the way that things are regularly thought to be in order to make progress and growth.  One example of this would be Martin Luther with the Protestant Reformation.  Luther was willing to challenge what was being accepted by others and to look at religion in a new way.  Think about the impact of his actions.

How do you access another computer from the Internet?

Last week in one of my classes, our professor had to unexpectedly access his material for the class from a computer in the library.  He was able to get his PowerPoint that he needed even though he did not have it directly with him.  This made me really curious about other options for how to access files that are saved on another computer.  One of my friends recently introduced me to Drop Box, which is a free download that helps you maintain the same files on multiple computers and then you can access those files from the Internet.  This seems very helpful, but I have been wondering are there other good ways to access files that you have saved on another computer?  Has anyone found a particular method that they especially like? I’d appreciate any ideas that you have.  Thanks!

Tweet Tweet

Today Jeff Chen taught me more about microblogging options through Twitter. I had heard of Twitter and "tweets", but I had never tried to figure out what they are or what they could be used for.  Today that all changed.

Twitter is another way that we can communicate easily with our friends, but also with people from all around the world.  Twitter is free to sign up for at http://twitter.com/.  Twitter provides options to send specific people a message. It also allows you to post a comment, question, etc. that anyone can see and can respond to.  Many companies are now using Twitter both as an advertising method and also as a way to communicate with their employees, because they can easily and quickly send a "tweet" to everyone to remind them of an upcoming meeting.  You can also connect with other people who have similar interests and follow what they are saying.  Twitter also allows you to choose which people you want to follow and then you can receive updates whenever they post a "tweet".  Thanks to Jeff I now have a much better understanding of Twitter, and I am even considering signing up for an account.