Final Reflections Carli Stone

My self-directed learning

            Growing up (3^rd grade until I graduated from high school) I was homeschooled.  Because of this experience I was given many opportunities to self teach, and chose what I wanted to study.  This class was a great reminder of how satisfying it is to choose what you want to learn, and read and educated yourself more on topics that interest you.  One of the things that I did almost every day at the beginning of the semester was watch history videos on YouTube.  I did not expect this to be as beneficial as it was, but I learned so much from each video that I watched.  I continued to study and watch videos as I feel like I was able to learn so much from each of them.  One specific video that I watched one day focused on way the industrial revolution took place in Europe instead of China.  This was one of the most interesting videos that I watched this semester, and one of the most educational.  Another day as we were studying about the 20^th century I felt a little bit overwhelmed.  I went online and searched for some of the more substantial events of the 20^th century, and ended up reading an article that went through each decade and broke it down with events and occurrences in that time period and how it effected the rest of the world. 

My evolving project

            As we started our project my idea of what I wanted to study and focus on was extremely broad.  I wanted to focus a lot of my project on sprezzatura.  Unfortunately, sprezzatura is a very confusing topic if you do not have a background understanding it from a historical stance tying it into modern day is tough to understand.  The start of group project was a focus on connection and collaboration.  After a few times meetings and getting started on the video part of our project we started to realize that our topics were not similar enough.  Even after our first time collaborating as a group Jordan pointed out to me that more specifically, my topic did not fit well with that of the rest of group.  Dr. Burton also mentioned to me that sprezzatura was not being explained in a very good way.  One day Bryce, Rachelle and I met as a cohort with Dr. Burton to discuss our topics and make a video.  It didn’t take long for us to realize that our topics were too different to bring together in a smooth and easy way.  After much talk, and interest in an opposing view of the digital age by Laycee, we decided that we would focus our project on the positive effects of technology and more especially social media. 

Communication and History

We see the effects of communication in history all the time.  If we think of the Renaissance we can see people learning to express themselves and communicate in a new and unique way.  In the reformation we see the way that Martin Luther for example communicated himself to the Catholic Church. (Not the most effective way to communicate, but communication nonetheless).  Even more than throughout history, we can see how communication has changed throughout time.  I think the biggest take away from this class is being able to understand HOW the past affects us today.  As I have studied more about history and the past (and enjoyed it), I’m more excited to draw connections from the past to our present day.  They way that we communicate today has a great deal to do with technological advances from the past.  Not to use him again, but I look at the example of Martin Luther.  He, like many of today had an easier time communicating through written word rather than spoken word.  How often do we text someone, or email someone something that is more harsh than perhaps we would be able to muster up the courage to say to their face.  Many of the means of communication from the past affects us today.  In one of my posts on digital dialog I talked about the moving forward of experiments and why I felt they were changing and improving rapidly, and in a positive way.  I think just as we see this with experiments the same goes for technology, and communication.