Final Reflections: Laycee Liston

My self-directed learning

My favorite learning log experiences that I did while in this class were based on ad fontes or going back to the sources. An example of doing this was when I read a portion of Martin Luther's 95 theses. This was very interesting to me because it was not what I expected. My whole life I have learned about the 95 thesis from history teachers and so forth, but I misunderstood the content until I read it for myself. I had previously thought that it was 95 separate complaints when really it was one complaint with 95 bullet points or arguments. This simple activity gave me clarity.

The time that we were given to research history gave me that opportunity to delve into topics that I had not previously researched. For example I spent time at the Museum of Art at BYU and I also visited the library education exhibit. These two experiences taught me specific things about each time period. The MOA taught me about the view of minorities and African Americans during the 1900's and the library exhibit taught me about the entertainment developments during the industrial revolution (ideas that I then incorporated into my final project)

Not only did the first half of this semester and the learning log give me an opportunity to research things specifically but I also gained a broad understanding of each era and how they all interconnect and related to one another. This learning can be seen in my digital dialogs. One example of this is seen in the connections that I made between the enlightenment era and the industrial revolution in my Industrialization and Imagination digital dialog. In this specific submission I contrasted the social power shift of the enlightenment and the power shift caused by industrialization. Overall this was a great learning opportunity that taught me about history both on a broad and narrow level.

My Evolving Project

The evolution of the "Digital Barrier".

My personal final project took many twists and turns to get to where it is today. I went through several ideas before I found an idea that I felt fit the bill. My first blog post idea was on religion. I eventually felt that this topic was not as relatable to society as a whole and that it lacked some kairos. 

It is always hard to scrap an idea and start from scratch but this is necessary at times if you are to create something great. So... with this new realization I decided to broaden and change my topic to digital media's disintegrating effect on relationships. This idea focuses on how media is becoming a distraction and hurting us socially. 

After putting my thesis online in the form of a short video clip. I was surprised by my results. There were those who agreed with me but there were many that wanted to point out both sides of the argument. This helped my argument become more rounded. As well, conversing with other students such as Katelyn Dalton and Jared Larson helped me change me enhance my ideas.  These peoples ideas added to the overall quality of my final blog post. 

As far as my group project when, our ideas all fit together very well from the very beginning. There were some thoughts we had to sort out, such as, do we want to create a counter argument and so forth. Talking with them gave me the idea to think more about video games and their effect. Overall I think that I gained a lot from my group but I also learned from posting my idea on facebook. This was a great opportunity to gain insight from both my peers in the classroom and a lot of other resources. All in all these factors all contributed to the final project.

Communication and History

 Does history affect you today? To this I can now reply with a resounding yes! Previously I did not understand the effects that history has on us personally. History has brought us to where we are today and specifically communication has brought us to where we are. This is because communication is what makes history.

The effect of communication on history can clearly be seen during the Enlightenment. In reading Borston’s book I learned about the creation of the printing press. The printing press was one of the main contributors to the start of the enlightenment. The printing press was able to produce information and books on mass levels. This made ideas available to many people. Without this form of mass communication the ideas of the Enlightenment would not have been spread around Europe and this time period could have never occurred.

Today communication is still making the history books. I experienced this personally as I was in Baltimore during the time of the riots this last May. These riots were organized online through online communication. It was clear to see that the communication of today can have a large impact on society. 

Amanda’s personal blog post claim is that communication is what makes up society. If communication makes up society then it is also what makes up the history of society. History is made up of communication, communication causing war, using war to communicate, advances in communication such at the telegram, telegraph, newspaper, even as far back as the creation of the written word. Communication has been a big influence on history. Not only is communication an influence on history but is its history.