Final Reflection

Self-Directed Learning / Personal Blog Post

I remember that at the beginning of the semester I thought I would be interested in Remix. But looking back on some of my posts I've seen that I was more interested in collaboration. Even my group's project reflected this (Menagerie). I think the most interesting thing to me was collaboration and art (particularly music) and how Web 2.0 affects this process. I wrote about one of my most exciting realizations in a post called "Confessions and Crowdsourcing." I think that I tried to apply the idea of collaboration and crowdsourcing to the Menagerie project, especially because I spent a good amount of time asking people around me what they thought of the project and asking them to contribute.

I think that I also took an interest in how digital culture affected connections, particularly with people who don't care to connect. I got a lot of ideas from a post that Sarah Talley made on Google + and then a short sharing with Greg Williams on a post that I made about introverts and the internet.

 

One aspect of digital culture that I spent some time thinking about but never made a post on, is the idea of digital culture being an island for our "real world" culture. Reading Lord of the Flies really helped me to think about this, as did considering the parallels between that novel and the TV series Lost. Deserted islands don't have a lot of connections to the outside world. They don't have strict social or governmental laws. They are a great wilderness, just waiting to be discovered. The entire digital culture can be seen in a similar way. And in a way, it can get pretty lonely on the island of the internet. But interestingly enough, people use it to connect to others and make it a real world. I found this website, support.webofloneliness.com, particularly interesting in those regards.

Collaboration

While we were still developing Menagerie, we all had a lot of great ideas. I feel like I helped, with the rest of the group, to develop these ideas into a solid project proposal. In the early stages of Menagerie we each had a very specific role that we were supposed to play. I was the primary member of the marketing team but was to also contribute to the editing/submissions team. However, we found that marketing was something that needed to come a little more naturally and wasn't something that we would have the time or means to force and emphasize. So I did what I could with that by posting on Facebook, talking to classmates, and generally trying to get the word out about it. I spent much more time trying to help develop our website, especially after we had our feedback session. My most solid contribution was the submission form. We needed a way to get our submissions in a unified format so I helped to solve that problem.

I feel like I did more to contribute to other groups' projects in their early stages. I was really interested in the LBP project as it started out. It was amazing to see the very visible progress that they were making. I also enjoyed testing out one of the preliminary badges for one of the badges groups.

Others' assistance

At the beginning of the course it was easy to fall behind the other class members who were very active on Google + and just follow their lead. I found posts by Tara Pina and Gwendolyn Hammer interesting and remember one particular conversation we had about girls in the gaming world. Throughout the course I would have to say that my fellow group members were most influential because they were the people that I was really looking for when I went onto Google +. Shelby had a lot of interesting and entertaining posts, including one that she did about her sister. I was always interested to see what Tasha Watts was going to post and her post that sparked the inspiration for Menagerie was one of my favorites.

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Digital Literacy

In this class not only have I learned about different tools to utilize to enhance the way that I consume, particularly regarding the digital world, I have also discovered better ways to create and connect. I think that my groups' project, Menagerie, really helped solidify these concepts in my mind. We really wanted to create a site where you could do all three - consume, create, and connect. By establishing Menagerie I was able to see the creation and collaboration process in action. It was also really interesting to see the ways that connections can be made because of small connections with people via Google + or Twitter or a blog. I have become more aware of what I consume online and what I'm giving to the digital world. There are a lot of ways to create and connect and I feel like I'm just starting to scratch the surface of those discoveries.

My Favorite Activity - Interrogation!

The title lies. This is not my favorite activity. But as my mom always said to me when I was younger (and it still doesn't really make sense), "If wishes were fishes, we'd all have a fry." I am not a teacher nor a teaching major so I'm not super top notch at writing questions. The more time I spend writing my questions, the more I recognize this. No really, I just took at least 45 minutes and wrote three questions. But now I'm done with the play-by-play.

1. Crowdsourcing is how companies or institutions can place an open call to a network of people to contribute content, perform specific tasks, solve problems, or collaborate in some manner. Which is not an example of crowdsourcing?
a. Imogen Heap's music project with consultation from fans. Answer here
b. Professor Burton asking students to come up with questions for his final exam
c. Contributing to Wiki articles
d. None of the above

2. The means of legitimizing an idea is called: Answer
a. crowdsourcing
b. social proof
c. spreadable media
d. participatory culture

3. The story of Megan Meier is a story about what? Answer in this post and that post.


1. Although the internet is a huge source of creativity and conversation for people, it can be difficult for introverted people to participate in Web 2.0 culture. It is through more private and interest specific sites that introverts can find a place to belong. [See my post about this topic with links to other posts as well 1]

2. Online collaboration has many obvious pros to it. However, there are some very real cons to online collaboration as well. Lack of interest, unreliability, and unwillingness to share credit are all reasons for people to steer away from collaborating with others in this very open digital world. [See Heather Anderson's post about their collaborative novel 1]

Going Viral

 I think that going into the Menagerie project we were all anticipating different outcomes. Some people wanted it to be a place for writers to collaborate and work together, to share ideas and use each others' ideas for new works of art. Some people wanted it to be social, a place where writers and creators could really discuss what they liked. Some people wanted it to be somewhere to come and browse the submissions and vote for what they liked best. Me? I wanted all of these things. But I really wanted it to be a hit.

What I realized really quickly was that it is really hard for things to go viral. You can't force something into popularity. It's like in middle school when you try so hard to get in with the cool kids that they just make fun of you for it. I really pushed this site on some of my friends. I even pushed it in one of my classes. And that's a big deal for me. I don't talk in classes.

One of the first viral videos I saw was the OK GO music video for "Here It Goes Again." It was released in 2006 (yes, I was a little behind the times when I was 16) and everyone was obsessed with it. Somethings I did learn about going viral though I gained from my own little intuition and what I've heard from other people:

• Accessibility - if you can't find the site, how are you supposed to share it?!
• Interest - sites like youtube, facebook, and twitter really have something to interest everyone. 
• Production span - I couldn't think of a better way to say this. Our site didn't stand a chance of going viral with submissions posted on it.

Part of me still has hope for our tiny site. If we can just get more submissions. Maybe 50 more? 100 more? What will it take?! What are we doing wrong?! Nothing. There are a ton of things on the internet. I don't even want to venture a guess. So the chances of going viral are kind of slim. But if we generate some interest, get some people excited, then I'll feel like our mission has been accomplished.

Just Way Too Monopolized (Part 2)

Apple has a monopoly on the music industry as it is right now. At least that's the way it appears. With everything that they have their fingers in though, it's really not that surpriseing to assume or hard to assume. Josh posted this comic back in September about the state of the music industry. With the mass amounts of apple products it is just easiest to fall into what I like to call the itunes funk.

Itunes has been my pal for a long time. We go way back. Then I discovered playlist.com. I abandoned it when the website just looked outdated and songs were deleted from the playlists I made. Then I moved on to Pandora. A hecka lot of fun but I was bummed that I couldn't really choose the songs I was going to listen to. Now I really only use Pandora when I'm doing something else and need some music in the background. Then Spotify entered my life. It was a glorious love affair. It really stole my sister's heart though. I wanted better recommendations though and missed some features of Pandora. I have now become what we call a "fickle mistress."

A fickle mistress flits around from one thing to another and can never make up her mind. I still like itunes because all of the music I own is in that one central location. But I like Spotify because I can add songs that I don't have to playlists that I already do have. The downside? Spotify is a little mean. Certain artists refuse to have their music available on Spotify because they don't get enough of a cut from it. Songza is great because it makes playlists based on the time of day and what you're doing and it has a great interaction aspect. But it can get a little too long tail for me sometimes. Noisetrade is fun because you can discover totally new artists. But there's not a super good way to sort through the artists and it's completely hit and miss. Topblip and Reverb Nation kind of have the same problem as Noisetrade.

Here's what I want. I want all my music in one place. I want recommendations based on what I've listened to. And I want these recommendations to actually be good recommendations. I want the artist to get a good cut of what I'm paying. In fact, I want to get it straight from them if at all possible. I want to hear new artists but I want to hear the popular ones sometimes too. I want my music player to get inside my head and know what I want and when I want it. I want a cloned version of myself whose job is strictly to identify my mood and what I'm doing and give me a soundtrack based on all that. Is that really to much to ask?!

Just Way Too Mainstream

I'm pretty sure that the first CD I ever got was NSYNC's No Strings Attached for my 10th birthday. I felt so cool. I finally had my own CD that I could play on my new portable CD player (with anti-skip technology, mind you). It was such a step up from that silly little tape player Walkman I had before. Psh. Lame sauce. I used my CD player religiously until for my 15th birthday I got an ipod. It was a 4th generation. Oh man, I felt slick as snot with that sucker.



I had this ipod for a good four years until I turned it on one day and it literally made a sad face at me. I figured it was about time for me to get a new ipod when people kept telling me that mine looked like a brick. But they were right. That thing barely fit in my pocket! And thus was Mario born. A sleeker ipod with a color display and it could even play music videos and movies. Oh golly, was I in heaven. That ipod has lasted my entire college career.

So where am I going with this? I jumped on the Apple bandwagon with everyone else back in the day. My brother-in-law worked for the BYU Bookstore so I got a pretty decent deal on my ipod. And everyone knew that they were the most top notch, high quality mp3 players. They still are pretty darn good. But also expensive. I've thought about updating my technology but I just can't afford it. It would be useful to have an ipad or a nook or even an ipod touch but they're just not in my price range. What's the point of having cool gadgets advertised to me if I can't even buy them?!

It wasn't until recently that I realized that there are other products out there. Just like when you discover that malt-o meals off brand fruit loops are just as tasty as the real thing, there are actually some really great products out there. You just have to look for them. True, they may not last as long. Yes, you might seem like a dweeb for having the random mp3 player that no one has heard of. But what's the harm in looking. So far I have yet to find some really swell technology that I could justify buying and afford but I'm searching. Next to come... why iTunes is the jock of the music industry and Spotify is the druggy hiding out in the bathroom.

Internet for Introverts

I've seen a few posts about people's siblings so I thought I would jump onto the bandwagon!

A little while back in this class I took a particular interest in the music industry and Web 2.0. After my midterm discussion with Dr. Burton I've decided that I really want to revisit that. Ideally, once a week I'll try to blog about my group's project and progress and once a week I'll try to blog about my other interests. Which will most likely be music.

In the beginning of September there was a little bit of buzz on the Google plus stream about introverts and the internet. Sarah Talley and Hannah Ballard both explored the idea in some of their blog posts and there was an excellent discussion about it on one of Tara Pina's posts. I briefly chimed in with a comment about how the internet is actually a really great place for introverts to explore their interests.

Now to mesh these three ideas. I have a sister. She is obsessed with music. Like, literally obsessed. She is also an introvert. Like, really an introvert. Just to give you an idea. In her spare time she is in her room, on her laptop, listening to music, finding music, playing music, pinning music, blogging music, finding pictures of music. Everything is music. And she does this mostly in her own little solitude. It's not that she's not a likable person. I think she's great! It's just that she really does not enjoy being around people at all. And hello Web 2.0. Because of the web she is able to do all of the things that she enjoys on her own. Yes, sometimes I think that it's not healthy. Yes, sometimes I really worry about her. But. I also have to be grateful that she's found a meaningful way to express herself.

For an introvert the world is a hard and scary place. From what she's said, even harder and scarier than I see it to be. Through the internet she can be part of this underground world that shares her interests. So thank you internet for giving my little sister a way to be happy and discover more about who she is.

Tiny Progress Is Still Progress

Yesterday in class we discussed the idea of the spiral. You have a starting point that you spin around and move out from. A spiral can go on forever and is always developing, but it always revolves around that one central idea.

Our online compendium (I really got tired of calling it a magazine) definitely has a central idea that we always go back to. But it kind of seems like right now instead of going in a spiral form and developing and moving out, we're going in a circle around our idea. I'm sure a lot of groups can relate to this feeling. We need more submissions for Menagerie so that it can look legit. But to get more submissions we'd really like for the site to have a better design. But for it to have a better design we would need a little funding. To justify funding we would need more submissions.

We met with a small group last night for a bit of a feedback session. The outside perception was incredibly valuable. They did say many of the things that the class told us, but with new eyes and a fresh perspective. After that I feel recommitted to our cause. We just need to be slow and steady (emphasis on the steady) and we'll find ourselves somewhere new and exciting.

"All I have to do is take one little step at a time and I can do anything."