November reflection post

1. Historical content, eh?

Interestingly, although the comments from the professors have indicated that most people have been focusing on the computing concepts for this class, I feel as though more of my blogs have been aimed toward understanding the historical understanding. Typically I understand broad concepts in history, but remembering details doesn't work as well (unless it's particularly interesting trivia), so although I've studied these things before, I always learn something new and interesting. Overall, I feel as though I'm doing pretty well with the history.

2. Computing concepts

Many of the computing concepts seem very straightforward to me. Some of the recent stuff with basic number theory and cryptography I'm already familiar with, and so much of it is based on logic that it's fairly intuitive. I feel as though I pick up the things in class fairly well and fairly quickly, and so I often spend more of my time on the history - I feel as though once I understand a concept (at least at the level we're learning here) I got it, and so it's more worth my while to spend time on the history, when I may not remember it as readily and will likely have less incentive to learn it in the future (computing concepts are often more DIRECTLY applicable to my current life, although it's nice to be able to discuss history with my friends upon occasion).

3. Self-directed learning

I also feel as though I'm doing all right on self-directed learning. When I don't understand a concept with the given reading, or something I read intrigues me more than normal, I go out of my way to search for more information about it to understand the concept or event more thoroughly. The dangerous part of this is getting lost in interesting research for far more time than one had budgeted for!


Something that I've really liked about the class this section was the class on Mormonism and digital culture. I set up my own account with LDS Simple Acts and shared it with Ward Council - several people seemed really excited at the prospect of being able to upload your own Mormon Ads and Mormon Messages. I was grateful for the opportunity to spread this service possibility and utilize new technology to help spread the gospel. It's pretty awesome, that's for sure!