Final Conclusion

In the last couple of days I was thinking a lot about what should I write in this final conclusion. I was considering how this class changed my way of thinking, and what I gained through this class personally and professionally.

So here it comes:

To be honest after the first session in September I thought: Why they want to make our lives even more complicated? And they also force us to write a blog, what I considered as the worst thing that could happen with me in this course. Then when we started to talk about ‘gift economy’, ‘shareware’, ‘open source’ (things I have never heard before): so I thought at least we learn something about computers/internet as I knew without this module I wouldn’t know about these things as I was not that interested in this area to look after it by myself.

Things changed around week 3 when we started to do the group project. I did a lot of research on online identity, why people are using online networking sites. I think this wiki/ blog assignment combination was a really good as it was something new and different (not an essay) that challenged our mind. I enjoyed both of the projects: the blog was a personal challenge, the wiki was a professional challenge.
With writing the blog and also reading after the 'blogging phenomenon' I realized how blogging changed the whole nature of news. Now everyone can be source of information and become ‘citizen journalists’ . Of course there are also good and bad consequences: news becomes more personal and initiated but because of the 'umediated' way of the online news (as they are not 'legitimized' by the journalist) the number of unreliable sources increases.

I liked the group project as well and luckily everyone in the group worked really hard and we managed to do what we planned in the beginning. I really liked to play with the wiki. I think I got a bit addicted to it, cause I always wanted to make it look better and to be perfect..
I also realized during this project how easy it is to publish on the net, and I hope that our site can be a credible source for everyone.

What I also liked in this class where the discussions about the internet, about being online as they changed my whole way of thinking about the internet. I remember when we were talking about the commercialization and how there are more and more advertisement on the net and how the web force people into consumerism. I shared this view before and looked at the web really critically and rather as a bad than a good thing. During this class I realised that we just need to know how to use the internet and then it becomes a really a good thing. I mean advertisement is everywhere and we cannot do anything about it and to be honest we control ourselves. As we don’t give our personal details to a random in the street we would we give it out online!! We need to realise that cyberspace is like real life where people commit crimes, people become victims of crimes, where people socialize.

In the last 2 years we have been learning how to be critical, and how to ‘intellectually defend’ ourselves (to look behind the surface of for ex.: modernism, consumerism, main stream media etc) In this class we learned how to look behind the surface of the internet: how to protect ourselves online (I took off some personal details from my Myspace page) and how to use the internet cleverly.
Personally, I don’t think that I will sign up to Second Life or to more networking sites but I must admit I have a different perspective now. I feel much more confident as I really have a basic knowledge about computers/internet (I don’t need to lie in my CV anymore:) so it did help professionally as well!
Thanks Nigel, I really enjoyed this class and I think all of us could benefit from it.
BYE