Final Thoughts (Blog 3)

This post is my last post for this class. That is an ominous way to start this post, but it is the truth! So the final assignment is a reflection on what I had originally thought “digital citizenship” meant before the course.

Before the course, I thought that “digital citizenship” was about the way the Internet is a deeply integrated part of the world. I thought it was about how the Internet makes people more social but also more closed off. My final thoughts were about content that is on the Internet and how we consume said content.

I would say that this course has definitely opened my eyes to what the Internet can be. I feel that as someone who grew up as the Internet progressed, I thought that I knew the Internet pretty well. But this class showed me that digital citizenship is much more about the participation involved with the Internet. The Internet has a lot of power to pull people from all over the world together and grow a community. Each social media site shows its own type of community and each community can affect the world in different ways. My opinion of the Internet has changed. I don’t think that having access to the Internet in our pockets through our phones makes us more closed off. I truly think the Internet connects the world in such a way that we don’t even realize how connected we are. For example, my boyfriend started a personal blog that he writes from little, old, humble Camarillo, and he gets international readers! I started a YouTube page more for myself like a video diary, but the reality is that anyone in the world can watch my videos if they want to. The idea that the whole world is connected is insane to me. I didn’t think that digital citizenship meant a type of worldly citizenship.

I still believe in the importance of the content that users put out and also the content we absorb. Because it’s so easy to put out one’s own content for everyone to see, we must be aware of what we put out. Any content that we put out is a form of engaging and a form of participating in the world wide web. I think that this aspect of the Internet calls us to be more aware of what we put out and what others are doing on the Internet.

The different skills that I learned from this course that I will definitely carry with me is crap-detection, lurking, and the comfort of engaging. The Internet gives us access to the world and its information, it’s important to utilize it (and utilize it correctly and knowledgeably!). Lurking and engaging are techniques of research that I had not used before this class, and I think it’s extremely useful. With these techniques, I’m able to gather knowledge from people all over the world, and I think that exposing myself to different walks of life and knowledge will in turn make me more knowledgeable.

To my readers, whether you’re from my class or otherwise, thank you so much for reading along this semester. I’m not sure yet if I will continue blogging, although, this experience has been extremely enjoyable for me. I think that it has also broadened my writing style. There’s not the pressure of a grade so much with these blog posts, so I feel that my writing and my ideas flow more freely onto the screen/page. If anything, I may continue to blog about my experiences at school.

Again, thank you so much! I hope you’ve had fun, because I definitely have.