Another way this book influenced me was by explaining how the structure of the Internet works to benefit activism. I’m embarrassed to say that before reading this book, I had no idea about the technical details of how the Internet worked. From reading this book (and asking my ex-computer science major husband for more details) I learned that the Internet is composed of a network of servers and routers that exchange packets of information. The decentralized structure of the Internet makes it difficult to censor, because information is nearly impossible to intercept and shutting down one router can’t keep information from rerouting through another path. And because Internet protocols are publicly available, anyone can set up a router and the network can keep expanding infinitely. So activists can promote their message to more people than ever with a lower risk of being shut down by hostile governments. Now that I understand better how the Internet works and how that structure is so important, I find using the Internet much more interesting and meaningful.
2. My literary work was one of my favorite plays, The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. I compared the fluidity of online identity and the related difficulty of establishing credibility online to Jack and Algernon’s problems with multiple identities in the play. I reread a scene in which Jack is told by his fiancee’s mother that he cannot marry her daughter because she does not know his family, even though she finds him acceptable in other respects. This helped me realized that a lack of credentials can throw acceptable content into question. I applied this problem especially to badges. The content of a badge may appear to be acceptable to show a person has a certain skill set, but if the identity of the issuer is uncertain or lacks credentials, a potential employer or badge earner might doubt the overall validity of the badge.
3. My self-directed learning has focused mainly on credibility, badges, and, more recently, how the Church uses online content to spread information and battle misconceptions. Some interesting things I’ve learned:
a. According to one study I skimmed, people often use social resources to evaluate the credibility of online content. For instance they rely on sources such as customer reviews, comments sections, and recommendations from friends to decide what content is credible.
b. Badges, badges, badges! What gets me most excited about badges (other than their potential for battling misconceptions about Mormons) is that they allow earners to display granular knowledge instead of just general qualifications. If badges catch on, I think they could be especially useful to obtain and display sets of specific skills tailored by the user to attract specific employers.
c. As I’ve begun to look at Church content about misconceptions that we can scoop to use for our badges, I’ve been really impressed with how the Church deals with difficult issues. They seem to find a balance between giving too much and too little information and between explaining and justifying. For instance, a page on the Church newsroom about polygamy shares enough details to help the Church appear open and transparent to some extent, but doesn’t share so much that it just raises more questions and doubts. The newsroom page also explains why early Saints felt it was acceptable to practice polygamy, but doesn’t try too hard to convince the reader that polygamy was ok. I’ve taken this as a model for our Mormon badges. I think our mission isn’t to battle controversy by convincing people, but to battle misconception by informing people. So we can’t convince them that Polygamy was inspired by God, but we can make sure they know that we don’t practice it anymore.
4. One of the things I love about his class is that as students we do influence and help each other’s learning. Because we share all of our class work with each other, I feel more motivated to produce good work. Seeing what other students are doing to move their projects along gives me ideas for my project and motivates me to keep improving my work. And, it’s just fun to be able to see others’ ideas take shape.
Right now, I’m being influenced a lot by Katie Wilkie and Greg Williams, the edbadgers. Not only do they often help my group by sending us links related to our project, but it’s been helpful to see how they are structuring and producing their badges. I’ve been really impressed by how well-designed their badge blog is and by their promotion video to show to the 8th graders. I’d like to imitate that by redesigning the Mormon Badges blog (which needs a serious facelift) and producing a video to post on you-tube that will promote the Mormon Badges.
I’m also really interested in what the litmag group is doing. I worked on litmag staffs in highschool and on Inscape here at BYU for a couple winter semesters. I really like the idea of a literary magazine that’s more interactive. I think art and writing lose some of their vitality when their audience’s are limited just to elite groups of specialists. It will be interesting to see if their magazine can build a wider community of readers than just academics and English majors.
As the semester progresses, I want to focus more on learning how to get publicity and social proof. I also need to understand the technical details of web design and badge baking better.
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