I can’t believe that the course is over and this will be my final post to my weblog. I started this subject as a seventeen year old, straight out of high school who thought that to pass the course I needed to study in order to remember what was said in the lectures. Instead I found that the course is really an interactive approach to learning.
The lectures mainly consisted of a history of how communication has developed over the past four hundred years (since the introduction of the printing press), but in particular we focused on communication in the digital age. I think this approach is good because it explains how technology developed into what it is now and how it is used today.
However, unlike high school where we learnt to remember facts, this course made us put theory into practice. I liked the idea of combining the theory from the lectures and textbook with actual hands on experience through the creation of a weblog and the weekly tutorial tasks. I would never have set up a weblog if it hadn’t been for this course.
The same is true for other topics covered. Instead of reading about digital photography or what 3-D chat rooms are, we actually took photos and manipulated them, visited a 3-D chat room and spoke to its inhabitants. We even practiced on and learnt more about Microsoft Word and Excel by completing various exercises, as well as looking at a variety of different search engines, how they work and how to use them effectively to sort through the numerous websites out there in cyberspace.
I had some trouble in keeping up with the course requirements of maintaining a weblog. It seemed that the more I learnt, the more I realized I didn’t know. We looked at so many aspects of communication that I spent most of my time thinking about what everything meant and how it affects my life, so that it was difficult to fully understand each concept before we moved on to the next. This made it difficult to write the weblog entries, as they required me to give my opinion on what we studied, and sometimes I hadn’t fully developed an opinion on the topic at the time.
The most intense part of the course, apart from studying for the final exam, would have been the assignment topic. I was initially going to write on computer games, but I couldn’t quite come up with a specific approach, so I chose to write on Virtual Reality (VR), instead. But as I researched VR, I found out so much information that it became difficult to remain specific about that subject.
The main difference I noticed between this subject and those I took in high school is that in high school we were taught what to think, whereas in this course we are taught how to think. The course has encouraged me to consider issues that I never thought of before. As a result it has changed the way I view the world in which we live.
The lectures mainly consisted of a history of how communication has developed over the past four hundred years (since the introduction of the printing press), but in particular we focused on communication in the digital age. I think this approach is good because it explains how technology developed into what it is now and how it is used today.
However, unlike high school where we learnt to remember facts, this course made us put theory into practice. I liked the idea of combining the theory from the lectures and textbook with actual hands on experience through the creation of a weblog and the weekly tutorial tasks. I would never have set up a weblog if it hadn’t been for this course.
The same is true for other topics covered. Instead of reading about digital photography or what 3-D chat rooms are, we actually took photos and manipulated them, visited a 3-D chat room and spoke to its inhabitants. We even practiced on and learnt more about Microsoft Word and Excel by completing various exercises, as well as looking at a variety of different search engines, how they work and how to use them effectively to sort through the numerous websites out there in cyberspace.
I had some trouble in keeping up with the course requirements of maintaining a weblog. It seemed that the more I learnt, the more I realized I didn’t know. We looked at so many aspects of communication that I spent most of my time thinking about what everything meant and how it affects my life, so that it was difficult to fully understand each concept before we moved on to the next. This made it difficult to write the weblog entries, as they required me to give my opinion on what we studied, and sometimes I hadn’t fully developed an opinion on the topic at the time.
The most intense part of the course, apart from studying for the final exam, would have been the assignment topic. I was initially going to write on computer games, but I couldn’t quite come up with a specific approach, so I chose to write on Virtual Reality (VR), instead. But as I researched VR, I found out so much information that it became difficult to remain specific about that subject.
The main difference I noticed between this subject and those I took in high school is that in high school we were taught what to think, whereas in this course we are taught how to think. The course has encouraged me to consider issues that I never thought of before. As a result it has changed the way I view the world in which we live.
Thanks to everyone who has viewed my blog site, I hope you enjoyed reading about my course. 123 we are there now, see you soon.
