As a final reflection for the course, I thought I would integrate one of the most fun tools that I have used in the course which is GIF creation followed by a written reflection. This course really stood out for me especially among my other core courses. I really enjoyed the experience and I would further explain it in the following reflection.
If I was asked what I learned through out the course, I would say a lot of skills and techniques but there are also a lot of things that I learned related to my understanding of the digital world and my attitude towards it. Regarding my social activity online, a lot of things were really informative in terms of understanding online communities and this is something that I really noticed especially in Soliya. I think the idea of having a social life on the digital world was never on my mind But after sharing a lot of ideas on word press and in Soliya meeting, I recognize the importance of it as it allows you to open up and to receive different views upon your opinion. This something that I really touched on in my Soliya reflection. Academically speaking, There are many new terms and vocab that I was subjected to especially in regards to topics like Surveillance capitalism and othering and these terms helped me become more aware of the issues and how can we take actions in regards to their issues. As for the assignment itself, I found many of them helpful to use in my future as an Architect and one of them was the creation of the empathy digital game. In architecture, we are always required to create scenarios for whomever going to use the building and the assignment helped me create these different scenarios that is based on the difference of the players’ personality. After feedback on the game, I realized that theses scenarios can only be strong if they have large number of variation and based on scientific research and this is something that I wish I can include in my designs in architecture to make it more inclusive and adaptive. Finally after connecting the course work, I fell like the most useful something I learned about myself is how creating reflections that helps me a lot in terms of absorbing experiences/ assignments and also to revisit subjects in an easy manner.
If I were to share my work with others, the first thing that comes to my mind is my digital literacy assignment. This is because it mainly show the essence of the course which is the different tools that you will be exposed to and also understanding how to reflect on any process. Another assignment that I would show is the Digital Literacy Campus Conversation assignment as I find the digital profile generation really good in showing the importance of the course in trying to make as well-rounded people in the digital world. Finally, I would show the digital game blog as it helps show the different content and creations we are exposed to in the course.
If I were to change anything in the course, It would be integrating the idea of the tinkering path as a more permanent element in the course. I fell that it would be fun to have a weekly small task that doesn’t require much effort but still gives you an basic understanding of a different tool. The reason why I find this useful is because sometimes you have an idea but you don’t know the tool to create it so you just give up but if your have a basic understanding of various tools when you need one of them, you would use it and learn more about it. Another thing that I would change is the distribution of the topics mainly because I sometimes forget about the earlier topics which are involved with othering and empathy. However, I think the game tie them to the end part of the semester but I also feel that it would be fun to kind of have a final topic connecting them with other topics that we learned such as the digital privacy and so on.
I think the type of person that should take this course is a person who aspire to mix between his career life and the digital world while also wanting to learn about the ethical values that he must consider in his digital presence.
I really appreciate the idea of having different choices that was offered in the course especially in the digital literacy pathway as I felt it catered for our different interest in the class. Also there isn’t really that many restriction in the way we present our ideas like in the digital game and even in this reflection which I find really liberating and allows for creativity. Also the choices that were given to us before class discussion were very useful in terms of making the class-discussion more interesting as we talked about the various choices that was offered.
Overall, I really enjoyed the course and the different aspects of it from learning about digital tools to learning about empathy and consideration fro others. However, what I most grateful for is Dr. Maha and my colleges for making the class fun and informative to be in.
References:
https://wordpress.com/block-editor/post/salma18.art.blog/84
https://wordpress.com/block-editor/post/salma18.art.blog/62
