Introduction

Hi, my name is Katie! I am a junior ISTA major and enjoy cooking, hiking, and playing video games in my spare time.

This course is going to be helpful when I am in a professional setting because the ability to effectively communicate is very important in computer programming. This class may help me better understand the data structures of various types of social media that I may analyze in the future because I will know the characteristics of the collaborations that helped create them. An unexpected benefit of this course is that it may help me better understand needs of the consumer and therefore help me create better products suited to their needs. I also enjoy meeting new people and look forward to this course.

While I knew that ReCAPTCHA was used to digitize information, I did not know that Duolingo was used for the same purpose. I have used Duolingo in the past and thought it was a good teaching tool and would recommend it to others. The only thing that I did not like about it was that it required you to speak into the phone for some exercises, which can be awkward if you're doing it in a public place. As a result of that feature, I deleted the app and now use quizlet to study Spanish on my phone.

I enjoyed seeing the different analyses of social media on the first day, since analyzing large amounts of data is something I may do in the future. The picture of how people of different political parties interacted was especially interesting to me, since the recent presidential election greatly divided our country and revealed some biased reporting practices employed by the media.

I enjoyed reading Tina Fey's rules of improvisation and was surprised at how effective it could be when working with people. While assertively communicating your thoughts is important, it is also important when you respectfully listen to and expand upon your teammates thoughts even if you do not see the merit of their ideas immediately. Also, I have done a lot of group activities in the past and I agree with Lemon's suggestion to make statements because my ideas have been ignored when I didn't assertively communicate my thoughts. I used to be really shy and working with other people has really helped me learn how to communicate with other people. This was my favorite article to read.

I think I understand Levy's assertion that collective imagination creates reality, because some of the science fiction/fantasy in the past has become reality (such as mankind's ability to fly, travel through space, and carry around hand-held computers full of collective knowledge and the ability to immediately interact with one another).

The article "What is Collaboration Anyway?" was helpful in understanding the different types of collaboration and importance of similar goals when doing so. I did not realize hashtags were a type of collaboration, but after reading this article it makes sense that they are. Hashtags are especially effective on sites such as Twitter, because it is more text/communication based than sites such as Instagram. I think that hashtags are especially important for social movements and compiling public discourse because they help facilitate discussion and organization over enormous distances.

I look forward to working with you all and hope you have a great semester! :)