I first signed up for this class because I accidentally thought I had to take another honors class for my honors requirements, then found out that wasn’t the case. But I kept the class anyway because the first day Adam and Nikolai certainly made the class seem intriguing. Several weeks later, looking back, I can say that this was one of the most interesting classes I’ve taken at UF. Not because I learned a great deal in an academic sense; because honestly I haven’t. But I don’t think I was supposed to, because this class was supposed to be different. So what exactly did I get out of this class?
For one, this class was pretty inspiring. Each time I left class I had the feeling that I could conquer the social media world, until about a day later when college apathy caught up to me. But nonetheless twice a week, I got something more than what I got from any other class I’ve taken at UF: a sense that what I’m learning is useful (unlike Man3025).
But I already mentioned that I didn’t learn that many tangible facts. I mean, I learned how to make Facebook fan pages, but I could have learned that on my own time. What I did learn was that as technology changes, I have a unique opportunity to take advantage of that. I already know that I can navigate Facebook well, but it dawned on me how poorly other people, particularly businesses, do. And its more than Facebook; thinking outside the box is something that our society, especially corporate society, sometimes lack, despite the fact we’ve been pounded over the head with the idea since childhood.
And that’s what’s so surprising. I always assumed that I would not come up with the best ideas, because everyone was trying to be daring and creative and as a result there wouldn’t be any opportunity except for the extremely lucky ones. But after taking this class I realize this is not the case. As shown by the principles of crowd-sourcing and wikinomics, the best ideas come from anyone who bothers to come up with them. You don’t have to have an ivy-league educations or be a millionaire in order to do it. A regular Joe can have better ideas than a large corporation, and that is probably pretty common.
So in summary, this class was pretty successful in what it set out to do. It was meant to be an “outside the box” class that did things differently than most courses. And it did. I wasn’t taught too many facts (nice change), but more importantly I was taught different ways of thinking about the facts I already knew. So bravo Adam and Nikolai. Now let’s hope I remember the lessons of the class past the next couple weeks.
For my last picture I will post Hugo Ball dressed up as a Magic Bishop. It has nothing to do with the Digital Frontiers, except that Hugo Ball is awesome, and so was the class.
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