Electronic Journal, Week Six Prompt

Reflect on what you have learned in the class and how you will use it professionally as both a lifelong learner and instructional systems professional (or whatever field you’re in).

In the course of this class I have been introduced to blogs and to wikis and the philosophy behind the open source community. I have also learned to be more vulnerable and to submit my ideas and designs to my peers early on so as to contribute to brainstorming, and to be open to learning from others what aspects of my plan may be feasible and what aspects may not be feasible.

I learned to build mash-ups of online services, to make use of online resources to build my own online resource. I learned about a plethora of different open-source applications and had the opportunity to compare and contrast many of them. I learned that some open source apps have value, and as for others, well, it may be easier to simply stay with the industry-produced application for now. I learned about Wikipedia and its guiding principle of Neutral Point of View, and how its community characterizes the open source model. I also learned that Wikipedia’s discussion tab may often have more valuable content than its primary definition page.

In the course of the last six weeks I added new words to my vocabulary such as produsage, trolls, pro-ams, free-riders, heterarchy, folksonomies, artifacts, social structures, information commons, social bookmarking, and communal spaces, to name a few. Among the many new concepts I learned, there was the contrast between the industrial production model and the produsage model (and its key principles). I learned about the open source model ability to bring down the barriers that prevented people from organizing to take on unfair industrial monopolies and repressive governments. I learned about how the industrial production model, because of its limited resources, cannot afford to fail over and over again, whereas the open source model – because of its vast resources -- can afford to do so, and to repeatedly fork.

My plan is to use what I have learned professionally by taking a greater consideration of the open source model and how it can be implemented in my current tech support position servicing faculty members’ needs. As I transition from a technical support capacity towards course development and take on greater responsibilities, I plan to look for opportunities to collaborate with team members to create or enhance our community’s shared content. I will also be on the lookout for possibilities where on-line open source resources can be incorporate so as to encourage mash-ups generally, and to contribute to generating more sustainable online content specifically.