I really enjoyed my New Communication Technologies class at UW-Whitewater this semester. It was a truly unique learning experience in this day and age, and Dr. Wachanga’s teaching style really allowed me to soak in the material we looked at over the course of 16 weeks.
The most helpful part was all the discussions we had that really had me involved and thinking about the topic. My favorite topic was probably crowd-sourcing and Ushahidi. I thought it was fascinating how people that weren’t even getting paid managed to map such great disasters with surprising efficiency. These kind of disaster relief real-time information systems are exactly what we need more of if we want to combat the ever-increasing crisis’s and conflicts that keep occurring.
The ten flatteners of the world that we learned about provided an excellent overview of how we are all becoming globally interconnected. We can communicate at such blazing speeds that its almost as if we are visiting every place in the world at any given time.
Overall this was one of my better college learning experiences and I’m glad to have taken part in this class!
I agree with you that this class was unique. I thought it was very eye opening and has created me to look more into our world. Dr. Wachanga’s examples and articles he had us read really brought me into what is really happening to our world. I can’t say I stay with the news in our world today, and it is sad that I learned Osama died through Facebook. But after thinking about it, learning about how Osama died through Facebook made me realize how big social media is in our world today.
I agree that this class was a great learning experiences. I enjoyed the talks about ethics, learning about Ushahidi, and all the articles read for class. I learned a lot and have opened my eyes to see what really is happening in our world today!