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| Kevin Lee Watson's blog |
I have had the opportunity via a Digital Civilization class assignment to review Kevin's blog as part of a midterm evaluation. We are supposed to review our classmate's blog on the criteria of how well he/she has been meeting the classes learning outcomes:
Understanding western history in terms of themes, events, and people.
Kevin has done a good job in applying historical context to his blog, but I venture so say that this is the learning outcome that the blog struggles with the most (but not a whole lot). Kevin makes sure to tie in the history of whatever we are learning to almost every post that he makes. It is clear that Kevin it making strides to learn the history; he often comments on how he has spent time learning about a certain topic, however, it is not always clear how much of that learning is being shared on the blog. I do however, enjoy the connections that Kevin frequently makes between the historical and the digital. In this, Kevin really shows his understanding of history because he is able to show the parallels between what happened then and what is happening now. A good example of that is when Kevin makes the connection between the way modernism changed the way people viewed the world and how our digital era is again shifting our paradigm of the world.
Understanding basic computing concepts, digital culture and relating them to history and today.
Like I said in the previous paragraph, Kevin does a good job at making connections. I have also enjoyed how Kevin does a good job of creating a good balance between history-based blog posts and computing-based blog posts. Kevin also does a good job of this by mixing classic, written blog posts with posts incorporating both videos and pictures. I especially enjoyed this in in his post on Logics and Computers. He talked about the Turing machine (historical) as well as "Computers LDT" and unsolvable problems (computing concept).
Managing personal learning and developing digital skills to Consume, Create, Connect
Definitely Kevin's strong point, Kevin has employed a lot of tools to help him in his digital learning. Let me just list some of the ways that Kevin has tried to expand and manage his own learning: YouTube, Diigo, Blogger, Google Reader, and Curriki. Kevin has watched old films and written reviews about them. Kevin often mentions how he connects with other classmates through Diigo and their blogs to find good content to consume. If you go onto the Digital Civilization Diigo group, Kevin's name is among the top users in the group. Kevin also does a good job of connecting with other students by reading their blogs and linking their blogs to what he writes in his own blog. For a quick example, see this post where Kevin has obviously read Kurt Witt's blog and relates to it. For creating, Kevin has been actively blogging and maintaining his online presence. His blog posts create good content for other class members to consume.
