I came into this class thinking I would learn about new forms of video editing and modern art, but on the first day I had a radical paradigm shift. As I learned, New Media has very little to do with traditional media or artwork. The first assignment, as we all know, was to write a blog post on something, anything. I, being the constant cynic, blogged about the uselessness of blogging. I could not wrap my mind around the idea that people could blog for fun; it felt disconnecting and meaningless. However, my prejudices were quickly swayed as I dove head first into the blogosphere. While I still don't consider myself an avid blogger (I only blog for the class), I have come to understand what is so special about blogging, it is, in fact, the community. I still can't quite understand why people would create their own blog that nobody reads, but knowing that our blog leads to a discussion amongst peers and friends seems extremely pertinent and important. Much like facebook, I live in the community I comment about and that's where I derive the drive to post and connect with others.

The wiki has been a slightly different story. I think it has great potential to connect everyone of us in ways unknown to us five months ago, but it still has not become a central part of the class. I started using the wiki about a month and a half ago with no idea of what the heck to do. The first couple of entries were scary; I had no idea what to post about. Then I did a couple of entries and realized how easy / fun they were. The beauty of our wiki is that the entries themselves do not matter as much as the fact that they are there for other people to connect to. The biggest problem after doing the first couple of entries was waiting for someone else to make an entry. No one really got into it at all for about a month or so, and then the entries began to creep in. Recently, a couple of people have realized, much like I did a while ago, that this "wiki" thing is freggin awesome. It is possible to bust out 20-30 entries in an hour and not break a sweat. Only now, after several people have begun to create in-depth "profiles", have I seen how powerful the machine can actually be. Who knew an entry on cheese could get some many people to connect, or having a younger brother, or a pet dog, or operation moonbounce? The possibilities are endless.

I have had an amazing experience taking this class. I really wanted to understand "New Media" as a whole, and I think I can now grasp the concept, even if I cannot put it into words (I want to use the idea of over-arching "New media" because that was the experience I had; I do not want to limit the experience to simply a community or a hypertext, but just take everything in and not try to label it). Words cannot describe the cyber experience I endured throughout the class. My adventures in New Media have translated into new friends and real life experiences along the way. Besides, how great is a class where a meaningful discussion can be had on video games, a week later on Facebook, and the week following that we get to assist in the redesigning of the class's layout. I say we are all a lot luckier than we realize for accidentally stumbling into New Media. I may not have learned new cinematography techniques, but I figured out a little something about web 2.0.