Reflection

As our time blogging for Multimedia Communication starts to wind down, I've been reflecting upon what I've learned from doing this blog. While I didn't necessarily learn a lot about blogging or using the web, it helped me to reinforce skills I'd learned previously. In any event, here's a list of ten things I learned from practica and keeping this blog over the past few weeks.

1) I learned how to utilize RSS feeds to more efficiently optimize the time I spend online.

2) I learned how to use Bubbl.us, which is a useful tool for visually representing complicated relationships online.

3) Through researching sources for my blog posts, I learned how to find podcasts or video blogs on a variety of topics.

4) By doing this blog, I've been able to learn what type of music and which groups are popular with my classmates at UNav-- which is important to me in keeping up with my musical education!

5) By reading my classmate's blogposts, I've been able to learn what resources they like to use to find new music.

6) I found Elena and Dani's interviews with artists from the Basque Country really interesting; it revealed that no matter what background you may come from the desire to create music is driven by the same passion.

7) I was surprised to learn that American bands I listen to that don't necessarily get a lot of radio play, like Incubus, are known and enjoyed in Spain.

8) Ines and Elena's posts often challenged me to think about music from a different perspective, such as soundtracks to video games, which I've often just kind of considered part of the game or background noise rather than music in its own right.

9) I also learned the true impact Hollywood films seem to have on perceptions of American culture...

10) Overall, I've learned a lot about different music and have discovered a lot of new bands! Blogs seem to be a great medium for doing this because, as Ines touched upon in her last post, and as Professor Orihuela has discussed,people prefer to get information from sources that are like them rather than "experts". In writing for this blog, I've certainly found that to be true.