Final Course Reflection

I really enjoyed the way this class was constructed and the different types of activities we did to keep us engaged. The blog posts and tweets were two ways of class engagement that I have never done before. The first learning outcome, is understand and communicate current trends in communication technology. I feel like I best learned this by reading about and researching current trends in the technology such as the shift to 5g, Augmented Analytics, and the improving of the cloud. The second learning outcome, is understand and demonstrate the use of several theoretical approaches to studying communication technologies. Some examples of this technologies effect on culture and the role of media in organizations. Instead of calling you can text or email family and or co workers. The Third learning outcome, is to understand and communicate the role of political, policy and economic factors in the creation, use, abuse, success and failure of communication technologies. A good example of this is the game we played to learn about how fake news is created and distributed including the different techniques used to spread the fake news and get people riled up, It was developed by researchers at Cambridge University in the UK and a Dutch fake news research organization. The game shows how a fake political account can gain traction and lead the public to fake news. The public who bevies the fake news starts to spread it even more so that eventually the fake news has been spread so much that many believe it to be true. Even though they did no research on the source that it came from. The last learning objective, is Be able to critically examine and communicate the role communication technologies play in our lives and society at large. The fake news game is an example of this, but also how media companies collect our data and sell it to companies that use it to their advantage. The data is mined to gain insight. There is structured data and un structured data. Structured data is available in rows in columns like a table format, un structured cannot be structured in a rows and column format. All of the data comes from everything we do online everything we buy, everywhere we go, and even in our car. Big data is used business, health care, education, and media. Finally, now there are laws going into place such as the California Consumer Privacy act to protect us from unwanted spying, it gives us rights and protects the consumers privacy. I really enjoyed this class and it is a shame that the person lectures had to be cut short. I learned a lot about the history about communication technologies and where we might be heading in the future. My favorite lecture was on big data. This was my favorite lecture because most of the time when you search a product, you get ads for that product on all different media outlets. Now I know why and how it is done, also how easy it is to collect data on a user. All in all i really enjoyed this class and will take away useful knowledge on media technologies.