Overall, I really enjoyed this course on the history of the information age. I honestly did not know much about this topic, and was excited to be able to learn more throughout the semester. One of my favorite things that we learned was that AT&T stands for the American Telegraph and Telephone company that was founded by Alexander Graham Bell. This is a simple fun fact that I did not know.
Another favorite topic of mine was discussing memes, technology and war, and cybersecurity. I was excited to learn the history of memes and the origin of the word, because I feel like not a lot of people know about it. It was interesting to think about the impact that memes have on our culture and how they can convey certain cultural themes in a funny, engaging way. Lastly, I really liked the discussions about technology, war and cybersecurity. I enjoyed these topics because my dad was in the military and was a cryptologist, and now he is a cybersecurity analyst, so it was exciting to learn a little more about those topics.
Another aspect of the class that I enjoyed was the class discussions led by students. I found these to be engaging, important to the content of the class, and allowed the class to hear everyone’s thoughts on the topic. Personally, I would have liked it if we spent one day doing a more lecture based class, and the other day doing a class discussion.
I enjoyed that we were able to come up with the syllabus together as a class and brainstorm all the assignments. For the final project, I was excited that we were able to choose between the AI assignment, the alumni project, or the timeline. I think that providing options for final projects is imperative for students to do well and succeed because they have the ability to choose something they want, rather than feeling forced to do a project.