Peer Review Evaluation: Chase McCloskey

I had the opportunity to review Chase's blog (Chasing Knowledge). It was great to review fully someone else's insights to the class and find out what kind of things he had been learning on his own.

Historical Context:
One of the things I really liked about Chase's blog was that he includes a lot of personal stories and applications. For example, when talking about the atomic age, he was able to talk about his recent trip to Hiroshima and share several photos as well as a short video clip. I feel that these topics have more relevance when they include a personal application. Chase is very good at capturing the historical context that we have been learning Many of his posts are about the subject matter. You can tell he has gone out of his way to learn and research more into these topics.

Computing Context and Digital Culture:
Chase seems to be grasping the computing context and  learning many new digital tools. I have learned some new things while reading his blog. His presentation of Wordle was especially fun to read, his Prezi of the book review was nicely put together, and his explanation of fractals (with yet another personal experience) were all very easy to understand and helpful to me as a consumer. He probably could do a bit more in this category to really get more out of the class, but it seems like he is well on his way.

Self-Directed Learning:
Chase seems very interested in the topics learned in class and is doing his best to apply them to his learning. He could definitely start doing a few more digital literacy labs as well as finding more readings outside of the assigned. Overall it appears that he is really enjoying the class and has greatly improved the quality of posts since the beginning f the semester!

Reflection

The past few months I have learned many different things in this class. I'd like to talk about the three different aspects to the class and what I have learned in each aspect.

Historical Context: I absolutely love history. I love learning new things and I love this class especially because it allows me to learn new things in my own way. We are given guided reading to help stimulate the topic, then we are allowed to explore the topic for ourselves, using our own methods (Google search, library, blogs, etc). I have been able to learn a lot more (and focus more on the aspects of each subject that I personally find more interesting). I'm even doing a better job at documenting what I'm reading through diigo.

Computing Concepts and Digital Culture: While I still seem to struggle in this regard, I think I've made bounding leaps of improvement since the beginning months of the semester. I've really begin to embrace the skills I've learned, and it's helped me not only in this class, but in almost all my other classes I've used the concepts I've learned here. For example in my Theater midterm I used Jing to help put my PowerPoint presentation together. I also created a Prezi presentation for my Political Science course. It's been fun to teach these things to my friends and family (they think I'm a lot more tech savvy than they used to). I'm also not afraid to search things out for myself. Before this class I was very closed minded to the technological/digital world. I was afraid to use anything more than Firefox and only searched through Google. However, now I am more willing to try to discover things on my own, and ask other people who know more about these things. It's been exciting to learn new tricks.

Self-Directed Learning: I think this was quite a challenge to me at the beginning of the semester, but I think I have come a long way since then. As I mentioned earlier, I have gotten better at using Diigo to show some of the things I've been researching. It's been very interesting to see how much legitimate information is actually on the internet. I think, especially in high school, teachers and professors are always talking about the evils of using internet information to study, but the more i have searched online for different topics, the more I have found that there is very good and legitimate resources to use. The great hing is that they are free and available to the masses. It's a shame not many people know about it though. I have really enjoyed learning how to discover information on my own, and to read and investigate topics that I find personally interesting. It's very liberating from my other courses I've taken which give specific reading assignments.

I think overall, I have greatly increased my knowledge of western civilization, computer/digital concepts, and self-directed learning. I'm still trying to find ways to better myself, but I think I've come a long way and have learned many important lessons that will help open my understanding to these ideas in the future.

Atomic Comic Book

A comic book distributed to visitors of the Big Rock Point Power Plant in Michigan reveals the ideas behind the age of atomic power. Click the link below for the full slide presentation!

http://www.scientificamerican.com/slideshow.cfm?id=1971-nuclear-comic-book&photo_id=191D78AF-DD55-BC26-52A5ED3BFB4F9323

Keynesian Economics is Wrong?

There are many different opinions about Keynesian economics. This video talks about the logical fallacy of this theory. He says that it sounds good, but the fact is that in the real world Government can't inject money into the economy without taking money out first. There is no increase (aggregate demand), it is just redistributed. Watch and see what you think.

Solving Unemployment in the U.S.: Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes

Currently in the US we face a large unemployment problem. According to The Huffington Post, 15 million people are out of jobs and nine million more are involuntarily working part time. We see the dissatisfaction in Washington with this issue as Democrats lost majority in the House just a few days ago. Voters don't understand why jobs are so scarce so they vote against those they believe are in power. They did this same thing to the first George Bush in 1992, Clinton and the Democrats in 1994, and also many Republicans who had supported George W. Bush in 2008. They want results, and they don't know how to get the, so they just keep jumping ship from one side to another.

 

So what do economists say would reduce unemployment? We can glean many helpful insights from Adam Smith, father of free market economics. He found that the real problem was not unemployment, but rather monopolies. He therefore aimed to liberate the energies of entrepreneurial people to create wealth. His goal was for British parliament to stand up to government-sponsored monopolies that in the 18th century kept competitors out of many areas and stifled growth. This can be found by reading his famous book The Wealth of Nations (which never mentions the problem of joblessness in any of its pages...).

John Maynard Keynes is the economist who suggested how unemployment could be attacked. Keynes believed in markets as much as Smith did. He recommended that the British government use market prices not rationing to allocate scarce resources as WWII approached. During the Depression, however, the millions of jobless were a crucial political problem. Keynes argued that waiting for private investors to create jobs as conservatives said Smith would have done could lead to the overthrow of Great Britain's free institutions.

Conservatives were arguing in the 1930s, as they still do in 2010, that cutting taxes and reducing government outlays would create jobs in the "long run." Keynes famously responded that "in the long run we are all dead."

The insights of Smith and Keynes are central to today's debate between the parties. Smith is still right that economic progress depends on liberating the energies of entrepreneurs so that they can create wealth. Government has to pump money into competitive markets to get investment going again. That is what stimulus is, and that is what will boost the economy and get people jobs.

Why Freud Was Wrong

So there is actually a book out there entitled Why Freud Was wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis (1995). It, obviously, is a critique of Freud and psychoanalysis. It argues that Freud became some kind of Messiah and that psychoanalysis is really a disguised continuation of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. What does that mean exactly? He basically asserts that Freud was a rather dirty and rejected child who, because of the deep need to repay his parents for being do undesirable, embarked upon a messianic mission to world fame with his own disciples and church to boot. His need for fame and recognition was so urgent that he not only deluded himself and deceived others; he also fell prey to the deceptions and delusion of his deranged seniors and special confidants through projecting onto others his own messianic urges.

Well we now know how Webster feels about the subject. What do you think? Is Freud valid in today's psychological society?

Microfinance

Today I selected to be in the group that is dealing with starting a microfinance group at BYU. To be perfectly honest, I knew little to nothing on the subject, so I thought I would do a little research an enlighten myself. Here's what I found:

Microfinance is the provision of financial services to low-income clients including consumers and self-employed, who traditionally lack access to banking and related services. Such services will attempt to help poor people out of poverty.

It's object is "a world in which as many poor and near-poor households as possible have permanent access to an appropriate range of high quality financial services, including not just credit but also savings, insurance, and fund transfers."

The problem is most banks traditionally do not provide financial services (such as loans) to clients with little to no cash income. Therefore, microfinancing allows these people to receive financial help, whereas they would normally not be able to do so.

Due to slow progress in developing quality saving services for poor people, peer-to-peer platforms have developed to expand microlending through individual lenders in the developed world.


Kiva is such an organization, which facilitates about $5M in loans each month. Kiva "empowers individuals to lend to an entrepreneur across the globe. By combining microfinance with the internet, Kiva is creating a global community of people connected through lending."

For our project we will be looking to create a microfinance group at BYU, thus helping connect students to this realm. It seems like an exciting project. I can't wait to learn more!