When I was choosing classes for this semester I was as always trying to fit them into my work schedule, making sure they are somehow related to what I am supposed to take as class and always last but shouldn’t be least I tried to choose classes that are exciting and interesting. The class description sounded alright and gave me hope that I might actually enjoy the class and learn something in the process, although I had a completely wrong expectation to what this class would be like.

As I said all three requirements were fulfilled by this class but I cannot believe how much the last part came to be true. First of all, I had no clue what a tbo class is and didn’t even pay any attention to the abbreviation. But I came to love the team part of this class so much. In being forced to work together, we all at the same time learned so much from each other. Having to discuss concepts of new media, writing blogs and key terms and doing it all as a group really made me want to learn more.

And I learned so much in this class. From being a person who never used YouTube to its full extent or even knew how to use it ‘properly’ if I even wanted to, I now have a channel (I am not uploading videos though) and discovered all these niches that I never even thought of being on YouTube. Through my project I learned so much about YouTube in general, which I never even really considered as a part of the class when choosing the course that I can definitely say I learned the most about YouTube in comparison to the other topics.

But the other topics opened my eyes and taught me that there are so many aspects to new media. Memes for example wasn’t even a word that I knew before (most likely due to language barriers) and it is the same with web series; I simply didn’t know of their existence. And even if I had known them I most certainly would not have thought about their purpose and intent so intensely as in this class. As for the web series I never looked at video games with a ‘race and gender filter’.  I never even thought about video games being possibly offensive, racist or sexist as I simply don’t interact with them in my daily life. But it made me aware that I should use this filter more often in life especially later as an educator I have to be more aware in this regard.

All in all I am really glad that I took this class and that I believed in a possible team love. It literally opened my horizon and changed me from an illiterate and ignorant digital being to an almost literate digital person that is going to work hard to get from hesitant spelling to solid reading, while still trying to be aware of gender and race at the same time.