The aha moment is something that many students vie for. It is essentially the primal goal for many students as they long for good grades, understanding of course material, and of course that shiny piece of paper that permits the student their degree. For me, this aha moment consisted of my own adventure with grading standards and the SOLO taxonomy. You see, I was a student who believed I knew exactly what I was doing. However, I was scraping by at the multi-structural stage with elements of the pre-structural stage. I actually developed my own technical term for this old habit. Splat. Through many emotional talks and personal realizations I discovered this was not the way to succeed. I needed to create a multidimensional understanding and work ethic to achieve my life long goals. With this background I can now bring you, my readers into my own encapsulating journey through the readings. 

I had one initial thought as I began the readings, ‘this is a lot of procedural goo that is sure to coat my brain in a lack of understanding.’ Guess what, I was right. I felt like the tiny child within was asking, “what’s that?” Referring to my last paragraph I have learned I need to be kind, supportive, and understanding to this confused inner child because she simply doesn’t know. After all, how would you react to a child simply asking, “what’s that?” Personally, I took some deep belly breaths, and took in the readings piece by piece, gradually taking in the information as to not overwhelm the innocent child within. After consolidating this information and consulting with all inner-characters I can say these readings all refer to how to achieve proper privacy and protection with regard to online activity and usage. I found the paper by Regan and Jesse to be incredibly aligned with my own curiosities/concerns with regard to the EdTech realm. I always ask, “what do internet sites and databases actually know about me”? “How are the For You Page (FYP) interests generated”, “How does Facebook know I’m looking into purchasing a laptop”, and why was it that my Instagram account was hacked, how do I further protect it?” These questions constantly ring inside making me ponder my use and interaction on these apps. Do I need to delete them? After this weeks readings I realize I can continue my interaction with these apps through caution and deeper consideration. For example, I promise I will no longer utilize the same variation of a single passcode. I will also download the mentioned app, KeePass so that I am able to keep track of all passcodes. 

Really, the readings this week were invigorating to the point where I considered and contemplated my own learning journey, my usage and understanding of privacy and protection, and also caused me to wonder about some new questions. Should I use auto fill on my computer? How should I go about changing my passcodes, all at once, or gradually? If anyone in this class has some answers with regard to these new queries I would appreciate a comment. If not, I hope you found my experience with the readings to be helpful in someway to your own learning journey. 

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At this opportunity I would like to thank my learning pod members for their insightful and helpful responses to my blog post. I found each one provided something unique and helpful to extend my learning on this topic! The three learning extensions i received from the responses were: 1. Social Media has a one-sided lens so to speak. It only captures the moment by moment details that users provide. It does not provide onlookers the dynamic changes that are occurring within every changing moment in a persons life. 2. That the illusion I made of the tiny child in my brain was effective in further providing my point. 3. That I could use my laptops auto-generated strong passwords and still use autofill. Overall, thank you to my group members for your help and insightful comments that led to my own further learning.