Final Post: How COM125 Helped Me

My final blog post! I've learnt a lot of things from COM125. I'll just share three of them, because I've had long lists before and I don't think reading them was any more enjoyable for you that it was for me to write them...:

1. I have a deeper understanding of the basic concepts and technology behind the Internet.

I now know that the Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use a standard protocol to serve billions of users worldwide. The interface that makes it all visible is the Web, invented by Tim Berners-Lee. it is a system of interlinked hypertext documents contained on the Internet. One can view text, images, videos and other forms of multimedia using a tool known as a web browser. People connect to the Web via the use of hardware such as cables and routers, devices that link two incompatible networks together. 

2. I have gained insights into the power of the Internet as a communication medium and its impacts on commerce, society, education and our personal lives.

The Internet is ubiquitous. It is everywhere in our lives. This has become especially so since the inception of Web 2.0, which allowed content to be generated by everyone. This gave rise to social media, the means of interactions among people in which they create, share, and exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks. With social media, especially video sharing, concepts in education can now be explained in the form of a YouTube video, with the relevant diagrams and concept maps thrown in to aid understanding. In the areas of business and commerce, too, the Web has changed the way we conduct business affairs. In the words of Michael Dell, chairman and CEO of Dell, Inc.: [The Internet has] definitely changed our business in the way we communicate with customers, the way they communicate with us, the way we learn from those communications. You know, billions of communications per year, conversations with customers per year -- the way we share and collaborate internally inside the organization. So one of our teams in France will have a great success with something, and they'll share that online in our internal social network, and that information will propagate much more rapidly through the organization in kind of a horizontal flow. We sort of think about it in a context of if we knew everything that the collective "we" really know across the organization, we'd be much more capable of serving our customers in a better way.

Finally, the Internet has changed our daily lives in an extremely profound way. In the words of Mindi Orth, the way we communicate, shop, learn and even entertain ourselves have incorporated the use of the Internet in an almost indispensable way. 

3. I now understand and am able to use a range of Internet tools for effective communication, resource management and sharing.

Whether it is in my video sharing, my blogging, or the cloud computing I was able to do for my COM125 project, I can safely say that I have learnt the importance and convenience of the Internet and its tools. What was once a shortcut to me has now become a necessity - something that I will now find very difficult to do without. 
Also, I can say that the need to maintain this blog has made me refresh myself in the use of HMTL, as sometimes, there were some things I could not do without code (the use of tables for instance). It was a useful skill that I learnt when working (CSS too), but I had somehow become rusty in its usage. I am grateful for the opportunity to refresh myself. 

So finally, I close my blog. It's been a fruitful semester for me, and I can honestly say that I've learnt quite a bit about the Internet and its tools. All the best in your exams, future self, and I hope you can retain what you've learnt here to help you in your exams and in your future studies and career later on in life.