Over the course of this semester there were a few events that I enjoyed and a few that I felt were not so meaningful.  I really enjoyed the whole 3D printing experience and I felt that although we may have spent a little bit too much time on the posters that it was rewarding to have the best posters at the STEAM festival out of any other group.  At the same time I felt as though we did not really do much regarding the BioBlitz and I felt as though it was hard to know what was coming up in class because it was hard to remember to check the syllabus because every other class uses BlackBoard.

I really enjoyed the 3D printing because unless the technology becomes very widespread in my lifetime which it might I don’t know if I ever would have used a 3D printer.  I really enjoyed learning how to design 3D objects and had a fun time actually creating something.  The poster was not exactly my favorite thing to make and I definitely did not enjoy presenting it four times in class, but it was really nice that our posters were so much better than everyone else’s and the STEAM festival as a whole was nice although the stamping system seemed kind of childish.  If Macaulay cannot trust people to explore different projects without policing us then it should not be running such an event in my opinion.  I very much enjoyed the labs, but overall though my favorite part of the course was the 3D printing.  I also feel as though my communication skills improved throughout the process because of all of the times I had to present.  This was definitely my favorite of the first three IDC classes so far.  However, there were still things I felt could’ve been better.

Something that I did not enjoy about the course was the fact that at times it seemed as though homework was assigned just because nothing had been assigned beforehand it did not seem like there was any rhyme or reason to some assignments.  The BioBlitz was an interesting event, but I feel like it did not teach me much.  I enjoyed learning about plot.ly, but I’m not sure what the benefit of using it is over Microsoft Excel.  I know that every IDC course has its own website, but honestly I’m not sure why.  If everyone else is using Blackboard then I feel like it would be easier to have everything more centralized.

As a whole I definitely enjoyed the course and would recommend our section to those taking the class in the future.  However, there are some areas where I feel as though a class can be spent a better way and I’m not sure that the Macaulay website system is the most effective one.  I appreciate the hard work put into the course and I’m happy I got to experience 3D printing.