All has come to an end....

Well as the semester ends on a good note I just wanted to make a few comments on our class. First, I really enjoyed this class and its wide range of projects. This is the first blog that I have ever done. Although sometimes it was a hard and kind of hard to remember to write on it...lol. But when we did, it was very nice to have the freedom to write about what we wanted with the only restriction of relating it to the writing class. Sometimes though, it was hard to come up with topics to write about. My resort, if I couldnt think of anything, was to resort to bbc.com. They have a great technology section in which you can relate almost everything to writng in some way. I also enjoyed the wikis and the media specific projects. The most important thing that Im taking away from this class is the manner of thinking about writing outside the box. I always, just thought about writing as paper and pen or on the computer, but now I have seen all the non-conventional writings that are available. I will definitley be incorporating some of the programs that people presented in future presentations and projects. Thanks for a great semester. I never thought I would have fun in an English class....lol. :)

Almost there!

Well, as stressful as these last two weeks of classes are, I have to say that our research paper seems to be the one project that I feel relaxed about. I have a lot of work to do with it, but it feels like it is all coming together. Thank you very much Shuhan and Izzy for the advice about my paper. I have run into a couple problems because the people that I was counting on for interviews and information seem to be too busy and/or not respond to emails. Hopefully the few sources that I have will be enough, but Im a little worried.

Here is just an interesting article that I saw on BBC.com. Apparently there will be a new way to search things on the web that is suppose to be easier and better than Google. I'm not sure what I think about this, but Im biased...I love google and yahoo and ask.com. :)

I hope everyone has a good end of the week.

GarageBand Wiki Reflection

As many of you know, my media specific project was about GarageBand. It was a fascinating program to learn as well as apply to writing classes. I have to admit, I was more excited about doing the wiki project than using the actual technology. :) I had never contributed to anything online like a website and certainly not something that I was certain others were going to reference. The whole experience was fun in my opinion!

First: Getting to know how the wiki works
Since I was completely new to wikis and how they work, it took me a while to understand the formatting (fonts, indents, size, pictures, etc). Once I got the hang of it, it was actually fun to play around with. One thing that I had a lot of experience with while creating my wiki was pictures! lol. I was very frustrated at times, I wished I could just move them how you can in almost all programs, but of course not! In the wiki we need to time certain parentheses, commas, etc in order to import the picture. Once I got the picture imported, then it took a while to figure out how to get it right where I want it. I'm a very visual person, so I wanted the page to look good as well as have good information.

Second: Figuring out what I wanted on my wiki
No offense to the student who did GarageBand last semester, but I did not think the wiki was very good nor did it get across important information. So I was lucky that I already had a page created, but it needed some desperate work! :) My main focus on page was figuring out how to incorporate information for students/instructors (who will be looking at it) that would be usefull. I wanted to make sure I made it clear that just becuase it is sound editing, that it CAN be used for writing classes. Hopefully I was able to do this successfully. One problem that I had with this section was that I wish I could have incorporated more specific examples. I was not able to do this because I, myself, did not have that much experience with the program, but I know its capabilities (so that's what I tried to focus on).

Third: Redoing the category page for Sound Editing
In addition to redoing my GarageBand page, I also refreshed the category page for sound editing. Again, the page was set up nicely, but just needed some re-wording. This is also where my challenges with the pictures came in. :) But with Scot's help, it all worked out. My group and I wanted this page to be a general overview that would help the readers understand more about sound editing. Hopefully after reading this information, the reader will be interested and click onto one of our specific program pages.

Fourth: Working with my group
I think that our sound editing group distributed the work evenly. We did not work much on each other's pages. We all worked on our own and then all had some input to the category page. I know that Alex did have more work than Jack and I because he had to create a whole new page, but it seemed to be working well for him and he did not need our help.

Overall, I thought this was a fun project and a good way to wrap up what we had already started and worked on for the media specific project. Hopefully instructors and students will find these pages useful in the future.

Apparently tweeting is not enough to keep the worms away!

So before last week, I didn't even know what twitter was or how it worked. I still have not used it or seen it in person, but I happened to run accross this article on BBC about "a worm" that was infecting many users of twitter and their computers. It is my understanding that twitter is that the terms are based off of a bird..."twitter" and "tweet" and so on. So I actually found this very ironic that "a worm" essetially effected "the bird". lol :) Does anyone else find this funny and ironic?

Well, I hope all of your rough drafts went okay. Im excited to get going on this project, but I still have many interviews to do.

See you in class. :)

Technological Breakfast Anyone????

Oh my! As I was on BBC.com I saw this article and could not believe what I was reading. In class, we have talked about technology advancing in many areas, but we have not talked about it with our breakfast appliances!!! This article talks about how some scientists have actually created a toaster with an iPlayer on the side of it!!! CRAZY. To me, this just seems like laziness. I mean, come on, how much time do we actually spend in front of the toaster to be able to actually watch tv, check email, or even listen to music from your toaster.

Well, I hope you all found this amusing. I thought since we have had a couple serious weeks of blogs and conversations in class, that we could all use a laugh! :)

Wiki Projects

So I don't know about all of you, but the whole format for the wikis is crazy. Why do we have to put 3 equal signs to get it to be a heading and all the other little things like that...lol. I think that the intentions of wikis is great and they are wonderfully helpful, but since I had never created a wiki before this class, I guess I didnt realize how much time and effort it takes to create one. I just thought you log on and click and type a little and then you can move it around how you like, but I was wrong. :) It's all good, it's a new experience for me. Did anyone find the format of the wikis different than what they thought it would be?

Phenomenology and Idhe

So I have to admit that when we first started talking about Idhe, I was completely confused and lost...but it is actually kind of interesting how these concepts can be applied to our lives and more importantly our research projects.

I have decided to write my research paper on a technology used for children with disabilities and more specifically cerebral palsy. This technology is called a Dynavox. It is actually a computer with a touch screen that can be attached to the side of a wheelchair for the person to use. The person can use buttons to scan through options on the screen as it reads them back to them. The person can then choose what they want to say and the computer will say it in sentence form in order to communicate.

Idhe can be applied to this technology in both embodiment and hermeneutic relations. First, it can be embodiment becuase the person is experiencing the world through the machine. We (the therapists, teachers, parents, etc) can change what the computer says and the different situations that the person might come across and need to communicate something. As we talked about the blind man with his cane, the Dynavox is like a cane to someone who can't speak.

Also, this relation can be hermeneutic in that the child has to learn how to interpret how to use the technology. They also have to adjust every time something is added or changed on the dynavox. Therefore the person is having an experience of the machine in order to use it.

These are just a few of my ideas. Let me know what you think and whether Im understanding this correctly. :)