Week 10: Final Blog of Quarter

I thought overall this class was a great class and I really learned a lot from a variety of people in this class as well as all the many different aspects and applications we covered in class from day 1.  Having never used any of the applications such as Photoshop, Dreamweaver, InDesign, Wix/Weebly, or even blogger, I got a great sense and learning experience of what it’s like to use each of these many different software applications and will look forward to using them and applying them to future work I do outside this class.  For the group website, I thought it was a great experience working with Weebly as my group and I worked diligently as a team as we came up with our different topic and meeting days as well as working as a whole on this project.  It was nice to do some outside work as well, but I felt our group operated wonderfully together achieving our weekly goals we all set out for one another.  Using Weebly was extremely beneficial on getting a basic layout on our individual websites as well because it was nice designing our own layouts and get the basics down as far as the content and structure was concerned regarding our own personal layouts. 

The portfolio was another element of this class that I really enjoyed.  At first this assignment seemed somewhat confusing as our goal was to generate and compile information relating to class and content beyond that will help us in the future with many of our other weekly assignments and other projects we did in class daily.  Not only did I somewhat gain an advantage by printing everything off a week or two early, I found it beneficial that way because it allowed me not to fall behind in my organizational notebook which is what I was putting together.  Overall though, I thought the portfolio was a great source of information to go back and refer to whenever I had an issue and couldn’t successfully reach Jason via email or any other type of way.  The individual website has probably been one of the most time consuming projects I have done so far at my time at Western.  I think it’s been a great exercise over learning the attachments of Photoshop and Dreamweaver as well.  I think that funnest, yet most frustrating part of this whole project is the ability to get the C.R.A.P. principles down.  I think this has been a great task of our ability to learn everything we have done so far in class with not only these principles but also the creativity and ability to work outside the class too.  Since week 2, I have been struggling to find the appropriate topic to cover for our individual website and week by week I have been structuring my website to the design and layout I wanted too.  I think completing this project up to par is a goal I really hope to accomplish come Thursday but am sure it completely doable.

Finally, our class activities have been the best part of this class as a whole.  I think it’s been extremely beneficial to learn these different activities as a group and walking through step-by-step the basics of how to do and complete each activity to our fullest potential.  I thought the introduction of business cards, brochures, webpages and all the other activities we have completed in class with Jason’s instructions have been great because he walks us through one by one how to apply each concept to that particular week’s activity.  It’s nice to learn that way because if one person struggles and falls behind, it’s nice because the rest of the class gets to play catch up and help out everyone simultaneously.  Overall, I thought this was a great class and look forward to applying my computer skills in the future.

--below is a video I have added which covers the basics of the C.R.A.P. principles which is what applies to almost everything we have done in class thus far:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=crap+principles&oq=crap+principles&aq=f&aqi=g1&aql=&gs_sm=3&gs_upl=751l3338l0l3467l15l15l0l5l5l0l238l690l8.1.1l10l0

Week 9: A Day Without Technology:

In this day in age, I feel it's virtually nearly impossible for a college student ( or any other person in their early 20's) to go a full complete day without using any type of media.  For example, most students either check their phone, email, or immediately turn on their television without even thinking about it each and every morning.  I think it's almost set in our DNA to not even think about it but just to immediately feel as if we are not alone in this world and always need that secondary source of communication whether it comes from our family or friends.  Yesterday, I tried going a whole 24 hours without using any source of media technology.  Here were my results:

I woke up yesterday at 3:45 a.m. to get ready for work like every normal day.  Instead of immediately checking to see if I had any missed calls or text messages, I quickly got dressed and left for work at 3:55 and made it to work at 4:00 a.m.  From there, I worked til 11:00 a.m. still without checking anything on my phone and came straight to school.  This is where I got sidetracked by all the other hundreds of students on campus using nonstop technology so I quickly made a phone call to a friend.  This is where I knew I wouldn't last the whole 24 hours technology-free.  Though I was able to go the rest of the afternoon and last night without watching TV or listening to the radio, I felt that I was able to eliminate and save so much time that way which I normally wouldn't have if I hadn't tried this experiment. 

I really thought I would be able to accomplish this goal of going a whole 24 hours without any source of technology, but I didn't actually realize how much we depend on so many of our handheld devices such as twitter, phone, i-pod, laptops and many other sources of technology we use on a daily basis.  I felt that I was able to actually save so much time and found many other activities outside my house that I was able to accomplish that I was actually really proud of.  This particular experiment made me realize the importance that so many of us depend on our technology that plays such a tremendous role in our lives that we don't even realize on a daily basis.  I told this experiment to many of my brothers last night and they thought it was virtually impossible to accomplish this goal for an entire day.  I don't think we are coming to any conclusions or moving towards a "digital-living" free world whatsoever.  With all the advancements on so many media products that exist today and how much technology has actually changed so drastically, I don't think we will ever escape what our society has adapted too.