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Learning Essay To be quite honest, I did not know what I was in for when I signed up for this class. I am not very good with technology, or at least I never considered myself to be. I also have never really thought about the impact that technology has on our daily lives. It is EVERYWHERE, and it affects so much more of our life then I realized. This class covered topics I have never discussed or even touched on in previous classes. I was immediately over whelmed. A few of these topics includes looking into multi user games, virtual worlds, participatory culture, and media ownership. And this is a very short list of topics discussed. On top of those, I learned to use Dreamweaver, make a Machinima on Second Life, publish a video on YouTube, and make my own web-published video. My first hypertext was a good introduction project to give me a feel for Dreamweaver and to improve my skills with the program. It was completely new to me, and for the most part, I feel I felt comfortable with the program in a decent amount of time. I did have a very difficult time at first figuring out how to save my webpages as I created them. For the longest time, I could only view my webpages when my flash drive was plugged into the computer. But due to my persistence and much frustration, I was able to FINALLY figure it out. It was smooth sailing using Dreamweaver from there on out. I know my first hypertext on Brett Favre is not near as detailed or well designed as my later projects. I think that I made a lot of progress in the following two assignments especially in the design aspects. The weighed down feeling that I felt the first day of class did not begin to compare with the stress I felt when we were assigned our Machinima video project. I discussed this project in more detail in my Machinima link, but I just thought the assignment was crazy. The majority of the students have never used Second Life, have never used HD movie, or I movie. How was I supposed to make a video in Second Life and publish it in two weeks. Everyone in the class ended up to be successful. I can honestly say that I have never been so proud of a project as I was with this one. I was amazed that I, and my class included, was able to achieve such a demanding feat. Then we moved onto our last two hypertext essays. I actually really enjoyed these projects. I was able to write them no things that I was interested in. I also found that making and especially designing websites was fun for me. I looked forward to working on them. For me, the civic engagement project on anorexia was something that I hope will actually help others. It is meant to give people information as well as point them towards an organization that can be of service to them. I also think it has meaning to people because I have personal experience with the issue. That gives viability to my site. I hope that it would be recommended to others. Making hypertext essays is much easier than writing a straight forward formal essay. When doing those kinds of essays, I find it difficult to get the words out. But when writing a hypertext essay, the words flow out so much easier. I think that composing a website could be a good final project for a variety of classes. There is a lot that gets put into making a website. It is also more enjoyable for the student. I think it could have been useful in my Psychology of Aging class because we were teaching older adults how to use computers. We could have make a website for the older adults to use. There could be tips, training session times and dates, and instructions. It could have been a go to site when they were not sure how to do something. I did have a mishap when making the video for the civic engagement project. My friend and I had made all the beats for the song and had recorded all the rapping. I had edited and added all the pictures. I had a few more pictures to add towards the end and IMovie unexpectedly shut down. I had not saved everything, so it was gone which meant I had to redo the whole project. This was really frustrating because we had spent a long time working on the video. Luckily, making it the second time went much quicker because I had more of an idea of what to do. I think that I am most proud of the civic engagement project because of the video I created as well as the fact that I hope it helps someone out. I do feel that I learned a lot through the online discussion forums and the class discussions. Many topics covered in class were things I knew nothing about. It was nice being able to post my opinions as well as read others. Class discussions were also very nice because everyone would voice their opinion. It was much better than just sitting and listening because we got to interact with the class. My final civic engagement project consists of 3508 original words and a personal story from an anorexic victim. It is spread over 15 web pages. There are five hyperlinks.
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