Course Reflection

Wow so the semester is almost over already! It seems like it was just yesterday when we first started with this class. Looking back I would say it was pretty cool. I had taken the standard english 105 class a few semesters ago and obviously it didn't go to well for me to be taking english 105 again lol. First and most importantly to me, I think our class had a good chemistry. It never felt wierd to talk in front of the class or anything like that. Everyone seemed very comfortable and I think that all starts with the atmosphere the teacher brings into the classroom...easy going and very conducive to learning. I definately liked that. Working on the computer and doing all our assignments based on the computer use was something different than I am used to but it was ok. I liked learning how to use dreamweaver to create web pages....something I thought I would never be able to do. I never once felt like i didn't want to come to class which is a good thing. I had fun going to class. As far as what I didn't like. Well of course I'm going to complain that there were to many things to do meaning like the blog posts constatly, but that wasn't even really that bad. It just forces you to stay on task which is a good thing. Overall, i would say i learned alot this semester and have improved my writting even more. I enjoyed this semester and have no regrets.

Synthesis

To be honest, the hardest part in writting something acedemic is getting started. Usually writting something acedemic requires research which i always think is going to take like a million years and just the thought of that scares me. So i procrastinate. Once i start feeling the pressure to get something done is when i do it...lol i know thats terrible isn't it? In all reality, its not really that hard. Finding sources and going through them just requires some focus and can get done in a day or two. Knowing how to research is a big part in making things go quick. So, just getting stated is the hardest for me.

I do sometimes have problems with spitting out what i want to say. Like in my head i know what i want to say and it makes perfect sense and i understand it but i just cant get it out like i want too. I have trouble sometimes explaining what i'm trying to say. I can usually figure something out but i guess you could say i have a problem with this.

As far as citing stuff, never had a problem with that or incorporating stuff. I feel i was taught well in doing that in high school.

I think i actually like writting acedemically more than creatively. I'm a very objective person so writting on facts or actual issues is more fun to me than writting someting creative. I like to be able to have acedemic sources with facts to back up claims than have nothing to work off of when writting creatively.

Multimodal Reflection

Going into this multimodal project, I knew it would be posted on the internet meaning my audience could be broad...very broad. But for the most part, it would relate more to someone who was interested in e-security issues or someone with an e-business. Knowing that this could be viewed by almost anyone, i wanted to make sure I presented my stuff well becase i didn't want to look stupid. Knowing this could potentially be read by a computer guru i didn't want to dumb down my information to much. I tried to keep a fine line of keeping it simple where someone who didn't know anything ablout computers could understand and still maintaining some technical stuff that was easily understood like encryption. I think i did a decent job at adressing my audience.

Obviously, I would have liked to make my page more appealing to the eye with layering things and 3-D boxes and different fonts, sizes, and colors but i'm not really that good using dreamweaver yet. I would have liked to make it look more professional overall. Enough of bashing myself lol. One thing i like about the stuff i do is that i always make sure my ideas flow together making a nice comprehensive paper. I feel i did that with this assignment. I tried to keep it as organized as i could and easy to navigate. As far as do i feel like i had enough time to complete this? Yes, and yes we had more than ample time to do what we had to do.

Researching for this project wasn't too bad. Once you showed us that library hunt thingy it really helped me and made things go alot faster and smoother. I found plenty of relevant and acedemic articles on EBSCOhost that i know i can use and are reliable. The hardest part was just getting started. Once i did that i found all my stuff fairly quick and started putting the assignment together. Overall, i am pleased with the outcome . For not ever doing something like this i feel i did ok.

CLAIM

Virus protection is crucial to ensure businesses can remain running without constantly having to repair glitches that come from viruses

Research

Ahh good old research. We are all familiar with doing research from high school. It usually would consist of getting a topic and having to dig through information from all sorts of places and formulate an educated paper. It seems like I've done so many research papers over the years. When researching, I always do it the same way. I make sure I know the prompt of the assingnment so I do exactly what is asked, I gather relevant information from wherever I can whether its through books at the library or using the internet and google to using the Purdue Calumets' online library and databases. Once I have my info I take out whatever I can use and write it down and cite the exact page where it came from. The last step is writing the paper. This is just simply putting your information in a logical and comprehensive order. I know MLA is used more for liberal arts and creative writting and APA is used basically for papers related to science. We always have to cite information we didn't know about and give credit to the author who did know what he was talking about. We use other peoples work because it proves accuracy and authority when someone reading your paper knows the information say for instance it came from a professor at Yale.

Podcast

http://student.calumet.purdue.edu/~balaza1

:Hpertext Reflection:

Finally it's over! So looking back at this assignment I would have to say overall I am pleased. Considering I didn't even know what a hypertext essay was and had no idea how to create one, I would say this first one went ok. When we first began this project, it was fuzzy to me and I wasn't quite sure what our objective was. Once the prompt was actually clear in my head and I knew what we were supposed to do I was on a roll!..and I was having fun doing it.
I think I did a very good job keeping my summary and hyperlinks very clean looking and functioning. Overall I believe I maintained a professional look and feel to my page. I suppose if I had more time and more experitse with dreamweaver, I'd be able to make my site "look" alot cooler. It would just be appearance making it look nicer, not necessarily better content wise. I tried to make sure all the information I put down was clear, understandable, and easy to read for anyone on the web who comes across this. Since this is on the world wide web, that means anyone will be able to access this making my audience potentially huge!! With that in mind, I just tried to sound educated and present myself the best and most professionally I could. I think anyone who comes across this will like what they get, an easy to read, informative,brief little summary about cognitve enhancers with the authors comments on how he feels about this issue.
Thinking about it, I'm very happy with the outcome of this. I know I do a good job of keeping things in general simple and to the point, and thats what I did with this assignment too. I did my best to do what was asked of us.

Life Magazine

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.hq.usace.army.mil/history/life_mag_cover_ftpeck.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.hq.usace.army.mil/history/Vignettes/Vignette_66.htm&h=3000&w=2248&sz=1243&hl=en&start=1&tbnid=PcLBP4nEXj4qBM:&tbnh=150&tbnw=112&prev=/images%3Fq%3DLife%2BMagazine%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den

Apon first look at this photo, I wasn't quite sure what it was and what it meant. To me, it just looked like a castle. I noticed that it was printed in black and white which told me it was probably from a long time ago and the reason I figured it may be a castle. I'm not quite sure what made me choose this photo instead of all those others, maybe it was because I thought it was a castle! lol I liked the simplicity of the image in the picture which appealed to my pathos. The colors were simple; black and white, appealing to pathos. After reading the caption behinde this picture, i realized it was the first photo to ever grace the cover of Life Magazine. It was a picture of Fort Peck Dam. Pretty signifigant, I mean it is the first ever cover of Life Magazine.

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Research Topic Proposal

Like I stated on the discussion board, I will be doing question three. This question talks about the positive and negative influences of the Internet/Web-based technologies on society, education, business and just about anything else you can think of. I've been pondering a couple ideas for each positive and negative influences:

Positive influences- internet is great for business-able to trade stocks instantaneously, transfer large amounts of money without ever physically touching it,keep in-touch and even have project partners across the globe; society is able to use the internet to purchase products, participate in discussion boards, able to have a web community; schools have recently started doing online classes- very beneficial for the person who has to work, computers are essential for class...think about what we're doing right now! These are just a few ideas, i have many more

Negative influences- people who know what they're doing can hack into computers and destroy and/or tamper with a business information, fraud is very possible, people use facebook, myspace, and other social networks to perhaps stalk people and be creepy..you can pretty much keep up with someones life if they are the type of person to be constantly updating thier status and posting pictures ect, its possible a distant learning student could have someone take tests for them or cheat some how.

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Technology

Everything we do revolves around technology. From the moment we wake up to the minute we fall asleep, technology is around us. Think about what wakes you up in the morning, its your alarm clock. We take a shower or use the bathroon; it took technology to create the pipelines and showers. I don't think people really understand or appreciate how good we have it with technology. I know at least for me, technology has been a part of my life ever since i was born. I have had a comptuer since they became popular and now use it daily. I use my computer for school work daily as well as purchasing items online and keeping in touch with friends through the use of facebook. Computers not only affect me, but they also pretty much run every aspect of businesses around the world. I think technology is a good thing overall. It allows us to do things we never thought possible such as online banking with almost instantaneous transactions. Putting someone on the moon is crazy and without technology would have been impossible. Having smart missles that can be shot thousands of miles away from there target and hit with pinpoint precision all would not be possible without technology. It does have downfalls for example perhaps someone uses the internet to set up a scam to steal money or something of that sort. To me, technology keeps the world running. I think without it we would be lost.

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Cyber Culture

I would say I have been part of cybercultures ever since the introduction of the world wide web when they were formed. I can remember when i was first able to start using the computer; it was about seven or eight years ago. I have been sending emails and browsing the web since. Being part of a cyberculture is now part of my everyday activities. What does this mean?
Everyday I interact with people online. I've never met any of the people I talk to on the forum I belong to, but still I feel like we know each other. Cybercultures tend to do that. There are cybercultures for just about anythinbg that your interested in. They bring together people with a common interest and allow people to talk and discuss what they like. Cybercultures have had a positive influence on me in the sense that they exposes me to the many things out in the world; some of which I like and some of the others that I don't. Cybercultures allow you to see and hear the views of other people from around the world with just the click of a mouse. It's really amazing how the internet and cybercultures can broaden your horizon. I don't feel like I need to belong to anything, but to some people they say that being part of cybercultures gives them a sense of belonging which is a good thing. If a cyberculture can make someone happy, more power to it!

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Popular Culture

Our life is shaped everyday by what is around us. From tv commercials to our friends, and to the random people we run into daily; everything has an influence on how and what we do. We are part of a popular culture. What makes me part of this culture? I wear the clothes I wear because they are trendy, or at least that's what our culture says. Our popular culture guides me and i bet many others to wear what we wear. But who is popular culture to guide us what to do. It's nobody, and thats my point. Our society is based like that; we all follow what "everyones" doing. It really irritates me that our generation is so shallow. I am comfortable saying that I believe most people care more about how they are viewed than how they actually feel. It's really sad that this is how our generation is being brought up. What ever happened to worrying about ones' family and the important things in life. It seems that with our modern age popular culture of now that people are more conceded could care less about the more intellectual things in our lives. This is just my opinion; I am not one to follow the trends and what everyone else is doing. I feel strongly about this topic and the stand i took.


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