Reflections

I have found this assignment to be a real challenge, but a challenge that I have enjoyed. Having only a small amount of familiarity with a lot of the subjects addressed within the first five weeks, I was easily daunted by the ideas and technologies that we were going to use. However, as we tackled them one by one, I found that they were interesting and enjoyable. I think a great advantage was working within a group, where we were able to support and assist each other as we progressed.

I never thought that I would enjoy HTML as much as I have been! I've never used HTML before, and was scared by the very thought of it! I think that when you see it, without knowing that there is a strict procedure and rules that you can follow, that the very sight of it is confusing. But now, after using it a bit, I'm able to understand it and use it. I'm still progressing through Codeacademy, onto CSS now, which is a bit harder I think but still, easy to understand so long as you follow the rules. This is probably the biggest thing that I'm going to take away from this subject - that I can use HTML, and that I'm actually quite good at it. I think it's the logic of the coding - it appeals to my preference for order.

Other things that I learned through this course

• How to embed a map
• How to use Twitter, why we should use Twitter, and how to embed a tweet (I was very proud of that one, it was my first attempt at HTML, and I was practically giddy with delight when it worked)
• What a document is. I'm still quite interested in that, but I really think that Suzanne Briet's claims about the leopard being the document is the position that I agree with.
• How to use Endnote. This tool is great, and one that I will definitely be using in future studies.
• This one is really just to point out that look, I just made an unordered list using HTML and isn't that amazing?

The biggest thing that I will take away from this assignment, however, is awareness. Previously, I had all of my social networking sites open to the public, all of my information freely available, and I was using only a couple of passwords, often for more than one website. Now I have a lot of different passwords, all complicated and different, as well as changing the settings for privacy for a lot of sites. I think that privacy is going to be a huge issue in the coming years. And it is something that I feel slightly more ready for after this course. 

So welcome to my blog! This is a first for me, so it's probably going to change quite a bit as I get better at using eblogger.

About me - my name is Nerida, I'm in first semester of MIM, and I currently work as a barista in a cafe. It's a good place to work, and I do enjoy it, but it doesn't tax my brain. I'm ready to do something different, and I think that I would enjoy library work. Something that doesn't cover my clothes and shoes in coffee would be good as well.

My dad is a librarian, currently working as the head librarian at Divine Word University in Papua New Guinea. When I was growing up though, he was the chief medical librarian at Bendigo Base Hospital. So on my days off from school, or when I managed to persuade him that I was way too sick to go to school (I was a terrible liar, and did this a lot), I would go with him to his work, and spend my day shelving books, wandering around, and looking at disgusting diseases in medical books. So for me, libraries are fun places!

I'm not very technologically able when it comes to the internet; I can do very basic things, but I'm hoping to learn more, and to become more skilled than I am. I really skim the surface of Web 2.0, so I think that some of what I'm hoping to achieve through this course is the ability to use the internet more adeptly, and to develop my skill set when it comes to social media and interaction. Understanding how html works is also going to be interesting, I'm quite looking forward to the course, but at the same time I'm a bit nervous because I obviously have a lot to learn.