This has been a very hectic week for me. Along with my usual 40hrs of work, I had to attend a wedding and a funeral. Therefore, I have already begun to slack in CD-315 and that worries me. This week we were asked to read different articles to increase our knowledge of the internet, subscribe and unsubscribe to a mailing list, search for people using specific websites, and post our response to several discussion questions on our blog sites.
I began my CD-315 week on Tuesday with my first MOO meeting. I was very surprised at how well everyone communicated using a chat-room format. I was especially surprised at my own performance in the MOO meeting. I talked, or should I say typed, a lot during the meeting. I talked more than I do in actual class meetings. I can’t figure out what got into me that made me feel the need to type messages throughout the entire 2-hour meeting. I refuse to believe the truth (Which is that I am just a motor mouth.); instead I like to think that I talked so much because I was uncomfortable just sitting in front of the computer doing nothing. In normal classes you can live with an uncomfortable silence, but on the Internet it is really uncomfortable. My goal for this week’s session is not to share my thoughts as much as I did in the last meeting.
After the two hour on-line class meeting, I was not in the mood to sit in front of my computer for another second so I put off the 315 homework for the night. The following day I started on my 315 homework as quick as I got home from work. First, I went to the 315 homepage and clicked on links provided under the first assignment. I read each of the articles about email that was presented under the links. I managed to jot down little interesting notes as I read. When I finished reading all of the articles, I opened another window to access my email. Then, I composed a letter to the class about the most interesting points in the articles that I read.
After sending that email to the class, I clicked on more links that led me to information about mailing lists. Once I had read all the information about mailing lists, I decided to attempt my next task, which was to subscribe to a mailing list. I didn’t have any major problems with this task, but I did encounter a few minor problems. Initially, I mistyped some of the necessary information to subscribe to a mailing list. The next problem was that I could not locate my confirmation letter. Finally, I located it under my junk mail folder and send that letter to the class list.
Once I was successful in subscribing to the mailing list, I was expected to unsubscribe to the same list. This assignment was also fairly simple to complete. I had to complete the same steps as before, except this time I had to type unsubscribe instead of subscribe. To complete a subscription or unsubscription, you had to send an email to the MLM of the subscription with a command to subscribe in the body of the message. It is that simple. It seems simple now, but the truth is that I had no idea about the steps you should take to subscribe to a mailing list before reading the articles and attempting this assignment. Once I received my confirmation letter to my unsubscription, I had to forward that letter to the CD-315 class list.
The next task on the 315 agenda was to read articles about navigation in the World Wide Web. We were to test our newfound knowledge about navigation by visiting several websites dedicated to locating people. We were asked to attempt to locate someone using the three websites provided for us. After our people finding experience, we were to write a note about our experience and report it to the rest of the class. We were expected to report our information by sending an email to the class.
The last thing that we had to do for the week was to post our response to several questions on our blog. This the area in which I slacked off in the 315 work for the week. I completed ¼ of these assignments. These questions require deep thought and personal knowledge of oneself. I think that in why I have only responded to one of these questions. I think that I know myself pretty well, but when I go to respond to a question I can’t think of what to say. That’s unusual for me because I always have plenty to say. Another thing that makes it hard for me to respond to these questions is that I know that anyone can read them. Unfortunately, I am not all that comfortable displaying my work. On the other hand, I know that displaying my work will only make it easier to do in the future. My delay in CD work could be due to plain old laziness. To be honest, that is probable what is keeping me from doing the work, laziness. It’s hard to dedicate yourself to sit in front of the computer when it is so pretty out. But most things in life aren’t always easy, are they?
I really feel like the work this week was easier to complete than last week’s work. This week required more time and thought, but everything was new for me last week. As I have mentioned several times, I know nothing about computers. It is like I am a child trying to learn how to tie their shoes for the first time. I attempted each task about 5 or 6 times before completing them last week. Not only did I attempt the tasks on various occasions, it would take we forever to do them. Maybe I felt more comfortable using the Internet this week that made the tasks seem easier. One of the things that I have learned about myself this week is that it is easy to know how you are but much harder to analyze yourself by writing about your thoughts and experiences. Obviously, I learned this by thinking about the questions of discussion, rather than writing about them.