Working in newspapers, TV and radio, I had to learn new technologies on the job. Voice recording on "carts" and audio tape for radio; film and video editing for TV; and uploading and downloading news stories, photos and video for newspapers and their websites.
I was not into social media until last year, when I joined Facebook. I like it, I love YouTube (especially music), and now, I'm interested in learning more about the different ways to communicate online. I'd like to do freelance work as a web content provider and editor.
Learning Module 1 had lots of new stuff for me.
READING:
I enjoyed reading about the early history of the Internet and was interested to learn that former vice president Al Gore, then a senator, DID have some connection to the creation of the Internet (but not as an "inventor" as he claimed), when he sponsored a bill to fund research that would enhance the speed of the Internet backbone, the main long-distance lines and the hardware involved. But the innovations came through university-based research on data networking.
A lot of the terms in our reading were familiar to me, but I learned more about them through the context and explanations. Some of the newer terminology for me included:
• Packet switching: Separating data from a sending computer into small units known as packets, sending each packet independently over cables, then reassembling the packets on the receiving computer.
• TCP (Transmission Control Protocol): providing flow control over the network and error checking for lost packets.
• IP (Internet Protocol: The method of addressing and sending packets of information.
• HTML (Hypertext Markup Language): Markup language used to create a document whose layout and content can be read by a special software program.
FACEBOOK DISCUSSION GROUP:
I am learning a lot from classmates' posts on new and developing technology, such as digital wallets, folding cars, 3D printers and digital menus in restaurants. I think my fellow students have done an excellent job in researching different websites and in commenting on the uses (and abuses) of some of the new technology. I posted early on, but I feel I need to do more research and stay more active in the discussion.
VOICETHREAD:
This was a great learning experience. I was pretty intimidated at first to even try it. This was way out of my comfort zone to speak on camera in a new technology. But I ended up liking the effect and learning about the other students. The Voicethread technique was not too hard, so I'm encouraged to learn about other Web 2.0 technologies like Animoto.
BLOGGING:
The student blogs from previous semesters were awesome! It was a great preview of what we'll be learning, and their work was interesting and well-designed.
