A Weekly Reflection of WEB101

WEEK 6:  2.2 Wikis

This week I will be learning all about wikis which will be interesting.  For the weekly activity I had to go to the Wikipedia website and edit a page on a topic of interest that I knew something about and I had to add a piece of information that was relevant to the topic that I chose.  As I love rollerskating I thought I would add a piece of historical information that I came across about rollerblades, the information actually got put onto the rollerblade page but was deleted a couple of hours later : (.  I posted the details on the discussion board for everyone to read and then Ainslie suggested I give Wikipedia another try, I did this and submitted a picture that I had taken of a Tiger Lily to Wikipedia and they kept it, much to my surprise. I never realised before that people could go in to Wikipedia and edit pages like that.  I really enjoyed this weeks activity and I learnt a lot from doing it.


WEEK 7:  2.3 Social Networking

This week was all about social networking which was a lot of fun.  I had to create a twitter account which I was a bit apprehensive about doing at first as I never wanted to go on twitter but in the end I set up an account and actually had fun doing so and now I am really enjoying twitter.  For the most part it has been good, I have had a few unsavoury characters trying to follow me which I just ignore and I have also found quite a few interesting people and organisations to follow.  On the discussion board I discussed my experience with setting up my Twitter account and gave the details of my account which is @Lordell2.  I got the results back for my first assignment this week and I realised that I need to work on my academic writing a bit, which I am currently doing by studying "Introduction to University Learning". It is hard because I have never studied at university before, it has been about 30 years since I last studied and I do not have much experience.  Over time I am sure I will get a lot better at it all.


WEEK 8:  2.4 Content Sharing

This week I learnt all about content sharing and as part of the activities for the week I had to create an inspirational poster, a movie poster or a magazine cover.  I had to sign up to Flickr and find photos on the commons page to use for my creation, I had a few ideas and it was difficult to make up my mind what to go with but in the end I decided on an inspirational poster.  I had fun creating the poster and I think it turned out ok.  I put the link to my poster on the discussion board which is: motivatorc7a7cefc703903791cc4fde05051d8976b01c2f7.jpg (pictured below) and I looked at a few of the other creations made by my fellow students and they were all very good, we have some very talented people studying WEB101.  I have also been working on my essay this week and it is taking a lot of time trying to get it right, I have no experience at all with essay writing so I am not very confident about it.

A Weekly Reflection of WEB101

The day has finally arrived, time to start WEB101 and my first time studying at university.  Oh well here we go....


WEEK 1:  Introduction to Module 1: What's in a name?

I enjoyed the first week of WEB101 and survived it ok. It all seemed a bit daunting at first but after I looked through the work that I had to do, I realised it wasn't as bad as I thought. I managed to find my way around the Blackboard and download all of my assignments and work that I needed to complete for the week.  I introduced myself to my tutors and fellow students on the discussion board and I found out there are a lot of people studying this unit.  For this weeks activities I had to go to the namechk.com website and establish a common username for sites like, Delicious, Twitter, Blogger, Wordpress, Flickr, LinkedIn and Friendfeed.  If I was already a member of a particular site I had to perform a search to see the availability of my existing username, it was a lot of fun.


WEEK 2:  1.1 What is the Internet?

I am a bit more relaxed this week and starting to get used to studying for university, I am getting through the work a bit better and feel more confident.  I completed all that I needed to for this week and I am also working on my first assignment, which I am a bit nervous about.  I really enjoyed the activities I had to do this week which were "Routing in Action", where I had to do a proxy trace on the headquarters of Wikipedia.org, Amazon.com and Flickr.com.  For the second activity "Who owns what?", I had to perform checks on domain names like, Flickr.com, Youtube.com, Mickey.com, Google.com and Yahoo.com to see who owns them, Flickr and Youtube were owned by Markmonitor, Mickey was owned by Melbourne IT Ltd, and Yahoo and Google own their own respective sites.  On the discussion board I explained that my earliest memory of using the Internet was back in 2000 where I used it at work, mainly for emails and to do research.



WEEK 3:  1.2... and what is the World Wide Web?

I am learning all about the world wide web this week which should be interesting, although my daughter is off sick from school the poor thing so I have to take time away from my studies to look after her, I just hope I can keep up with it all.  I have nearly finished working on assignment no.1 and just hope it is ok.  For this weeks activity I had to use archive.org's wayback machine and look at various websites from years ago to see how they have evolved, I looked at: Apple.com (Oct '96),  Google.com (Nov '98), Wikipedia.org (Jul '01), and Dominos.com (Feb '97).  The old websites were all really basic and bland with no pictures and boring to look at compared to what they are today. I had a lot of fun looking back at those websites and seeing how much they have changed.  On the discussion board ( 27/6/11, Official Thread: and what is the World Wide Web?) I agreed with Kristy and Natale with regards to online shopping, I said that online shopping is great, especially for people who for some reason, say ill health cannot get to the shops.  The one drawback that I found is a couple of times I have ordered goods online and I have not received them, trying to find out what has happened to the items I purchased was a nightmare.



WEEK 4:  2.0 What is Web 2.0?

Off to a good start this week, my daughter is a lot better and is back at school so I should be able to get a lot of  the work done. I really enjoyed watching the first video (Web 2.0....The machine is Us/ing Us) from this weeks module, it was very clever and well made. I also enjoyed the video by Clay Shirky Web 2.0 Lecture called "Here Comes Everybody" I found it fascinating, he is a really good speaker and I enjoyed listening to him. For this weeks activity I had to join the website Delicious and bookmark a few sites that relate to WEB101 and the work we are doing, which I enjoyed.  I answered the question that Ainslie posted on the discussion board " Do you think Tim Berners-Lees intentions for the net are being realised through the concept of Web 2.0?"  I said yes as Web 2.0 is what Tim Berners-Lees tried to create in the first place, Web 2.0 is people to people and that is what Web 1.0 was supposed to be all along.  Tim Berners-Lees maintains that Web 2.0 is really just an extension of his original ideas of the Web, that does not warrant a special moniker.  I am learning so much and I am finding this unit very challenging.


WEEK 5:  2.1 Blogging

This week was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it, I learnt a lot about blogging which basically started out as a few simple online diaries to what they are today.  Anybody can contribute content to a blog, on any topic that they choose for the world to read. The weekly activity was to sign up to Google Reader and subscribe to many different websites.  I came across some very interesting sites but one in particular was "Old Picture of the Day".  This was a very interesting site with very old historical pictures.  I came across a picture of the first Laptop computer which came out in 1981, cost $1,800 and weighed 25 pounds, I posted this on the discussion board and Deepti had a laugh at how small the screen on the old laptop was compared to her new Laptop.  I enjoyed the readings this week by Rebecca Blood called "Weblogs: a history and perspective" and the reading by J. Rettberg called "Bloggs, Communities and Networks in Blogging".  I am finding this unit very interesting and very challenging, I am getting a lot out of it.

Photo by PJM, Old Picture of the Day

http://old-photos.blogspot.com