efolio's, mindmaps, and craziness

The title sounds harsh. It's not all craziness- just my life outside of summer classes.
Just want to vent for a minute- my week was crazy. I have accounting classes Tues and Thurs nights an hr and half from my house. Thursday, my purse and makeup bag was stolen out of my car (which can I just point out is a women's LIFE). On my way home from class, my breaks pretty much give out, and I have to drop my car off to get fixed at the shop. $500 later, I'm broke- with no purse, no makeup, no car, and sadly no internet. Thus, here I am, 2:16 Tues morning, trying to finish my assignments for class. Humm.

Moving on to more important subjects, I surprisingly had fun creating my webpage. I love playing around with fonts and colors and things to make my works somewhat creative. I thought it was cool to be able to add my mindmap to my home page, but am thinking about taking it out once I am finished. I would love ideas and comments on how to make my ePortfolio better though! I'm also trying to think if there are any major categories that I'm missing and will need. Who knows though, like I said- I'm eager for comments from anyone on how to do better!

Reflections on ePortfolio!

It's kind of exciting to be creating my own new website! At first I was a little apprehensive about my design and layout that I wanted for my site, but after viewing a few examples, I decided my mindmap's layout would pretty much work. I haven't added my career goals or hobbies yet though. Career goals because I'm not quite sure of exactly what they are yet (lol), and Hobbies because I'm not sure if that is necessary for a professional website?? What do you guys think?

The link to my new ePortfolio is http://sites.google.com/site/hilaryeportfolio/Home

Once I started my eportfolio, it took me some time before I was able to navigate the apps the way I wanted. At first, I thought that the "create page" link was going to give me a whole new website (don't ask... I was tired), so I searched and searched on how to expand my pages.... ahhh. Finally though, I started to figure it out. One of the things I started doing with my pages was creating them in a word document first (because I can navigate easily in Word)... and it seemed to work pretty well! I like the colors I've chosen for some of my writing, but is that too much for a professional website? Hmm. Any ideas?

Mind Map

Form: Website
Audience: my classmates, potential employers, possible potential colleges?
Topic: My work experience, career goals
Purpose: To sell myself and persuade employers to hire me

http://share.xmind.net/hilaryw01/e-portfolio/

When doing this project, I was at first confused as to how to set up the mind map. Some of the ways XMind is set up didn't follow the video's we watched, but after starting my first few topics, more ideas started flowing. I hope that I followed the instructions well- I finally figured out how to add a few images to my map, but could have probably added more. Although, I wonder if the images made my map a little harder to follow? Also, after many many tries, I finally have uploaded my map to my Xmind account, so people can see it now. Yay!

The FATP concept is actually pretty helpful. It helped me focus in on what my ePortfolio will be based on, which so far seems to be career-oriented. I'm a little neervous about how my site will look when it is done, because I feel like my experiences/ background isn't impressive- and will make my site look bare and boring. I'm hopeful though! We'll see how it goes!

Social Networking

I just wanted to write a quick post about how I think social networking is changing. It's kind of sad really, that before this class and being formally introduced to these other networking sites, that I had no idea they existed. I guess I kept up with facebook and myspace because thats what my friends and the people around me were networking on. But now, I really am starting to realize that there are networks out there that, even though not "everyone" has jumped on yet, can actually be really useful and helpful when trying to do things- such as professional networking. I am really starting to learn that knowing what your doing on the net now consists of more than 5 websites and copying and pasting. Interesting stuff!

facebook vs. Linkedin

Alrightttt! Hard to believe we're 3 weeks in already.... time is flyinggg by right now (hopefully it slows down, since we only have a few months of summer!). Anyways, the sites we have been introduced too thus far are actually really useful! The most intriguing to me, though, is Linkedin. I like that instead of posting info such as favorite movies, books, foods, etc.... it actually has a professional focus. It helps you network with businesses and professionals without them seeing you drunk at a bar (as "Demo Girl" states in her screencast about Linkedin- below). I suggest checking out her screencast on how to use Linkedin, it not only shows you how to use the features of the website but she has some interesting insight as well.
http://flash.screeniac.com/linkedin/linkedin.html?TB_iframe=true&height=590&width=1050

This is one website that I can honestly say I will definetly continue to use- it seemed like such a hassle to watch my friends who have graduated have to make their facebook's private, and delete pictures and information, for the purpose of professional networking. This site seems to solve that networking problem and can pool together professionals, who can suggest friends to other friends, thus helping them create a professional network. YAY for learning how to use this site!!!!!

One more thing- one of my tasks to figure out for this blog was how to post the actual video instead of the link- can anybody help me figure that out?

Alright week 4, here we come :)

Screencasts

I decided to write this blog about screencasts, because I had seen them before (only once or twice)- and never thought twice about what they were and why they were significant.

According to Wikipedia, a screencast "is a digital recording of computer screen output, also known as a video screen capture, often containing audio narration."

It turns out, that after reading and watching about screencasts, they have numerous uses. One of the most uses and popular uses is actually for teaching how to use computer software (kind of ironic, using a computer program to learn how to use a different computer program). For kinesthetic learners such as myself, this use is VERY helpful. I often have a very hard time understanding a concept without doing it out by hand, and screencasting is the perfect piece to this equation since it shows you hands on how to do something. Wikipedia also makes sense with this statement: "Considering the high cost of instructor/ faculty led training and the relative ineffectiveness of typical computer based training (CBT) systems, screecasting is likely to become a very popular technique for imparting high-quality knowledge at a low cost."

Now that I understand what a screencast is, this use for it makes COMPLETE sense!

Here is a Blog link that talks about teaching software with screencasts. Check it out! :)

First Post :)

So, this is my first blog post for multimedia class! I didn't have much trouble setting it up, since I already had a google account and had signed up for blogging before. I am excited to learn more about applications I can include in my blog!