This week I feel very confused as to what our assignment actually was. Because we had already put up homepages at the beginning of the course, I didn't feel like this week's assignment was applicable to our situations, so I had to figure out what to do. Also, I feel unsure as to what we are to write about and what to rate myself on. Should I rate myself according to how I felt as I was trying to put up my homepage? Or should I rate myself according to what I actually did this week? I decided to do t he latter because, honestly, I don't really remember exactly how I felt as I tried to put up a home page. I don't remember it being all that difficult because Dr. James gave us explicit directions as to how to put up a home page. The only difficulty I r emember having is in trying to get my documents onto my homepage. I remember that I couldn't figure out how to use fetch and I had to ask the computer lab attendant to help me. I remember it took me hours and several tries before I could proficiently ac complish this one task and I remember feeling very tired and frustrated throughout the whole process. This is what I felt while I was actually putting up my homepage, which is what we were supposed to be doing this week. However, because we did this abo ut a month ago, I decided to concentrate on beautifying my homepage this week and I rated my feelings according to exactly what I accomplished this past week.
Because we have been dealing with the computer and the internet for over a month now, I feel that I have finally acquired enough knowledge to accomplish my current goals. This is why I rated this week's tasks as very easy. I simply used knowledge that I had already acquired to add icons and to change the look of my homepage and subsequent pages. While this was not difficult, I did find these things to be time consuming. A good deal of my time was spent on experimenting and just trying to figure out w hat was what. In particular, I first tried out various codes to see which code corresponded with which color. I came up with a list of nine colors and more than one code for some:
black=#000000Another time consuming, yet easy task was going through the icons on Dr. James's icon directory, and trying to figure out which ones I wanted to put onto my own homepage. I really like these icons, but I'm wondering how to get a photo or something from outside the computer into my homepage. For example, how did Kevin get that picture of his class last semester onto his homepage? Or, how did Cyn thia get that Disney characters picture onto her homepage? I would love to do this with a picture of my own, but I have no clue as to how to do it. This is a project I will have to undertake in the future.
I also went through the Generation 1 files to check out any potential icons that I might like to use and I found several. From Linda Wong I found a colorbar that I liked; from Dellia Badua, opus; from Beverly Diaz, funstuff; from Jill Kaneshiro, stars1 (stars going across the page); fro m Tina Smith, bulletblue; and from Cheryl Remata, linefrog and chainyellow.Another reason why I found this week's work to be tedious is because I was experimenting with what looked good on the page. I would have to switch back and forth between Netscape and pico. Each time, I'd change one little thing in pico and have to save and close the file to look at the change in Netscape. Then if I didn't like what I saw, I'd have to go back to pico and bring up the file again and cursor down the desired location to change my command. Pico is not all that efficient in the sense that one can't just move the cursor using the mouse. Rather, one must use the arrows to cursor down to the desired location. The tediousness of the work that I did this week was the main source of my negative emotions. I didn't feel impatient, but rather, w orn out from going through one file after another.
As I mentioned earlier, this week was not so much about acquiring new skills, but rather fostering and developing skills that I have already learned. Thus, when I rated the value of this skill for later use, I was thinking in terms of how useful the ski ll that I had acquired had already proven to be. Because I was already using the skills, that in itself was proof of the usefulness of the skills. Also, I feel like because I'm able to use the skills that I had acquired, I have already gotten good at th e tasks, which is why I rated myself a 10. Because I have been successful at all the tasks which I have been trying to accomplish, namely, beautifying my homepage, I felt very satisfied with the computer and Internet systems this week. I gave commands, and the computer would follow suit. Because I was making up my own tasks that I wanted to accomplish, I did not notice any differences among my subtasks.
I felt that I did try hard to get through this week's self-appointed tasks because I was determined to improve my homepage despite the laborious nature of the work. Last week I made a list of all the things I wanted to add to my homepage, such as links to some other locations that I found, poetry, and pictures, and I have not even been able to accomplish most of them. I feel as if I'm crawling along at a snail's pace and all the tasks I want to accomplish are far off in the distance; the goal is not ne arly at hand. For example, even though I accomplished one of my goals, to add a file comprised only of links from my team reports, I did not put them in alphabetical order as I had wanted to, so I feel disappointed in that respec t. I almost feel discouraged that I did not accomplish all that I wanted to accomplish, and yet when I look back at former reports and ratings, I feel like I've come such a long way, the only way that I should feel is proud. A month ago, I would have ha d no clue about how to accomplish the things I am doing now, and comparatively, I am an old pro. I used to get so frustrated with the computer and with the internet and I felt a lot of negative emotions as a result. Now, I feel that none of this, and mo re importantly, I don't feel lacunae, but rather, confident in my newly acquired abilities. In the past, I felt a great deal of lacunae, but now, I feel minimal lacunae. In fact, the only thing I felt inadequate about this week was in adding outside pic tures onto my homepage, but I didn't even feel so badly about this because we were not assigned such a task.
All in all, I feel proud of what I have accomplished this week, and in this whole course for that matter. I only hope that I can accomplish all that I want to accomplish. I want to accomplish everything at once, and I get impatient that the progress is slow, yet at the same time, because it is so slow, every task accomplished is a mini-triumph and my heart does its own little celebration inside, every time I finish what I set out to do. As the week's progress, I feel more and more satisfied with the c ourse and with myself, and less and less frustrated with the computer. I just need to remember that there's so much more for me to learn. I can't let myself get complacent because I have acquired an adequate amount of information to get by. I need to p ursue new avenues of learning and more efficient ways of accomplishing tasks. Hopefully, when all is said and done, I will have a homepage that I can be proud of that will be helpful to students to come.