Christina Kealoha
10/16/95
Psy 409
Dr. James
Assignment: Same as Report 7 but with a deeper study and perspective.
How much negative emotions did it cost you, all in all?
Very little 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Very much
This week's rating =1
How valuable for later use is this knowledge or skill going to be for
you?
Not useful 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Very useful
This week's rating =7
How likely is it that you'll be getting good at this week's tasks?
Not likely 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Very likely
This week's rating =10
How satisfied are you with the computer and Internet systems?
Not satisfied 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Very satisfied
This week's rating =10
How hard did you try to get through this week's tasks?
Gave up easily 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Refused to give up
This week's rating =10
This week's task was exactly the same as last week, so I'm not going to go over my self assessment ratings again. You can look at Week 7; if you want to read over this again. I'd rather like to go right into my thoughts about the homepages that I explored:
Appearance -- I felt that his regular homepage was very plain because it was merely a list of links, but I liked the way he grouped the links by relatedness, ex. different homepages, homework, other students, other links, etc. I liked his creative homepage a lot better because he used a lot of icons to make the page more interesting. I liked the way he opened the page with an opus icon at the top center with the welcome underneath. I also liked the bit of humor he used in alluding to the Budweiser frogs when using the "linefrog" icons.
Content --
Short computer lab hours
In his Week 6
report Kyle complains about CLIC lab closing for the weekend so he
has to do his homework before the weekend. To this I say "WAH!" He thinks he
has it bad. At least he took the class before budget cuts shortened library
hours even more. At least he HAD weekend access. We didn't even have weekends
to work at the beginning of the semester. At least now they've decided to open
CLIC on Sundays, otherwise I would definitely not have enough time to do
everything I need to do. Actually, I've been feeling a little discouraged this
week because I still don't feel like I have enough time to do everything I need
to do, even with coming in on the weekend. I had to skip going to the Fall
Footholds Dance Concert because I needed to come to the computer lab, and now
that I'm here, I just don't feel like I've accomplished all that much. I've
been trying to work on my homepage but I can't find just the right images that
I wanted to use so I've been feeling frustrated. Oh, well, I guess it's all
part of the learning experience.
Netscape fun
Kyle also talks about how he "went completely NUTS" after doing the
assignment, meaning he got to explore Netscape for fun. I can totally relate.
The first time I had some free time to just netsurf I went wild and was so
excited to find things that I was really interested in, like The Miss Saigon page,
Lea Salonga's
homepage (for those of you who don't know, Lea Salonga was the
original lead in "Miss Saigon"), and The Ultimate Disney
Link Page. I was in the computer lab just astounded and completely
in bliss. Netsurfing can be really fun and exciting when you're not pressured
to accomplish something for a class.
Frustration
Lastly, in Kyle's Week 4
Report he mentions that "we are all frustrated with this thing!!!!!".
Oh, yeah, I know, I know, I know. This is so true, but what I don't get is,
why is this class so much more frustrating than all these other classes? I
don't get nearly as frustrated with my other classes. I think what makes it so
frustrating is that learning in this class is not so cut and dry as it is with
other classes. In regular classes, they give you the material, you attend
lecture and read the book and memorize facts and that's that. With this class,
what we learn is all applied to using the computer and we are working with a
very complex machine that is not always so predictable. Just because we know
how to accomplish a task one day, does not necessarily mean that our method
will work the next day. The computer is sometimes temperamental and there is
not necessarily only one cause of or one solution to a problem, thus we must
experiment and try out different solutions and hope that one works.
Appearance -- This homepage is very reminiscent of Kyle Fujii's homepage. It's very plain with no icons, but the advantage that Ryan's homepage has is that he organizes his links and separates them by subheadings. It's organized into General class information, Psy 409, Psy 459, and Personal Files. He's also got a great bookmark file that has links to other cool locations. He had no topical index and no other homepages to visit. All in all, (sorry Ryan if you're reading this!) I felt that this homepage was very lacking and needed a lot more work.
Content --
Overcoming depression
In his week
3 report, Ryan talks about his feelings of frustration, confusion,
and depression, and then in his week 4 report he
talks about how he overcomes these feelings. In week 3, he was so despondent
that he didn't know what to do with himself, and I know how that feels. There
were times when this class made me feel this way, and as I talked about in
week 6, I merely handled by
avoiding this class and not going to the computer lab. This is not any way to
cope, so it was helpful for me to read how Ryan copes, and what he said makes
sense: "just keep everything in perspective". This is what I need to learn to
do. When things go wrong for me I just let it affect me like it's the end of
the world, so I really do need to learn to keep things in perspective. This is
only one class in one semester of college and one class will (/should) not have
drastic effects on my entire life. He also says that he "shouldn't expect
[himself] to pick this up immediately" which I also must agree with. It's hard
because we develop this schema of learning that things should be learned and
understood immediately, and when they're not, the schema is destroyed and we
are unable to cope. I just need to readjust my thinking and realize that this
is not like anything I've encountered before and must be more understanding
with myself.
Appearance -- I liked to way her homepage opens with a nice picture of the class, and then is separated into major sections -- "Jill's Home Page" and other hot links. The italicization of her main headings adds a nice touch. On her creative homepage, she has a nice picture of the ocean and a very interesting layout. Rather than merely listing links, she has them at various indentations. I don't particularly care for this layout, but I do like her use of different icons to spice up the look of the page.
Content --
PLATO
In her week
5 lab report, she discusses PLATO and says that there seems to be a
sense of camaraderie brought about within the participating class, even though
they did not know the identity of the person writing on the computer. My Psy
100 freshman seminar class participated in PLATO and I find Jill's observations
to be particularly perceptive. We would post our thoughts on PLATO and then
wait for others to respond and/or respond to the responses of others. Some
people were very insightful and thoughtful and others were just obnoxious and
rude. It was fun because even if you didn't know the identity of the other
people, you could get a sense of how their mind works and you didn't care about
what they looked like. I met a girl on PLATO who I probably would not have met
otherwise because she is so different from myself (she's from Minnesota, I'm
from here; she's very big and I'm very small), but over the computer, we
discovered a common point of interest and after PLATO and Psy 100 was over, we
met and ended up becoming very good friends. I felt like there was a lot more
camaraderie on PLATO than there is on the internet now, I guess because the
form of interaction was a little different.
Fuzzy Instructions
Another thing Jill talks about is that "the instructions aren't as specific as
I'm used to. I feel like I'm on my own." That is EXACTLY how I felt. I felt
like we were given tasks to do without any idea how to accomplish these tasks.
To learn, we either had to attend lab, or figure it out for ourselves. This
frustrated me greatly in the beginning, until I had built up enough repertoire
to figure out how to solve the problems by myself. Looking back, I understand
why it is so important to attend lab, but for those of us who couldn't, this
put us at a real disadvantage because we really had to fend for ourselves. I
wish that lab time had been scheduled into the course so that students would
have a definite time set aside to get assistance; this would have greatly
minimized my initial frustration with this course.
Computer Lab Attendants
Toward the end of her week 5 report, Jill talks about the "frustration of
having problems and no one being able to help you, not even the lab assistants
in the computer labs." Well, I disagree. In defense of the computer lab
attendants, I found them to be extremely helpful. The one's in the Porteus Mac
Lab and the Keller Mac Lab are very friendly and try very hard to be helpful.
In particular, Gary Hu helped me a lot. My only complain is that some of the
lab attendants at CLIC lab definitely have attitude problems. They act like
you're bothering them if you ask for help. I mean, they are there to help us,
are they not? I'm not saying all of them are bad, but I have come across a
wise-ass or two (or three...or four...) in my time.
Appearance -- I really liked the overall look of this homepage. Jason's page was colorful and effectively utilized icons in front of every link to make them stand out. His page opens with a nice colorbar across the top and then has his e-mail address in large letters followed by a smaller "Welcome to Jason's Home Page". I felt that these two should have been reversed. The welcome should have come first in big letters and the e-mail address should have been in small letters afterward. He also has explanations next each lab report link concerning its content, which I found very helpful in deciding which ones to read. His other homepage listed his links and separates the various links by subheadings, so they were easy to organize mentally, and also lists links from his reports, which was very nice. On his other other homepage, he uses big lettering to list the reports with their anchors. I liked Jason's alternate homepages in particular because they were not merely a restatement of each other, but each was different, containing different links. All in all, I felt that Jason did a wonderful job with his homepage.
Content --
Constructing Alternative Homepages
In his week 10
report he talks about the construction of his alternative homepages.
He says that he tried to build these homepages with visitors in mind. By
visiting his homepages, I can see that his effort paid off. As a visitor, it
was very easy for me to navigate around his homepages, so if you ever read this
Jason, good job!
He also complains about how he "can't get the images to come out like they should." I know, I know, I know! Oh, I have been there. This past week has been so frustrating for me trying to experiment with the look of my homepage and trying to get the images to be place where I want them to be, but I am realizing the way the computer works, my image just will not be placed where I want it to. Also, the last time I logged on, my images were not even showing up clearly. They looked as if, somebody went and scratched parts of them away. I was so distraught and depressed, I just gave up and moved on. Images can be such a pain, but I think in the end, the effort is worth it because they end up looking so great!
Appearance -- I actually thought this homepage was rather plain. She has a small welcome line, which I felt she should have made bigger, and then lists her links. She does have an order to her links and she does use double-spacing to separate different topics, but because there are no subheading, the order is not obvious. I liked her artistic homepage the best. I like the way she puts icons before each link and centers everything. She also uses a blue bar icon across the page to separate each major category of links.
Content --
Tina's advice
She says that we need to try to look at things in a positive way, which sounds
like what Nicole
Gustie said in her week 4 report about keeping a positive mental
attitude. (See my week 7 report
for my comments about this.) Secondly, she says to "realize that you are very
lucky to have the opportunity to learn about the internet." I couldn't agree
more. When I signed up for this class, I had no idea that I would learn SO
MUCH or for that matter, that there was all that much TO learn about the
internet. I had no idea that it had such complexity. The only aspect of the
internet that I knew about was the e-mail aspect. I didn't know that you could
do programming. What a shocker this class was to my system. But I must admit,
although the road has been very rough, I don't regret taking this class because
I love that I am finally becoming computer literate. Computers are really
revolutionizing the world, so much more so than I even had an inkling of. I'm
glad that I at least have some knowledge about this machine that is becoming so
prominent in our lives.