Week one in review

So the first week of study period one is now over. As you may have gathered I am returning to study this week through Open Universities Australia. The unit I am studying is WEB101 Web Communications through Curtin University. This blog is both a record of my journey and to provide information and guidance for others you are thinking of embarking on the journey into further education.

So far so good I have really good things to say about WEB101 and Curtin University. I have found registering as a student at Curtin very easy and the guides they have provided very well written. Now as I have used BlackBoard before at other universities it is a little more difficult for me to provide a beginners perspective on it - however I can say that WEB101 has some really good information up on the BlackBoard. The fact that lectures are recorded and available online is a huge bonus; other university's I have studied at either don't have them at all or send out audio files on a CD. For WEB101 not only am I able to download them I can watch them! Video lectures are an awesome feature!

I like the way that the Discussion Board has been broken up into topics to make them easy to follow and find the information you need. The unit material is also well written and easy to follow which is great for all the beginners out there!

Now I have worked with computers for the last ten years (the last six in IT support and the last year actually teaching it!) I have a pretty good background heading into this course, in saying that I didn't want to just apply for RPL (Recognition of Prior Learning) for the course. I have a genuine interest on seeing how this subject is taught and I am sure I will still learn something new. That being said I am moving through the subject material and making sure I read it all and not just skim over things I believe I already know (it is always good to have a refresher!).

I found it very interesting to learn that while I live and breathe email (I have too many accounts to count) that there are younger generations coming through that do not rely on it as heavily as my generation (25-30). I guess the younger generations have been blessed with cheap technology and have absorbed social networking like a sponge. With cheap technology we are seeing younger children having access to mobile phones that not only have sms capabilities but can also access the internet.
I got my first mobile phone at 16 so a good 11 years ago the good old Philips Savvy and it only displayed two lines of text and made phone calls. No games, no colour screen and basically what I would now consider to be a brick. Since then I have had countless phones, I am the type of person that is likely to sell a phone to buy the new one out - I am lucky if I keep a phone for a whole year usually gets to six months and I start looking at what else is now out! Only recently has there been an exception to that. Enter the iPhone - I was a late adopter of the iPhone I wasn't interested in importing from overseas and even when it hit the shelves in Australia I didn't rush out and buy one (I did however end up getting an iPod Touch which is what inevitably lead me to the iPhone). When the iPhone 3GS was released that was when I started seriously thinking about it and finally went out and got one and haven't looked back. I have since upgraded to the iPhone 4 after a brief trial of an Android device. The theme of my blog is a tribute to my iPhone love. Anyhow I am getting side-tracked...

So where was I... learning experiences. I was told about an interesting website where you can check your desired user name availability on a number of social networking sites: namechk.com. While I admit it is not always accurate it is an interesting tool to use. We are also required to create a web presence as part of our assessment - I did find it a little frustrating that I had to set up all new social networking accounts for this after I spent so long building up the others (my amymartin.me blog is only a few months old and I have only been actively using Twitter for the last two months but alas I understand why to make it fair on others it just means more accounts for me! So as part of this presence assignment I have this blog you are reading, a new Twitter account, a new YouTube Channel (not that I used my existing one before anyway), a new Facebook Page and a link to a Blogger account that reposts everything I post here. All the other social media links on this page link to my existing web presence for those that want to follow me through that means.

Well now I am rambling a bit so I think I will finish up here. I will hopefully find something interesting to post about over the weekend so stay tuned!