Jennifer Brown

I can honestly say that I have learned a lot this term.  This particular course has given me the ability to be more independent with technology.  I have to admit that at the beginning I was calling my friend at least a couple of times a week trying to get help with what I had to do and now he is asking me if I dropped the class.  I am proud of myself in what I have accomplished this far and am considering learning more about it.  I still feel as though I am going to need help from time to time but now I know where to go to get it and how I can learn about finding it.

I loved exploring the possibilities of the Dream project and the Culture site taught us all a little something about what it was like when it really was hard for women.  The Teach project allowed us all to learn just a little bit more about the world and how we can continue to fit in.  Practical uses like changing a tire and doing laundry is helpful for all ages, and then there are things that we take for granted like being able to print wireless or to have a photo book online.  The important thing is that we will know how to do these things if we need the skill.

I have enjoyed the class and I hope that you all have a good summer!!

I have decided to do my project on setting up a wireless printer.  If you are like me, you work off of your laptop most of the time and connecting to a printer at home can be tiresome every time you want to print something.  I find it extremely useful in my current setting.  I use my laptop in the the den while the printer is in the other room hooked to the desk top.  I used to have to disconnect one computer and then connect the other one in order to print and then reverse the whole procedure when I was done.  Now I can say that it is so easy to do.  Initially I had to have my friend show me how it was done and then he took it all back to where it was to begin with and made me do it.  He was able to walk me through the procedure and I think that I can do the same for you.

I am not a fan of the narration of pages feature.  I was so distracted by the sound of the voice that I found myself not paying attention to the material.  I think that it was because the voice was so mechanical and not realistic at all.  I was hoping that the voice would sound more realistic, but I suppose that it all has to do with the computer.

The only voice that was an option for me was the Microsoft Sam voice.  I have heard it before and I am pretty sure that it is just the default voice for anything mechanized.  All I had to do was go to my control panel and then choose speech from the list of categories.  After double clicking the speech icon, i was able to preview the voice and then apply it to the settings.  I left the default controls where they were.  Ctrl+Alt+spacebar could be used to turn it on and then ctrl to turn it off.  I think that it would be ok if I was able to not pay so much attention to the sound of the voice.  I then had to re-read the information to be sure that I was in fact retaining it.

There are so many great things that people could do if they were able to save a little extra money each month.  One of my all time favorite things to do would be to be able to open a dog rescue or be able to foster animals that didn’t have a home.  Ultimately, I would like for the rescue to be non-profit, because it should be about the animals.  This project is shedding more light on the total package that I would need in order to do this.  I am thinking that I would need to win the Lottery or something.  There is so many thing to think about.  There is the food costs, vet bills, bedding, kennels, permits, help in order to keep the kennels clean and a mountain of other things that a person would have to think about.  This is why I idolize Tia Torres.  She has it all together and going through some of the hardest times in her life, it is still about the dogs.  Like she says, ” saving pitbulls one at a time with the hope that one day I won’t have to”.

All that I can say about the help of the online librarians is WOW!!  I can’t believe how much help they were to me.  After looking online for material for my project, I kept coming across the same problem.  The material was almost identical to on another.  After searching for a couple of days on  my own, I checked out the online assistance.  They were so helpful.  I was able to chat LIVE with a librarian that gave me some ideas that I could use to find more information.  When I took her advice, it lead me to an end that I didn’t expect.  The article wasn’t in the local library system and because the topic is DNA, they weren’t sure that they would be able to get it in a timely manner.  I spoke to the librarian at the university and low and behold she was able to set me up with a form for Inter Library Loan.  They were able to track down the article and send it to me electronically.  In that one article, I was able to find more information that all of the ones that I had read online.  Needless to say I am very impressed and would recommend the service to anyone that needs that little bit of extra help.

So this is the second week of blogging.  I can say that I am still a little on the uneasy side of things.  There is so much to think about and this weeks instructions to “personalize” were not exactly clear.  I am hoping that as the term progresses, I will not have to have three or four tabs open to make sure that I am doing something right.  I will have to say that reading my classmates posts have helped more than I could imagine.  It let me know that I am not alone and that other people are having the same problems.

Here’s to having a more comfortable blogging experience.