May 23, 2012

Our project for this class Digital Literacy is creating a web site of our own and sharing all the presentations and youtube videos and bibliography for the theme writing!
And so we learned how to create a website using google sites.

google sites
- free
- easy to make websites
- connected to gmail
- don’t use someone else’s template
- options.. in case your site had features unsuitable for children underage

Google sites are so easy and we get to customize the format and everything as we like.

Though it requires some creativity to make my site an interesting and catchy one, I try my best to make it look good.

I should work more on my presentation.... I'm behind my schedule...

I better finish them before final exams are coming up...



 

May 21, 2012

It feels so strange when we come back to class after a week of no-class because the blog dates jumped dramatically. May 21st coming right after May 9th!

This is what we've learned on Tuesday;


Dopamine-
-chemical that is produced in your body when you are excited, sad, scared
- side effect makes you remember something you see after dopamine has been produced
- have funny and shocking part in your presentation that is related to the topic so that the viewer would remember the information you want them to remember.

Keynote
- choose the theme that relates to your topic
- you can upload pictures and movies easily


We did learn much much more, but on Tuesday I was too busy working on computers (like creating keynotes) to take notes! I usually take notes on google documents as I listen and see Rab demonstrating useful stuff. But Keynotes were way too easy and fun to create and I was into it! I never knew how I can make amazing keynotes so easily!

May 9, 2012

Long time no writing....

I forgot to write about what we have done on May 9th..

So this is what we did!

cooliris
- useful for presentation
- works with chrome, safari, and firefox
- you don’t need to go through all slides to get to the slide you want to get to

imovie 
- save it by uploading to youtube or save it to USB

linear presentation
linear= one way

May 7th

New things I learned today;

Pandia
- Elvis Costells
          Presly
          
if you didn’t want information about Elvis Presly, type Elvis not Presly

“Elvis Presly” searches for only results with Elvis Presly
Elvis Presly searches for results with Elvis, Presly, and Elvis Presly


The WWW Virtual Library
- enables us to search for many topics
- what made me most interested was regional studies because I am interested in foreign cultures and history


Vimio
- only created video can be uploaded
- the videos tend to have high quality

icerocket

youtube university

itune university

google videos
- you can search for long videos 


I found The WWW Virtual Library the most useful because it enables us to jump to various kinds of academic studies done in other universities. For example, I am currently interested in history of foreign cultures. What I need to do to search for such topic is first I go to The WWW Virtual Library, choose regional studies, and pick whichever region I want to know about. In addition, they have many studies about regions we are not familiar with such as Africa, Hawaii, and Latin America. I suppose it will take a long time if I try to look for these sources via Japanese search engines. 
I also thought that google videos are very convenient because they enable us to watch videos that are too long to be uploaded to youtube.

May 2nd

Below is what we have done on May 2nd

played with TW portfolio

Google presentation
make a presentation for the essay so that it’ll be easier to write TW

first slide
the title font size should be minimum 48
use image that matches your topic and it has to be catchy
an image saves you energy to write 100 words to describe

second slide
upload videos from youtube
a video should be short



flickr
- you can save images on it from Yahoo and they are shared with public
- you can download photos from flickr
- flickr has started the service of sharing scanned photos from many libraries all over the world 

iStockphoto
- most photos are on charge
- choose designer as your job so they might give you more free of charge images

April 30th

First, each of us had a short speech introducing topics we would be writing for TW.
My topic would be about health insurance. I'm not so sure about details, but I'm now planning to write about health insurance system in Japan and other countries. I can't really decide because no research has been done yet. I don't want to save my work for later but I won't hurry either because my TW would be in winter term and there's more than half a year before submission.

Then, after the speech we got together with people whose topics seem closest to each one's.

After that, Rab gave us interesting lecture regarding computers, websites, technologies, and etc.
I'll just post the note I took as I listened to Rab.

freedocumentary.org -> I can check many documentaries here
I can look up from many categories
               
media education foundation http://www.mediaed.org/
I can preview documentaries

how can i site movies?
go to imdb!

April 25th

Oops, I forgot to make a blog post for April 25th.

I'll list down what we learned that day.

Bibup
- a very convenient way to get the data of the book via barcode reader on i Phone
- data can be easily transferred to zotero

Google photos
- former picasa
- you can share photos and the photos can be searched through the google engine

Google plus
- you can chat with up to 6 people at once
- it’s like the google version of facebook


Drop box
- you can put anything to Drop box up to 2 GB
- if you invite people to dropbox, you get extra space up to 18.25 GB
- if you change something, it will automatically change the file

Evernote
- notes kept permanently
- download it, and you can keep sites and web pages you find interesting in evernote


All of these were new to me and I'm not sure if I'll be able to make good use of all, but I'll try. Especially those that relate to google sounded fun. Dropbox would be useful too, if I knew how to use it! I really should try to be familiar with these enhanced technologies. 

April 23rd, 2012

We leaned about the followings:

google book

- you can get information from books for free. 

- sometimes you can see the whole entire book from google book

amazon.com
- you can create wish list
- you can transfer the information of the product for zotero just by clicking the icon on the slide bar

zotero
- makes it easier to save the references
- zotero can recognize what you’re looking at in amazon.com
- create an on-line account for zotero

imdb
- Internet database for movies

What I found the most useful was google book.

It should help me with doing research for the essay. I usually rely on library databases when writing essay, but when I am tired with such academic data, I can just go to google book and look for sources that has many visual images that I find more interesting.

Speaking of essay, I also thought that Tumblr would be very useful. I was not interested in Tumblr last week, but after Anan's presentation, I changed my mind. Maybe I'll give it a try in winter term, when I will be working on theme writing.

After Rab gave us the lecture last week, I'm trying not to log on to facebook.

I used to play around with facebook all day, but now I am aware of the danger that we tend to miss when we are addicted to SNS. Getting away from facebook gives me more time to study and spend on hobbies. I really should continue on spending least time on facebook.

I am getting used to google.
I learned how to use igoogle and google reader in the last class, and found how useful they are!
igoogle helps me search things, look up for interesting news, and play with fun games.
What makes igoogle so fabulous is that I get to costomize it on my own.
Google reader help me save time when I want to read new post from my favorite web sites and friends' blogs. Such an useful tool.

We learned about many other sites like LinkedIn, Lifehacker, and Tiny url, but it seems like they are something I will be using in the future and not for now. But it sure was a very precious opportunity to get to know about these stuffs I never knew before coming to this class!!

Safari!

I should install safari the moment I open my laptop today.
Safari Extensions are so useful and fun! Their features are amazing.
The most amazing one was screenshot and New York Times updates.
I've always wondered how people use screenshots (though there must be a way I can use screenshot without using Safari Extensions). But now I can screenshot any page I find interesting!
This should really help me with essays and papers I will be writing for Theme Writing as well as other courses. For the Freshman ELP essays I sometimes had hard time trying to collect the pictures and graphs I wanted to use because though I might have found the picture I could not save it.
Now I CAN save any image from the web!
And New York Times updates were pretty cool as well!
I always had to jump to yahoo to check the news, but now I have New York Times updates on the screen anytime! Should there be any interesting news popping up on the screen I just have to click it and then there would be a new tab opening up, showing me the details of the news:D
Safari is cool. I should learn more about it.

Sophomore ELP!

So judging from what 16 girls say at dorm, apparently we 15s (and re-takers and everyone) are the last ELP takers. 16s are the first ELA takers.
I don't think that just because ELP has changed to ELA, it has changed dramatically but yes, I must admit that ELP and ELA do differ because they are different.
But it doesn't mean I wanted to take ELA instead of ELP because my first year at ICU was like the best thanks to Fresman ELP classes. I loved my teachers and section mates.
Now that I am taking Sophomore ELP class with a new teacher and class mates (I'm not sure if I should call my class mates "section mates" because it's not exactly a section... or is it?), I must enjoy it. Enjoying is the best and the easiest way to work on things, especially things like studying, reading, writing, and all the other stuffs that make you feel you want to leave them for the last.
I know I will be enjoying Sophomore ELP, because the first class was so fun that I am already looking forward to the second one. But there may be a time when I have hard time doing works and stuff. In such times, I need support. I will be happy if my class mates would help me. And I wish I could be of some help to my class mates when they need help:)