Journal 6: Self-Reflection

If I had one word to describe how I felt at the beginning of the quarter in GED 512, there wouldn't be. Thus, I chose an image since I'm more of a visual person. To be quite honest, the very first day I sat down in  the back of the lab unsure of what I was getting myself into. When Dr. McGarvey started speaking, hundreds of question marks popped into my mind. Was he speaking in English? What is this HTML he speaks of? The World Wide Web versus the Internet? Servers? CSS? I thought I was doing okay in the technology world right up until this very moment. I realized there was so much information to learn still, and creating a website is not as easy as Weebly. As the weeks passed I grew more and more anxious, my brain felt swollen after every class and it pulsated as I rode the elevator down to the parking lot. Sometimes during class I would find myself lost because I was stuck doing the previous thing we were working on and it was tough to catch up, this created an internal freak out like I've never experienced before. By the time week 6 rolled in, I began feeling more comfortable with everything Dr. McGarvey was saying, I had a grasp on what the codes he was typing in were going to look like in the browser preview and what I was doing. Since I am a visual learner it did help that the labs were displayed step by step on a projector screen. The book exercises were hand in hand with what we were doing in the lab, hence, that repetition did help me recognize and remember what I was doing. I'm so glad I kept up with each of the assignments each week and inputted them on my index.html page or labs.html page every weekend so that everything was ready to go for class on Tuesday. The constant repetition of doing the same routine on both of these pages made it quite easy to link my homework exercises and labs or any other for that matter.
Examples:

• http://www.csupomona.edu/~smsandino/ged512/book/
• http://www.csupomona.edu/~smsandino/ged512/labs/labs.html

I had the toughest time with Dreamweaver and setting up the server as well as making sure all of the files in my local drive were being uploaded and shown on Dreamweaver. Sometimes I would have a clone of the same file under both my local drive as well as in Dreamweaver and I couldn't understand why (I still can't). What helped me in the Dreamweaver section of the class is writing step-by-step instructions for myself on what I need to do and drawing icons for the buttons I need to click on. Another difficult part for me was the Photoshop lab because I am not familiar with Photoshop at all. I remember using it my junior year in high school in my visual communications class but then again I never touched the program again until now. It would probably be beneficial for me to take an entire class on Photoshop because it was just information overload with all the tools that where available as well as their jobs for just one class. During this particular class, I made a lot of mistakes trying to fix the picture of the head, but it just didn't come out right. After class that night I stayed for a little while and attempted to fix it, which in turn gave me a better result although there are still quite a bit of mistakes.

Examples:

• Before: http://www.csupomona.edu/~smsandino/ged512/labs/images/head.jpg
• After: http://www.csupomona.edu/~smsandino/ged512/labs/images/crazy-2.jp

At this point in the quarter, the word I would chose to describe how I am feeling is...well, none. However, I did choose a photo to help my words out. The light-bulb is still foggy, but at least it's not a post-it with a question mark written on it. There are more ideas flowing out of my mind, and most importantly, more connections are being made with HTML code and what it would visually look like on a webpage. There's a great deal to learn thus far, but all I can do is practice, practice, practice. Something I learned very well during the 15 years I played soccer. The final project is still going to be quite challenging and I am positive I will have to refer to the book a lot, nevertheless, I do think I have the sufficient tools to make a simple website. It may not be perfect, it may not be the fanciest out there, but it will do the job for now until I have more tools that I can put under my belt. This class has been a learning experience for me, I've had to work hard, reread, ask questions, and ask for help to get to where I am today in Week 8. When I surf the web I know think about what it takes for the page to look the way it does and all of the effort that goes into it. There is a new found appreciation for technology, web designers, and the future of our techy world.