Reflection #6: Editing Images

This week, we were introduced to a photo editing program called GIMP.

GIMP is a software that's similar to Photoshop in many ways, but this one is FREE so, in my eyes, that fact alone, makes this software 1,000 times better than Photoshop (confessions of a broke college student). GIMP is also available to different types of OS like Mac, Windows and Linux. Although the program seems to be pretty awesome, the download process was very annoying. The file is big, therefore, it took me about an hour or two to actually have it on my computer. i do have to admit that my computer is not the fastest machine in the world, nor is my internet connection so i think that played a big part in the whole experience. Nevertheless, i was able to install it properly and get to work. With the help of the professor and his video lessons, i was able to navigate through GIMP without any problems and i managed to do just fine, if i say so myself.

On our class website, we were assigned a homework which consisted of us, changing the appearance of this terrible-looking guy that the professor named, Pepe.

YIKES!... As you can see, Pepe is quite difficult to look at without gagging. Our mission was to turn Pepe into a handsome -kind of- young guy that looked somewhat decent or better in any way than in his horrible picture. Using the tools provided by GIMP, we had to clear up his acne bumps and acne scars from his face, we had to whiten his teeth and also shave his sideburns. It took me about an hour or less to do everything the professor asked us to do. i must say, i enjoyed it very much. I was very pleased with the results that i got and Pepe definitely looks a lot better now. 

Here is a comparison of Pepe's looks before and after GIMP.

Aside from the photo editing homework, we also had another online assignment that required us to look for information about the history of computers or technology in general and choose one topic that we were interested in to produce an essay that we would have to upload to be evaluated.

Because February is Black History Month, I decided to highlight the work of African-Americans in the era of technology and portray their inventions and how much they have affected and influenced the world as we know it today.

Reflection #5: Rubrics

This week, we have continued working with Microsoft Word and becoming more familiar with all the little tricks available to us yet, unknown to many.

In class, we started a document which is an example of a rubric -kind of- with a different format but it basically serves the same purpose of a rubric which is to evaluate student's work. We learned to develop all the parts of the rubric and to organize the columns and lines of the table perfectly straight and lined up with the rest of the document. We even learned a new way of making signature lines. That was awesome.

Also, we learned how to make the document look official by putting the emblem of the Department of Education on top and following the right guidelines to make the introduction of the paper appropriate for the rubric.

 Here is the final result of the document done in class.



 And here is the work done online on the class' website this week.

Reflection #4: Keeping up with a blog

Keeping up with a blog is not as easy as you may think. When you're not used to having a blog and managing it on a frequent basis you end up forgetting you even have one. It happened to me. I'm not used to taking online classes, let alone be in charge of a blog that you have to update weekly to meet the course requirements.

The class is still focusing on adorning our blogs and filling them with information that relates to our areas of study so we haven't done anything different. However, we did learn the basics of Microsoft Word and that was a great class! Apparently, we've all been living under rocks (or at least I have), because Word has a lot of features that i didn't know existed, which are there to make your life easier and to facilitate your work while writing on this platform. Like the citation feature... WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT?! I've been using online citation generators since I started doing essays and all this time there was that little button on the toolbar that I simply didn't care to notice and would have saved me a lot of copy-pasting time all these years.

Anyway, I really want to thank the professor, foe taking the time to enlighten us with these mind blowing tricks Word has to offer and for helping us to have a better writing experience overall.

Here is the work done in class this week.

Reflection #3: Getting to know your blog

This week we concentrated on getting to know our blogs and adding stuff to it so it looks pretty and has nice content on it. I gotta say, I love blogging. It is very exciting and fun. I've thought about having a personal blog before, but I did not have the necessary tools to make my idea possible. I'm hoping after this class I'll be able to make it happen.

In class, we talked about html code and embed code. How to use them and what they are for. We added pages, links, animations and many other things to our blogs. I'm getting the hang of this whole blogging trend and I definitely see how it would be a magnificent tool in the classroom. Students can have access to a class blog which would have all kinds of information related to the class, organized by date or topic, making it easier and more entertaining to learn.

I will be using this tool in the future in my classrooms and also in my personal life. That's it for right now...

Here is the work we have been doing on the class' Website this week.

Embed document example

Reflection #2: Creating a Blog

On this second week, we had to make gmail accounts to be able to create our blogs. We couldn't use the @upr.edu account provided to us by the university to create the blog, therefore, those who didn't already have a separate gmail account, had to create a new one.

I was surprised that many people didn't have separate gmail accounts from the university, I guess not everybody has realized that hotmail is long dead... which in turn, reminded the professor of a funny video about unconventional email addresses. Back when it wasn't cool to use your name as an email address, some people (myself included) would have a very awkward sounding, usually embarrassing combination of words for an email and you had to think twice about who you gave it to.

After we were done laughing about the video, we finally created this blog but we couldn't really get much done because of the time but we did get to write a nifty introduction (which is the first post on this blog) summarizing our purpose for the blog and what the class is about and also, our first weekly reflection. That's it for this week folks.

Link example

Uncle Tom's Cabin

12 Years a Slave

Narratives of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

Video example

Branches of Linguistics

Branches of linguistics from Victory30