So close, yet so far away...

We're halfway done with IT486. So far we've done a TON of different activities and used a plethora of programs and with each one we've used, I've found positives and negatives. Like most technology, there have been several points of frustration. Google docs has some issues with formatting that made me pretty irritated, but I managed to reformat everything and get my task accomplished. Voice threads was an interesting tool, but it seems like a lot of the really cool features are only available if you pay for the subscription. I've used picasa before, but only on my personal computer, not using the web albums. It was a really easy tool to use, as is almost everything I've found using Google.

I'm excited to be finishing up our wiki. The finally product should look really nice and have some very useful links as resources for the different fields of music education. But I have to admit, I can't wait to finish up with summer classes though and take a break before school starts back up again! :)

Music Scavenger Hunt

We went on a scavenger hunt around UT's campus in search of musical instruments and accessories. Upon returning to class we uploaded all of our images into a program called Voice Thread which allowed us to make comments on the pictures via typing and also voice recordings. It's a pretty neat little program with quite a few cool features for free.

Digital Image Collection

This is my collection of images. The pictures are fairly diverse, but essentially cover a lot of my interests.

To blog or not to blog?

That's not really the question! :) Thus far I have learned quite a few new things in IT 486. As it turns out, there is more to the internet than I was ever aware of! I have found that wikis are quite frustrating and entertaining at the same time. It's interesting to watch other classmates and students from other sections uploading their information onto the wiki and I find that so far it seems to be a good tool for us to learn from each other.

Google docs seems like a pretty nifty tool, and seeing as how I'm already a google fanatic and I've had a gmail account for years now, it feels like I should have known about google docs for years now!

I'm most looking forward to my finalized wiki. I have a feeling it's going to look fantastic and have a wide variety of helpful information and links for music students and teachers alike.

What's happenin' internet?

Here I am starting up yet another web-page on the world wide web, which we all know is already full of tons of fascinating pages! :) I'm hoping to utilize this page to its fullest extent while in the IT 486 class and to possibly find and share with other Music Education students and graduates.

My technology background is fairly good, and I've always prided myself with being able to keep up with just about any new device that is thrown at me. I have to admit that I am a huge fan of Mac products, but I can still easily find my way around a PC since I was born and raised on them. As far as the world of the internet is concerned, I have gone through many, many social networking systems, beginning with Xanga way back in the day and moving on to Myspace, Facebook, and I've even had a few blogs before in my life. (not that I can remember their urls or passwords of course). For this IT 486 course I am most interested in seeing how these past experiences I have can be used in addition to the information I will gain from this experience to expand my technology knowledge.