An RMIT media student reflecting and blogging on her experiences at uni, on making and learning.

Over the course of this semester of Networked Media, I have tried to use this blog as a way of considering and reflecting on blogging practices, hypertext, the connective nature of the web etc. I also used it to blog my lectures directly, rather than copying notes. Because of this, a lot of my posts are lecture notes. As a way of thinking, it is much more informal than writing in a Word document, or in a notebook. It feels, on most occasions, much less formal than those forms of writing and allows me to make connections between topics, or connections between things learnt in Networked Media, to things experienced outside of university. Having never blogged before, it was a new experience, but I was surprised to find it easier than I expected to keep up the number of posts per week, and I grew to enjoy it – so much that I set up a separate blog that is not part of this course. Another unexpected benefit of the blog was the way it allowed our group for the Hypertext essay to communicate and update each other on our progress. The following twelve posts I hope show some progression of thought over the semester:

1: Expectations
2: Train Network Fail
3: ‘Social’ networking
4: Megan Washington Mailing LIst
5:My mobile broadband connection
6: htmllll…oh look! an image!
7: Image test (manual)
8: Sooo…just on spatial montage…
9: Mortensen and Walker
10: The year the Saints (possibly) win…
11: planning the hypertext essay
12: Short and sharp

Well, we did it! All on the same server, links all working, pictures visible, no scrolling required, external links open in tab, photographs are attributed, bibliography is there, rollover colour – it’s looking pretty good!
Well done all!

Channel 7 Chopper

Photo: Andrew Culverston Title: Channel 7 Chopper
Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/andyroo64/3401315810/
This work is licensed under Creative Commons

I’ve finally gotten my pages to link!! I had the end tag in the wrong spot, silly me. Plus, I’ve fixed the colours – they now show up in Firefox which is sehr gut! I’ve also employed Lindsay’s rollover idea and it looks pretty awesome, *applause for Lindsay* I think this means I’m nearly all good! My links are in place too, some just don’t work because the pages have not been uploaded yet.

Journalism 1
Journalism 2

My blog is alive!!! So are the other blogs!!!!
My heart nearly stopped when I tried to log on here the other day and all I saw was ‘a database error has occurred while trying to connect’…or something like that.
0.o <– that was me!
But its back now, the I.T people have worked their magic, and now our group can go on collaborating via our blogs, and we can do our blog reflections which are due at the end of the week.
Group meeting tomorrow for hypertext essay – if all goes well, we might just finish our pages and write the contextualising statement. I’m about to start editing my HTML code while previewing in Firefox so I can get the colours right, aside from that it all looks good. (There is also a blue line around the picture -because it’s a link but there is a way to get rid of it, I know)

Well co-hypertext essay writers, here are the links to my two pages. There is an issue though. In Safari it looks fine, but in Firefox something has gone wrong. I know Seth warned us about this and I’m at a bit of a loss. The link from page one to page two works in Safari but not Firefox? *Shakes head* I have no idea what’s going on there.
http://raws.adc.rmit.edu.au/~s3287701/project/journalism_1.html
http://raws.adc.rmit.edu.au/~s3287701/project/journalism_2.html
It’s all there though, and it looks good in Safari. Basically all I did was copy the code from Sophie and Lindsay’s pages and move things around a little. I applaud you both because I would never be able to do that, or it would take me about ten times as long!
See you guys Tuesday

Well, it’s now time to review my progress in this course for the final time. After going back and looking over my participation criteria from the beginning of the course, here is what I have found. For the most part, I have followed the criteria that I assigned myself. I’ve kept up to date with my work and kept up the frequency of the blog posts (at least three per week).
Another main criteria that I set myself was to reflect on things learned in the course and try to connect them to things I see outside the course as well. I have been able to make certain connections with things I’ve learned, though perhaps they are a little obvious, as my post on the New Optus ad proves, and this post on how artists use the internet to connect with their fans, through blogs and mailing lists and such. I’m also really pleased with the way that our hypertext essay group has been able to collaborate via the blogs. Aside from that I attended all the lectures when it was possible (I had to miss one), but one thing I didn’t really do and will talk more of this in a moment.
I think the biggest thing I did that influenced me as a learner this semester was writing the blog posts. Writing in the blog as a way of reviewing and thinking about the course material was different to any other form of reflection. It felt less formal than it might otherwise have been and I was able to make quite random connections between things that I otherwise might not have thought of.
One thing I have done well – keeping my blog. Looking back, I’m quite happy about the number and length of my posts.
What could I have done better – reviewing HTML codes. I did not do this outside of the class and I regret it. A lot of the code is still pretty hard for me to understand, apart from simple things like putting a break in the line.

http://raws.adc.rmit.edu.au/~s3287701/images/helicopter.jpg

Heya fellow group members (Lincoln, Sophie, Lindsay) here are some quotes I was thinking of using for the super short summary of the summary page.

“…the blogs have shown us just how deep the divide has become between the commercial and professional news media and the people…” (Barlow, 2007, pp. 184)

“The limitations on the press, to say nothing of its separateness as an entity distinct from the people, are being eroded.” (Barlow, 2007, pp. 153)

“This hypertextual dissolution of centrality, which makes the medium such a potentially democratic one, also makes it a model of a society of conversations…” (Landow, 1997, pp. 89)

And here is my picture, I thought a news helicopter would look better than newspapers. This one allows sharing and remixing.