looking back at comm 350

LOOKING BACK AT  COMM 350

My tech skills before comm 350

When I signed up for comm 350 at WWU, I was excited about learning new technologies for communication. I had never used any of the programs that I read on the syllabus so I was pretty nervous. Our first assignment was to create a party flyer (pretty simple right?) wrong! For some reason I couldn't even make a simple flier look good. I was given free reign to use any program I desired. Since my experience consisted of Microsoft paint, I looked at my neighbors screen and quickly went to a site called "Canva" to create my flyer. I had no idea what I was doing and slapped something together within the time limit. Looking back at my original flyer I can only laugh at how silly it looks. My final flyer has a simple and clean look and is something that I can be proud of. I will attach a photo below of the first and final drafts.

After that first experience I was not hopeful for the rest of the quarter. I felt nervous and frustrated because of my lack of knowledge.  At first I was afraid, I was petrified kept thinking I could never live without these skills on my side-but then I spent so many nights (in comm 350) learning how I was so wrong and my skills grew strong and I learned how to get along!
Adaptation of "I will survive" by Aretha Franklin 
I was delightfully surprised at how fast I was able to pick up basic skills in a whole new world of technology. My professor Jason Lind is very straightforward and keeps the class fun and exciting. He was able to break me out of my technology shell. I am proud of myself for facing my fear of technology head on and creating some cool projects. I have learned how to use Adobe Photoshop and InDesign as well as Audacity, Dreamweaver, and website builders. These are valuable skills that I can now add to my resume and continue to refine and expand on in the future. My favorite projects were working in InDesign. I loved remaking a magazine cover and creating a brochure (see below).

 I would recommend this class to anyone interested in expanding their technological literacy. The class was fun, challenging, and rewarding. Jason was a great professor and made my experience enjoyable. Overall comm 350 was a positive experience for me.

How well did I keep up with Foursquare?

A few weeks ago one of my assignments was to sign up for a new social media site and explore what it had to offer. I chose to join foursquare. It is a pretty cool site/app for someone who loves food and wants to try out new places wherever they go. Unfortunately for me I am behind the times again with technology (I still don't have a smartphone..) I know *gasp*. Since I have a dumb phone and don't have foursquare at my fingertips, I have let it fall by the wayside. I will however be getting smartphone soon and plan to use foursquare on my travels this summer and in the future.

Blog-tastic

Keeping up on this blog throughout the quarter has been a mixed experience for me. I almost always forgot about it and had to stress out the day or two before it was due and get it done. Thus my design and layout has suffered because of that. It was a good experience overall though, because it forced me to expand my knowledge on various subjects and explore sites and videos to have a decent blog. My blog is by no means high-quality but I think I was fairly successful in maintaining it. Will I continue my blog in the future? I'm going to have to say maaaaayyybe. If there was something that I was very passionate about, then blogging would be a great outlet and way to get information to the world about something I loved. My passion for writing however is seriously lacking, so a future blog is most likely not going to happen. It was not a negative experience, I just feel that I would be inconsistent in any future attempts at blogging. Its nice to know that making a blog is actually pretty easy and free though.