And We're Live in 3...2...1...

On September 9th, 2009, I attended my first LIVE session. What an experience! I know that I wasn't the fast chatter like others were, but it was interesting to be listening to the professor and reading the conversations of students at the same time. It was as if I was in school, except of course my classroom was my bedroom, and I was lounging in bed attending a lecture. I <3 technology!

We talked a lot about metadata this past lecture. What is metadata, you ask? For me personally, metadata is data about any data. A card from a card catalog? Metadata. The copyright information on the back of a title page? Metadata. The information that you get when you select a document and press apple + i? Metadata! Some people do not accept the first two examples as metadata, as they do not pertain to electronic sources, but I like the more inclusive definition.

A large portion of the student discussion was about the "evils" of Google. I'm not sure whether I would define Google evil- I AM using their amazing free blogging website (wink wink), and I use Google to search every day. The "evil" students talk about are Google Books, something that sounds great at first but as you think about it, not so great. In the end, Google is a for profit company- for them, putting books online isn't exactly for the greater good, but rather for the greater profit. I do not know what to think about all of this, I guess I'll have to read some comments.

Next time, I'll talk about our group project!

Finally Back in Action

I have to get back into the "groove" of blogging and being active on the Moodle. I have to say, making myself think about anything academic is hard right now, because I'm still thinking about my summer. For me, this summer was amazing. I did some camping, had my grad school orientation, and went to Europe for two weeks. It's Labor Day though, and that means that finally I have to get down to business. By Wednesday I will be back- mostly because we have our first assignment due. I do not know how that will end up, because I have not written since orientation. The assignment is to find an article about how one user group searches for information. I hope I remember how to search for things from orientation!

As I was gone for the first two weeks of my 501 class, I was curious to see how the archived chat sessions worked- do I see the white board, can I see the chat box, etc. Well, the answer is yes, so for all of you in my 501 class who rick-rolled our class in its final moments, I saw that :D

We also have a group project for this class. Usually, I am not the group project type of person, but this sounds interesting. It is about "genre-specific considerations" for different media types. We have to both orally present it to the class, and have to write about it in a group and individual level. I had to pick three options out of a large list of medias, of which I chose: 1) oral histories, 2) maps, and 3) comic/graphic novels (hehehe). Looking back, I wish I put aps as my first choice, but I would be very happy with oral history as well. Since I come to this program with a history degree, it would be cool to research this.

Because it is the regular school year now, I should be posting on a regular basis. Keep your eyes open!

Until next time, yours truly.