WEB101 - Learning Portfolio, Week 1

This year I've started the third lot of "formal" study in my lifetime, but the first in more than 15 years.  Suffice to say, things have changed a bit!  Back then I sat in a lecture hall watching a lecturer furiously scribble on a whiteboard while handing out reams of paper, and I studied such gems as "Programming Concepts" and "Using a Mini-Computer", which was about all you could do in the World O' Geek back then.  This week I sat down at my own desk with a cuppa, logged into my student account and downloaded my first lecture, then listened to it in my own time, pausing to look things up, take notes, tap out a couple of posts in the discussion boards, answer the phone or respond to urgent emails whenever I needed to.  It's almost surreal!  This first unit is entirely web-based and all assignments are submitted electronically.  I will probably never even meet my lecturers or tutors, who seem to be all based 3000km and 2 timezones away from Melbourne at Perth's Curtin University.  Welcome to the world of higher learning, 21st century style!

Part of our assessment is to keep a Learning Portfolio, to document things that we find interesting or useful each week, so I've decided to make use of this rather vacant-looking Blog that's been sitting here unused for a couple of years now.

This week they've started in slowly for us - What's in a name?  One of my pet subjects!  My husband still can't believe that I sat there the day that Facebook "released" usernames for the first time, ready to bash out my personalised name before anybody else could get it (yes, I got it).  We were asked to visit http://namechk.com/ and try to find a username that we could use for several social networking sites.  Luckily my chosen username was only being used by me (except for 1 site) so I registered in a couple of other places and now I have a veritable collection of "nickyveitch" sites scattered about the place!  Here are a couple:

http://au.linkedin.com/in/nickyveitch
http://twitter.com/NickyVeitch
http://nickyveitch.blogspot.com/

Oh, and let's not forget - http://www.nickyveitch.com! 

One other thing that was covered this week, which I'm bizarrely fascinated with, is this funky little Flash app depicting Social Media Counts by Gary Hayes:

http://www.personalizemedia.com/garys-social-media-count/

For those that are interested, I'm doing the first unit in what will probably become a Bachelor of Arts (Internet Communications) via Open Universities Australia (if I can stick it out this time!)

Until next week,

Cheers,

Nicky