In Dr. Schacht’s English 340 class we have been working a lot with different types of programs and devices. We were asked the question “What are the most interesting things I know now that I didn’t know at the beginning of the semester?” I feel that I have learned a lot this semester about computers then I have in years. Dr. Schacht’s class has pushed me to learn about all the different types of computer programs and websites. The most interesting thing I believed I learned so far in this semester is how to use the program VirtualBox.
At the beginning of the semester, VirtualBox seemed so foreign to me. I didn’t know what it could do or how to even work it. But now that we’ve used it over time in most of our classes I have become quite comfortable using it on my own. I’ve learned how to use different features in VirtualBox like the firefox or the terminal application. In the terminal application, you can do any and every command possible. We have the Walden book in it and with a few commands, you could find the longest word in the whole entire book. VirtualBox can also use the command line in terminal to do anything on your computer. These commands that you tell it to do can connect to your computer, an example is our class, we all set up to have individual shared folders with VirtualBox. Through this shared folder we were able to hook up our Atom journals that we keep throughout the class and have VirtualBox set up a new journal for us. We were also able to have VirtualBox name the journals just form opening it. It automatically sets up to say Journalthe date the time of day.md.
Another interesting feature that I learned about in class through VirtualBox is the website Omeka. Omeka is a web application publishing software. This tool is used in many colleges and its free. In class, we have been using it for making our own websites. I thoroughly enjoyed playing around with Omeka. I found it to be really fun and interesting to make my own website that I could create myself. You can change everything about it, the theme can change whenever you want and you can add nay context that you want. The website we used was localhost/omeka-2.6.1/admin/ and we were able to create our own website about us, mine is named Stories About Nicole. One thing I learned about Omeka is you don’t use Omeka the same way you use WordPress like making posts. Rather think of Omeka as an online museum which contains artifacts. So, what you would do is choose a picture you want to have on the website and then you add some content to it so the viewers can see what is going on at this time. You can do time periods of your life and document it all. You can also have exhibits about you and stamp them in a certain time period. What you have to do first is download exhibit builder. This enables you to make your own exhibits on your page that you created. You can keep the exhibit private so you can keep this personal and just for you or you can have it public and anyone can find it on the web.
I feel that taking this class was very beneficial for me as a student but also as a future teacher. This class has helped me come out of my comfort zone and learn way more than I would have ever learned if I didn’t push myself to take this class. I really enjoyed learning about simple texts and coding software. But also, about ways that I could use these resources in the future and maybe even in a classroom one day.