Website

I have never made a website before, so this is going to be interesting! The first thing I put on my page was a map, and I already had to get help! How hard can it be? All I had to do was press a couple buttons and I could not even do that without having to ask for help! Hopefully as I start working more on the website I will become more familiar with it and be able to figure things out on my own. I am sure I will be writing more when I need to ask questions!

Copyright Laws and Fair Use

In class the other day we learned about copyright laws and the fair use clause. I think that copyright laws are great to protect the people who have creative talents and abilities. If there were no copyright laws the creativity of people may decrease because they do not get anything for their work. The times I do not like copyright laws are when I want to use something for selfish reasons. When my friend has music that I want, I am only thinking about me and not the people who produced the song. A popular thought is that the artists have enough money and they don't need anymore so I don't need to buy the song. I don't have the right to say when someone has enough money or not. I need to buy the songs myself so that I do not violate copyright laws.
Copyright laws are extremely vague. If I were to change one thing I would make them a little clearer. I personally do not do well with having to interpret what something means and if I am allowed to do it or not. Also, I did not know any of the copyright laws before this class. I think students need to start learning about copyright laws when they are young so they grow up knowing what is and is not allowed.

New Resources

In class a few days ago we learned about many sites on the internet that can potentially help us a great deal with our homework. Some of the sites that we talked about were diigo.com and zotero.org. The first site allows you to highlight text online and place sticky notes on web pages. I have a hard time reading long passages online, so this website probably will not be very useful to me. I much prefer to have the passage in paper in front of me and highlight myself the material. I can see how this website would be very useful for people who read just fine on the computer. The second website allows you to sort all resources found online and cites all the material for you. This will be a wonderful website when it comes to doing research papers! I love finding materials that help make research papers easier!

Gadgets

I love countdowns! I am constantly counting down to something. Whether it is my birthday, a day off from school, or a college sport game, there are always countdowns in my planner! By putting a countdown on my blog I don't have to worry if I counted right! The computer just does the counting down for me!

I also added a gadget that tells me where people are from that look at my blog. Because I lived in a foreign country, I have become in love with maps! I love to see where countries are located on a map, and plan trips I would love to take. It is fun for me to have a map on my blog so I can see where people are from.

Umm...Peter, I need help!

I have a very limited background in technology! Computers and I are not always the best of friends. Most of the time I have to call my brother and have him help me with a problem I am having. More often than not, he laughs at me for the question I am asking.
I have many goals for this semester. The first goal is to be able to feel comfortable using the computer and many different computer programs. Second, I want to be able to understand the computer better so I do not always have to call my brother, but I can try and figure out the problem myself. Lastly, I wan to enjoy technology. At this point, most of the time I do not enjoy working on the computer. Hopefully by the end of the semester I will LOVE technology!