Before I delve into some Edgar Allan Poe this evening in preparation for my Literature class tomorrow I wanted to take a moment to thank my blog, or my brain or both.
I had a class presentation on Tuesday (the 22nd) and I have been agonizing over it for the last several weeks. Then, in a stroke of luck (uhm...sarcasm) one of my group members dropped the class and it was down to me and another girl and well, panic ensued. I volunteered to take on the extra responsibility, including finding a visual for our presentation which, it turned out, was nearly impossible to do. At any rate, back to agony. On Sunday night I finally gave up on searching video stores for movies that would work with our short stories and in a final act of desperation, broke down and searched YouTube. What luck! It turns out there are weirdos out there who enjoy acting out short stories and posting them on YouTube for their own sick enjoyment, and for my academic sanity. I was relieved, book marked the page and went to bed for the night.
Monday I took my laptop with me to school to see if there was internet on campus that I could hook my laptop to, whether by line or wirelessly. Sure enough, there's free wireless internet on campus now, which is awesome, glad that they finally got around to doing it now that it's my LAST SEMESTER. So I got online, made sure the videos worked and they did. But, then I realized that I would look pretty stupid just pulling up YouTube and searching for the videos so I started thinking of ways to present the videos to the class. This proved an all day thought-assignment.
I got home Monday night, which I would like to add that Monday absolutely SUCKED. My new bike broke, my bike locker wouldn't open, I had to have Jason pick me up, I think I failed my philosophy test and then there was this whole "group project" stress that was not helping my state of mind. Back to Monday night: I got home and immediately started to think of ways to get the YouTube videos into class. I knew there was a laptop in the class that was hooked up to this projector, but I didn't know if the laptop had access to the internet. I also did not know if my laptop would hook up to the projector. Either way I was taking a risk. I was really stressing. I didn't even know how I would present the videos--pretty lame to just search, or bookmark, so I was beginning to get frustrated. Then, I wanted to blog. I always do my best thinking when I'm blogging.
I came to my blog site (here at eBlogger) and as soon as the blog entry box came up it hit me: you can post videos on here, pictures, and make it look however you want! It was like a light went on, angels started singing, birds started chirping--basically every kind of revelation symbolism you can think of occurred in that one moment. I was inspired! I created a whole new blog and titled it special just for our presentation, posted the videos, then I got crazy. I posted my entire discussion on the blog, along with pictures and I put in hyper links to all the sites I used to do research on all the keywords. It was awesome. Seriously, I don't like to toot my own horn, but I was so proud and happy. I decided that if we couldn't show the videos, or the site in-class I could still just give the URL for the students to visit on their own time; they probably wouldn't but at least it's out there and the teacher probably would.
All in all the presentation went on so much better than I had anticipated. I was pretty confident about my online presentation (as long as I could show it) and I knew what I was going to say. The technology worked so great, and the blog looked fantastic on the screen. The videos didn't work: I don't think the campus laptop had the plug-ins or something to play the videos but because I had pictures and text up I think it counted for our visual presentation.
I stayed after class to ask my instructor how we did and we received 75 points out of 75. FULL CREDIT! I'm totally stoked. I think I'm solid in for an A now in that class.
Well, I should really call it a night. Despite this week--since the end of the semester is really starting to get to me--I am very pleased with how our presentation went. I may have failed my Philosophy test, but I think I still have a good shot at either a high B or even an A if I do really well on the final. I cannot believe there are only 3 weeks left in my last semester at ARC...
it seems surreal. I wouldn't say "too good to be true." Perhaps "too true to be good?"
I'm having breakfast with Rose tomorrow between classes and I have been looking forward to that all week. (Hi Rose! I know you're reading!) There are exciting things on the horizon for the both of us and I cannot wait to share those with her tomorrow, and to see Alina. It will definitely be good times. Thanks again for reading. It's a pleasure writing for you, though I know it's not always a pleasure to read.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment