Jessica Jerrell’s Personal Thoughts

Week 1 Summary!

On Wednesday, I was able to learn how to set up a Discord account and go over the expectations for Applied digital studies this semester. I met a few other people in the class and got a feel of what we would be doing on a daily basis. On Friday, I was unable to attend class as the snow on the backroads of where I live was unplowed and I decided to put my own safety first. I remained focused on the class, however, I learned how to create this Domain on my own using the guides UMW offers. 

Looking into the key terms discussed in the class, I felt I had a solid understanding of digital fluency, but digital citizenship and digital praxis I was much more unaware of. Now I know the importance of digital citizenship and digital praxis. Overall, this first week has allowed me to get prepared for the class and start having a grasp on what my own personal goals for the class are.

Week 2 Summary!

This week was exciting as we explored the many metaverses that exist online. I specifically played SecondLife and made a character that looked like me and I explore the world and attempted to make friends in the process. Also, I was able to find many fun pages on GeoSites. I spent a very long time looking through the thousands of sites they had on there. My favorite thing I found were random stranger’s music suggestions. Using their recommendations I found multiple 80’s songs that I enjoyed.

The podcast on GeoCities I listened to made the entire journey the site took through the beginning in the early 90s to the end of the mid 2000s. Through Yahoo purchasing it to its ultimate downfall. My goal for the next week is to figure out how to do more HTML and create subdomains as I still have not gone into depth to explore how to do that.

Week 3 Summary!

This week in class we talked a lot about AI and the policies there should be for it in classroom settings, but also in many other settings we analyzed the rules for AI they have put in place, with a group. My group specifically focused on the Department for Homeland Security, which has many safety precautions put in place, so no private information is revealed. This led to the creation of our classes’ AI policy being made based on our input in the discussion post. I also got to delve into hyperstacks and find many unique computer programs that were fun to look at. The one I put in the discord was every state map in the United States in alphabetical order. I have a weird interest in maps, so this was an extremely fun find for me.

At the end of the week, the development of our subdomains on our sites went into full gear. I followed the video tutorial posted and was able to get it done before class Friday. I found it very easy to do and then I began looking into how to code it with HTML. I learned how to do a header and a paragraph and change the font size of my paragraphs. My plan before class Monday is to progress my subdomain and start looking into more HTML techniques that will elevate my website.

Week 4 Summary!

This week was a fun week for the development of my retro site. Monday in class I was able to learn how to add images to my site and put links in, which is an essential element to what I want my site to provide for an audience. Then Wednesday and Friday we did our peer teaching, this ended up being so much fun. I taught my peers how to add color to text, links, background of the site, and borders around different parts of the website. My favorite things that I learned from my peers were how to make a gif the background of my site, which I am obsessed with. And how to inspect other sites’ html code that has shown to be very helpful when I want to understand how a website coded their own site. 

I am the most excited about where my retro site is going. I have finally picked the theme of it and it shall be a Trisha Paytas’ fanpage. I want it to give early 2000’s vibes because she herself is coded in that era. My plan for the weekend is to dedicate a lot of time perfecting the Trisha theme and learn more HTML/CSS tricks to make my site beautiful.

Project Management

Architectural Solutions