Final Reflection Blog Post

My Experience with CT101

First of all, I would like to admit that it’s been a  wonderful journey so far. The way Professor Ryan designed this course I had a unique experience. Throughout college life, we have to take a bunch of courses, but honestly, only a few courses help us to grow intellectually. There is no doubt that CT101 is one of those courses, where we get to learn and practice new skills almost every single week, which we can continue using in the future in terms of virtual communication. In this class, I learned how to improve myself in terms of using the internet more creatively. Here I learned how to create my own website from scratch using WordPress, publish blog posts more professionally by using hyperlinks, embedding images and videos, linking any image to the source, etc. I also learned how to create Memes and GIFs to tell my stories and give context to readers of my blog posts. I am also glad that through this course, I got to introduce some incredible websites such as Giphy, Pixabay, Photopea, WordPress, etc. I enjoy studying  CT101, and undoubtedly, this is one of my favorite classes that I’ve taken in college.

The future of my newbie website:

Yes, I would like to maintain and keep working on my new website. Since my website is based on traveling and I love to travel, I am planning to keep posting my travel photos and my experiences on my website. Because this way I can keep those happy moments alive and relive those experiences forever.

Reflection of the Assignments:

Now I’m going to reflect on the assignments I did so far and showcase some of my works here.

Assignment #1 – What Makes You Happy on the Internet?

In this assignment, we were asked to share media, images, videos, and links that I love to do/watch on the internet. I used hyperlinks, Memes,  GIFs, and my favorite  YouTube channel links to complete that assignment. As that was my first blog post, I was quite happy with the outcome.

Assignment #2 – Making our first GIF & GIF Post Narratives!

In this assignment, I shared my experience on the first day of the CT101 class, my thoughts on its creative contents, and compared this course with my other courses. I used a lot of GIFs from Giphy, one of my favorite websites, to complete this assignment. However, I didn’t use any hyperlinks on the assignment, so Professor Ryan asked me in the comment section to use some hyperlinks in my blog posts and I updated my assignments with a few hyperlinks.

Assingment#3 – Are memes art?

I created this Meme for this assignment. To be honest, I felt weird as well as surprised knowing the fact that Memes can be considered as an “Art”..! But from this video, I just learned that there was actually an exhibition of memes held in LA in 2017!! Besides that,  I was introduced to the websites Imgur and Make A Meme which I used to create Memes for my blog posts.

Assignment #4-: Digital Storytelling Project Flexibility

Initially, I thought this assignment was one of the most challenging ones to complete, however, it wasn’t that hard, and really enjoyed doing it. From DS106 Assignment Bank I completed a total of 3 projects, code assignments, Name this Flower, and Make a GIF and add subtitles!  I described step-by-step processes and the end results of the projects in that assignment. 

Assignment #5–  Digital Art & Creative Immediacy

In this assignment, we had to define the meanings of Creativity + Intuition + Immediacy. I had to do some brainstorming work for this one because I wasn’t sure about how. The main goal of this assignment was to design a webpage using the mmm. page which was quite interesting.  I have never worked with creating Memes ,GIPHY , or designing web pages. Almost everything is new to me. After completing this blog post I feel like my creative content creation skill has certainly improved!

Assingment#6–  Mid-Semester Recap 

This was basically another reflection post about how am I doing in CT101, what skills I developed so far, how many points have I earned, and what grade I believe I am maintaining… This assignment makes me realize that I actually learned so many new things so far and felt good about my journey. 

 

Assingment#7– It’s Time to Pick A Domain Name!!

With this assignment, we officially stepped into the 2nd phase of this which creating our own website. We had to decide what type of website we want to build and created a list of a few  Domain Names accordingly. Among them, we had to pick out a  Domain name (Love2Explore.net) for our website and checked the availability of that name from Godaddy.com.

Assingment#8: Domain Name Registration, Hosting Set-Up & WordPress Installation!

In this blog post, I explained the process of creating a Domain Name, registration, Hosting, and Setting up the WordPress Installation. At first, it seems to be a lot, but thanks to Professor Ryan, by following this instruction it took literally 5-10 minutes to set everything up!

I can completely relate to this reel. Although I did everything pretty fast and smoothly, however, the email address I used was incorrect, so I had to face some trouble fixing this issue because I couldn’t verify my email and my domain got suspended.

Assingment# 09-  Customizing My WordPress Website

I decided to build my website based on my travel stories. After I got access to my website, I immediately started my customizing my website. I chose a theme for my website, added a tagline, and created the Home page, About page, and Contact the same day. I was exploring my options with different editing tools and colors and watching video tutorials really helped me start editing my website.

Assignment #10: Exploring the WordPress Potential and My First Blog Post.

In this blog, I invited my fellow classmates to visit my website and read my first blog post “MY FAVORITE DESTINATIONS SO FAR”- which I just published here on my website: Love2Explore.net. I also requested everyone to leave feedback in the comment section below my blog post. I am glad to say that some of my classmates actually like my website and shared about my website in their posts.

Assignment #11– Panoramic Storytelling & Multiplicity

This was one of my favorite assignments because in this blog post I shared my experience with Panoramic photography as well as the funny stories behind them. I really enjoyed a lot doing this assignment.

Assignment-12: Sharing Website’s URL

Here I shared my Website’s URL once again with everyone. For this assignment, I explored and discovered some of my classmate’s websites, which were amazing. It was a great pleasure by looking at each other’s work and making helpful comments about their websites and giving them suggestions on how they can do better.

Tour of Website:

My website: Love2Explore.net

By clicking on each image, you guys also visit those pages.

home page

This is the first glimpse of my website. I have a total of 5 pages on my website. I also added the tagline “Here, There, and Everywhere” on my website. If you click on the “READ MORE” button, it will redirect you to the “Recent Visited” blog posts tab.

This is a brief summary of my first blog. By clicking the “Read More” button, you can view the full post.

about

This is my About page where I write a little bit about myself so that the viewers can know about me and my motives for creating this website.

Adventure

This page is basically about my favorite types of adventures. I am planning to share blog posts based on each category.

upcoming events

I created this page mainly for commercial purposes. Although I am not gonna do that right now, in the future, I might organize these types of trips.

contact

 

This is the contact page. I didn’t put my actual address and contact no for privacy purposes.

footer

The footer section of my website is pretty simple and straightforward.  I just have my address, email, contact no, and copyright claim on my website.

the blog page

This is the Blog Page of my website. It has a comment section where the readers and share their thoughts and leave feedback for me.

Overall assessment of the building and having a website.

Other than the email issue, I did not really face any other issues building this website. I followed the professor’s instructions as well as this YouTube tutorial for creating the website, and my overall experience is pretty good. I actually do not have anything to complain about. I was excited about the website and had an amazing experience creating it.

grade I am expecting from this course

Well, from the 1st assignment to till now, I literally put my 100% effort into creating each blog post. Even though I have attended every single class, still I always rewatch video tutorials and take notes of important stuff like this word document, before starting a blog post so that I don’t miss anything that the professor asks for. I always use titles for my posts, GIFs, Memes, hyperlinks, embed images and videos, and link those images to the source basically everything the professor mentions during lectures.

Therefore, I am hoping for an A in this course. However, it’s true that I could not post the last few assignments on time for the last couple of weeks because I have some health complications and was recommended to take bed rest for a couple of days. Moreover, I have taken 6 courses (21 credits) this semester because I am planning to graduate next semester. Thus,  keeping up with the all course works was quite challenging for me.

Lastly, I would like to thank Professor Ryan for making this course so much fun, and for being so kind and generous. Also, my fellow classmates are amazing too. In the last assignment, I love the way they appreciate each other’s work and share their thoughts. Overall, it is an incredible experience indeed!

Surfing through the web & Some Social Media Fun

I can’t believe this is the “Last Assignment” before the final blog post, finally, this semester is going to be over, however, it’s been a wonderful journey.

For the 1st part of this assignment, I already shared my social media link during the class period when the professor asked for it. I am going to share it here one more time in case anyone wants to check out my website.

My website’s domain name: Love2Explore.net

URL: http://love2explore.net/

In the last couple of days, I have noticed some of my classmates actually liked my website and shared it on their posts. I would like to thank them all for visiting my website and appreciating my work.

I actually visited almost everyone’s website, whenever they shared their website link. Most of them have done a really great job and I got inspired by them, however, a few of them were very basic. The website that I liked the most are Elizabeth, Tiandra, Zia, Paola, Manpreet, Safiya, Sudipta, and Duojay. Most of them didn’t have a comment section on their blog posts, so I couldn’t leave a comment on their posts. However, on my website, I put a comment section in my blog post, so that people can leave their feedback.

Since it’s quite not possible to describe everyone’s website here, so I put the links to their websites so that you guys can also have a look at their works. And I got this idea from Tiandra’s post.

Tiandra’s website URL – http://brownecorner.com/

First, I would like to talk about Tiandra’s website. She used her last name in the domain name and built her website accordingly. Her domain name, logo, color theme of the website, etc. everything fits perfectly with each other. Her idea of building the website is really innovative.

Elizabeth Okiji website URL- https://cookwitheliz.org/

Secondly, I want to talk about Elizabeth’s website. This website stood out to me for many reasons, but especially because it was the only website that is based on food blogging. She has also posted the full description of the recipe along with the ingredients list and proper description. I believe by following her post anyone can cook this amazing dish. Her blog post is no less than a professional one.

Zia’s Website URL- https://zsports2022.com/

I also like Zia’s website. His website is based on sports where he shared some amazing sports-related content. The home page has some amazing photographs as well as some cool GIFs. I am looking forward to reading some of his blog posts in the future.

Overall, everyone has very creative websites with cool content. I enjoyed visiting all of them.

Panoramas and the behind stories…!!

Panoramic photography is a technique of photography to capture images with horizontally elongated fields of view. It is sometimes known as wide format photography. I was introduced to Panoramic photography back in 2018, however, the first time I used it was during the 2020 covid lockdown. I actually didn’t get a chance to go outside to take photos for this assignment, however. I already have a bunch of panoramic images which I took from my previous outings. 

Well, my experience with Panoramic photography is quite similar to this Meme. I actually have a picture of myself like the first image where one of my eyes is close and the other one is open.  Have a look.

This was the very first time when my best friend and I were trying Panos and it was taken on the Rockaway Beach Boardwalk. After a couple of funny attempts, we got this one which kinda looks better, however, the railing still looked bent. Here is the final outcome.

The next one is the funniest photo of my cousin, her facial expression was hilarious. Unfortunately, I had to hide her face otherwise she would kill me for uploading this on a public platform. I had another picture of her where one of her hands was missing.

The next 2 pictures I took back in 2020 on a very gloomy day.  I was chilling with friends in Downtown, Brooklyn, and wanted to take a picture with a full view of the stunning Manhattan bridge. I really love the way this picture turned out.

It was so foggy outside that the top part of the NYC skyscrapers wasn’t even visible. In this picture, I tried to combine Downtown NYC, the island, and The Statue of Liberty in one frame.

This was one of the most beautiful sunsets I enjoyed. I wish I could go and relived those peaceful moments again.

Last but not the least, this is one of my favorite pictures of The Grand Canyon trip from last year. It was very crowded over there, still, somehow I managed to take this beautiful shot of the Eagle Point of The Grand Canyon West.

In case, anybody wants to learn how to click panoramic shots, you guys can check out this YouTube Tutorial. This guy shared some amazing tips and tricks for taking beautiful Panoramic images.

Publishing My First Blog Post!!

Today I’m very excited to announce that I have posted my first blog on my brand new website.

I would like to invite you all to check out my website love2explore.net and to read my blog post you can click here:

http://love2explore.net/travel-blogs/my-favorite-destinations-so-far/

 

 

or you can also click on the image below:

On my website’s home page, I have attached a brief description of my blog. By clicking on the Read More button, you guys can view the full blog.

I followed this YouTube tutorial to create the blog page on my website. This video is really helpful and easy to follow.

Basically, my first blog post is about my favorite destinations in the USA that I have visited so far. I love to explore new places whenever I get a chance. However, I don’t like visiting the same place multiple times. Therefore, my first impression of visiting a new place is really important for me. I hope you guys will enjoy my post.

If you read my post, I would like to know your opinion about it. Did enjoy reading my blog post? Do you like traveling as well? Or you can also share your favorite destinations with me and suggest me some other places. I would love to explore those too.

 

 

Building My Dream Website

In this assignment, I am going to share my experience of getting everything set up with my new websites! Last week I got a new domain name, a web hosting account, and a website framework ready to be built and customized.

When I was trying to log in back to my website, unfortunately, the email address I provided had an error, therefore, I was unable to verify my account, and my domain name got suspended!! Then I have to contact Reclaim Hosting to update my email which took almost 3 days.

First, I went through some themes to see what I would like; I clicked the appearance tab to see the options. I chose the Astra theme and began customizing my website by altering the theme initially. I used Elementor which is a plugin that helps to create beautiful pages using a visual editor. I find this YouTube tutorial really helpful and followed the instruction to customize my website.

This is my website’s homepage and it turned out exactly how I wanted. You guys can click here or click on the image to visit my website. I already mentioned in my last blog post that my website is based on travel and tourism. Therefore, instead of creating a personal website, I wanted to make it more like a business website. However, I have no intention of using it professionally at this moment.

There is a total of 5 pages on my website. After finishing the homepage, I set up the other pages as well.

After setting up all the pages, I created a few blog posts as well. I would like to welcome you all to visit my website and read the blog posts. I am planning to post more frequently in the future.

Stepping into WordPress Blogging World….

First of all, I would like to thank prof Ryan Seslow for making the process of Domain Name Registration, Hosting Set-Up & WordPress Installation so smooth and straightforward! It literally took 5 minutes for me to complete the entire process and including the account set-up in WordPress.

To begin the process, first I click on the link of  Reclaim Hosting that prof provided to register the Domain Name. Since I wanted to build my website based on my traveling experiences, the domain name love2explore.net fits perfectly for my website, and fortunately, it was available. In fact, most of the names from my list were available.

After that, I authenticate my account by entering the required information and using the offered promo code and that’s all. Before installing  WordPress, I changed the username, email and password, saved them for me as the prof mentioned, and then I installed WordPress.

In order to make changes and customize my site, I followed this YouTube tutorial. This video shows how to work with the new WordPress 2022 Theme Editor.

Overall, I would like to say, it was a pleasant experience. I am excited about this new blogging journey with WordPress and can’t wait to start customizing my site and post my first blog. I would like to invite everyone to visit love2explore.net  and hope you all will like it!!

 

Finding My Domain Name

As a computer science student, I have learned how to create web pages through HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. So, when the professor said, we are going to create our own website on the internet, I find it really exciting. To create a website, the first step is finding a suitable domain name for the website.

To learn more about Domain, I did some research and got to learn some interesting facts about it. A domain name identifies a network domain, it represents an Internet Protocol (IP) resource, a server computer hosting a website, or the website itself or any other service communicated via the Internet. 

I find this YouTube video very useful, it easily explains everything that someone needs to know about Domain names. The Domain Name is the unique identity of the website. A Domain Name can be anything you want as long as it is available. However, it’s important to have a domain name related to the website so that people can easily find your website on the internet.

As the professor mentioned that we can set up the website based on anything that we like. Well, this makes me confused for a while. At first, I thought I will build my website based on photography, music, and arts…. basically, whatever I love to do, then I realized it might not be a good idea to mix up everything in a single website. However, now I am considering building a website to showcase my travel experiences.

I love to travel and explore around the world and I love to watch travel videos and reels. Whenever I see any beautiful travel pictures, I want to explore those places, but planning a whole trip properly is a tedious job. I know there are some travel bloggers and influencers who do post about their experiences, however, the hotels and restaurants they recommend are mostly sponsored but not necessarily the best option to choose.  Besides that, as a student, it’s not always possible to go anywhere I want because of my tight budget.

Therefore, I am planning to set up my website based on my travel experiences where I will post not only travel photos and locations, but rather help people to plan the entire trip, including where they can stay, nearby restaurants, and nearby places they can stop by.

So here are a few domain names that I have selected for my website and I will check the availability of those names from Godaddy.com 

• Plan4Trips.com
• goPlaces.com
• explore4fun.net
• advanture2go.com
• proExplorer.net
• travelgram.com
• love2explore.net
• worldExplorer.com

I choose these names so that people can easily understand what my website going to offer them based on the Domain Name.

Now let’s talk about my personal favorite websites that I love to explore YouTube and Instagram. I have already mentioned them in one of my previous blog posts. I love YouTube because it has anything and everything that anyone is looking for. Honestly, it makes our life so easy that we don’t really need any tutors anymore to learn our passion. For example, if we want to visit a place, there are tons of videos available on YouTube and we already know what to expect from those places even before visiting there and we can plan accordingly.

Similarly, I love Instagram because I love photography and I get my inspiration from Instagram.  I also love the reels on Instagram and it is my favorite activity to do whenever I get bored.

 Mid-Semester Recap Post

Assignment #1: Things that make me happy on the Internet!!

Assignment #2: The potential of Memes and GIFs storytelling in real life.

Assignment #3: Are memes art?

Assignment #4: Digital Storytelling Project Flexibility

Assignment #5: Digital Art & Creative Immediacy

How am I doing in CT101?

To be honest, I am really enjoying the course, learning so much new stuff which helped me to improve my communication skills. However, I am not doing great in terms of posting the blog posts each week as well as posting comments on others’ posts.

How many points have I earned so far and what grade do I believe I am maintaining? 

So, this is going to be my 6^th blog post for this course, although I should have worked on my 9^th post by now. I have been sick for the last few weeks; therefore, I was unable to post on a regular basis. Although I am falling behind in terms of posting, I believe, so far whatever I posted I took them very seriously, I learned so many things throughout the process. Whenever I post something, I tried to follow the professor’s instructions as much as possible. So, I believe I was able to maintain the quality of blog posts and did pretty well. Since I have to score at least 85 to get an A, I will try harder to achieve that.

What have I learned and retained the most?

So far, I have learned and retained a great deal of information, but the most would have to be our previous two assignments regarding  ds106 assignment bank and mmm. Page. The ds106 assignment offers so many options for developing our skills in audio, video, photoshop, visual, writing, etc. Through mmm.page I learned how to incorporate different types of media into one and utilize my previously learned skills in terms of building a page by inserting GIFs, hyperlinks, videos, and much more.

What new skills have I developed, cultivated, and displayed regularly in my weekly posts?

Till now, there are so many new skills have I developed, cultivated, and displayed regularly in my weekly posts. I actually learned how to edit pictures using photoshop websites from this course for the first time. I am not active on my social media accounts, and I mostly take pictures for my personal memories, so I don’t bother much about editing. Thanks to CT101, my photoshop skill got better also I learned to make Memes and GIFs. I used to think making Memes and GIFs is a very complicated process, however, when the professor introduced us to websites like GIPHY and Imgur, I find them very interesting and easy to work with.

How do I assess my performance through self-reflection in this class?

I try to assess my performance through self-reflection by checking comments and feedback on my posts on a regular basis so that if my professor or fellow classmates have suggested to improve in terms of formatting or adding a further explanation on something with more detail. Another way I assess my performance is by viewing the recording and peers’ posts on the same topic before starting the assignment and taking notes of important things that the professor asked for so that I don’t miss something important. I work on improving my posts so that they get better each week. I have witnessed myself gradually becoming more comfortable with sharing thoughts in my posts each week, which is a sign of my improvement.

What do I know now that I did not know before taking this class?

Frankly speaking, most of the things that I  learned in CT 101 such as hyperlinking, embedding videos, creating GIFs and Memes, and utilizing different websites like Giphy, Imgur, DS106, and mmm.page , etc., and most significantly WordPress, I had no idea about all these at all. Now, that I have learned how to use them, I feel more confident in terms of expressing myself on the internet. They really helped me to grow my overall communication skills and I am thankful for that.

Do I see my weekly blogging work expanding creatively? 

Yes, I do see my weekly blogging work expanding creatively. Since each week we are learning something new and have new materials (different websites/ online tools) to work with, therefore, my blog posts are also expanding because I work with something different every week.  They do not look repetitive at all and I constantly focus on doing better on the upcoming posts by looking at my peers’ posts. Since there’s no rush of due dates, I give myself enough time to have a better understanding of the posts, making notes of important stuff so that I can maintain the quality of content.

Are there any assignments that you are missing?  Are you commenting regularly on your classmates’ posts? Are you responding back to comments given to you by the professor & your classmates? Are you participating during class time? 

Yes, I do participate in class and answer the questions the professor asked during class time. I also take notes while the professor explains the assignment and works on drafts. I also try to comment regularly on peers’ posts and try to respond back to the comments of my posts as much as possible. Unfortunately, I am missing Assignments# 7 &8, as I mentioned earlier, I had been sick for a couple of weeks. I thought if I push myself, I would be unable to maintain the quality of the assignments. Also, I am taking 21 credits this semester and every week I have to study for multiple assignments and quizzes. However, I have planned to work on CT101 during the spring break. I am determined that I do not want to make any more delays in terms of posting each week.

 

Digital Art Making Immediacy

Creativity is the ability to create ideas or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves rather than imitating. In simple words, creativity is simply transforming someone’s ideas, imagination, and dreams into reality.

The immediacy of an event or situation is the quality that makes something seem important or interesting because it is or seems to be happening at the present time.

Intuition is having the ability to understand or know something without any direct evidence or reasoning process, although some people simply consider it as a gut feeling.

Every single person has his own perspective of being alive, which mostly depends on the circumstances of life. For me, being alive means not just having a life, breathing or existing instead of living life full of spirit, enjoying small moments of happiness with family and friends. As long as you’re alive you have to have a purpose in your life. Being alive also means being conscious of what do you expect from life and what are the goals that you want to accomplish. Without that consciousness, life becomes meaningless for people. I believe reading books, being thoughtful, and staying close to nature help people enhance their consciousness, therefore they can easily figure out the purpose of life and live life with contentment.

I am passionate about spreading kindness and positivity among people. Whenever I look at my surroundings, I see no one’s life is perfect, they’re fighting their own battle for life. But what hurt me the most, when I see people from third world countries are suffering because of poverty, hunger, and lack of healthcare opportunities. For example, here we are wasting tons of food every single day, whereas, on the other side of the world, people are starving to death. I want people to take these issues seriously and come forward to solve this problem. I really want to help people according to my ability but what holds me back is that I cannot fully trust those fund-raising organizations. I know people do lots of charities, but it barely reaches those needy people. If we become kinder and could trust people, this world would have been a better place. I might be wrong, maybe I should not judge people based on a few fraud cases.

My experience of working with mmm.page is amazing! It was a pretty quick and smooth experience. I could easily add text and style them. Also, I easily hyperlink my today’s assignment there. Adding stickers and images was super quick and easy to edit.  This is the web page I created on mmm.page based on today’s topic. Click here or click on the image below to check my web page.

Digital Storytelling Project Flexibility

For this assignment, I had to do some research on the DS106 Assignment Repository, & choose 2 projects from the list that I have attached above.

Project- 1:

Since I am a senior, doing a major in Computer Science, I already have some skills to do the Code Assignment and I believe I can figure it out on my own quite easily compared to the other categories.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have many options to choose from compared to other categories in DS106 Assignment Repository.

There were only 2 code assignments and obviously, I choose the easiest one where I only asked for 10 -20 lines of code to solve a simple problem. Luckily, it didn’t ask for any specific programming languages which means I can use any of the programming languages. Therefore, I choose C++ which is a middle-level programming language to complete this assignment.

Again, I could use any online compiler to write and test my code, so I used my favorite one Repl.it.

Prompt: Here, I am planning to solve a simple mathematical program, where the user is asked to enter two integers (divisor and dividend) and the quotient, and the remainder of their division is computed.

Step -1: 

At first, I open my online compiler and select C++ as my preferred programming language. Then I wrote the code and save it. This is what I wrote:

Step -2:

After compiling the code, I run it to test if it is working perfectly. When I click on the Run button the code, the program asks the user to enter dividend and divisor. Here, users can enter literally any integers according to their choice. However, I have selected 10 as dividend and 5 as divisor.  Therefore, I got 2 as the quotient and 0 as the remainder, which means my code is working perfectly without any error.

Step -3:

Although the code worked absolutely perfectly in the first place, still I did another test to make sure everything is working fine. This time, I have selected 100 as dividend and 15 as divisor.  Therefore, I got 6 as the quotient and 10 as the remainder, which is absolutely correct!!

Since this project was very easy and I did it pretty quickly, I decided to do another project from DS106 Assignment Repository, and this time I choose my second project from visual assignments. 

project- 2:

In this project, I was asked to search up on the internet the name of this flower from the picture and name it.

First of all, I open the Google Chrome browser and search for yellow marron flower, and thankfully within a second, I found the exact same flower.

Then, I clicked on the second image and it took me to a website named bobvila.com, where I found the name of the flower by scrolling down a little bit. The name of the flower is Coreopsis.  However, I also find out that this flower is also known as Golden Tickseed. You guys can buy the plant from Burpee.com for 13.99.

project- 3:

For this project, I choose from animated GIF assignment because I want to develop my skill in making GIFs as they are really important for this course.

In this assignment, I choose this GIF and I am looking forward to having something funny subtitle for it.

I found this video tutorial on YouTube, where I can learn easily how to add subtitles to GIFs.

 

Are memes art?

When I heard this question, I was so surprised because I never really think that way. In fact, I took it in a sarcastic way. But from this video, I just learned that there was actually an exhibition of memes held in LA in 2017!! The organizer of the exhibition said in an interview that they did this because he wants to bring more legitimacy to memes as an art form.

Whenever I see memes, I ignore most of them because I do not find them funny or don’t really understand their meanings. Sometimes they make me laugh, and if I feel related to the memes, I might share them with my friends. That’s all about it. I never really pay attention to the fact that “Can Meme be art?”

However, while doing research for this assignment, I just realized that it’s a form of art indeed!  Although Google did not classify it as art yet. As per today’s internet culture, it’s a form of art, because memes contain stories through visual representation, just like an art piece. Another direct connection would be arts are often used as subjects for memes.

I consider memes are a good form of communication.  In this fast-moving world, nobody has time for reading a joke or post, but memes are really great in this case. They are really fun and eye-catchy.  I don’t think all memes are simply just a form of self-expression. Creating a good meme requires a great sense of humor as well as creativity. Otherwise, people don’t find those memes funny.

Besides that, memes are widely used as forms of storytelling and those are my personal favorite types of memes. Here one of the storytelling memes that I find funny:

The potential of Memes and GIFs storytelling in real life.

My experience on the first day of the CT101:

When I enrolled in this course, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this course. I saw some good reviews about  Professor Ryan, so I thought it wouldn’t be a bad experience. But after meeting our professor and learning about the course format, I was so happy. I think it’s one of my best decisions that I took this course where I can improve myself not only academically, but also by expressing my thought through blogs to others.

My thoughts on the course and its creative content:

Yes, I was really happy to hear about the course and its creative content. The course materials are pretty straight forward and I know what contents we are going to learn throughout the semester. I felt very glad to know that through this course I will get a chance to study something that I am really interested in.

CT101 compare to some of my other classes:

To be honest, this course is very unique compared to the other classes that I have taken so far. There is no pressure of deadlines, the professor is so friendly and kind. Most of the time students cheat instead of learning study materials because of the due dates. Also, here, we can genuinely express our feelings through the blog posts as well as get to know what other students are thinking.

The potentials of this class:

The potentials of this class are to gain knowledge on creating blog posts where we share our thoughts with others in a very interesting way through photos, videos, Memes and GIFs using digital tools. If we don’t use these digital tools in our posts, then it will be boring, and people can’t connect to us.

Learning new skills that use Internet tools:

I feel great about learning new skills that use Internet tools because this is the present and the future of our generation. This is also a form of entertainment nowadays. In social media, we can very easily feel connected to something when it is in a form of memes or GIFs even sometimes it just made our day.

 

Things that make me happy on the Internet!!

I know it’s a surprising fact for most of the people here that I did not have access to the internet until 10th grade. Since I grew up in Bangladesh, the only source of entertainment was playing with the children from our neighborhood in the afternoon and watching television. However, when finally I got access to the internet, the first game I played on the internet was Hill Climb Racing. But my favorite game was Bomber Friends, I finished all the 1000 levels of that game with my younger brother.

Nowadays I spent a lot of time on the Internet exploring social media. My favorite site on social media is YouTube. I love to watch documentaries on science and history, off-grid lifestyle, cooking channels, DIY videos on YouTube. There are some content creators on YouTube whom I follow on a regular basis. I also learned cooking and painting from YouTube. Besides that, I am quite active on Instagram. I often use  Facebook and Messenger to stay connected to my friend and family who lives in Bangladesh.

I also enjoy movies from online movie streaming sites like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Videos, Disney+, etc. I enjoy Korean drama and thriller movies. Although people are so addicted to Tiktok, I don’t really like that at all. In fact, I never installed that app on my phone. I know there is some good stuff, but most of it is a waste of time for me.

Because of the Covid’19 pandemic, I become more addicted to the Internet.  But gradually I am trying to limit my screen time so that I can concentrate on my study.