Reflections

Posted December 10, 2018 by Sarah Callanan

As of last night, my final project is complete and turned in!  As I mentioned last week, the final project for my LIS-488 class (Technology for Information Professionals) is a personal website and portfolio, coded by hand using the skills that I developed over the course of this class.  There were some shaky moments during the process of doing this project, but I was able to either troubleshoot and solve everything, or compromise and change my original plan to work with what I had.  All in all, I think that my final product looks pretty similar to the original paper mock-up that I sketched out over Thanksgiving.  I’m really proud of this final project, although I should really stop looking at it, because I’ve noticed a few things that I would like to go back and change, but what’s done is done and I need to walk away and not dwell on it. 

This semester has been a wild ride for me.  If you’ve been following my past posts, you know that I was a bit nervous about taking this class.  This semester has been a lot of hard work for me.  Some of the topics we learned about include how to use coding languages such as HTML, CSS, and Javascript; we learned about text editors such as Notepad++; we learned how to use image manipulation softwares; we learned about ethics and accessibility; we learned about networks, security, and privacy; and we learned about databases and XML.   Some areas of technology are easy for me to pick up and learn; however, coding is a skill that I definitely had to dedicate a lot of time and effort to.  However, with a lot of determination and perseverance, I’ve gained a lot of new skills that I’ve been able to use not only in this class, but also in my personal and professional life.  Every time I encountered a problem with my code, or an issue with the technology I was using, I felt a bit of pride and a sense of accomplishment if I was able to solve the issue, and more often than not, I was able to do it on my own because of the skills I learned in this class.  If not, the class forums were always there for us, and our professor was more than willing to help us.  While other classes that I’ve taken have come more naturally to me, I’m really glad I took LIS-488, and I’m going to try and take more technology classes in the future to build upon the skills I learned in this class.