Week 2 Blog Assignment

Welcome back!

I am now a few weeks into my Emerging Communication Technologies course at Western Washington University. It's amazing how much I've learned such a short period of time. Since my first blog post, I now also know about online website builders, podcasts, the Audacity program, and music beds/sound effects.

Do you wanna build a website???

"Website builders are tools that allow the construction of websites without manual code editing" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website_builder). The fact that users can construct a website without manual coding makes the entire process much more inclusive and welcoming to people of all levels of ability and training when it comes to technology. When I was at Wenatchee Valley College I took a course on computer coding and it felt like I was learning a different language. I can't imagine creating an entire website from manual code editing. And I'm sure I'm not the only one. 

Two website builders that our class experimented with are Wix and Weebly. Both websites are very user-friendly. Their drag and drop tools and hundreds of pre-made templates make it easy to create a professional and well organized website. I would like to underline how excellent the drag and frog feature is. Want a picture on the page? Drag and drop it! Want to insert a list, audio recording, or Facebook link? Drag and drop it! As I have been working on our group website for class, I have been amazed by how much I can create with little to no prior knowledge about the program going into it. Many of their features are free and I've personally found that the features that cost money are not usually necessary to create a fantastic site.  

Here is a helpful video if you're interested in using Weebly to create your very own website!

My group chose to use Wix for creating our group project website. We decided on Wix because we found that the way tools were laid out made it easier for us to understand and work with. Also, Wix has themed templates which gave us a better idea of what the page would look like after it was completed. 

This video is a great example of how you can create a website for your company simply by starting from a template! 

Ultimately, what I learned this week in terms of website builders is that anyone and any company or organization can make a website. Having a well put together website gives a person or group an online presence and a professional edge on others they may be in competition with. The little time put in to dragging and dropping information and personalizing one of hundreds of templates through Wix, Weebly, or countless other website builders is completely worth the outcome and lasting benefits. 

Another assignment I have in class is creating two podcasts and an intro and outro to our class's podcast series. A podcast is "a digital audio or video file or recording, usually part of a themed series, that can bedownloaded from a website to a media player or computer (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/podcast). The topic of our podcasts is emerging communication technologies. We are making them through a program called Audacity.

Audacity is a program used for recording, editing, and compiling audio. It can be downloaded at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/ and is very easy to learn to use. 

After recording your voice, a fun way to make the audio more interesting and entertaining is by inserting music beds/sound effects. These can vary from the sound of applause or a car horn honking to a voice saying "hello!" to rain falling outside. For my partner's and my podcast series intro and outro, we inserted bits from the Lord of the Rings soundtrack to make or recording more exciting and epic. And apparently people liked it because it was chosen by my class as our podcast series' intro and outro! Music beds and/or sound effects are a great way to make a podcast unique stand out. They create a more pleasant experience not only for the listener, but for the creator as well. 

Here are some links to great music bed and sound wave sites to help you get started: http://www.pacdv.com/sounds/index.html
http://www.freemusicbeds.com/


Thanks for reading! Come back next week to see what more I have learned in COMM 350 - Emerging Communication Technologies.