Week 1

Today, the 29th of February 2008, is our first lecture and tutorial for UPC0004, Accessing Knowledge. The lecturer is Dr. Helen, she told us about her university experiences, how she has travelled and worked overseas and how she has overcome dyslexia. Dr. Helen said that if she could complete her PHD without being overcome by dyslexia that all of the students in the UPC could and should do just fine. It was inspiring to hear that Dr. Helen didn't let Dyslexia stop her from going to university and obtaining her PHD.

Today was basically an introduction to the unit, there was a week by week planner that showed what topic we would be learning about in each week of the UPC. For example today's topic was an Introduction to University Computing. The lecture was interesting and Dr. Helen had so much to say that we ended up running out of time.

The tutorial was next, with Rachel who is my tutor for UPC0002 as well. First we playing around on Black Board, which is where students can obtain information and unit resources for any of the units they are enrolled in. Next we all made sure we knew how to log into our student email accounts as they are a vital part of communication around the university. Finally we made our blogs on blogger.com, which was a fun way to end the tutorial because we could make it any way we wanted and each of the blogs reflected all of the student's different personalities. Each week we are to post an entry on our blog about our experiences at university and particularly in this unit. We also learnt how to do a screen dump, there is an example below.


We also did a reading called, PC Lube and Tune, which provides usable instructions, tutorials and education on technical subjects for all computer users. I didnt really like the style of the website and the way it was set out. It was quite bland and nothing special.