I had never really used Google News before, just because I am not usually interested in reading the news (as bad as that sounds). It’s amazing how many different functions and applications Google has just on their website. I went on Google News and added all the same categories that were mentioned in the step-by-step instructions from the professor, but I was still confused why there was still other types of news on my feed, even though I had deleted them from my preferences. Again, I don’t really have Google News experience so maybe I am missing something. I messed around on the page for a little bit and then thought to click on just one category I had entered. This brought up only pages referring to “gender & technology”. Then, I clicked on the RSS button at the bottom and, at first, I copied the super long HTML code that the window brought up. Then, when I found that this didn’t work, I realized I needed to copy the web address from the top bar instead. After I did this and edited the RSS module, I saved it and looked at my page and it was all there. I also did a little research on “RSS” since I had never really known what it was. I found that the information updates itself, which I found pretty cool. It’s almost like a mini Google news on my blog that I don’t have to update frequently. I like this RSS thing!

This website is still kind of confusing, but I found the step by step instructions from Canvas to be very helpful. I’m hoping I completed everything I needed to. When I added the “pages”, I found that my sidebar didn’t end up looking like the little picture in Canvas, so I am wondering if I did something wrong and if there’s a way to fix it. I’m hoping to figure out how to customize my blog page a little more so it’s more “me”. I enjoy editing and customizing profiles and websites like that. Overall, this time around with WordPress was a little easier and I am getting the hand of it for the most part.

Wow. I thought I was pretty good with technology until now. I have never heard of this WordPress blogging site before and I am overwhelmed with it to say the least. I have never even used Canvas, so figuring out how that works has also been quite the experience for me. I hope I’ve set everything up correctly for this blog. I was confused how to add a new post, so I am just editing the first post that was automatically posted for me. I feel like this website and this course is already really scattered and random. I’ve felt very overwhelmed with this class so far and it’s only week 1, so I am hoping I will be able to figure out this website as well as Canvas pretty soon.

The page for setting up a signature for a gmail account was very helpful and I think I got it figured out. The only thing I dislike about this signature is the fact that it is now going to be on all of my emails. If I email another professor from a different class, why would he need or want to know my WordPress address for my WGSS class? It just doesn’t really make sense to me why we are making a “permanent” signature only for this class. The set up was easy, though, so I guess I can’t complain too much.

The text-to-speech function is cool and often handy, however I would prefer to just read on my own. I do use this function on my iPhone sometimes when I am feeling lazy.

UPDATE: I have tried to post this blog several times, but the site keeps crashing and then goes back to the “Edit Post” page. It tells me it autosaved my post from before but it didn’t save anything new that I had written. This is extremely frustrating…