This summer I’ve had the experience of continuing my work for the Academic Technology team as a Tech Bar Consultant. It wasn’t the original plan for the summer, but I had so much fun and was able to learn a lot about different technologies!

Favorite Part

Hands down my favorite part was being able to work with Annicka, Caleb, and Maverick (the other students) on many different projects. I got to know them a lot better and am excited to be able to keep working with them as Tech Bar Consultants through next year.

Least Favorite Part

My least favorite part was easily not being able to work with everyone in person and see them. I think one of the biggest lessons for me over the past six months has been that I don’t think I ever want a remote job in the future and really need to be able to get out of my house. However, having my commute be 20 feet was pretty nice.

Favorite Projects

I’ve been able to help with a variety of fun projects including the Academic Technology website, video tutorials, and the start of a virtual tour of campus.

Academic Technology Website

The main project I worked on this summer was creating the Academic Technology (AT) website. Web Design is easily one of my favorite things to do, so being given a blank slate and told to go was really fun. It was also a great way to be able to have others understand what part of ITS I work for (I promise I will break your computer more if you ask me to fix it, but I’m your girl for a website or video editing). With everything being more technology integrated this semester, I loved being able to have a central place for all of those important pieces of information.

Navigating Digital Learning Video

One project I was not expecting at all was a video that I collaborated with the three other students on about how to Navigate Digital Learning and the uncertain semester we are going into. We used a program called Engage in the Oculus Quest Virtual Reality Headsets. I don’t typically like video editing, but this was a fun project to piece together the different views and audio pieces. I also had a bit too much fun with the ending credits (around 8:25 in). Another great part of the video was just getting to spend more time (virtually) because with the four of us together there’s always bound to be a lot of laughs and a fun time to be had.

Virtual Tour of Campus

One project that I have always wanted to work on is a virtual tour of campus! I’m so thankful that I live so close to campus and always had the luxury of visiting whether during the college decision process or while I am a student. I know not a lot of students have this luxury, so I wanted everyone to be able to have the beauty of campus in their pocket.

This summer I got to start the process of this project and have had a blast taking the images and learning more about the history of campus and how it has expanded to its current state.

I’m very thankful for the experience to continue my work with Academic Technology over the summer and can’t wait for this year and to be back on campus for a least a little bit!

View the short video below to learn how to get started with Elementor! The video assumes you already have the plugin Elementor installed and activated before starting.

There are over 30 widgets in the free version of Elementor including text editors, columns, buttons, music, code, icons, and maps. The pro version unlocks access to many more widgets. I’ve personally never used the pro version and have found the free version to be able to do more than enough. Below are some of my favorite widgets/features of Elementor and a variety of example websites from Tech Bar students at SNC all using Elementor as their base.

Best Themes to use with Elementor

1. Ocean WP (also install the plugin Ocean Extra)
2. Neve
3. Astra

Helpful Plugins

1. Essential Addons for Elementor
2. Premium Addons for Elementor
3. Contact Form 7
4. Duplicate Page (creates a duplicate page or post in one click – great for creating a template page for a more uniform look throughout your site)

Five of my Favorite Features

1. Templates

Templates are a great place to start if you aren’t really sure an exact look you want or if you are feeling a bit overwhelmed with starting from scratch. Refer to the video if you need help finding how to insert those into the page. You can also start your pages from scratch and create your own template page and make a more uniform site that way. My portfolio site was made by creating a template page to base the rest off of.

2. Shape Dividers

A very simple tool that can add a bit of depth to your page is a shape divider. They can be applied to sections and are found in the style tab (seen below). This allows the section borders on top and bottom to be something different than just a straight line. There are 18 different types to choose from with a variety of customization options for each.

3. Lightbox Feature on Images and Galleries

The Lightbox feature allows you to see a larger image when you click a smaller image on the page with a caption underneath. To find this feature, in the Content tab of the Elementor Editor select Media File under the Link option and then the Lightbox option will appear and you can select Yes.

4. SoundCloud Widget

One of the newest features I found out about in Elementor is the SoundCloud widget. It allows you to search a song on SoundCloud and has a variety of display options of what to show/hide. In the song below, because it is a GO+ feature, only the first minute or so plays before cutting out. However, SoundCloud has numerous options to play royalty-free. There is an option in Elementor to have it auto-play so you could have it play when your site loads. I haven’t personally used this feature on a website yet, but it seems like a great tool.

5. Image Carousels

Elementor offers many different options for animations on your website and one of my favorites is the Image Carousel. This allows you to showcase a variety of photos in one location without overwhelming the page with images. The one drawback to these carousels is in order to look the best, all the images should be cropped to the same size before inserting instead of that automatically happening. Also, it looks best if all images are horizontal or vertical as well. The widget allows you to specify how many images you want showing at a time (it is one in this example) and you can link the photos to a different website as well along with picking how large you would like them to appear.

There are a variety of other animation options in Elementor including the Counter and Progress Bar widget. Also, every widget and section has a way to animate how it loads called its “Entrance Animation” which can be found under the Advanced tab and then under Motion Effects.

Website Examples

Below are examples of sites made with Elementor including blogs, student organizations, initiatives on campus, and student portfolios. Click on the name of the website to view the full site.

Responsive View

This feature allows you to see how your website will look at a variety of widths and on different devices.

To find this feature, right-click anywhere on your website, and near the bottom, there will be an option called Inspect. You can also reach this by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+I.

Once inside the inspector, the left side will be the view of your website and the right side will be different elements of your website. To learn more about the left side of this page, look at the blog post here.

If your screen does not look like the one below, on the top far right next to the small x of the inspector, you can select the three dots and change where the dock (the right side of my screen) is located.

If the device toolbar does not automatically appear, click the device button on the upper right-hand corner (circled below). The keyboard shortcut to show the toolbar, it is Ctrl+Shift+M. This toolbar is what allows you to set the size of the screen to see what it will look like on a specified size screen.

With the toolbar set to the responsive setting, you can manually resize the web page by dragging the bar on the right side of the webpage as seen below.

On the top device toolbar, you can select a predetermined screen size based on common phones or the responsive option which lets you resize manually.

Below are a few examples of what my website looks like on different devices. Click on an image to enlarge it

Capture Screenshots

Another feature of the inspector can be found by clicking the three dots on the device toolbar (closer to the middle of the screen). Two options in this menu are “Capture screenshot” and “Capture full size screenshot”. These options download a picture of your website.

For example, this is what these options look like on my site.

Looking at storage through CPanel

You can check how much storage is being used up on your domain in a few short steps through the CPanel. 

First, travel to https://knight.domains and click the “login” button in the middle of the left-hand side. The site will prompt you to login with your SNC Google account. Once logged in, travel to the “CPanel” Tab on the top right-hand side

Next, while in the CPanel, on the right sidebar, under the statistics section,you’ll see your overall storage under disk usage.. To view a more in-depth description of your storage, click “Disk Usage.”

The Disk Storage screen will show you a breakdown of what items on your domain are taking up the most space.

For example, my website on cassienooyen.com is taking up 209MB, techbar.crnooyen.knight.domains is taking up 310MB, and lastly, public_html is taking up 286 MB. (public_html is the main website hosted on your domain. For me, it’s crnooyen.knight.domains.)

Reducing the size of uploaded images (Imsanity)

Imsanity is a plugin that will reduce the resolution of images uploaded to your media library, thus reducing their file size.

To download Imsanity, select the “Plugin” option from the menu on the left-hand side about halfway down. On the top left, select “Add New” next to the word “Plugins.”

Use the search bar on the right-hand side to search “Imsanity”. Click “Install Now,” the first option on the left side. Once it is installed, click “Activate.”

Travel back to the Dashboard of your site. Then hover over the “Settings” option on the menu on the lower left-hand side, then click on “Imsanity” from the second menu that appears.

The screen below should appear with the default settings shown. I decided not to change any settings, but if you wanted to make the images smaller than suggested, you could change the max-width and height to less than 1920. If you decide to change any settings, remember to click “Save Changes” near the bottom of the screen.

Once the settings are to your liking, scroll all the way to the bottom of the screen and click “Search Images…”. This will search your media library to find images larger than the settings above.

Above the “Search Images” button, you may notice the disclaimer to try it with only one image at first. I decided to deselect all the images except the top image.

In a new tab, I navigated to my “Media Library” and found the picture the disclaimer was referencing. At the very beginning of the image name, WordPress gives you the month and year the image was uploaded. For example, the image below was listed as “Image 1394: 2020/02/IMG_3146-scaled.jpg” meaning it was uploaded in February of 2020.

After the image name, the current dimensions are given. These can be compared to the dimensions given in the media library in the top right section. 

After checking the image, I went back to the “Plugin Settings” tab and clicked “Resize Selected Images”. I then went back into my “Media Library” and saw the selected image was now 1920×1440 [originally: 2560×1920]. This is how I knew it worked so I went back and resized the rest of my images.

After running the “Resize Selected Images” the “Media Library” showed that they all were correctly resized and the image sizes were decreased.

Finding and deleting duplicate and unused images (Image Cleanup)

Another plugin that can help reduce storage space is called “Image Cleanup.” This plugin removes all the images that are uploaded to the Media Library but are not in use on your website.

The first step is to travel to the “Plugin” page in order to download the plugin. “Plugin” can be found about halfway down the left-hand side menu. Once on the page, click the “Add New” button on the top.

In the top-right search bar, type in “Image Cleanup” and hit enter.

Once the search results load, you may have to scroll down a bit down the page. The plugin is on the right side of the screenshot below with the gray triangle picture. Click “Install Now” and then afterward “Activate”.

To use the plugin, hover over the “Tools” option on the left-hand menu and then select “Image Cleanup” from the smaller menu that appears.

Once on this screen, click “Index Images” on the top of the screen. Once the results load, the two groups of images that we are going to delete are the “Unreferenced Unused Images” and “Obsolete Referenced Images”.

For each of these two categories, click the checkbox next to “Index” on the top bar of the table. Then, right above, click the dropdown and select “Delete”. The default option on the dropdown may be set to “Quick Action.” To delete the images, select “Apply.”

Once this is done for both categories, all of the unused images are now deleted.

Alongside installing these two plugins, another thing to look for is the number of videos that are in your Media Library. If there are multiple long videos, instead consider uploading them to YouTube! When uploading a video, YouTube gives the option to make it “Unlisted” meaning only those who have the link can view it, and then that link can be used to embed the video on your site.

Before college, I used my phone’s Apple Calendar, but it pales in comparison to the blessing that is Google Calendar in my life.

There are five major advantages of Google Calendar that I think everyone (especially college students) should know.

1. Convenience/Ease
2. Colored Events
3. Sharing Events
4. Checking Others’ Schedules
5. Reminders

1. Convenience/Ease

The major reason I love Google Calendar so much is simply the fact of how easy it is to use and how accessible it is. Since the calendar is linked to your Google account, you can easily access it on any device, from your phone with an app or by going to calendar.google.com on a desktop or laptop. Unless you have a MacBook, Apple’s calendar does not translate to a laptop or desktop, and I don’t know anyone who doesn’t constantly have their phone on them, making their schedule always easy to check. Personally, this is much better than a planner because I ALWAYS forgot it. Even if it was with me, it was such a hassle to write in and then I would say yes to events and forget about them. Now, with my whole schedule on my phone, this is never a problem.

To schedule an event, all you have to do is to click and drag on the calendar and a popup should appear to schedule a new event (seen below). Then you can just fill out the information listed, or go into more options for a more detailed event. Just click Save and then the event has been created!

2. Colored Events

As you can see in the image above, events can be colored to create an even more organized schedule. For example, my classes, different jobs, and clubs are all different colors. Google Calendar has 11 different color options to choose from! Personally, I am a very visual person and this colored view helps me to organize my schedule mentally as well as on the app. Another visual perk on the desktop/laptop view is the color fade that happens after an event is completed.

3. Sharing Events

Google makes it incredibly easy to share events with other people and groups of people. You just have to add their email address under add guests on the right side. When a person is added, Google automatically adds the option for a hangout meeting.

On the main screen for Google Calendar in the left sidebar, Google also gives you the option to meet with a person. This allows you to type in an email address and that person’s schedule will also pop up on top of yours.

4. Checking Others’ Schedules

As I mentioned a bit before, Google allows you to check other people’s calendars. If a person has an event on their calendar, it will show up as busy. This allows you to easily be able to check and compare schedules with those you are trying to meet with. When all of your events are on your calendar, others can also see when you are busy. An event can also be set to free, meaning you are available during that event. This can be great when blocking time to study for exams.

You can also create and share specific calendars with certain people so they know what you are doing at a specific time. However, when a person types in their email address only their main calendar appears.

You can also set the privacy of your own calendar. Automatically, it shows everyone busy instead of specific events, but you can allow certain people to see the events/places you are at.

5. Notifications

One feature I use frequently on Google Calendar is the notifications of events. If you have notifications turned on, your phone will automatically send you a reminder ten minutes before the event. Personally, this has been really helpful with classes or club meetings because you can get to pretty much anywhere on campus in ten minutes.

When creating an event, you can personalize when you want the notifications as well. This can range from minutes to weeks before an event and multiple notifications for each event can be set.

These are just a few of the many reasons that I love using Google Calendar and it allows me to organize my schedule and never miss an event.

1. Working Collaboratively in a Group with Professors/Faculty

The whole of my research fellowship was an experience I was not expecting at all. From the first day, I was surprised when they asked me to create my own goals for the project and really wanted me to shape my own experience. The working team is now comprised of three faculty members and four students and from the start we were all equals. All of our ideas were highly valued and accepted to bring the project to the next level. This experience was and continues to be truly unique from any experience I have ever heard of from students in similar positions all the way to workers in the corporate world. As you will see later in this list, most of my experiences came from opportunities that stemmed from this fellowship instead of experiences in the classroom because how unique of an experience this fellowship has been.

2. Seeing My Hard Work Pay Off

During second semester this past year, right around Easter I started to get mildly sick. It wasn’t anything serious, but it did make me incredibly tired and made it hard to do much during that full week. Of course, this came at a bad time for me. That week I had two large exams, one in Computer Science Data Structures and Linear Algebra. To top it off, the first-year honors students had dinner at President Bruess’ house the night in between them. Anyway, I studied so much for Computer Science that, I wasn’t able to study as much for my Linear Algebra exam as I would have hoped and ended up getting a 59%. Before this exam, I was at a comfortable A, but after I was at a pretty low AB. I could have given up easily and not studied for the exam and accepted an AB or even a B. However, I decided to try to work my butt off and study to try to get the near-perfect score I needed on the exam to get an A in the class. The week leading up to the exam was spent relearning the whole class, and the day before was spent with over six hours in the library straight. I still was worried and stressed and it was a leading factor in me falling off my loft that night (it’s not a fun story). That morning I just decided to do my best and be proud of how hard I tried. When grades came out a few weeks later, I saw that all of my hard work paid off and I was able to ace the class. This class really just taught me the necessity of hard work and being able to work for what you want and never giving up, no matter how hard the road may seem.

3. Creating and Designing the Full Spectrum Learning Website

This project was the main focus of my research fellowship this year, and also one of the most I am most proud of. I had website experience from FBLA in high school, but this project is truly the one I love the most and am able to show off to people all over the world. People from all around the country and even the world have been able to see my work in the website and the evolution of the grid and it is truly humbling that they decided to trust me with the process and design of the website to show this idea. I have learned a multitude of things from creating the FSL website and using that work to advance my personal domains as well. The main skills that creating these websites have helped me with is understanding WordPress and especially the Elementor plug-in. 

The page on the website I am most proud of is the interactive grid. There are a few reasons for this decision. First, it is the part of the site that shows off my partner and I’s hard work with the teaser class videos. Second, I tried to use a plug in to design the table, but it didn’t work well, so I decided to go back to my roots and use HTML and CSS to code the table myself. Because of the lack of responsiveness of a table on a website, I had to create multiple media queries to fake a responsive table by creating a new table for smaller screens. Lastly, this was the page I needed the most help with. I am not great about asking for help when I am struggling, and this page really required me to go out of my comfort zone to work in a group with tech bar students or the staff of academic technology if I was struggling. The main item of the page that I would say I needed the most help with was the axis rollovers. Each element of both axes have rollovers explaining what the names mean and add are based on a segment of HTML and CSS code that work together. I tried to use rollovers in the past, and wasn’t able to get them to work so this was a big step for me when they actually worked. Being able to show my work to the public and have it all be a big learning experience was really impactful for me this past year.

4. Presenting at Domains 2019

Earlier this summer, I had the incredible opportunity to present at Reclaim Hosting’s 2019 Domains Conference in Durham, North Carolina. I had never presented at a conference outside of St. Norbert, and this was a very new experience for me. The main surprise for me was the range of schools that had representation. It was also very interesting for me to understand the view of St. Norbert as a Domain of One’s Own school and really being an example for those programs trying to imitate us. I really did not know what to expect, but I came out of that conference for a deep appreciation for the administration of St. Norbert, and I got a bit of an inside look of how much planning and support needs to go into the ability to have that kind of a program. This was also the first conference where I really had the opportunity to show and explain Full Spectrum Learning (FSL) to those outside of the college and show my work of the website off. The response was incredibly positive, and it was really reassuring to me that my work was making a difference and had a purpose.

5. Presenting to the Board of Trustees

One of the most terrifying, yet rewarding, days of my life happened in early October, when we had the opportunity to present to the Board of Trustees for the college. If you don’t know, the Board of Trustees oversees the college and the president, meaning the lowest on the totem pole in the room for those few hours was the president of the college… so you can probably see why I was a bit nervous. The presentation itself went really smoothly and the feedback was incredibly positive. I started to learn how much I appreciate talking about my own domain and explaining it to those who may not otherwise even think about this kind of digital space. This presentation also lead me into speaking for a multitude of different conferences and presentations on campus including the SyNC Business conference, the Financial Planning Group, and the Hire A Knight Business Conference. All of these experiences have helped me realize how much I appreciate my own domain and how I want to teach others about creating their own domains. These opportunities have also helped me to come out of my shell and be able to show a bit of my personality to others. As anyone close to me would tell you, I am terrified of strangers and if you told me that I would be giving these presentations, I would have had so much anxiety. I still get incredibly nervous before presentations, but I feel incredibly accomplished and come out of them with a new appreciation for my work and sharing it with others.

6. Attending Computer Science Capstones

Being able to see the Computer Science Capstones was a really meaningful experience for me to really see what the goal is. It can be easy to miss the “point” of intro classes and wonder ‘Why am I doing this?’ However, watching each capstone presentation I saw each piece of the work that I had been learning over the past two semesters. Also, being able to see the real world implications of the hard work of the four years of my degree was really impactful. The range of projects was also incredibly inspiring. Knowing that all of the students had (almost) all of the same classes up to their capstones but they all produced wildly different projects. From different coding languages, to design, the variety just amazed me. Some of my favorite projects included a grass cutting simulation, a positive affirmation app, and a dance program that allowed users to create routines based on their own dance moves. A few of the students also expressed their hardships of their first years and how they pushed through which was inspiring to be able to hear, especially because I had thought about changing my major when times were hard. The main benefit of allowing students to see these presentations helps show the hard work of all the seniors while also inspiring the underclassmen to continue on and push through.

7. Attending Digital Pedagogy Lab

This summer, in August I got the experience of attending my second academic conference, Digital Pedagogy Lab, in Fredericksburg, Virginia. This conference is truly unique as you are fully collaborating in specific groups of twenty or less for the entire week. I was in the Critical Open Pedagogy track with another student, Ruthie. Honestly, this kind of conference is not easy for students to attend, especially students as young as we are. Most of the concepts of Open Pedagogy can be hard for anyone to understand, and the advanced language was really hard to get through at first. However, it was a great experience to hear and understand the different experiences that each person in the group has had at their own universities across the world. Each day I felt more comfortable and started to understand how I needed to implement what I am learning in to what I am working on with Full Spectrum Learning and how to promote it to the larger campus community especially certain professors. It was a truly unique opportunity that I never thought I would have imagined that I would have especially after only my first year of school and none of this would have been possible without me taking a whim and applying for a research fellowship.

8. Representing the college

One experience that I never thought I would have would be representing St. Norbert while traveling and around the community and the country. Through my work with Full Spectrum Learning I have had the ability to attend two major conferences this summer, Domains 2019 and Digital Pedagogy Lab (see above). There, I was representing the college and even the state on a very large scale. At these conferences, some of the attendees have never heard of St. Norbert, and I am the first student they have met and their first experience. Closer to home, on campus I have presented to a variety of committees and conferences and there I was also representing the college. Many of the conferences included employers from local businesses and corporations. I mainly present my experience using domains, but I am usually one of two examples that they see and hear from. I never would have imagined that I would be in this position, especially in my first year, but looking back it is extremely humbling that my bosses believed in me and trusted me with these presentations.

9. Helping others set up their own domain

This year, I haven’t taught in the “traditional sense” in front of a group, however, I have started to teach students about domains one on one. I was not a tech bar consultant this past year, however, there were a few times when someone called in sick or wasn’t available that I stepped in to help them as emergency back-up. Usually, these appointments centered around domains and I got to help them set them up. This isn’t a way of teaching that I ever thought I would experience, but it has become my favorite way to teach. Being able to show the students the benefits of their domain and help me to show them and help them with questions they have has been a really impactful experience. Also, it helps me to explain to others what I am passionate about and what I fell in love with. Also, knowing they have the support that they need on campus can be incredibly important and I am glad that I can continue to be a part of tech bar as a consultant next year!

10. Understanding Hidden Figures

Lastly, my tenth most valuable experience is a little bit different from the others. I recently rewatched the movie “Hidden Figures” about the women computers involved in the space race. During one scene when the main character has a mental breakthrough and discovers what equation to use for the “go no go” coordinates of the landing, I realized that I actually had learned this equation a few months earlier in Linear Algebra. This is a bit different of an example, but I was glad to see a real life example of the work I am trying to accomplish as part of my degree.

Thank you

I just want to end by saying thank you to everyone involved in my learning experiences over my first year, especially my research fellowship. I would have never imagined I would have most of these experiences in all four years, let alone only my first year. I am blessed to be able to attend such an amazing school and be open to such caring faculty and staff. I honestly just can’t say thank you enough for each experience and each person who cares for me and has trusted and believed in me each and every day, especially when I couldn’t believe in myself or my work.

Security

The first issue that I never really thought about was the security and privacy on my domain. A few months after having my domain, I realized that if you searched my name, my domain was one of the first things that popped up. I was excited about this, but I soon realized that this meant everything I blogged about was very much in the open. This meant all of my pictures and also every person I have mentioned. I made the decision to only use first names when talking about others and the things we have done together. This way, I can protect their privacy in such an open space. With social media you have some control over who can see your post based on who “friends” or “follows you”; on a domain, this is not as much of a luxury. Originally, I thought my domain would be something I only shared with close friends and family, like a social media page, but understanding how many people have the opportunity to see it really shocked me and pushed me to think about the bigger picture of security and safety for me and those around me.

Blogging

I was hesitant to start my blog because I thought, ‘What do I possibly have to say?’ I still have that thought occasionally, but I have turned my blog into a blog really just for me. Sure, I share the posts online, but I like to blog to remember my memories of college. Even at the end of the year, I was looking back at some of the first blog posts I wrote and I had forgotten some of the fun things I was able to do earlier in the year.

I have two different blogs: my personal blog on my main domain and my work blog on my subdomain. I have discovered two main differences and how they relate to one another: how much I blog and how much fun it is. My personal blog is all for fun; if I don’t want to blog, I don’t have to. I usually only blog when fun things are happening in my life, which happened to go in waves. I wouldn’t post for about two months, and then I could post three weeks in a row. I never felt pressure from anyone else to post anything; it was completely self-run. The main pro of this random blogging is I feel the quality was a bit better because I was never forced or rushed to post. For this same reason, I seemed to put it to the back of my mind and it would only come to my mind occasionally; this made my blogging very sporadic and infrequent. This style works great for a personal blog, but it is very easy to procrastinate if it was ever for a class assignment.

Meanwhile, on my work domain I was encouraged to blog weekly about the different projects I was working on. This usually brought two different emotions to mind: excitement when I had accomplished a large task and had ideas for the program, but also slight frustration when I felt like I was working on the same project for weeks at a time or felt like I could not accomplish anything that week. The main benefit of weekly blogging was it made me more self-aware of what I was working on. When Thursday and Friday rolled around I started to think about what I had accomplished that week, if I felt like it was not much, I took a step back and thought about the reasons why. Was I unproductive? Unmotivated? How many hours did I work? What else was happening in my life? This exercise did really help me to evaluate my work and make sure I was giving my best effort to be a part of the team. This frequent blogging was a bit of a stress on me and would not be the best for a class, but it did help me to be self-aware and to reflect each week. Although blogging so often was difficult for me sometimes, knowing that I could still take a few weeks off made the structure less intimidating; it was important for me to take a break every once and awhile.

I really enjoy having both blogs; the one that I can update every two months or daily, and the one that I update weekly. I feel like both blogs show my growth this year, both personally and as a student worker.

Ask for Help

In the beginning of the year, I was slightly terrified to ask for help because I had experience in website design and I felt like I should know everything I was doing. However, I soon realized that this was horribly wrong. Some of the errors were as simple as something being spelled wrong, but others really needed another set of eyes to help. Everyone around me was there to help me and teach me, and not relying on them only left me feeling stuck and frustrated. The only way I am  going to grow as a designer and a developer is to ask for help. Many of the advancements I have made on my own domain and FSL’s domain are because I asked for help when I did not understand. The best projects are made by teamwork and being able to admit when I don’t know everything is one of the most important lessons of all.

On the other side of this, I have learned how important it is to share my knowledge with others.  I used to be the person who would just take the laptop and do it for you, but now I understand the importance of teaching and explaining so others can also learn. I still struggle with this, but I continue to try to get better. Sharing knowledge with others helps both people to grow; life is not about sitting in a corner and trying to be the best, instead it is about helping every person to grow together.

Changing Your Mind

The biggest lesson I have learned with my own domain is that not only is it okay to change my mind, it is actually encouraged! A domain is never done; it is always changing and improving. My main domain has stayed consistent, but my subdomain and other projects have been through many phases and designs. I came into St. Norbert with no WordPress skills at all. I had previously worked with Adobe Dreamweaver and it turned out to be a very big change. Finding a theme for my main domain turned out to be an adventure, but I have stuck with it ever since the beginning of the year. Recently, I decided to change my header image from black and white to color and was astonished at how much that brightened the site! Changing one image helped me to completely change the look and feel of my website.

My sub-domain however, I still don’t love. I had the same theme almost all year and I feel like it is too plain and boring. I recently updated it to include purple, the main focus color of Full Spectrum Learning. The grid is focused on the intersection of engagement (blue) and technology (red) to create purple. I added pictures to each page to get more of a visual for what I am working on each week instead of just paragraphs of text. I do want to continue to experiment and maybe even try out a new theme.

The biggest change that happened was the Full Spectrum Learning Website. I created the first iteration of the site in early fall. It took all of about two hours, and that should have shown me the quality. With help, I found a new plug-in called Elementor and experimented for days on how to make the website look the best. I continue to experiment and upgrade pieces of the site constantly. I know the website will never be complete, it is always improving one piece of code at a time. This is the beauty of website design, it is encouraged to continue learning and it can be incredibly fun and rewarding to keep improving.

This lesson is the hardest to learn, but the most important. You have to be open to changing your site. No website is or will ever be perfect, but making small little changes can help it to be that much closer. Sometimes the opposite is true as well. As I have learned, it can be important to know when creating a new sub-domain to play around with and completely starting your site over is the best option.

These four lessons have been my main takeaways from my first year having my own domain. I know that it will continuously change and grow and that is necessary. I learn something new about my domain and its possibilities each day and I am excited to see the growth from the beginning to today. I have also seen these lessons applied in other parts of my life and they have all helped me to grow as a student and person. It is always important to be able to admit I need help and do not know everything, and to embrace the idea that there is often more than one right way to do things. I am excited to look back at my progress and continue to build on all of the skills I have gained this year.

Biggest Surprise

The range of schools across the country that attended, along with the wide variety of stages that the domain programs are currently surprised me the most. From the small, undergraduate Liberal Arts college, in the middle of Wisconsin that is St. Norbert to large public schools and graduate schools like NYU and CUNY in the middle of New York City, I was amazed at the variety of the schools represented and that domains connected us all.

I guess I did not realize how far ahead St. Norbert is compared to other institutions.  I enjoyed being one of the model schools for how other schools wanted to create their programs.

Last summer, I was extremely excited when I learned about Knight Domains because I had fallen in love with website design in high school, however, I did not realize how rare the opportunity was. Attending this conference made me realize how lucky we are to have supportive faculty and administration at the college. The program was fairly far along when I came to St. Norbert, and I am not really sure how the process of creating the program went, but I am proud to see how much the program has grown in its first year, and I am eager to see how much it will grow next year and in the years to come.

Favorite Parts

Listening to all the different stories from so many colleges who are in such a wide range of places with their programs really was inspiring to me. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am terrified of strangers and talking to new people, but everyone was incredibly friendly and I loved hearing their stories. I did find it disheartening to see how many administrations do not support domains, but I found it inspiring to see how hard some staff are fighting.

I also enjoyed the critical thinking sessions and discussions that I had this past week. Many of the presentations brought up some critical thoughts and points that I would never think about such as the security of my domain (or lack thereof) and the possibilities that my domain offers other than WordPress.

Least Favorite Part

Oysters. I’ll leave it at that.

The Presentation

The presentation itself went much smoother than I expected it to. I have learned over the past year that every presentation I give will be different and I can never say the same thing twice even if I try. Because of this, I have learned that I am horrible at practice presentations because they just stress me out. During the real presentation, the audience was very engaged and I enjoyed the variety in their questions. It was very rewarding to be able to talk about my work with Full Spectrum Learning and my experience with my domain.

My Takeaways

This conference helped me to reflect on my personal use of my domain and how I want to help others use their domains. The main thing I hope to expand on personally is not being stuck in the box of WordPress. This year, it has been really easy for me to think of WordPress as the only option which is limiting due to its themes. Next year, I really want to dive into my sub-domain and try to use a different platform such as Omeka or one of the many other applications on the CPanel. I am hoping to deepen my coding knowledge and free myself from the confines in the themes of WordPress.

The main idea about the future of the program that I came out of the conference with was explaining (but not using) the domains program to the freshman during our gateway class. Currently, the main way that students learn about domains are through the classes that they are used in, but if a student does not take one of these classes, it is hard to say if they will ever learn about the domains program. I think it is important for students to understand what the domains program is and how it can be used, especially outside of the classroom. If I did not have the research fellowship this year, I am not sure how and when I would have learned about domains. Explaining to freshman during their first year can be really important to see their growth over all four years, and I think as a Tech Bar Consultant I have to explain this better when students come in for appointments.

I am excited to see where the next three years at St. Norbert will take me and how much more I can learn. Domains 2019 was an excellent first conference for me to attend, and I am grateful for the opportunity.