Technology and more technology

My learning has been growing exponentially this past couple of weeks and I want to document some of that learning here.  

• Scanning and converting to PDF files : while this is probably just barely considered to be technology by some, it was an accomplishment for me!  We were asked to hand in our first term art portfolio electronically in the form of a PDF.  I had a physical book, some trading cards and a photograph which had to become one file.  It turned out that my fear surrounding this task was unwarranted.  Scanning to a PDF and saving on a desktop is as easy as selecting those options from a menu in the VueScan for Mac software.  Saving a photo as a PDF is also easy!  You simply import the chosen photo into MS Word and save it as a PDF.  The last step was to drag the new file I had created onto a thumb drive and copy it onto my Profs computer.  Huh.  Who knew?
• Dropbox.com:  This is another tool that I had never used.  I needed to find something, though, because I had a file that turned out to be too large to email.  So, I created an account and shared an MP3 file that I created in GarageBand with a couple of classmates.  It is not hard to do and a great way to share large files.  
• GarageBand:  Right.  Did I mention that I created a file in GarageBand?  It was even more complicated than that!  First, I chose some YouTube videos of music with parallel harmonies.  Next, I saved those videos as MP3 files.  They automatically saved into iTunes.  Then, I took the files from iTunes and imported them into a new audio file that I created using GarageBand.  I needed to split the files and manipulate them in order to create one file (around a minute long) with several samples of parallelism in music.  Saved it, uploaded it to Dropbox and shared it.  Sounds like a success experience but not quite yet.  For some reason, it saved as each complete MP3 file instead of the edited version.  So, back to the drawing board but I will figure it out today.  

That's it for today but I am slowing beginning to become more comfortable navigating my way through new technology without having my hand held.  There's hope for me yet!