Culmination of Tech Class
After consulting with the "road map" and presentation requirements I would just like to organize what I have done this semester.
1. Blog - this is my course blog. I have tried to be inspirational and reflective. In addition to blogging about assignments, I have extended it to include articles about technology in the NY Times or Yahoo. I enjoy reading news headlines and articles with my morning coffee, so I just took it a step further by blogging a synopsis and attaching a link in case anyone else was interesed.
Additionally, I created a commercial blog, an mp3 blog, and a newsfeed blog. The commercial blog hasn't really gone anywhere because I haven't put the time into really developing it yet, but it did give me the chance to sign up for google adsense and figure out where to paste it in the blogger template. My mp3 blog was for the purpose of adding my own mp3s to my classical music digest blog. The mp3 blog is special because I edited the html to embed the sound clips. The feed digest blog I will discuss later.
2. Flash Creations - I created two animations, start/stop buttons, and a movie. Additionally, I experimented with the action script examples that Chianan sent us, but did not save or publish them.
3. RSS Feed Digest - I wanted to create an mp3 digest out of syndicated podcasts and mp3 blogs, so I first created my own mp3 blog. Then I created a feed digest blog, created a feed digest, added the urls of podcasts/mp3 blogs, and edited the keywords so that items more specific to classical music and flute would appear.
4. Dreamweaver - this has been my main program for web design. It is relatively simple to use, yet I had trouble with the very beginning steps (like the opening menu....which is really confusing!) so I bought a book which helped me get over my minor "new computer program that I don't know anything about" fear. I can't say that the book taught me all that much (since the program is so straightforeward) but it did help me with the important steps of creating folders and always saving files to those specific folders. In addition, I have used Photoshop a great deal with creating and importing images, and taken advantage of the "import flash" method, since I used flash animations on my website.
5. I have not really experimented with wikis (although, I have definitely looked up things on wikipedia before!). I did create a swicki and place it on my commerical blog. Again, quite simple to do, the only moderately challenging part was placing it in the right place of the blogger template. However, I'm getting pretty good at editing the template and putting things where I want them to go on the first attempt these days. I have not created anything on Moodle, however, last semester my flute teacher Keith Underwood had a student who created a flute website for Keith's students using Moodle. The idea of it was really good because flute pictures, mp3, movies, or whatever could be shared. However, groups like these need active participation to be successful, and the members became somewhat disinterested after a month or two.
6. Domain and server - I am using Startlogic because, when I did a google search on web hosts, Startlogic was in the top 10 on more than one ranking chart. Another motivating factor was that Startlogic advertised 1 year and a free domain for a flat rate of $50. That was the cheapest one I saw, particularly since I plan to use my ElaineOlschesky.com website after this class. And the nice thing is - I don't have to worry about paying for it again until January. I don't remember the particulars about the web server perks, just that it gives me more memory than I would ever need and it promises a fast upload time.
7. Web design, etc. - That is all discussed in the post below.
This sums up everything I have learned this semester. I feel like I have accomplished a lot by developing a website with my own domain name. We touched on a lot of ideas in class, and even though I didn't use all of them for my website, perhaps I will in the future. Speaking about the future, I definitely plan to expand my knowledge further when I have the time. I would love to become more fluent in Flash language and once day rebuild my website completely using Flash. For now though, my website is pretty cool and definitely effective for advertising purposes. Thank you Dr. Gilbert and Chianan for teaching this class and giving me the opportunity to enhance my technological abilities!
1. Blog - this is my course blog. I have tried to be inspirational and reflective. In addition to blogging about assignments, I have extended it to include articles about technology in the NY Times or Yahoo. I enjoy reading news headlines and articles with my morning coffee, so I just took it a step further by blogging a synopsis and attaching a link in case anyone else was interesed.
Additionally, I created a commercial blog, an mp3 blog, and a newsfeed blog. The commercial blog hasn't really gone anywhere because I haven't put the time into really developing it yet, but it did give me the chance to sign up for google adsense and figure out where to paste it in the blogger template. My mp3 blog was for the purpose of adding my own mp3s to my classical music digest blog. The mp3 blog is special because I edited the html to embed the sound clips. The feed digest blog I will discuss later.
2. Flash Creations - I created two animations, start/stop buttons, and a movie. Additionally, I experimented with the action script examples that Chianan sent us, but did not save or publish them.
3. RSS Feed Digest - I wanted to create an mp3 digest out of syndicated podcasts and mp3 blogs, so I first created my own mp3 blog. Then I created a feed digest blog, created a feed digest, added the urls of podcasts/mp3 blogs, and edited the keywords so that items more specific to classical music and flute would appear.
4. Dreamweaver - this has been my main program for web design. It is relatively simple to use, yet I had trouble with the very beginning steps (like the opening menu....which is really confusing!) so I bought a book which helped me get over my minor "new computer program that I don't know anything about" fear. I can't say that the book taught me all that much (since the program is so straightforeward) but it did help me with the important steps of creating folders and always saving files to those specific folders. In addition, I have used Photoshop a great deal with creating and importing images, and taken advantage of the "import flash" method, since I used flash animations on my website.
5. I have not really experimented with wikis (although, I have definitely looked up things on wikipedia before!). I did create a swicki and place it on my commerical blog. Again, quite simple to do, the only moderately challenging part was placing it in the right place of the blogger template. However, I'm getting pretty good at editing the template and putting things where I want them to go on the first attempt these days. I have not created anything on Moodle, however, last semester my flute teacher Keith Underwood had a student who created a flute website for Keith's students using Moodle. The idea of it was really good because flute pictures, mp3, movies, or whatever could be shared. However, groups like these need active participation to be successful, and the members became somewhat disinterested after a month or two.
6. Domain and server - I am using Startlogic because, when I did a google search on web hosts, Startlogic was in the top 10 on more than one ranking chart. Another motivating factor was that Startlogic advertised 1 year and a free domain for a flat rate of $50. That was the cheapest one I saw, particularly since I plan to use my ElaineOlschesky.com website after this class. And the nice thing is - I don't have to worry about paying for it again until January. I don't remember the particulars about the web server perks, just that it gives me more memory than I would ever need and it promises a fast upload time.
7. Web design, etc. - That is all discussed in the post below.
This sums up everything I have learned this semester. I feel like I have accomplished a lot by developing a website with my own domain name. We touched on a lot of ideas in class, and even though I didn't use all of them for my website, perhaps I will in the future. Speaking about the future, I definitely plan to expand my knowledge further when I have the time. I would love to become more fluent in Flash language and once day rebuild my website completely using Flash. For now though, my website is pretty cool and definitely effective for advertising purposes. Thank you Dr. Gilbert and Chianan for teaching this class and giving me the opportunity to enhance my technological abilities!
posted by Elaine @ 8:01 AM
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