Jack’s Online Communication Blog

Much of this past week has been dedicated to our final projects and reviewing the rubric. Since the due date is next Friday, we reviewed the rubric a lot so everyone knows what to do.

One of the tutorials we did learn about was in regard to polls and surveys. Using a site called www.polldaddy.com, a person can make any poll or survey and then copy a code to put it on their blog. (See post, “What is your favorite music?”)

I think a poll would be very useful for my final project. There are many times when voting in a group is difficult and if everyone had a poll they could go to and only vote once, I think it would be easier. Also, there would be no conflict over how many people voted what, since the poll would tell us. For my purposes, a survey wouldn’t really be helpful. However, at the end of the year, I could use a survey to ask people what they thought of their year in Natural Helper so the officers that follow us can have feedback.

Edublogs also updated its dashboard in the past week. I personally like the update because I think it makes it easier to navigate around. I think they organized more things under less categories and it eliminated some of the clutter. I had no problem adjusting to it.

The only thing that did pose a concern at first was widgets. I was used to dragging the widgets and that isn’t quite what you do on the new dashboard. You have to click the “add” button and edit it from there. I suppose it isn’t really different, but enough to throw me off the first time.

Despite that, I like the update and find it more helpful to navigate around.

A lot of this week was dedicated to working on our projects, but we did have a tutorial on Google Calendar which I found useful.

 The Google Calendar is very easy to embed because it gives a code. I think this is an extremely useful application since it can always be updated and it will update directly to the blog or website. It makes managing events and list of things to do easier so things can get done at a faster and easier pace.

This is extremely useful to my website and I already added it. Since Natural Helpers do a lot of events, the calendar is good since it would allow my advisor to post whenever an event is scheduled so people will remember. It’s also useful that you can have multiple calendars but maintain them all on one page with a color coded technique.

There isn’t really anything else I’d like to learn, but I will have to play around with the Google Calendar. There are many options about it that I’m sure I don’t know about yet so exploring these will make for an even better calendar.

This week was a pretty unproductive week on my part. I have been working on gathering content for my final project since it is the middle of Phase 2, but more on that can be read on my Project Progress Analysis.

 As far as reflecting on what we did in class, not a whole lot was accomplished. One day we had a half day and didn’t do much and another day our teacher wasn’t here. So, during that time, I met with my advisor to talk about content and such for the website because there seems to be no other time when we get to do that.

On Thursday and Friday, I was not in class due to the AP Literature and AP European History exams so I missed two days of class due to those. I checked the website and I am aware of what I missed and what needs to be done over the weekend. So, my next step is to complete all of those things and continue to get my website together.

 This reflection really isn’t full of that much content but there isn’t that much to reflect on, so next weeks will be more promising.

The two main things that I did this week dealt with User Access and the Final Project.

 I read this article that dealt with roles and capabilities for WordPress Blogs. A few roles that are on blogs are: Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor and Subscriber. Basically, the Administrator is the only role that has full capabilities. All of the other roles have capabilities, yet they are limited.

I feel this is very important when I develop my project more. I hope that my page can be used after I leave this school so I hope to be able to pass my web site on to new Natural Helpers for them to use. By allowing certain roles, the capabilities of users are limited which is helpful because every user can not have supreme power.

I think that I’m at a good spot with my Final Project. Phase 1 was to basically set up a dashboard with a theme and enabling widgets. I enabled my plugins and I feel that the web site is ready to put content up on, which concerns Phase 2.

Looking ahead to Phase 2, I am looking forward to working with my teacher on what to put on the page. I’m going to begin by making a rough written copy of what I want to put on before I type it up.

Another thing that I hope to be able to put on my web site is a slideshow. Throughout various Natural Helper events, many pictures were taken and I think it would be really beneficial if I can find a site that creates slideshows from my pictures. Then, I could take that code and put it on the blog!

This week we concentrated on two things: 1) Our Blog and 2) The Final Project

 I think I am off to a good start on my project since I already have a basic plan of how I want my final project to look like and where I want to go with it. Also, I’ve been Mrs. Hart’s CERTO for two years now and we have a great relationship to get a lot done on it.

 I learned how to get more Javascript on my blog like the Voki that is on it now. I think this is a really cool and fun feature to add different messages to your blog. I think it’s something fun that readers will enjoy seeing once they come on, and it’s easy to add! I am definitely going to incorporate that into my final project.

 I also learned how to add text widgets which made it possible to add the Voki. With the text widget, I was able to add my blog on a text only basis. I find this incredibly helpful, being the owner of an object that can access the internet: the iTouch. I know how some web sites have a ton of images on them and loading them on my iTouch is difficult so it’s great that we have this text only option.

 I also learned a little bit more about HTML while I added those text boxes. I copied a code off the Online Communication page that led me to this web site: Code Resources 

From that web site, I was able to get the text only code which allowed me to add it to the widget.

 I feel like I learned a lot this week that will be fantastic to use during my final project such as the Voki Javascript and the Text Only box!

Sorry it has taken so long to update…edublogs does not work fantastic on my laptop.

Throughout all of the week before break, I did a group project with Mary and Tom using Microsoft Encoder. All in all, I think we worked well together. Each of us had different roles that added to the project.

Mary and I drafted the entire presentation writing a script to read off of when we recorded using Encoder and we planned everything all out.

Tom was the recorder of our group and was ultimately responsible for the success of the video.

Our project came out better then I expected it too. I barely knew Tom and have never talked to Mary before so we all did not know each other going into the project. However, we were able to successfully finish it and create, what I think, is a good tutorial on Power Point.

Today in class, we didn’t really do too much but review our blog. I uploaded the Blog Rubric to the blog so it’s easier to access then going to the File Share.

Blog Rubric

 Our group is going to do a tutorial on Microsoft Power Point. I think it will go okay however, I know that I am not 100% familiar with how Power Point works and how to make good presentations, so I will have to spend some time learning some more about the program.

 I also do not know my group very well so hopefully we all work well together and create a successful project.

This week, we were assigned a new group project where we are to create a tutorial using Microsoft Encoder. We will be creating a video tutorial like the ones here on edublogs. Our group brainstormed and decided we all have a decent knowledge on how to use Power Point. Since creating an overall tutorial on Power Point is very general, we decided we would focus on the presentation part of it including backgrounds and animations. I know that I was never great at making Power Points look appealing but I have learned about it using it over the years.

 By doing this project, I will gain more knowledge with Power Point and hopefully others will as well! Our group is off to a great start with most of the steps already finished on how our tutorial will go.

 Also this week, I read up on Microsoft Encoder. It seems like it shouldn’t be extremely hard to use, but being a new program at a school where many things can go wrong with the Internet, it will be interesting to see how it turns out.

This week, we started to think about our end of the year project, which ultimately is the project where we can incorporate everything we learned into this last project. The first step in doing this is to have 10 questions prepared to ask the person whom we are working with about their goals for the website. Since that is this weekends homework, I have been thinking about ideas but have not typed them up yet. My concentration is buisness, and while I don’t have an extensive knowledge on buisness, I know I am going to try to advertise (one of the major aspects of buisness) Mrs. Hart’s club and one I am involved with, The Natural Helpers, by hopefully advertising events that we do. One of my goals for this website is to not only to advertise the club, but make it a spot where current members can access any information about upcoming events, etc.

In order to successfully accomplish this project, there is still much more about the online world to be learned. One thing I learned about this week was usability. Usability is how extensive a user’s experience is when working with a product, like a website. Usability is important because while many websites offer information or products, the actual website is either complicated or doesn’t appeal to users. When we’re looking ahead to our final projects, we want to use usability to make sure others are attracted to the website so it can be used past this class.

Class was really disrupted this week due to CAPT, but I did learn a bit in the past half hour when I was doing the homework. RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and the purpose of this is to view newly added posts, etc. easier through (what I use) Google Reader. It makes viewing blogs and other web sites a lot easier. I didn’t realize until I learned this how many websites use RSS feeds until I looked at two websites that I view daily. I discovered both of them had this RSS feed option.

I also saw how plugins work. I was always aware what a plugin did but never got to experiment with them to see what they actually added. When I went on those same two websites, I was able to see which plugins they had activated such as the Contact Box and Subscription plugin.