Deskcrits

I gave 4 deskcrits this semester:
1. Given to Marianne Walters during the first project day (10/16/08). Marianne has a lot of talent as a web designer. She created an informational site for her Spanish students with tons of resources! Her concern is that her Spanish flag keeps moving when she views her work in the browser. She doesn't understand why it's in one place in Dreamweaver and then in another place when she views it in Internet explorer. We played around with a couple of ideas. I told her to possibly put in a table or a layer to keep in from moving around. She said she would try that. Another concern she has is that some of her text is highlighted and underlined like a link would be when, in fact, it is not a link. Dr. Rieber ended up helping us with this problem because we couldn't figure it out. Apparently she had too many folders and the text was being associated with a text in another folder. I hope I was a good mentor for Marianne. At times, I felt like I didn't know the answers to any of the questions she asked! Her site ended up looking really well put together.

2. Given to Chrissi Sperling during the second project day (10/30/08). When I first saw Chrissi's project she was still in the process of trying to figure out what exactly she wanted to do for her final project. She had lots of ideas but was having trouble honing in on one idea. I attempted to help her clean up her Dreamweaver folders. She had so many folders within folders within folders. The system was getting confused (and so were we) as to which file or page she needed to upload where. I suggested to her that she might want to start simple since this was her first time taking the class. I also suggested to her that she have a lighter background. Her text was blue and her background was black, and it was very difficult to read.

3. Given to Carrie Bishop on showcase rehearsal night (11/13/08). Carrie's project looked good on rehearsal night. She said she still had a lot to do but what she had done so far was great. She was focusing on using a quiz creating software, rather than a site she had developed herself. There was not a lot that I told her to change. I liked how the quiz contained a video embedded into it. I also liked the feedback that the quiz gave. There was even a way for the user to leave comments after the quiz was finished.

4. Given to Carolina Robinson on showcase rehearsal night (11/13/08). Carolina's online scrapbook is so cool!! I'm a scrapbook lover myself so I was super excited to see that there is now a way to create scrapbooks online so that you can share them with others without having to ship your big book over to them and pay a hefty price at the post office. I was really impressed with Carolina's knowledge of scrap booking and with online development. She seemed to really know what she was doing. Carolina was also pretty much done with her project by the time I saw it but I really didn't have anything to tell her about how to fix it or make it better. I really loved how unique and creative her site was. She did a great job of putting her personality into her site.

Service Hours

Here is a list of my service hours for the semester:

• Helping mentees during project days - 2 hours
• Helping mentees during non-project days - 2 hours
• Assisting my TST (technology support technician) with web site updates - 4 hours
• Assisting fellow teachers with promethean interactive board software and hardware - 2 hours

15/5 - December 3, 2008

The past two weeks have been SUPER busy for our team. After the showcase rehearsal I think we all breathed a small sigh of relief and took some time to enjoy the holiday and the small break from school and work. Then it was back to work full speed ahead.

For the past two weeks I have been working on entering all of the information for the lessons 3 of the last lessons. I entered the text into the templates that Trudy had already made. Then I had the challenge of trying to figure out how to input the pictures into the pages as well. Trudy has also made a template of a picture format we were going to use for all of our pictures (she is an incredible leader!). That task turned about to be a bit more daunting that I had originally thought. I had to search through the plethora of pictures our client provided for us. Some pictures she had designated for certain pages, but others were up to us to choose. So once I found a picture I liked for a certain topic, I had to copy into a picture editing software, then copy it into Fireworks, and resize it and change the orientation, then finally save it and pull it into Dreamweaver.

I have to say that the end result was pretty great! Our site is awesome and our client is so pleased with what we have done. I'm very proud of how well our group worked together!

The showcase is tonight and I expect it to go very smoothly. We're meeting early so that we can go over our presentation and make sure we have enough time to say all that we need to say.

15/5 - November 19, 2008

The showcase rehearsal went extremely well last Thursday. Our client dropped in to cheer us on and she let us know how impressed she was with our work thus far. She said she can't wait to see the rest. Our 8-minute presentation went off without a hitch. We were only about 10 seconds over our time slot. Considering we hadn't rehearsed our individual parts together I think we did awesome! We also go to get a glimpse of the other 6210 team's project. I've been too busy to check it out. It looked really good, and I can tell they've been working as hard as we have for the past few months. This is when it really starts to show. We also go to look at the work of the 6190 and 6200 people. I was blown away with some of the work. I'll have to definitely step it up next semester when I'm in 6190 for the second time.

This week my group has been working on various things. I didn't do much over the weekend because I was camping (it was freezing!!!!) and then celebrating my 1 year anniversary to my wonderful husband (we ate our wedding cake that had been frozen since 11/17/07 and it was delicious). I finally worked my way around the problem with dreamweaver. I still can't get access to the site but now I'm using webdrive and I can at least get to the pages and modify them. My other group members have been creating Flash animations and doing other development tasks.

I can't believe the showcase is almost here...only a few more weeks! This week I'll be doing some more content entry and whatever else I need to do after my group meets on Thursday.

15/5 - November 12, 2008

Last Thursday my group met online because the conference was going on in Orlando. Trudy has access to the UGA Russia site, but for some reason I couldn't get my dreamweaver to connect. I tried several times using different methods but could not ever get it to connect. Or it would say it had connected but then I couldn't get access to the remote server to download the work Trudy had already done. I feel really bad because Trudy ended up doing all of the entering content and uploading to the site. I'm going to bring my computer with me tomorrow so that Josh can help me take a look and hopefully solve the problem. What I did have a chance to work on this week was the lesson summaries. We wanted to find a way to review what each lesson had taught and segue into the journal entries that Dr. Powell sent us.

The site is up and running and it looks really good! It's neat to see how it all comes to fruition after months of planning. The showcase rehearsal is tomorrow night. We have to do an 8-minute presentation to introduce our project to the other students. My part of the presentation is to tell everyone about the content (objectives) and our delivery method (videos, interactive activities).

In the weeks to come we'll be fixing any of the glitches that we find, getting and receiving deskcrits, and just generally finalzing things in preparation for the showcase on December 4th!

15/5 - November 5, 2008

I can finally breathe a sigh of relief...my comprehensive exam is over! And, the most exciting part is that I passed!!!!!!!!

I also have to note here that I'm very excited about the election that took place yesterday. I'm not going to disclose who my vote went to but I think it's absolutely amazing and awe inspiring that I am witnessing history as the first black man is elected president. It may be the coolest thing I'll witness in my lifetime.

Getting the exam out of the way has really eased some of stress I was feeling last week. I know that the dress rehearsal is just a week away, but I also know that my group is pulling together and working overtime to get everything done. We were waiting for a little while for some space on an alternative server due to the large amount of video and images that we have for our unit.

This past week I was finalizing the content layout. One challenge that I kept running into was having to do research on the content. For some objectives, there was a lot of information and for some there were only a few notes. I had to add a lot of my own thoughts, and I also had to do some research to find out more about certain concepts. Now that we have our server space all worked out I'll be entering the content onto the templates that have already been made. We'll be working on getting ready for the studio dress rehearsal.

15/5 - October 29, 2008

Here we are again, another week gone by! Last Thursday my group met to discuss some of the content layout and the animations that Suhwa had been working on. I really can't wait to start seeing some of the development come together in the actual system!

This week I've had a lot on my plate. For this class I've been working on organizing the content information and layout. For some objectives there is a plethora of information and for others....well, not so much. This is a task in itself. Plus I've been reviewing and reading for my oral exam coming up tomorrow night. I've also been doing some work with my group for 6100 and completing individual assignments that are due each week. Whew...is it time for a break yet??

I hope these posts don't come across as negative or whiny. I guess I just feel like this is a safe place to dump my feelings and thoughts. Maybe that's why blogging has become the big deal that it has.

So, this week coming up I'll be continuing to work on organizing the content, getting my deskcrits completed, and working on some service hours/mentoring hours for a couple of 6190ers.