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.

15/5 - October 22, 2008

It seems like I've just blinked, the week has gone by, and it's Wednesday again! We're getting closer and closer to the studio showcase. This is, by far, the most challenging class I've taken in the program. There's never a moment when I'm not thinking about what I have to do next, which I guess is good because it means I'm not falling behind.

This past Thursday didn't allow for a lot of work time with my group. The first big chunk of time was devoted to a "project day". I sat with one of the 6190 students and looked at the work she had produced so far. I also chatted with some of my fellow 6210-ers. After that we talked about the comprehensive exam coming up of which I am terrified for some reason. I'm so afraid I'm going to freeze up and my brain is going to shut off completely! I've spent some time going over the questions though. I have all of my answers. All I really need to do is to read them over a few times.

Anyway, back to the project. This week my group met to finalize the flow and storyboard to be submitted to the client. We heard back from her and she said everything looked great. This week I've also been organizing some of the content so that when we get ready to begin building the actual pages we'll have some material to cut and paste.

15/5 - October 16, 2008

It's been another busy week for us. I missed the usual Thursday meeting last week due to Yom Kippur, so I felt a little out of the loop. My group caught me up a bit on what we would be working on for the week. We are into the development phase and have spent most of this week working on the flow and set up for the actual web pages. At first I found this task very overwhelming, but once I got into it, it was easier than I thought. I think it's more time consuming than actually hard.

I feel like it's been forever since I've seen my group. I'm looking forward to tonight's meeting and all that we'll get accomplished.

Coming up next week we need to work more on the flow and set up. We'll be looking for what photos, animations, videos, and content we have versus what we still might need from the client.

15/5 - October 8, 2008

It's been an interesting week. We elected not to meet up in Athens for a couple of reasons. Number one, it wasn't a "required" meeting day. Number two, and maybe more importantly, up until a couple of days ago it was next to impossible to find gas! Number 3, the items we needed to get accomplished were things we could do online.

We met Thursday evening online and divvied up some of the documents that needed to be completed. I was in charge of completing the treatment rationale, which, when I sat down and hammered it out, was not that difficult to get done. I was also responsible for writing up some of the procedures and test items for the alpha and beta tests that we'll complete when our module is finished.

We met again on Sunday to go over some of the documents we created. We each took turns sharing our parts and giving input on each other's.

To do this week: begin developing some of the flow of the lessons. We're moving right along!

15/5 - October 1, 2008

It's October! I'm so glad that fall is here. It's my favorite time of year because school is in full swing, my kids know me and my expectations, the leaves are changing, and the weather is cool.

This week I've been trying to wrap my head around the "treatment rationale" for which I'm supposed to be creating a document. Last week I discussed the treatment rationale with my group while we looked at some of the previous groups' documents. I'm really having a hard time coming up with more than about 2 or 3 sentences describing what we're using and why we're using it. This will be something I plan to work on this week.

We will not be meeting face to face this week but online instead. It could not come at a better time considering the gas shortages and price increases.

I don't have much else to report at this time. I'm beginning to feel a bit anxious about how much we still have to do and how little time we have to do it. I'm definitely a person who likes to get things done way ahead of time so it's hard for me to sit back and wait for certain things.

15/5 - September 24, 2008

It's been a very busy week for me. I've had lots to do for my classes and for work. I'm really struggling for some reason this semester to manage my time. As a teacher, I don't have a lot of time during the day to do anything but teach! When I get home in the afternoon I'm exhausted, mentally and physically, but I still have work to do. This year at my job I'm really feeling the performance push more than in year's past. Luckily I have a wonderful group of students who don't mind being "pushed" as well.

Anyway, enough of the complaining. Last Thursday our client came to our group meeting to go over some of the content with us and to review the flow of the unit. We discussed a little about how the content would be presented. Our client has a plethora of video from her past visits to Russia, and she would like for us to include as much video as we can. Our group watched a few of the videos. Some are better than others but, as I said, there is a lot of footage, so our client told us that she would have someone who is familiar with the videos go through them and look for the best ones.

We received the full content on Sunday. We decided that instead of meeting on Sunday, our time would be better spent looking through the content individually and making some notes on how we thought it would be delivered best. When we meet again on Thursday we'll discuss our ideas and see if we can start figuring out how to design.

Things coming up: 1) meet with my group and start hashing out some ideas, 2) start working on some documents that are due in the upcoming weeks.

15/5 - September 17, 2008

Last week during our group meeting we took our goals and created tasks to go with them. Then we created a task analysis chart. It didn't take us much time to get it finished, but then we discovered that we were missing a performance objective. We decided to split up the 8 goals, 2 for each person, and each create a performance objective for our respective goals before our next meeting, which was on Sunday night. It took me a while to remember exactly how to correctly write performance objectives. When we got together on Sunday night we all shared what we had come up with. Then we updated the task analysis.

I'm really impressed with the way our group works together. We are all easy going but aren't afraid to speak up and express our opinions when we think something is not working. That's a really good group dynamic to have.

We're still awaiting some of the content from our client so Trudy suggested that we start taking a look at other websites to get some ideas for what we want our design to look like.

Coming up this week: 1) meet on Thursday with my group, 2) look at some sites and get some ideas, 3) start designing?

15/5 - September 10, 2008

This week has been very busy so far, and there are still things to do. I met our client for the first time when she joined our meeting last Thursday. She gave us a lot of material to use for the content. Our ideas started bubbling up, and we were all very excited. It's going to end up being a really fun project with an end result that I think our client will be very pleased with. We decided that with the amount of the material the client gave us we would have to narrow down our objectives in order to focus on a few main points. The content that is left over will be on the site but it won't be in as much detail.

After our client left the meeting we created a survey/questionnaire to give to one of the classes who would potentially become counselors on the Russia trip. The questionnaire contained questions about Russian culture, camp counselor norms, and personal questions on work ethics and interactions with children. The survey was given to the class and then the data was examined. From the data we decided on 6 objectives for our instruction. We also met online as a group to start getting together all of the documents we would need for our analysis phase.

I sort of feel like all of the data gathering and other preliminary stuff that we do is kind of boring (am I allowed to say that?). Maybe boring isn't the right word but I can't think of how to describe it accurately. I would compare it to the months of practicing the piano before the night of the big recital. I find the design and development phases much more enjoyable!

Coming up next week, we will beginning the design phase. We will be closely looking at our content and data and will begin to determine appropriate ways to relay the information to our users.

15/5 - September 3, 2008

I attended my first 6210 class last Thursday and met my group for the first time face-to-face. The first part of class was spent answering questions from and giving tips to the 6190 and 6200 students. I think the other 6210 members and I did a pretty good job of giving them the best tips we could. I remember exactly how overwhelmed I felt on that first day in 6190, which happened to be my first ever grad school class. I'm pretty sure I cried on the way home. Now I'm actually feeling okay about what lies ahead. Yes, it's still overwhelming but I know that it will all get done at the end. What's that old saying about eating an elephant one bite at a time?

Anyhow my group met for a few minutes after class was over and discussed all that we have to get done in the next few weeks. We looked over a website that our client gave us in order to get a better feel for what this Russian summer camp thing was all about. We decided that we needed a little more content from our client, and that we would be giving some of her students a survey/questionnaire in order to complete our analysis. I believe I'm going to be the one to create the actual survey once we get all of the information. I really love organizing information and being able to present it in a pleasant way. As a teacher, I've created many activities using Microsoft Word for my students! On this survey/questionnaire we will be trying to figure out what these students, who are prospective summer camp counselors, already know about Russian culture, history, and camps.

Coming up this next week I'll be meeting with my group again on Thursday in class and on Sunday online and we will be going through the content that our client is sending us and deciding exactly what will be going on the survey. Our original timeline has shifted slightly because we weren't able to get some of the content from the client right away. I think the next few weeks are going to be pretty busy for us. Did I say weeks? I think I meant months!

And, finally, since I talked about my upcoming camping trip in my last 15/5 I couldn't resist sharing some pictures. It was the perfect camping weekend! I promise not to do these off topic rants too much.

15/5 - August 27, 2008

This is my first 15/5 for EDIT 6210. It feels like just yesterday I was the new kid in 6190 who was scared out of her mind listening to these smart 6210 folks talk about how to have a successful studio experience. Tomorrow evening I will be one of those 6210 people...that's so strange to me! I'm definitely not a pro by any means but I do feel as though I've gotten some great experiences so far in my classes. So far my group seems to be moving along nicely. We have a client and are working on starting our task analysis. Our project manager seems to be well prepared and on top of things. Falling behind and getting overwhelmed this semester are two of my big concerns. With the great group we have, though, I don't see that happening. Since I had to miss the first class due to my teacher duties, I'm really looking forward to class tomorrow evening.

Moving forward, here are some things I need to do. 1.) Figure out how to link this blog to our group blog. 2.) Post the jobs for the 6200 members so that they will know what we need them for. 3.) Think about what I'm going to say tomorrow to the other studio members about how to have a successful experience this semester. And finally, this is a personal one 4.) Pack for my camping trip this weekend!