Adding Links to your Web Site Instructional Videos

I have just posted two instructional videos about links.

The first covers Creating a Site Map with Links.

The second discusses Adding Links to Your Web Pages.

Partners For Critiques

Monday Night
Trista Beck/ Michael Bowman
Crystal Clemens/ Cynthia Trainor
Lenore Green-Boyle/ Wade Forbes
Margaret Gunnison/ Deborah Levitt
Karlie Nix/ Laura Robinson
Dorothy Kline/ Jerica Yoas

Tuesday 9:30
Joshua Milne/ Jennifer Becker
Angela Lee/ Patty Bell
Kyndal Coleman/ Timothy Johnson (11 Class)
Amanda Dabney/ Jeffrey Bosarge
Tiffany Crenshaw/ Joe Reddick
Kimberly Segler/ Chasity Wyatt
Brittany Smith/ Shannika Williams
Angela Suter/ Helen Wiles
Stacy Taylor/ Jennifer West

Tuesday 11
Laura Blackman/ Kimberly Wesley
Tiere Bracks/ Virginia Warren
Jennifer Thurgood/ Jeanieve Burroughs
Alesha Campbell/ Jimmie Sunday
Lawrence Campbell/ Christy Smithweck
Rachelle CArlberg/ Brooke Smith
Inky Fagbongbe/ Elizabeth Sharp
Sarah Horsley/ Emmett Proudfoot
Ashley Johnson/ Amy Mosley
Timothy Johnson/ Kendal Coleman (9:30 Class)

Tuesday 2
Erin Bates/ Leslie Newton
Mozhgan Bayatpour/ Jessica White
Maria Beck/ Terri Onderdonk
Shannon Beck/ Angela Petry
Emily Forsyth/ Corey Roberts
Matthew Kemp/ Lawanda Stanton
Alfoncer Watson/ Sara Jones
Alexander White/ Marcia Lyles



You must email your partner and provide them with the address of your blog. AND you must send me a copy of that email (strange.john@gmail.com) ALSO include your Gmail address and ask them for their Gmail address. You will need to use Gmail addresses when making someone a Viewer of your DOC. If they use an address other than a Gmail account, use that address as a Viewer AS WELL AS their Gmail address. To do this:
1. Sign in to Google
2. Go to pages.google.com
3. Copy your web site address (in blue at top of Page Manager)
4. Go to the Class Blog
5. Click on your class.
6. Click on your partner's name to go to their blog.
7. Place your mouse pointer over on their Email-Me link
At the lower left corner you will see their email address. Copy it down and use in your email to them. If this is NOT a gmail address, ask them for their gmail address.
8. Write a note to them and include the address of your web site (in memory)
9. Put strange.john@gmail.com in the CC area
10. Send

If you have not heard from your partner by Thursday night, email ME!

Additional Changes to Syllabus

1. Google Talk; Google Maps; Google World; Other Google Tools scheduled to be covered in Week 11 have been postponed indefinitely. Watch for future instructions.

2. Web site Critiques are now due Monday March 24 or Tuesday March 25.

3. In Week 11 we will cover more on DOCS and introduce Google Spreadsheets (using them as Databases). The database project will be due in Week 12 (March 24 or 25). This is NOT a change (but it is a clarification) to the syllabus.

4. DRAFT Trifolds will now be due March 31 or April 1. Final Trifolds will be due April 7 or April 8. This is a change to a previously made change to the syllabus.

4. Videos on DOCS and Spreadsheets as Databases will be posted later this week (Week 11).

5. Additional Blog assignments will be posted later this week.

Critiques of Web Sites

Each class member will be assigned a partner whose site you are to review. It should be a genuine critique, not a "it looks great" statement. You will want to consider all of these questions (and hopefully others that you think of) when you do your critique.

1. Does the web site work?
2. How complete is it?
3. Is there a complete site map that works?
4. Are the links all working?
5. Are the links on every page?
6. Are they the the best links for that page?
7. Do they work?
8. It the text appropriate to the picture displayed?
9. Are the words in the text correctly spelled?
10. Is the grammar correct?
11. Does the Source show when your mouse is over the picture (will last approximately five seconds)?
12. Does the web site look nice?
13. What might the author do in the remaining five weeks to improve the site?

You should write your critique using Google DOCS. Make sure that I am included as a Viewer. Use this email: strange.john@gmail.com for me.

I will post a movie on how to use DOCS later this week.

If you are absent, a list of "partners" will be posted later this week.

Additional iGoogle Instructional Videos

Publish All Pages and Set the Correct Index Page
Two reminders that are important as you near the completion of you draft web site are contained in this video. Click to watch!

Add ALT and TITLE Modifiers to all IMG Tags in Web Site
You must add ALT and TITLE modifiers to all IMG tags in your web site. For a video review of how to do this, CLICK HERE.

RSS Feeds

Need help in understanding RSS and in thinking about how to use RSS yourself and in your classes? CLICK HERE to watch my instructional video about RSS Feeds.

Be sure to add Google Reader to your iGoogle page and to subscribe to the class blog!

iGoogle Instructional Movie

Need help in developing your iGoogle project? CLICK HERE to watch my instructional video about iGoogle.

Next Week (March2)

Web Site - Links
We will add navigation links to your web site. Be prepared!

Trifolds
Bring the material you gathered when you visited your classroom. You will need it to start your trifold brochure.

Week 8 - Topics Covered

Web Site Development
First, we had a session of directed lab work where I looked at the progress you are making on your web site and tried to answer questions. You should be moving toward having all of you pages created with a picture and text on every page. Do not change the Headers at this time. Do not try to add links (navigation) until after the class next week where links will be covered.

iGoogle Page and RSS Feeds
I covered the development of iGoogle Pages. This is one of the projects you must do. A complete instructional video podcast will be available early next week (if my new program to do this works. Otherwise you will have text instructions).

The same hold true for RSS Feeds.

Check back soon.

Changes to Syllabus

Week 8 (February 25,26,28) Supervised Web Work; RSS Feeds; Google Reader
Week 9 Due Date for Draft of Web Site Changed to Week 11 (after Spring Break)
Week 11 Due Date for Draft of TriFold changed to Week 12
Week 12 Due Date for Final Version of Trifold Changed to Start of Week 13

Other changes may follow

Instructions for HTML Tag Modifiers Covered Mon 2/18 and Thur 2/21

See the link Required Tag Modifier Instructions under Important Links. Currently I have published version 3 (last revised at 10:45 am 2/21).

Class Photographs - An Exhibit

We will have an exhibit of photographs taken by members of my EDM 310 classes this term (and previously as well), including photographs by Mrs. Griffin and me.

If you are interested in participating, bring me your pictures. If they are unframed, or even not yet printed, I will take them from there and prepare them for hanging. If you have them ready to hang, just bring them to me.

This should be fun!

Thanks,

John Strange

Cleaning Up Picasa For Public Lab Use

1. Open Picasa
2. Under Tools Menu, select Folder Manager
3. You will see some folders in a box on the lower right. For each item in that box, click on it in the LEFT hand box. Then click the Scan Once button. Picasa can be set to “watch” folders and automatically put them into Picasa. That is great on your own computer, but VERY INEFFICIENT in a Public Lab!
4. Every time you do this you will be returned to the main Picasa window. Repeat until all items have been removed from the right hand box (the folders “watched.”
5. Now we will remove all folders already imported into Picasa. This is done by clicking on a folder and then going to the Folder Menu. Remove from Picasa … After answering Yes a number of times, the folder will be removed from Picasa (the pictures are still on the computer, however). Do this until there are no folders shown on the left side of Picasa.
6. Now insert your pen drive.
7. Under the File menu, Import From … or just click the Import button.
8. In the upper left, click the Select Device button.
9. Navigate to your pen drive.
10. You will see a list of all the images on your pen drive. In a Public Lab, it is best to select ONLY the images you want in Picasa. On your own computer, import them all but be sure and select Exclude Duplicates in the lower left corner of the window.
11. REMEMBER TO BRING YOIR PEN DRIVE TO CLASS. You will be stuck without it!

Instructions on putting Picasa on your computer at home can be found on the Class Blog.

Several Additions to Important Links

Be sure to look at the additions to the Important Links area on the right side of this blog.

Picasa Instructions

1. You will need Picasa on your computer. It is free. It is from Google. To get Picasa, click here to go to the Picasa web site. Download Picasa.
2. Picasa is a program that organizes your photographs and provides tools to manipulate your images. In this class you may use all of the tools available in Picasa, but you will be especially interested in these tools:
a. ROTATE - in case you picture is sideways or upside down.
b. CROP – used to eliminate parts of the image you do not need or want to include.
c. STRAIGHTEN - This tool really helps! It does what it says. And many time your picture was not taken on the level. Or at least mine aren't!
d. CONTRAST – bump it up and see what happens to the way your picture looks. It will probably be better. You can bump up the CONTRAST several times if you want. Any changes you make to your picture (those listed above and all others) can be easily removed. You will see the button that does that when you look at the Picasa page.You can add other changes as well but they will be covered later.
e. EXPORT to a specific size (storage and physical size set in one procedure.

3. Things to remember when using Picasa:
a. Make sure you have a copy of your pictures BEFORE you start working in Picasa. If you take your own pictures, Picasa will want to “import” your images from your camera or card reader. It will also offer to erase those images. DO NOT DO THIS. Quit Picasa and copy your images to a permanent location (on a CD, or a separate hard drive, anywhere safe). Then reopen Picasa. Picasa will copy your pictures to a folder. You will be asked to name the folder and select the location where it will be stored. Pay attention to the default location so you can find your folder. Or better yet, on your personal computer, put the folder where you want it. Picasa organizes images into Albums and Folders. They are shown on the left of the Picasa screen. Albums are arranged by the earliest date of an image imported at a specified time. You can also create your own albums and folders within Picasa. Remember these are merely organizing tools of Picasa and do not represent “real” albums or folders on your hard drive.
b. You can select pictures to be part of a group. You will do this when you Export your pictures to redo their size (the major task you must accomplish before you can start working on your web site). There are several methods
i. Star a picture by clicking on the Star button on the bottom of the Picasa page. It will automatically be placed in a folder called star. Then you can select all the images in the star folder.
ii. Control click more than one picture After selecting in this way you can Export.
iii. Hold pictures. This is often the best technique. Select an image. Click Hold at the bottom of the Picasa window. This puts a small image of the picture in the “Holding Tray” at the bottom of the window. You can then review the “held” pictures, click (Control Click) the images you want. Then Export.
c. EXPORT
i. This is the command you use to export your images AFTER you have worked on your images. When you export, set the size to 480 and leave the setting “Automatic” alone. This will reduce the size of your images for the web. Select the images to be exported using the techniques described above. Click the Export button at the bottom of the window. You will be asked to name the folder to which you want to export the images. I suggest naming it “reduced???” (you replace ??? with your word!). Make sure you place that folder on your pen drive. Now you are ready to begin placing the images in this folder on your web site pages.

Web Site Examples

Here are some selected examples of web sites created in the Fall 2007 semester. HOWEVER my goals for your web site this term are much higher. The Google based sites done last semester were the first Google based sites that had been developed in my EDM310 classes. I want your sites to be better than these were! You should be excited by your site. My hope is that you will not only do it as a "project" for this class but that you will also want to continue to use and improve it even after this class has been completed.

Click on the names to see that student's web site.

Kailey Aaron
Richard Ellisor
Monarica Foreman
Danielle Herrman
Kristen Shepherd
Paige Wade
Kimberly Piburn

Word Processing - Tools To Help You Learn What You Don't Already Know

General Word Processing Help

CLICK HERE to download a Word Processing Practice Sheet. It explains how to do many of the things you are required to know.

Header and Footer

Follow the instructions in the Header Footer Handout. CLICK HERE to get the Header Footer Handout.

Tabs

Follow the instructions in the Working With Tabs handout. CLICK HERE to get the Working With Tabs handout.

Preparing For Your Classroom Visit to Gather Material for Trifold Brochure

You will need some pictures for your trifold brochure:
1. A picture of the teacher whose class you visit.
2. A picture of you and the teacher together.
3. A picture of the school.
4. A picture of the classroom. If children are present, do not show faces in your picture.
5. Other pictures, images or graphics as appropriate.

Your trifold brochure should be considered as an "advertisement" brochure for the class you visit. If technology plays a role in the classroom, you must include that in the brochure. Think of your teacher as your client. Assume she (or he) has hired you to do a promotional brochure for their class. Maybe they want to raise money for more technology, or tell others about the great things that are happening in their classes. Work with them to plan and design your brochure. Interview the teacher. Get quotes that you may want to sue. Or pictures of student projects, etc.

You should make your visit during the next two weeks. I am delaying the final submission of the trifold one week. It is time to get started. If you need to borrow a camera, just let me know.

Getting Started With Your Web Site

1. PLAN. It is essential that you plan your web site. Create a storyboard with one page for every page in your site. In the upper right corner name each page. Follow these rules: use only letters and numbers. No spaces! No weird characters. ONLY letters and numbers.Identify the picture or pictures you will place on each page. It is usually best to limit the number of pictures to one or two per page. Make notes about what text you will be adding. Create a header for each page. Think about the links that will be on each page. This requires you to think about how you will organize your site. An outline helps!

2. Get you pictures together on your pen drive. Name them appropriately. Follow the same rules for naming your pages: use only letters and numbers. No spaces! No weird characters. ONLY letters and numbers.

3. Using Picasa (or Photoshop or Elements if you already know how to use Photoshop or Elements), prepare your pictures. You may want to rotate your pictures, crop them, enhance them with the many tools available in Picasa. But you MUST export them to reduce their storage size. When we use the word "size" with images, we can mean two different things (but they are related). Size can mean the PHYSICAL size of an image, usually expressed in inches (in the United States) or dpi (pixels per inch). Generally we use 72 dpi as the goal for images that will be displayed on screens. Size can also mean the storage space required on a storage device for an image. Our goal is to keep our images under 150 Kb. If you View your files using the Details option under the View menu you can immediately see the storage size of the image and the physical size expressed in pixels. On a Mac you would use the middle choice for displaying file information.

In Picasa, select the images you will be using. EXPORT them to a folder which indicates they are the ones you will use in your project. Set them to be exported at a width of 480 pixels and automatic compression. This will result in the pictures being appropriately sized for storage AND physical placement on your web page. It is important that these "resized" images be placed in a special folder so that your original images will not be overwritten.

3. Sign in to your Google account. Go to pages.google.com. The first time you do this, scroll to the bottom of the page and accept the terms. Then click the link to start your web site. You will arrive at a page which is a "starter" page. Find the link (upper left) to the Site Manager. The Site Manager in GooglePages is equivalent to Dashboard in Blogger.

4. The most important thing to remember from the material covered in class is that every time you create a new page you should IMMEDIATELY put in the name of your page following the rules specified above. Google asks you to insert the "title" of your page. DO NOT follow Google's instructions. Instead, follow my instructions and insert the NAME of your page as you have determined it.

5. Before class on Thursday (Monday class - proceed with adding pictures and text to your pages as specified below), you should concentrate on setting the Layout and the Look. Bring your pictures to class on Thursday!

6.After you have used Picasa to reduce the size of your pictures (we will cover this Thursday), begin to place your pictures and your text on each page. Do not attempt to add links at this stage. It will be much easier later when you are absolutely sure about the organization of your site. I would also avoid changing the Header at this time. Leave it as the name of your page for the time being. It will be easier if you change to your real header at a later date.

7. Be sure you know the source of your picture. You will have to add that later.

8. Call or email me if you have questions.

No Classes Thursday -- Bring Web Site Plans Tuesday

Classes will NOT meet this Thursday. This is one of the two days that are being substituted for your visit to a classroom in order to gather material for your trifold brochure.

More information will be distributed next Tuesday regarding those visits.

You should bring your web site plans and at least some of the pictures you intend to use with you next Tuesday when we will begin to learn how to create a web site using Google Pages.

Continue to monitor this Blog for additional information that I intend to post.

Happy Mardi Gras!