The End!

How bittersweet it is! Here I am at the end of my grad program and feeling a mix of emotions. I'm excited to have my weekends back. No more spending my entire weekend doing school work but on the other hand I've learned a great deal that I don't think I would have been brave enough to learn on my own. This has been an awesome program and I'm so glad I did it. My husband was just reminding me the other night of my first class I took and how I cried almost the entire semester because I didn't think I could do it. Well I did! Embarrassed now by how foolish I was it was a great experience. I've never been more motivated to implement all this cool technology in my classes. I just hope this motivation keeps up to keep exploring more uses of technology. I've had fun using technology to teach with this past year and I know my students have enjoyed it as well. I've done some really cool things from having students create web pages, digital stories, pod-casts and even creating 360 panoramic images to create virtual tours for a class.

I wish my classmates the best of luck and a great end of the semester!

CSS

The Basics of CSS

    When I first looked at csszhengarden.com I thought CSS was like what you do on MySpace with your backgrounds. I though CSS was "templates" others posted for you to use to make your pages personal. Well, while I still see CSS as a way of personalizing your web pages I'm beginning to see that they are not necessarily for public use.

    According to one website http://virtuelvis.com/archives/2005/01/css-history CSS was created in 1994 by a man named Hakon Wium Lie and Bert Bos. However, several before attempted attempted their hand at creating similar products of CSS but it was Lie and Bos's that took off. On another website, http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_intro.asp CSS was created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to deal with the many HTML tags that the different browsers were adding.

    CSS was designed to save time and frustrations when designing multiple web pages for sites. How? Well CSS allows the creator to create just one web page layout and apply that layout to multiple pages of their site. When you want to make a change all you have to do is make the change on your CSS file and the changes are updated automatically on all your pages instead of manually changes each page individually. You would want to use CSS if you have a multiple page site to create a harmonious site with little effort on your part. While CSS is a great time saver, a disadvantage is that older browsers may not display what is in the style tags correctly.

    CSS complies with the ADA by creating Aural and Braille applications. Aural creates screen readers that will talk to the user repeating what is displayed on the screen and Braille applications will transcribe and emboss Braille files.

    Until now I had no clue what CSS was, in fact I'd never heard of it so I did not use CSS on my multiple page site. I went and set my pages up to be identical but I manually did the coding on each page. Now that I know what it is I would use it 1. to create colors and fonts that flowed from page to page, 2. to create an image that would appear on each of my pages, kind of like a trademark symbol and 3. to create page layouts that were identical to make it easier on the viewer.

    I'm still a little shaky on CSS. I understand what CSS is and what it does but I'm still not sure I'm comfortable creating a CSS file. I guess the one question I have is can you create a CSS file using a program that will write HTML for you (like Kompozer) or do you have to write the code yourself (like using word pad)?

 

Sources used:

http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_intro.asp

http://virtuelvis.com/archives/2005/01/css-history

http://csszengarden.com/

 

 

    

Nice & Easy

It was a relief last week to have an assignment that was much easier than the past. I'm pretty comfortable with web building and FTP so there wasn't much research involved this week. That being said, I'm only comfortable with static web design. Creating sites that allow users to leave comments or interact I know nothing about. I wouldn't mind learning about that but at this point in my career I don't think I need to worry with it. I'd be to afraid that if my web page for my classroom allowed students (or parents) to leave comments that they may be inappropriate. Still though, I would someday like to learn to do more than just what I've done on my fairly simple web site.

On another note only a month to go! This is my last semester and I'm so ready to be done. It's been a long, exhausting journey. Last weekend I bought myself lots of new books to read and am looking forward to this summer when I can sit and relax and read something other than educational journals!

HTML...oh my!

So I put this assignment off and off because I thought it was going to be easy. HAHA! I've never wanted to throw my computer across the room more than I wanted to this past weekend. I had done a little dabbling with HTML but that was junior year in my undergrad program (5 years ago). I had forgotten pretty much everything so I was back at square one with learning the ins and outs. Still thinking this wouldn't be to difficult I procrastinated until late afternoon on Saturday and ended up spending my Saturday night still trying to write HTML. After semi-mastering what I was doing I got my page together. However, I don't really see the point. There are so many FREE web building sites that will write the code for you, why is it necessary to learn to write code? And, what is the point to "comments"? I read and read and don't think I understand.

I think I will be sticking with my program I use to build my web site that is free. It's working just fine!

Thoughts About Jing...

So Jing is a great concept BUT I found it really frustrating that you couldn't edit your work before submitting, or saving. I used another similar program in another class that allowed you to capture your work (although now I can't remember the program). If I remember correctly you could do some editing, like you can in Audacity. I must have re-recorded my project 8 times because I kept messing up and having to start over. Anyone else feel this way or know how to edit in case I missed that feature.

Online Classrooms...love 'em or hate 'em?

This last week I have truly learned the benefit of the online classroom. This year our school district joined forces with Southeast MO State University to bring OIS to our district. OIS is basically SEMO's version of blackboard or Moodle (if you've ever used Moodle). It allows a teacher to supplement activities beyond the classroom. Several teachers (mostly our veterans) have complained and refused to use to program. I've been using some of the OIS features but haven't by any means been using it to its full potential. Last week however I was home sick 3 1/2 days with a respiratory infection. It was not fun. Not wanting to let my classes fall 4 days behind I was able to keep my classes going by posting discussions, quizzes and assignments in the OIS system . Because it's web-based what I did at home was instantly available to my students at school. And I was able to get a start on my grading because they submitted their assignments digitally to me. Awesome! I know the students were probably not happy with me but my classes are pretty much on track and I can now continue on with my classes as normal. If I didn't look like death last week I would have considered posting a vodcast for them to watch but I didn't want anyone to see just how lovely I looked last week!

We teachers (especially us high school ones) are constantly out of our classrooms because of conferences, meetings or student trips. I believe the online classroom could also be used in these situations too, not just when sick. Does anyone else have experience with an online classroom? What are your thoughts? Do they belong in secondary, or even elementary, schools?

Confused

So I also forgot to add my Delicious tags to my blog. I've now done that as instructed but I am still not seeing the application working. I've tried going to my classmates blogs and I'm not seeing theirs either. Or I see the icon but then nothing happens. I'm lost. I know we are all technology majors and this should be a seemingly easy thing to do but it seems the easiest task sometimes turns out to be the hardest!