Alyssa’s Blog

This week I feel that I have accomplished quite a lot.  First off, I decided that I need to organized my page a little better so I added categories, which act as my mini pages.  The first category is cool facts, which is a new idea I had come up with.  I decided that I wanted to have posts on my advisor’s page so each day in class I find a fact about todays present day in history and find out some facts about that day in the past.  The second category is fun stuff; this page is where my widgets are located.  On this page you will find all different types of facts about history.

Some things you should check out on my page are my new voki that I added.  This voki welcomes readers to my advisor’s page.  Another thing that you should check out is my usability center; it’s actually pretty cool.  This center has two links, one links you to a text only page and another links you to an audio page where you can play the posts and listen to them.

Since next week is the last week, I plan on putting my finishing touches up on my page.  I will continue to write posts about cool things in history about each day.  Also, I will try to find some new images to add to my pages.

Long term goals aren’t really any because the project is one week until completion.  I will basically just be working on finishing my project and working on the areas that need work.

I think that overall this was a really good week and I worked hard.

The week of May 12-16 I have made some progress on my advisor’s site.  I searched for videos on teach tube; I felt  by adding a video would spice up the page a bit and it would be something for visitors to do when the come to the site.  I also tried adding some widgits, but there seemed to be a little confusion with that.  I added a history widget, but it didn’t show so I took it off.  One widgit that I got to work on the page was a clock, even though the time is wrong.

There was nothing really special to check out or listen to on my advior’s page because this week I really just messed around with the widgets.  Although there is nothing to check out of my advisor’s page, I got a new header on my page which is pretty cool.

Next week I plan on adding a teacher tube video and creating an image for my side bar in paint.

My long term goals include adding more depth to my pages and making it more complete as the days go by to make my advisor’s website the best page it could be.

This week I don’t feel like I have progressed much on my advisors blog.  Monday I worked on my advisor’s blog.  Tuesday we learned how to add the audio to our page and Wednesday we learned how to add the chart to our portfolio page.  Since I was out on Thursday and Friday I feel that I did not progress well on my advisor’s blog.

Something that I did get the opportunity to add to my advisors blog that I hope the audience gets to check out is the teacher tube video.  I also worked in paint and added a picture of the statue of liberty.

This week I plan on adding polls to my website.  I remember that last week Mr. Stengel said that we will learn how to add polls to our blogs.  I think that this will make my blog more interactive with my readers.  I still need to add more widgets to my page and get in contact with my advisor because I haven’t heard from her.  So that is on my short term goals, to go see my advisor this week or e-mail her.

My long term goal is still to develop a well blog for my advisor.  I still feel that I have a lot to add to this page because I have not been able to progress much in the last week.  It is a very hectic time of the year and I hope that my blog becomes to be more complete in the next week or two.

Some thoughts that I have are that I need to work harder and stop procrastinating.  I feel that if I work hard and focus this week that I can get the job done.

On Monday I worked on my advisors blog and on Tuesday I added the audio on my page.  This audio page was placed underneath the text only link.  When visiting this page, you can hear my entries speaking out loud by a sound voice.  I thought it was pretty interesting how it translated my website into audio.

In the middle of the week, I created a chart to add to my portfolio page.  This chart contains work that I have done in the class so far this year.  I think that creating the chart would be useful for future use.  It helped me work more with the code side of the posts.  On my chart I added my brochure in publisher, my advisors website, and my project progress page.

I was not in class on Thursday and Friday.  I think that on Thursday there was a sub, so the class worked on their advisor’s pages and I think there was a tutorial on Friday from what I remember what Mr. Stengel said.

Overall,  I think that even though I was not in for the end of the week, I understand more about my website from adding the audio and the chart to my page.

This week in class we learned how to create a Google calender.  From learning how to create a Google calender, I put up an athletic calender on my own page.  I will try to keep up with this calender and write when I have hockey games, when I will go to the gym and when I will go running at the track.  I also plan on creating a Google calendar for my advisor.

Something else that I did this week was mess around with the widgets.  I explored the widgets and looked around for widgets for my advisor’s page.  I e-mailed my advisor and talked to her about widgets, but I still haven’t heard anything from her.  I created a page for widgets, but the widgets weren’t working so I deleted the page.

On Friday I added two new things to my advisor’s page.  First, I found a picture of the Statue of Liberty and I put it in paint and adjusted it to the size I wanted it.  Then I got the html code and put it on my advisor’s page in a side bar.  Also, I checked out the teacher tube and explored for videos.  I found a video that has something to do with history, and then Mr. Stengel showed me how to put the video on the page.

This week I worked on the content of my advisors page.  I added an American flag as my image header, I felt that this was appropriate for the image header because my advisor teachers history.  I also created four pages; FAQ, About Me, Schedule, and Contact page.  I met with Ms. Liberman on Friday after school and worked on these pages, except for the schedule page.

I decided the Mandigo page for Ms. Liberman’s blog because I have experience working with it.  I like how you can have more than one side bar and how I can select an image header.  This theme is open to having a lot on your page which will be useful.

I don’t really have anything that is important to look at or listen to on my advisor’s page.  Maybe if you want you can look at the content or  layout of the page.

Next week I plan on working on the home page maybe by adding more widgets.  I will also add more details to the other pages that I have on my advisor’s page.  I also plan on maybe adding a voki this week and adding the five widgets that we are suppose to.

My long term goals for this project are to create a page that my advisor will like and that will benefit to others.  I can’t really think of anything else right now, but I’m sure over time I will think of more long term goals for my project.

Earlier this week we learned how to add something that we created in paint to our blog.  I made something and put it on my page, but then I took it off.  Although I took it off, I think that this is something useful to add to a blog.  You can have text or an image, which is a good way to get a message out or let the audience know what your blog is about.

Throughout the week I worked on my blog.  To be completely honest, this week was a little hectic and I didn’t get the chance to talk to my advisor as much as I would have expect to.  One thing I learned this week from working on my advisor’s blog was that certain themes cannot have more than one side bar.  By learning this, I decided to choose the Mandigo theme because I feel more experienced with that theme and I like working with it.

Yesterday in class we had to read an article on widgets.  From reading this article I have learned a few things.  I learned that MySpace is part of Fox Interactive Media, which had bought Photobucketfor $300 million.  I find this interesting because I have used Photobucket to place photos on and get codes to add to my MySpace page in the past.  After reading this, I also learned that Yahoo and Google also have their own widgets.

In class today we had received our grades for our April blog entries.  From reading the comment that Mr. Stengel had left me about the title I enabled the shading around the title.  I didn’t know how to do this until I asked Kayleigh and she helped me find it.  Thanks Kayleigh!

Earlier in the week we learned how to add the text only link to our blog.  This page contains no graphics and is simply contains edublog material with just text.  The benefit of having the text only link on our page is to have the text laid out for readers who are interested in looking at text only.  For example, on my page I have a voki and when you click on the text only box the voki wont show on the site.  It will have just text which contains the code that I used to put my voki on my page.

Throughout the week I have been talking to my advisor, Ms. Liberman.  I am helping her create a edublog for her history classes.  We have been e-mailing each other a few times this week.  I sent her my ten questions and she will be sending me the answers soon.  I also met with her this week because she had trouble logging in.  The trouble with her logging in happened to be she thought the letter L was the number 1.

This week I started to begin to work on Ms. Liberman’s blog.  I haven’t done too much, but I have created a few pages, but not put any text on the pages.  Some of the pages that I have created for her are about me, frequently asked questions, and a schedule page which will contain what classes she has and the times of the classes.  I also have set the theme as Mandingo, since I liked working with this theme with my own page.  I hope to see more progress with my ad-visors page with in the next week.

Yesterday in class we learned about user access.  We used this website  and I learned how to add someone to my blog as an administrator.  By adding someone as another administrator it allows them to have access to all the administration features.  From reading this page, I also had learned about editors, authors, contributors and subscribers.  This reading has given me a better understanding of roles on my blog.

Overall I think this was a pretty good week.  I plan on creating more depth on my advisors page next week and I plan on to keep learning more things to use with my page.