samanthajc

This past week we learned how to put a web 2.0 application into a text widget.  This is just fancy talk for, we learned how to add an animation to our blogs!  The animation is called a voki, and they are characters you personally create to simply welcome you to your website.  It was a nice, fun little break from doing actual work on our blogs.

We recently had to read a few articles about how the internet is potentially harmful to teens or others in general.  I found most of it a bunch of crud, because I do not think the internet has that much negative effect on people.  It is the people that are acting negatively, using the internet incorrectly as a means to satisfy whatever terrible ideas they have in mind.

Also, GOOD NEWS! The class has finally started working on our big project, creating a website for the school that people can actually use!  The website I am creating is a school store for the athletic department, which I have decided to name THE LION’S DEN, seeing how our mascot for Foran is a lion and all! Buttttttttt we haven’t gotten too far, so ill update my blog as I progress with the new website.

Kurt, Dean, and I completed our photostory tutorial.  I would like to say that it was actually pretty interesting how we created it using the encoder program. 

I am glad to have learned this new way of making presentations on the computer, and for the most part I think our tutorial came out alright.  We could have done better, but it is still good.

(04/04/08)

This week was a short week because we had Monday off of school, which was great because I cannot stand my school.  In Online Communications, we have been discussing more about our tutorials and how to make a good one. 

We have learned the basic steps of using the Microsoft Encoder.  This nifty program has the ability to memorize every movement you make with your mouse.  This is useful when you want to show some one how to do something and have them watch your every step.  In my case, this is great tool to create a straightforward, well made tutorial.

I had also learned that this tutorial is due soon, which scares me a little bit.  Out tutorial is not quite finished yet, and I am a little nervous that we will not have enough time in school, and it will be difficult to split up the work between the group for outside of school.  Hopefully my group and I will pick up the pace a bit and get ourselves back on track to finish our Photostory tutorial.  So…GOOD LUCK TO MY GROUP!

Manon is the lovely girl that sits next me in this class.  She is a big help with my blog when I have any questions, and I really appreciate her help.  Not only that, but shes fun to talk too!!!!!!!!! If you would like to also, just click Manon!

(04/01/08) HAPPY APRIL FOOLS! 

This past week we started our tutorial webpages.  To start, we were put into four groups, mine is group number three and it consists of Kurt, Dean, and I.  We decided that we are going to create a tutorial for Photostory so that Joseph A. Foran High School students have another option for creating projects besides Powerpoint and Windows Movie Maker.  Photostory is an easy way to create videos or stories that one can record on the computer.  We started by adding helpful sites, like google, and then started the actual writing of the tutorial.  We did not get that far, but thats what this whole next week is for.

(03/24/08)

Last week, I learned nothing.  I was sick and out of school for two days, and Mr. Stengel was out another day, so that little time I was actually in school really had no importance because there was nothing new to learn for my blog.

(03/16/08)

This past week, we changed the look of our website.  We changed the theme and were able to put in our own personal image, of basically whatever we wanted.  My image is kind of odd, I just like all the colors and abstractness of the image.  We activated more plugins, I changed the subtitle to something a little more original, even though its not too original.  Also, I came up with ten questions that I am going to ask Mr. Vitali concerning the online school store for the athletic department.  I spoke with him and we are planning to meet one day in the future and discuss the website.

(03/09/08)

This past week, I tried to upload my technology autobiography onto the blog, but for some reason it did not work.  I tried on numerous occassions and on numerous computers, but yet I could not fix the problem.  I now know that alot of people had issues uploading their videos, so I am not too worried about it.  During the week we just messed around with our blogs and learned how to add websites to our google reader.  Besides that I did not really learn too much.

P.S.       

This post was created on the 9th, but I did not publish it I guess until today, the 17th of March.

 (03/02/08)

This week in online communications I learned how to get started on making my own personal website.  I learned that we are creating these websites so that we can teach the teachers at our school, Joseph A. Foran High School, how to use edublogs so that in the future they can use this website with their students.  So far I have learned that using hotmail as your email source does not work too well with this website.  Hotmail considers this website as junk, or does not send the emails at all.  In order for this to work, I have recently created a gmail account, scsapilla@gmail.com.  After creating my new email, I was then able to activate my blog with the password they sent to my gmail.  Seeing how the password they send you is difficult to remember, I figured out how to change the password to something I will always remember.  I learned how to pick a theme so that my website is a little more personal and more interesting to look at; I choose the blue bird.  I also learned how to add to my sidebar.  I added recent posts, archives, google search, edublogs search, and categories to the sidebar.  After browsing the website, I learned how to add a plugin and activate the Advanced Editor which adds more styling options to my WYSIWYG (what you see if what you get) post editor, like font color, special characters, copy from word, etc.  I learned how to create, edit, save and publish a post also, which is obvious because this would not be here if I hadn’t.  And basically this is as far as I went because I did not learn what to do next.  As for next week, that is a whole different story and I am sure I will learn more ways to improve my edublogs website.