Project Four Independent Learning Technology Post Three

For my third post I will talk about Spruz.com. We were required to make out webpage about our topic on Spruz.com. Our group along with many other groups experienced problems with this domain. Beginning with the very first step of getting a membership to this website. Some people, including myself, had to try numerous times to submit a log in and password to gain access to this website. After acquiring a membership I then set up my personal profile, this is where I talked about my self and the reasons in why I decided to pick to discuss the topic of commercialization of children. AFter creating my personal profile we were to post our own individual blog post about a specific part of our topic. During this step I experienced difficulties when going to submit my blog post. After completing my blog post, I clicked the submit button, the next page was an error page, when I went back to try and re submit my post the post was deleted completely and not automatically saved. After finally posting my blog post we were to replay to another group members blog post, at this step I did not experience any problems. After this step we were to as group come up with the mission statement and welcome note for out website. Also in class we decided to change the theme of our webpage. There were some slight difficulties when trying to post both the mission statement and welcome note, but they were fixed shortly. The domain or Spruz.com also operated very slowly. Pages took forever to load, pages had to be refreshed constantly.

Project Four Independent Learning Technology Post Two

For my second log post I will tai about my specific component I talked about on our webpage. I decided to talk about the commercialization of children through food products. How people overlook the issues that this causes. In today's world parents replace babysitters with television. Today children are watching more t.v. then ever before, and the numbers continue to increase over the years. Since the television is now spending time with children rather then people, who could be playing with children and teaching them things, they are occupied by programs that attract their attentions. this is where the media strikes. Based on the tv shows the children watch the media decides where to play certain commercials that appeal to specific crows. The commercials played during children shows, typically appeal to children. Commercials for children also involve children. This is because if children see other children on television doing certain things, they as well will want to do those things. This is how the media sell their products. They are making children and entire class of consumers, not only now but also for later. Soon these children will be growing up, and as they grow up they are further influenced by the media. We need to protect the values of childhood. We need to prevent the increasing problems, such as the rise of child obesity, and get children involved in more knowledgeable activities.

Project Four Independent Learning Technology Post One

For my first blog post I will talk about the topic my group had decided to pick for project four. For this project, we were again divided into groups. In these groups we were to select a prominent issue in todays world. An issue that we are personally interested in and want to discuss. For my group we chose the topic of the commercialization of children. We thought that the commercialization of children is a growing issue in the US, and that it does not receive enough awareness. Our main goal was to spread the awareness of this uprising problem. We talked about six different aspects of the commercialization of children, and how each one of these aspects are a part of the problem. While researching out own topic we were also required to complete an assignment, which was creating a webpage for the groups issue. The webpage should provide certain information that discussed the groups specific topic. We thought that the commercialization of children is important because now a days the television is such an important factor in our world. If children are being apart of media, it can potentially cause problems within our younger generations. We thought that by trying to spread awareness we would be able to stop this upcoming issues.

Project Three: Independent Learning Technology Post Five

For my last process blog post I will talk about my opinion about this project. For this project we were required to work in a group, in college group projects tend to be a little more difficult or more stressful. Also working with a group and with a new program was a little tricky. I did like how we were able to communicate through the  separate forum groups on sakai to converse with my group members. For group projects though, being able to work together in class is crucial. There was a good amount  time for class work provided, but it college things tend to move ten times faster. I liked working with Wordpress, although frustrating at times it was interesting to learn the different components of the website. Learn how to make a website and change the entire format of a pre existing website. Being able to analyze poor websites was also interesting because you were actually able to get a good look at how many horrible websites are out there. Before this class I would have over looked all the negative aspects of the website and just looked for the information I was searching for. I didn't realize how much better the website would be if it just provided the audience with the information they were looking for. This what we tried to do when redesigned Kingston Pizza website, redesign the site based on the information that an audience member would be interested in.

Project Three: Independent Learning Technology Post Four

For my fourth post for this project, where we had to use the website wordpress.com I will talk about the  components of the website that I was unfamiliar with. First with when working with Wordpress, I was unfamiliar with the theme selection process. As a group member I took it upon myself to start designing our website for the redesign of Kingston Pizza, the first step in that process would be to pick out a theme for the web page. The selection was narrowed because some of themes needed to be purchased to be used. I decided to pick a rather simplistic theme because for a pizza place we thought that as group, the webpage didn't need to be cluttered with any extra information or "stuff". After picking the theme, working with editing all the aspects of the theme was different for me and for us as a group.  To make the webpage represent our idea of our redesign we started editing all the basic components, before adding in all the information actually needed for the website. The basics involved changing the title of the webpage, also adding a sub title, fixing the color schemes of the pages, assigning tabs the proper labels, and adjusting page measurements. while trying to find the editing option for the basics I was able to find all of the listed above along with some other components of the webpage where we would need to go back into to add information. Being unfamiliar with the website was time consuming and sometimes frustrating. Eventually were we able to edit all of the basic components of the webpage and also add in all the information we decided to include in the redesign. When adding in information and picture there were certain parts that we needed to fix after the first upload. For example, after uploading information we had to adjust the alignment of the text and the pictures so that they would align correctly with the rest of the page. By working and adding information to Wordpress, each member of the group was able to explore the program and learn how it works.

Project Three: Independent Learning Technology Post Three

For my thirst post for project three, I'm going to talk about the components of our website. Our redesigned website for Kingston Pizza. We decided to arrange our information in a  number of page tabs. The tabs were the home page, the menu tab, the location tab, a tab for URI, and the about us tab. We thought as a group these tabs appropriately displayed the information included. We thought the original website had to much going on, there was too much information for a pizza website. We narrowed the information and only displayed the information we thought the website needed. We edited the about me section the most. For a pizza place all the background knowledge about the website is not what the audience is looking for. For the menu tab we decided to take the uploaded picture of the menu out, and write out the menu. The uploaded menu was unclear and some items on the menu were unreadable. It was hard to make out most of the items. Our menu consisted of all the items, prices, and descriptions. The URI tab consisted of deals offered to URI students, and information about kingston pizza for URI, also had picture of the Kingston Pizza mascot actively involved with students.
The locations tab had all of the locations of kingston pizza along with the addresses and phone numbers. The home page had Kingston Pizzas' main location information, which is located on the URI campus. Also a picture of some pizza for attraction for the audience. The home page was very basic, but we wanted to get straight to the point. The main goal of a pizza places website should be to gain more costumers, not over crowd your website with information they are not interested in.

Project Three: Independent Learning Technology Post Two

For project three as a group and an individual we were required to use the program Wordpress. Generally I got a hold of how to work the website but there were also a few confusing elements. There were also restrictions on certain elements in the site since we are using the program for free. Another one of the problems we were having as a group was dealing with the pictures we wanted to add to the site. It was difficult working with word press in this case because we weren't able to get the spacing and the sizing correct for the pictures. We tried many different things to try to get the image on the home page to a certain size and were unable to edit the format. All we were able to do was adjust the alignment of the picture to either the left, right, or center. Unfortunately we were unable to depict the design we wanted but the design we decided on we thought was the best for the settings we were given. Adding pictures to certain tabs and pages took some playing around with. It would have been better if we were able to adjust a picture to the background but the program didn't offer us that option. It either offered for one picture to be in the background stationed in the left corner of the page and stretched to as big as the original picture, or it offered the option to block the image which made many duplicates of the image as the background. As a group we did not think that blocked imaging looked good for our website.

Project Three : Independent Learning Technology One

For project three we were put into groups, and in the groups we were to decide on a website that needed help in redesigning. We chose Kingston Pizza and redesigned the website on a program called Word Press. With word press there were some difficulties. Since we were using this program for free we were not able to pick the theme that we would have liked to. With the theme we picked we were limited on the font style and color, which was a problem since it didn't rely the exact image we wanted to show our audience. It was difficult to figure out where to put certain words, and when we were able to figure out what wording went where, it was set to a certain font and size that we could not change. For example in the heading, the Kingston Pizza, we deliver on time heading we were un able to change the size of the font, we wanted a bigger font and wanted to be able to make the Kingston Pizza and the We Deliver On Time different sizes and colors. This theme limited us to not be able to do so. We had to keep the size provided and the sentences had to be the same color. It would have been nice to make certain words, tabs, and heading different colors but keep the same overall font for the page, but we made due with what we had.

Response to readings By: Lance Bennett and Danah Byod

Bennett's article talks about the changes in citizenship styles over the past few years. He talks about how children now a days and people now a days are less motivated by a sense of civic duty, referring to being motivated my their own self accomplishment then in the past. I feel like this statement is somewhat true, you do see more people now a days wanting a reward for completing an assignment rather then completing it for their own personal feeling of success. He argues that becoming an effective citizen comes from being in a formal setting such as a school and a type of education. The article also talks about what schools do for the growth of an individual and how it helps them. Then Bennett talks about informal learning environments for the youth where they can receive the same lessons of civic learning. 
The second article by Byod starts off by talking about youth and their involvement in social media website like Facebook, and how they are important to the world wide web. Then the author talks about how these social networking sites attract young mind when advertising information to their interests, typically information not relating to what shapes and motivates a citizen. Political information when put on these social networking sites does not attract as many young individuals as some thought. Byod talks about how social networking sites mirror and magnify how our society really is, showing us that our society is "status-obsessed and narcissistic". Byod also states this following statement, "perhaps we need to focus on the causes of alienation and disillusionment that stop people from participating in communal and civic life."  This statement is probably the most important sentence in the article I believe, because, many people try to focus on other things that people hope to come true or work, rather than the reality of how it actually is involved in our society.

 These two articles talk about the youth and the involvement in citizenship, and how it is not what it used to be. How youth now a days are more consumed in different situations and information then to be concerned with the important factors that a citizen should be aware of. Situations that are important in this society, and information individuals should know. 

Independent Learning Technology Project Two Post Five

For my fifth post I will talk about how well I believe I contributed to the Wikitravel page on New Milford, CT. I believe that adequately contributed to the site, providing new information that was not previously contributed. Also, I was able to restate and confirm already existing information. I also believe there is more information about my town that I did forget to mention. After looking back on it I realized that there is so many different things that appeals to many different people. I also did realize that other information will be self discovered when visiting the town, so I did not want to seem over barring when describing my town, I wanted to offer the basics plus a little more. I did not want to state every little detail about New Milford, and from living there I know just by traveling around town one is able to discover more on their own, and I wanted to leave that to the traveler.

Independent Learning Technology Project Two Post Four

In project two I had some difficulty dealing with the pre existing content on the New Milford, CT page on Wikitravel. The pre existing information gave me trouble with my post, I tried not change the information other users had posted, but some information was incorrect and I removed it. Some of the information was out dated and locations in the town are no longer around. The other information on the page that was still accurate I left up, and didn't change the forma of. This was a challenge for partially because two different types of formats were on the page, which I thought showed inconsistency. Also included some of the same things or places in my descriptions of the town that were previously mentioned. I didn't know if this was a good thing or a bad thing. So I didn't want to not include information that was important. I knew we weren't supposed t be repetitive, which I wasn't in my own work but I was in the content of the page since it was previously posted.

Independent Technology Learning: Project Two Post Three

When working on my Wikitravel site I wanted to incorporate pictures when talking about certain locations in my town, to give my audience a sense of the home like small town setting.  I went out and took pictures of my hometown when I went back for a weekend. I thought that picture would really be able to show the true beauty of some of the places in my town, and instead of bragging and selling the place I wanted to provide picture for my audience to determine that for themselves. They would be able to see what area that would want to visit. I took pictures of a few different places. The town green or Main Street and two different hiking areas. I picked the two hiking areas in my town, rather then the surrounding ones even though they are just as good, if not better, so that before even visiting travelers would be able to see where they would want to go to first. Then I picked the town green because it is one of the most known places in town, so I wanted the travelers to be able to know what it looked like before visiting so they would know what to keep an eye out for. Unfortunately I was unable to figure out how to post a photo to Wikitravel. I tried many different ways, looked up how to do so on Wikitravel, and even on the internet to try and figure this out. Whenever I tried and uploading a photo it either faulted the existing spacing and font on the page and also did not show up. The outline of the picture showed up but the picture never appeared. This would have been helpful for my page on Wikitravel, but I removed the picture so nothing was unorganized. I did include the pictures in my final draft submitted in Sakai.

Independent Learning Technology : Project Two, Post Two

For my second independent learning technology on project two I was going to talk about the form of writing I used when adding to my travel site. Figuring out the correct wording was one of the most time consuming parts of this project, reading over sentences over and over trying to make sure to follow the rules, and still provide important information in a non advertised way. Also I  had to void using such words as "I, Our, We" to avoid bringing in personal experiences and preferences into the site. Also when writing about my hometown, I tried not to be too formal or too relaxed. I attempted to have conversational writing when talking about what to do in the town. I was more formal then I would be when talking to a friend of mine about my town, but was not overly formal to where the town ended up seeming boring or that the information was hard to interpret. Having to use conversational writing style was sometimes difficult, I found myself either being overly or under informing. I went back and fixed many sentences to make them see more like everyday conversation, but doing this while also trying to inform an audience about information was tricky. Using when informing someone of something it is in a formal context and not conversational. Before this project I thought using conversational writing would not appeal to the audience but now after I see that is is helpful because it relays a relaxed setting for the site. Since it is a travelers site, I find that important because one does not want to feel overly informed or pressured into or about a place they would want to visit.

Independent Learning Technology: Project Two, Post One

For project two, we were to post or edit a page from Wikitravel. Wikitravel is an internet traveling site, that offers information about locations that people are typically looking into to travel to. The website is used more as a travel guide for it's audience. This was our goals when making a wikitravel site or editing a wikitravel site. I decided to edit the wikitravel page that already existed for my hometown of New Milford CT.
 The goal for this project was to serve as a tour guide and to not to advertise the town. For me this was difficult, because when you are talking about your hometown or a location that is a place to visit, I always want to talk about what is fun, but I need to remember that all the same things aren't fun to all the same people. When contributing to my page I needed to keep that in mind. I was hoping to give an overall broad description of what goes on in my town and what there is to do for everyone. Just thinking of all the activities that everyone would like to do in my little hometown was difficult, I could not imagine doing it for an actual city. After going over everything that there is to do in my town for everyone, I had to try and not sell it to the audience when describing my hometown. I avoided talking about my personal experiences on what I've done, rather offer what there is do and why it would be a good thing to do. What certain activities would appeal to certain people. I tried not to repeat myself talking about the town, and certain locations, and avoided using cliches but that is also hard because that is the language one talks when interesting someone to go somewhere.

Wikitravel

The goals when using wikitravel is to provide a tour guide description of a place that I am familiar with. It is important to not advertise a place, rather describe the place as if I were to give a tour of my place.  It's more important to describe what you've learned at a place rather then describing what you did, though it is important to include what to do but do not describe your personal experiences with it.  Some important rules to follow is to make the tone of the article to be conversational to the right extent. This means to not talk in complete slang, but also do not be over formal to the point where the writing becomes boring and way more difficult to understand then needed.  Some other important factors to follow would be to avoid cliches, because that is all travelers hear, and they want to hear the truth.
Avoid putting in personal opinions and superlatives to describe certain events, activities, or places. The reason you do not want to do that is because not everyone has the same opinion on certain things, everyone does not enjoy the same things, and people do think all the same food tastes fantastic. The basic guideline wikitravel suggest would be:  1) Get in, which is how to get to this place and where it is located, 2) Get around, which would be if it is easy to travel around this area. 3) See, what is there to do at this location. 4) Eat, everyone loves a good meal, so make some suggestions that would satisfy a range of different foods. 5) Sleep, the location needs to have a place for people to sleep that is comfortable and convenient. These factors are all important for travelers and are the key components to an article. Then after one describes what to do in their location the next step would be to Get Out which is another way to tell the travelers where they could go to next. It is important to include this step because many times when people are traveling they are vacationing for more then then one or a few days, this step helps provide information on what to do next.

Independent Technology Learning Five

As I have been blogging I have noticed that the blogger website doesn't not correct your work as Microsoft Word does. For example I can say the letter "i" without it automatically being capitalized. Then when looking at lynda.com I notice that there was a tutorial for how to go about spell checking and publishing my document. I was able to discover the blogger.com has a spell check similar to Microsoft word. I still am confused when working with lynda.com when the tutorial refers to HTML. Since we do not have to work with the html format, when looking for help on figuring out a problem it only shows examples when working under html format. Should I be using HTML format to be posting and editing my blogs? I feel like I know the basics of blogging, how to post and edit my posts, but I'm concerned that there is not much more to discover. What are we supposed to be learning independently because much of blogging comes with practice. I guess I am wondering is what am I supposed to know how to do with my blog at the end of each project period?

Independent Technology Learning Four

With my clubhouse blog at this point I believe that I am starting to get a feel for how the general things work with blogs. What I am looking to do with my blog, is to make the contents look legitimate. I want to be able to have organization within my blog. I know I am registered for lynda.com but that website alone is difficult to navigate. I found the blogger essential training where I found the most helpful and relevant sections were Formatting Your Posts and Working with Images. These are the fields that I had previously begin to work with, I had hit difficulty with some but worked through the issue. Other parts were easily understood and I was apply to apply them to my blog. The videos attached to the training were a little confusing because I work off of a Mac and the format shown is on a PC. This website is useful just to be able to read all the different things that you can do with blogger.com and then being able to listen to someone explain them to you. I personally do not like listening to the tutorial because it is more time consuming and I think it is easier shown, the tutorial goes to much in depth on simple concepts.

Independent Technology Learning Three

For another one of my blog posts I had decided to attach videos, in order for my readers to fully understand my posts about safety regulations. This is where I began to have problems, attaching videos was some what difficult. The first video I posted I attached the link, and after I had published the post and viewed it on my blog the link was not able to be clicked on. Then for the next video I tried to attach it with the video button on bar above the text box, this button directly loads the video clip to the blog. After the video uploaded I had noticed that the quality of the video was poor, so I didn't want to use this option again. For the next two video clips I wanted to upload I decided to use the link button on the bar above the text box. This button is what I should have used when attaching my first link, because this is how my readers will be able to click on video links and be able to watch them in a separate tabs. This is probably how I will continue to attach videos in future posts.

Independent Technology Learning Two

In one of my posts I had decided to include pictures. I think I will continue to use pictures because I think it is a good visual effect for my readers. With my topic of cheerleading, many people have no idea what cheerleading actually consists of so being able to attach pictures so that they can have an image in their head should be a helpful tool. Attaching the photos was surprisingly easy. I like being able to post pictures to my blogs, because I can include my personal experience and be able to provide actual proof of my participation in my topic. I want to be able to figure out another way to incorporate pictures into my blog, and not only upload them in order to describe something in my text. I may find myself posting pictures of cheerleading to catch the attention of my audience, to draw them in and hopefully want to read some of my posts.

Independent Technology Learning One

I have never maintained a blog so figuring out how to just set up a blog was a little bit confusing. When setting up my clubhouse blog and the About me portion, it took me a good amount of time to figure out that I had to go into my profile of my blogger account to set up the about me, but after I figured it out I had felt achieved and had conquered the first step of many. I have begun to play around with the settings of my clubhouse blog, it's going to take a lot of editing and time consumption I have come to realize. Things I have changed already is the layout and the font of my blog. Things I would still like to figure out or edit are: to change some of the colors in the clubhouse blog to make certain posts more exciting, also I have noticed that some of my posts hold the default font and then switch half way through, usually after I had added in a direct quote of some kind. It's going to take some playing around to do get things how I am imagining. Also I am not sure if I officially like my current layout so my audience might see a change half way through the semester. I hope I am doing well so far, and can't wait to make the blog how I am picturing it.

Summary of The Business of Understanding

The Business of Understanding is written by Richard Wuman, and it begins with the explanation of what an information architect is. Wuman begins to explain an effective information architect differs from an ineffective architect. Effective architects makes the information they are explaining understandable to others. Wuman then states that the key to understanding is to understand what it is like to not understand, and that answering questions is rewarding and asking them is not rewarding. Also that being able to admit when you do not know something, that it will in turn make one able to learn more. Then Wuman introduces the topic of Aesthetic Seductions. He states that seduction is usually linked to sexual appeal, but in fact seduction has always been a part of design. In design seduction is not referred to the meaning of sexual appeal. Next He introduces the concept of LATCH.
Latch stands for location, alphabet, time, category, and hierarchy. Location is described as the natural form to choose when one will attempt to examine and compare information. Alphabet stands for a method in which one can take large groups of information and be able to organize them, examples of this would be a dictionary and a phone book. Time gets put into play when trying to organize information over a set period of time. Category is in relation to organizing good, like how a department store would organize their merchandise. Lastly, hierarchy refers to the organization in magnitude. For example when prices are organized from low to high. Next he introduces vantage points, and how it is important to look at the information from other angles therefore one will be able to examine and assess the information more clearly and creates structure. This also helps one look at the information in terms of opposites. Lastly, Wuman states that there are two parts to solving any problem, the first part being what you want to accomplish, and the second how you are going to go about doing so.