HTML Language

Today we learned about HTML language and its importance in order to create a website. Basically, all websites are made of HTML; however browsers such as firefox or internet explorer help us to view websites as we see them 'normally'.
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Week 2

Our first task was to read the articles below and comment on them on our blog.
The second task was to finish the HTML sheet that our teacher handed-out during class-time.

Week 1

Today we had to create an account on http://webteachertools.com/wtt/ and enter an online-based class led by our IT class teacher. Our first task was to introduce ourselves to others and add an image of us so that people would know who is in their class. Then we had to answer 3 questions that were based on yesterday’s assignment which was to visit thinkquest.org and look at websites that were created by young adults. The questions were:

1. It was ‘shocking’ when I opened a website that was created by 19 year old and under student from Singapore, who was the contest-winner on thinkquest.org. The website was about leadership and it included all topics related to leadership skills etc. The design itself was very interesting, such as s/he included fun images and graphic designs in the website, and the chosen colors were warm and went well together. The designer used beige, brownish tones in the created website, which automatically created comfortableness and easiness to view the webpage.

It was also very appealing to me when the website was designed to ask for visitors name so that they can use their name in the webpage. I thought that it was respectful towards the visitor by calling by their given names, rather than using ‘visitor’ as their names.

The website contained every possible info, a person wants to know about leadership. It also contained fun facts and statistics, but as well as games to play for entertainment. They language they used were easy-going and not formal, since this website was dedicated for young adults (I should take it in consideration, because I might create a webpage for teenagers)

2. I don’t like how everything was all over the website, so it was sort of confusing from WHERE to start. Some websites were using bright colors that didn’t match with the background color, which made it hard fro me to read what was written.

3. I would like to make webpage on:

a. Street style

b. Relationship/ friendship

c. The You (finding yourself, digging deep into the world inside you)

d. Unique creations with simple items

People liked the 1st and 3rd idea, so I should think about it as well

Investigation: Week 1

INVESTIGATION

ATL + Inquirer

INVESTIGATION

We are basically learning all about on how to create a website, and at the end of the project we are going to have a competition on who has created the best website. I think that this unit is going to be very interesting, because first o fall I never tried creating neither a website nor a blog.

Through IT class I could have a blog, and now I am FINALLY going to learn how to create a website! In my opinion it is a very useful project for us, because you can choose any topic you want to work on, which gives you the opportunity to learn about topics you are interested in. Secondly, it is a very creative way to let your voice hear to the world on certain topic, and I especially like the part of creating a website based on our chosen topic, because I can be creative in a different way (using technology) and learn a lot of things during this project,

I expect myself to learn about how a creation of a website works and how these can be helpful to others, but as well as gaining knowledge by researching on the topic I am going to chose for my website.

Today we talked about what to consider in order to create a web, and one of the most important factors are taking in consideration of handicapped people. There are people have difficulties to hear, see, touch, move and speak; therefore it is very important to think about these problems and considerate them while creating the website. Furthermore, one of the basic problem viewers tends to have it that they use a different browser, and it can cause the effect and appearance of the website.

We also have to think about what makes a good website:

· Technical function (whether the website is working properly, easy to use and to understand the basic technical function on the website)

· Subject of the website (choose a topic we are interested in)

· Design (the appearance of the website overall is appealing to viewer)

With the class we discussed what AOI to choose and what Learning Profile the project will fit to. After talking about it thoroughly, we are going to concentrate on ATL as AOI, because we learn new topics and gain knowledge. Inquirer was our Learner Profile, because we are going to thoroughly analyze information we find and look deeper into the given topic to have a better understanding of it.

Afterwards, our teacher told us to go this website www.thinkquest.org and look through the websites that were created by young adults. Then choose one that appeal to us the most and state why we liked that particular website more than any other one.

NEW PROJECT

Creating a website :)

Design B

Our edited page: The text we removed is striked, what we added is in green and our explanations of why we did these changes are between parentheses in italics.

1. Every sentence containing some sort of information should have a source.
2. The edited section must be grammatically correct.
3. One week after we upload our edits, our section must not have been majorly edited, as there shouldn't be a need for it if we did our job well.

WIKIALITY

For our new IT class project, we are basically going to ‘spot’ inaccuracy in Wikipedia articles and change them into the correct information.

What is wiki?

Wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser.

Who creates them? Who edits them?

Anyone, who is the member of Wikipedia create a page, and is free to edit, change and comment.

Why use them?

These are used for mostly educational purposes, but as well for bringing up debate topics so that people can come to a conclusion on that certain topic afterwards.

What is my task?

My tasks are to find a page with inaccurate information and correct it in order to improve the use of Wikipedia for other users, but as well to figure out whether Wikipedia include a lot of inaccurate information.

Why learn about Wikipedia?
Wikipedia is a source that most students rely on; whether researching for a topic or a need a clarification on a certain topic, they all go to Wikipedia and read the articles that are posted. However there were few cases where the information in the article were not accurate therefore it created suspicion among people, especially teachers and professions in the educational area. So this project is a good way for us to get to know ways to spot inaccuracies, but as well as prove whether Wikipedia is reliable or not.

We started off by signing up or pbwork.com (a website where anyone can post their work and work together with different people. You also can edit, change and suggest improvements for the works done by the users of the website) By doing so, we could see what people actually do if the posted work is not for educational purpose, and how it would feel if the work was edited and changed.

Our teacher told us to get together into a group and create an account together so that we could post our work on the website and let our classmates edit, comment them. I and Elise were in a group and we posted a previous work from the last Unit (it was about teenage pregnancy); it was quite a shock what people had written in it, or what they had changed in the whole work! At the beginning people were humble while they were commenting and editing. They suggested actual improvements for the whole script, which was very appreciating. However things turned to the wrong side after a day or so, when people started being ‘funny’ and edited the scripts so that it was inappropriate and ‘funny’ for most of the people. The actual goal of the editing changed into making funny changes and comments, and they all forgot what the main purpose was of the whole posting the works. First to me it was funny to read the changes in the original context of the work, however it turned out be not funny when people started editing me and my partner’s work :P

Pbworks.com is a great way to start a debate on a topic, but as well as resources, advertising, and survey and support group.

How Pbworks.com works

Sign Up:

1. They ask for your name, e-mail address and password you would like to use

2. E-mail for confirmation is sent to your e-mail address

3. After you have confirmed the email, you move on to the next step which is filing out the basic information sheet (e.g. location, website, AIM etc.)

4. The choose workplace FREE (since your work is not for educational purpose or anything like that; you got to pay if you wanted to have more GB and more beneficial workplace)

5. You have to create a name for your address (e.g. cool1030.pbworks.com)

6. Then choose whether your works are for individuals or for educational purpose

7. DONE, ready to work

Afterwards, we had to choose a partner whom we have never worked before. I and Sarah practically never worked together in IT class, so we decided to work as a group. The task was to plan out a method on how to found out inaccuracy in Wikipedia articles and then change the given inaccurate information into the correct version by following the method we had created.

Sarah and I decided to use the template message on the Wikipedia page, and these are symbols to indicate that certain source or information is doubtable and should be considered to take a look again at that particular section in the article.

The method we are going to follow in order to find inaccuracy in the article:

1. Go to the "Contents" page from the main Wikipedia page
2. Choose a category, and then a sub-category. You should be looking at a section containing about 50 articles.
3. Look through each article for template messages such as "The accuracy of this article is disputed," "This article's point of view is disputed," "This article does not cite any references or sources."
4. Check each article or ideally, section, which is marked with a template message. Look up the information for that article/section on the Internet and in books. If you find an inaccuracy, rewrite the section. If you do not find any inaccuracies, simply add reliable sources to help improve the article.

We decided to look up at “Environmental Articles”, since we believed that it was a controversial topic, so most likely to contain inaccurate information. There were thousands of articles on this topic, so we decided to look at letter ‘G’ in the Index, yet it contained quite a lot of articles, we both looked through the articles quickly, looking for template messages. Most of them were saying that citation was needed, since the sources were cited wrongly and included some small mistakes. We continued eliminating articles, until we decided to choose the article about “Gaia hypothesis.” It's a theory about the way living creatures on the planet interact, and the article seemed pretty biased.

The section we chose needed a citation, and the author used biased language while bringing up the talking about ‘Controversial Concepts” of the Theory.

Evaluation

Design Specification:

· MUST be published

· The topic must relate to adolescence

· Include pictures

· It has to relate to other teenagers

· It has to fulfill its purpose (I will ask the audience whether they feel encouraged and inspired by my podcast)

· It must be less than 15 min

· Audio format

· I should speak clear and loud so that the audience can understand what I am talking about

· Be casual and calm (relaxed)

· Include background music

ü It is published

ü Related to adolescence, since lots of teenagers experience lots of ups and downs

ü I think that it has fulfilled others (my testing results)

ü it was MORE than 20 min

ü Music

ü Calm

ü Audio format

ü Loud and clear

So overall I think that I got it quite good with the design specification and evaluated against our teachers design specification (published and recorded)

TEST:

Suugii Bat-Erdene: Do you think you will be able to listen to my podcast, if I continue doing one?

Did my podcast inspire you and somehow helped you?

Do you think my podcast was boring/ entertaining?

Do you think you would follow the tips I suggested during my podcast?

Temuulen Hartwig: yes it helped me very much

Temuulen Hartwig: becasue it was a good podcast at the right time

Temuulen Hartwig: and I leraned sth from it

Temuulen Hartwig: and I would definatly listen to your again when u would do one

Temuulen Hartwig: yes

Temuulen Hartwig: yes yes

Suugii Bat-Erdene: bayrlalaa =) did u like my podcast?

Temuulen Hartwig: yesssssssssssssssssss

Temuulen Hartwig: i told u

Temuulen Hartwig: yes I would nere listen to it

Suugii Bat-Erdene: okay thank you! ^^

Criterion A:

For Criterion A, we all had to research about podcast, and we all had to take in the consideration of why podcasts are used, for whom and how. I think that I did pretty good research on the overall topic itself, and gained new knowledge about how it works. While I was researching I found that iTunes was a very easy way to publish my podcast, and I decided to use iTunes; however because I didn’t read the steps very thorough and well, it made me to change from iTunes to podomatic.com. First I thought that I could just upload my podcast on iTunes and publish it, but after I was done with recording my podcast and right before publishing it, I read through the instructions again, and it said that iTunes itself should be available in the country I am in, and unfortunately there were none in Mongolia. So, because I didn’t read the instructions well at the very beginning, it made my plan to change and use podomatic.

In the future for improvements, I should thoroughly research the website in order to publish my podcast, and see what is required in order to publish it. I think that I could have researched more about different methods of publishing and websites that support podcast publishing, if I did so, I would have had more options than iTunes or podomatic to publish my podcast.

Criterion B:

I think that this Criterion was satisfactory, since I accomplished all the requirements that were listed on the paper. I wrote down detailed information about the topics I am interested in; so that it made easier for me to choose alter on. I am very interested in more psychological aspect than for example fashion or music. So, all my topics were related somehow to mentality of teenagers, such as how to bounce back or finding the right guy. I very detailed design could show me which one was the best and interesting. I chose ‘how to bounce back’, because no matter who you are we all go through the same process and pain (I specifically focused on teenagers, since they have lots of mood swings and feel emotionally very often). Through the designs, all I wanted to do was to somehow provide good and reliable information to those who are listening, and help them in any ways.

Criterion C:

Although my plan was to work over the winter break, due to my laziness I didn’t follow the plan at all; therefore I had to create another one. If I did work during the break, I would not have been in a hurry to finish my podcast in a week! My second plan was not that good as the first one, because it was not very detailed and specific. One of my weaknesses are time managing, so because of that I had only a week to do my podcast, which could lead into a poor quality podcast. Next time, I think that I should make my plan very detailed, but also first of all FOLLOW it without any procrastination.

Criterion D:

For this Criterion, I think that I did well, because taking a look at my test I think that I achieved my ‘goal’ of this project. First, I published my script on my blog so that my classmates could comment on it and suggest improvements, however they didn’t suggest any so I think my script was good enough? For recording the podcast, I read out the script in different ways, used different methods to add music in the background etc. Although one of the requirements was that I had to publish my test-podcast so that classmates could comment and suggest improvements, I did not publish any, however I recorded my podcast for about 18-20 times and I think that it was a better way than a podcast that was recorded only once or twice and published.

When I let my class mates listen to my podcast (it was already published), they said it was good and entertaining, however my voice sounded quite sad. First of all, I didn’t have the chance to change it because the podcast was already published, and secondly, even though I had the chance I would not change the tone of my voice, because for me if I was feeling upset and then listen to the podcast with such cheerful mood, it would have made me even more annoyed and angry. So, I thought that if I kept my voice low and calm, I would sound more serious and trustworthy, which would impact the listeners more.

One thing I would like to change in the future is to publish my test-podcast and let other comment on it. By doing that I could improve my podcast into a better one, since I think that others opinions and point of views are very important in order to improve something.

One thing...

I forgot to mention that I didnt use iTunes in order to publish my podcast, because it got even more complicated when I read through the process, and since I didnt have enough time, I chose podomatic.com

Thats it...

Create

CREATE

Since I didn’t work during the winter breka and didn’t folow my plan, I had to work really hadr in order to finsih my podcast on time. So first of all I had to finish the script and it was quite hard for me, just to write it down; I needed an outline in order to organize my thoughts.

I first had to record my script, and to be honest I recorded it more than 30 times; always with different tone and pase, tempo etc.

Later on, I figured out that it was taking quite long time, so I broke down nmy script into 4 parts and I recorded for example the very first as many times as I could in order to get a good result. Sdo, I listened to them and chose the best one that sounded good. I did the same method to the other parts.

I decided to use Movie Maker to edit my podcast, because I wanted to include music; however one problem was that I couldn’t use the song more than 30 sec, and I also had to include the artists name and song title in my podcast.

To make my podcast sound very flowy and nice, I wanted to make the music play in the background and me speaking at the same time, however I could not reach the satisfactory when I worked with Movie Maker. You could paste the song in the timeline and shorten it however you wanted to; you also could drag the song INTO the recorder podcast file so that it would sound as if the song would be playing in the background. Unfortunately, since I was using a very short part of the whole song, it didn’t fit to the length of my recorder first part of my script. So, either I could drag the song in the beginning or only in the middle; but I wanted it to have somehow in the middle while I was talkig for a very long time.

So instead (I used my laptop recorder), I played the song with Windows Media Player for only 30 sec and I was talking at the same time. I tried it for the first time and it sounded very good (well at leats it sounded very good for me J So it was like this:

I played a song for 30 sec,while I was speaking and when the song ended I had to start a new one again so that ONLY me won’t be speaking. I also had to be careful to not to make any extra sounds in order to to start a new song while I was recording; it required a lot of concentrating and being a multi-task person!!

mY nEW pLAN

This is my new plan for the IT project, and since I planed to work before winter break I didnt do it, so I lost precious time ='( I had to do the whole podcast in a week.

Hi everyone, I posted a new episode to my podcast, Suugi Bs Podcast. Please click the link below to view it. http://suugiib.podOmatic.com/entry/2010-01-17T04_50_37-08_00 See you there! - Suugi

SCRIPT.

Here is my script, however I will let my classmates read it and comment on it, so that I can improve it. Thank you those who have commented! :)

You feeling down today? Fight with friends or got a bad grade in the math test? Don’t you just hate feeling always upset and disappointed? Then it is time you turn on your loudspeakers and listen to me. Right.

First of all I would like to mention that I am not a professional psychologist or anything like that; I am just a typical 17 year old teenager who is just living her life. However, I wanted to share my feelings and experiences with you guys about how to ‘bounce back’ whenever you feel bad. I should mention that feeling good and happy is the result of a long-term progress and not something that can happen in a short period of time. I believe that happiness comes within yourself and how your attitude is towards life.

Of course there are small things that can make us happy, for example new skater or your crush asked you on date; however do you really think the happiness you are feeling right now will last long? Imagine you are having great time with your bf/gf, but suddenly one day they decided to leave you. It will hurt you a lot and you will be feeling down etc. Yeah, it is ok to feel the emotions you are feeling at that time, however there are always limits. You don’t want to spend your whole life with such an attitude, don’t you?

You might have not realized or you did; but don’t you agree with me that whenever you feel a certain emotion, you always affect your surrounding with your mood? For example, I recently started feeling as if no one ever would understand me and that I am such a lonely person. Every day I was in such a bad mood, very aggressive, and even my classmates started not talking to me since I was quite being mean them (such as responding in mocking way or something like that). Then I got my test results back and I got a really bad grade… the whole thing just started annoying me, so I began to prefer to be alone. But my mom just won’t let me have time for myself; instead she would tell me I should study, since I got a really bad grade. Then I started a fight with her and all that…it even more annoyed that now I was pushing off the closest people in my life away from myself. It felt like the whole world was collapsing down, because I could not do things right.

And the one thing really helped me was when I talked to a close friend about the whole thing. It really gave me such warmth whenever she encouraged me, told me not to give up and that the emotions I was feeling were just for a short period of time. Through her nice words, I could finally realize that it was up to me to decide whether I am going to go on with life with optimism or just end up being lonely and upset in this wide world. So, I started thinking that those factors are really important:

1. Being best friends with yourself

· Accepting who you are

· At the very end, you are the one who is going to be there for you

· Start seeing the positive things in you (write the characteristics, skills etc you like about yourself and write them down on different colorful paper and stick it everywhere where you can see it)

· Tell yourself encouraging words (e.g. you can do it! You are amazing!)

· Don’t care what other people think of you

· Don’t compare yourself to others

· Do things that you enjoy doing (drawing, listening to music etc)

· Find your own style

· Dream list

· Develop your skills

2. Optimism

· Thinking positive is hard, but if you can learn it then it is going to be very easy for you to push away those bad feelings

· See the good things in situations

· Good thoughts

3. Act kind and forgiving

· Helping others is a great action of anyone. Helping those who needs one is going to make that person AND you happy.

4. Smile

· Just a smile at others or at yourself can make your day ;)

5. Love your family

· These people seem to be very annoying, however remember that they are the most trustworthy people in this world. Respect them, admire and love them.

6. You are not alone

· This thought makes some people even worse and upset. But hey. Why don’t you just listen to the voice within yourself? Why don’t you just travel inside your mind? Then you will truly realize you actually aren’t alone at all ;)

These were things that I developed more and to be honest it really works for me. Of course, I sometimes have bad days but I am able to get rid of them very easily since I started following those factors listed above. I always tell myself encouraging words and it is very cool to see that when you start accepting yourself as who you are, you start feeling very comfortable with yourself and you feel as if you can do anything! I hope you at least try to follow some of these factors and I really wish you all the best in the future! Believe in yourself and remember:

Nothing is impossible!