Tom’s Super Blog!

The year is winding down and that means the deadline for this project is too. With less than 9 days lefdt to complete the assignment each day in calss matters more and more. We have just finished usability week and we are now moving onto adding polls and surveys to our advisors site.

This project has been very useful eaching me alot about how to communicate with someone and working together to get a common goal complete. I actually really liked the assignment regardless to all the work and extra work that come along with it

What have you gotten, if anything out of this website?
( polls)

We have finally started our collaborative community projects within the school.  I began working with the basketball team but it went no where fast.  I couldn’t contact the coach and had a hard time coming up with ideas to put on the site so I found a new teacher hoping to join the edublogs network and that person was Mr. Baldwin.

I am currently making him an edublogs for his freshmen English class that will deal with the works of Shakespeare and other famous poets.  I will be adding widgets,  pod-casts, videos and everything in between to enhance his site.  The students will be signing up for an edublogs account so they can too be active in posting information on the site. 

I really do enjoy working with Mr. Baldwin for this assignment. I feel we understand what each other  needs to do and this project has been made  easier and something i look forward to doing.

In reading the artice Benefits Of Online Interaction For Teens Outweigh Danger, in Science Daily i have come across many opinions that swim through my mind.  I do agree with the stance taken in this artice.

I agree that in most cases blocking or monitoring childrens online use takes away from most educational or social usues it has. I agree with the point that says its easier to talk to someone on the computer rather than face to face in some cases. It is easier depending on if you know the person well or not.

 I agree with the fact that the internet is a dangerous place for kids but if educated properly and if you know the risks there should be no excuse.  I take the nessary steps to make myself safe on the internet.  On websites that could give away my personal information i only list things nessary such as my name.

In most cases i will not even put my email adress and i never put my phone numbers or house adress. I believe that educators and parents should built a relationship with kids that allows each party to be honest about what is going on and to educate the kids about internet safety and the  risks they can take. 

After reading the article about hot spots i learned alot about where things should go on a website to draw viewers in. The two main hot spots are the top left af the side bar on the right.  I made some changes to my site to enhance it for the better.

I changed my website around in the fact that i move my Voki to the topp left.  This is the number 1 hot spot and i decided to put it there because it introduces my site and lets viewiers know what its all about.  I didnt want to much in one hot spot so my recent blogs were moved to hot spot number 2, the right side bar.

I felt that if i had the voki and the recent posts in one spot it wouldnt do its best because viewers would be drawn either to much to the voki or to the recent posts.  Hot spots have really helped me enhance my site for the better