CEdu 533--Week 5: Building a Website is Addicting!!

After working on my final project Website over the last several days, I found myself hooked on the process and greatly enjoyed the results. Learning how to make tables, using ImageChef and ClockLink, changing hyperlink colors, and linking to investing websites has been an enlightening experience. I now have a much greater appreciation of the work that goes into creating Websites and view sites with a more critical eye.

My only previous experience with HTML is with Classzoom, our district's CMS. The help link in Classzoom allows for only the basics such as underline, bold, and italic. This final project helped me learn more creative HTML options such as alignment, color hex values, ordered and unordered lists, and table hyperlinks, padding, spacing, and borders.

Over the weekend, I will make greater use of graphics in my final project, while always keeping in mind that my audience is my 8th and 9th grade students. I look forward to using this project in my Financial Life Skills classes this fall and eagerly anticipate my students' reviews (positives and negatives) on being introduced to a stock market simulation through web-based learning.

CEdu 533--Week 4: Thoughts on Websites for School Use

As we enter the last two weeks of this course, I am thinking of ways to incorporate what we have learned into my business education classes at North Junior High. Here they are:

• The embedded Google Docs custard demo was fascinating in that I could poll my students on their thoughts about our courses, their research on stocks for our stock market simulation, or sharing their findings when comparison shopping in our budgeting and consumerism unit.



• The website I am creating for our final project will serve as an introduction to StocksQuest, the free online stock market simulation we switched to last semester. Not only could I instruct my students on how to create accounts and execute trades, but this website and linked pages could also be used to teach students about relevant stock and investing terms and strategies. I will be evaluating age-appropriate sites that pass the rules we created in our "What Makes a Good Website?" group project.
  

On a personal note, I checked out the Microsoft Office Templates for Teachers link on John's blog. Our district did not allow the necessary Media ActiveX Control for downloading the Education Credits Tracker or Substitute Teacher Instructions template. I will try to download these useful-looking templates at home. It will be nice to become more organized in these two areas. Thanks for the tip!

Ced533—Week 3: Reflections on Web Design after a 3 Week Hiatus!

After wrapping up the school year and thinking about what we have learned so far in CEd533, I have come up with the following observations:

• I certainly look at websites with a more critical eye now. In particular, I was checking out my daughter’s summer fastpitch team site. As a coach, I sent sponsor information to the web designer. When I checked a week later, the site had not been updated and, in fact, the home page still said it was 2007. I will bring this up to our program’s head coach and let him know that we need to achieve a much higher level of currency.

Here is the link: http://www.worldseriestc.com/home.html

• My brother runs a gas barbeque grill assembly shop and retail outlet in Butler. The two manufacturers that he represents have websites, one of which he would like our study group to critique. As a business education teacher, I will enjoy reviewing this site with my group. I may have more of a managerial approach whereas my group members may have more of a consumer perspective. Both are important to consider.

Here is the link: http://www.modernhomeproducts.com/

• I look forward to learning about CSS, Java, content management systems, and helper software such as Dreamweaver. Many of my business education peers teach Dreamweaver and I need to have a basic understanding of it, whether obtained in this course or in my own work this summer.
• I wonder how easily I will pick up HTML again after being away from it for several weeks. I finally started to grasp it in Week 3 and I am curious how my retention will be. In addition, I have done our HTML work at my school. However, now that the school year is over and I have turned my keys in, I hope that our home computer will work well for my web pages. I did have some difficulties with Filezilla and graphics at home back in Week 1, but that may have been my inexperience more than anything else.