Bill's Web Journal

Use of Web pages (Macro-media) in English III and Leadership classes:

Fall

English III:

• Began having Andrew come to class week three; worked through basic understanding of Dreamweaver and applying tables and pictures to a single web page.
• Andrew then came to class to teach anchors and photo finishing techniques.

Here is a sample asignment:
Assignment # 1: By 9pm on 10/17/02 your home page will be evaluated for the following items:
* response text to the questions about your learning style and your approach to the writing process;
* a final draft of the essay What is an American? and an image to complement your text.
* an image/photo/piece of personal art work scanned/Flash drawing with text explaining the selection and purpose of the image;
* all of these basic web page design features: complimentary colors, tables, anchors and working links;
* annotations that follow the critical guidelines for evaluating the grammar web sites;
* an aesethic value and appreciation for the presentation of data.
* click on this webpage steps link to see list of things that have been covered during technology training.

Assignment # 2 After Long Weekend, we will learn more of the following:
* we will learn how to use flash text;
* we will also incorporate an interdisciplinary topic with your work in US History.

• Late in the fall term, I came up with the idea of having students write directions in their own words.
• Sitting in a public school evening class (taking Spanish with my wife), I noticed a problem solving guide for Geometry students. I was struck by the idea that students do not apply the same problem solving skills to their work with technology. If they are weak or new to the software, they tend to give up at any given roadblock. They do not know how to redirect and try solving the problem from another angle. I am interested in breaking down these skills and charting them so that everyone can see the whole process of trouble shooting a way out of a problem.

Leadership (Sophomores)

• In contrast to my Juniors, the sophomores (with newer I-books) have picked up on Dreamweaver so much faster.
• Most importantly, in contrast to my English classes where students were learning the knowledge and perfecting things on his/her own for a individual grade, my Leadership classes were tapping into the team work ethic. We were pairing people up according to skills. We spoke to the classroom bond that exists among us--unique for many reasons but primarily b/c of our quality check-ins--and declared our work to be not for competition; instead we worked with the spirit of collaboration. As a group, we were determined to build a web page for use as a transparent notebook. What has become is that now our students have electronic Leadership notesbooks.

Winter term:

English and Leadership classes are on fire!

• English classes have set up separate pages; the interdisciplinary page was the most rewarding in terms of content. Students made their own person interdisciplinary connection to a topic in US History. Students also tapped into their family history to write about a female family member who overcame 19th century/20th century gender barriers to achieve a goal. This excavation proved to be a fun and interesting way to build a personal context around our reading of Sarah Jewett's A Country Doctor.
• Andrew taught and retaught my English classes some fireworks: picture cropping/shading/placing artistically outside of the normal confinements of the table/importing to Dreamweaver.
• Leadership classes followed an idea of May's. May came up with an idea to have a contest. Building on our fortune to have Dr. Carter (MKL Day Chapel Speaker) visit our classroom, we had the two sections build their own web pages on some of the content of Dr. Carter's classroom and chapel talk. The results were productive. We might have error red on too much content as well as trying to polish off speeches on the web with the I-Movie software. It seems as if there was a run on Digital Cameras during the last two weeks of class. The good news is that Erika Flynn is working on directions which will help re enforce the teaching that we have done with students as they make their own I-Movie.

Spring:

• Big Goal: visual/multi-media interpretation of an American lit. poem.
• Must teach a session on basic scanning procedures.
• Must teach some basic recording of sound.
• One way may be to set up a visual (digital pictures) story board of pictures.
• Could also set up...

Visualizing a poem in a multimedia envirnoment.

Last Project:
Multimedia/Visual Interpretation of Poem: Visual Images: you must break down your poem into images.
Folders
Poem folder: in that, have images folder; flash folder; fireworks folder (be mindful that you need to create specific fireworks folders for each poem1html page. Thus, if you have ten pages, you will have ten ).
Each page should include:

• Text; phrase of the poem
• Imagery:
• Buttons: previous, next and back to beginning
• Voice: each student will record his/her voice

Title page/poem1.html/poem2.html/poem3.html…etc and then a link to title page.

Steps:

1. Must sit down and medatate your poem. Decide where the phrases are. Read it out loud and interpret the poem visually. Then, create a story board. Open up a microsoft word document and

2. Don't use the internet alone. Draw things and scan your own personal art.

My Directions: Dreamweaver/Macro Media Notes

• Must be organized/Folders should have lower case letter, no spaces, no dashes, etc
• Make a new folder (we’ll call it mainpage):
• An image folder/fireworks folder/
• Getting picture: hit control and click to save image in folder “download image to folder”
• JPEG are better for photos; Gif. For maps.

Technology

• Download pictures and open each pic in fireworks.
• Vector draws items; select chooses items to modify (highlights).
• Crop them and save them as fireworks files ‘filename.png”
• Make sure to put picture in 100% size
• Resize the size of the picture; use top left menu item under vector. Put a square around whole document and use vector rectangle tool. Then dip into and pick a color.
• Crop and use return key.
• Highlight what you want, and hit return to crop out what you don’t need.
  (Pattern: if you Crop, you probably have to resize and crop again)
  
• Make folder called digthinking
  
• Make two subfolder inside: images and fireworks files folder
• Now save picture as a png file and put into fireworks folder inside of digthinking. Save this into the fireworks folder
• Now make a new page in Fireworks: 740width; 480 Hieght.(Pixels) Keep Resolution at 72. As of april 2, 650 by 420
• Put background color in; change fill color to desired color, hit select and make a square background. draw a rectangle and choose a color.
• Go to menu choose: import and drag picture where you want on the page. Much better than dreamweaver which relies on tables.
• After placing images, click the A to create a box for text (draw a zone, or a box). Then double click the A to create a Text editor box. Work away on text.
• Now make slices. (We do this so that we can export these pictures/texts as one big image into dreamweaver.) [Generally, we make a slice per object; not so for text.] Use the four tools under the web on the tool bar. Use the top right (the knife one) one to draw backgrounds around your text and pictures. They will create hot zones on your page and can become future links.
• Save as “mainpage.png” and save in the fireworks file. Now go to file and choose plain export. Call it mainpage; make sure it’s in the the digthinking folder, in the right place, desktop. Check bottom two boxes which should be checked off.
• In the digthinking folder, you should now find an html file named mainpage.html. You should also find a bunch of images for this page in the images page.
• Now drag digthinking folder that is on the desktop into the tigernet Sites folder. Then, make a link on the main web page and be sure to use link carefully:
  Link: digthinking/mainpage.htm.
  More work with slices and adding buttons. 2/21
• go to top menu and choose optimize
• general concerns: make sure that you turn your gifs to jpeg(s). Then choose better quality.
  Button:
• go to Assests and find library which is under layers on your panel/palette.
• Make the master button which is often called the parent. Just as in life /literature, children inherit characteristics of parent.
• Within assets, go to the fly out menu (small icon to right) click and create a new button.
• In Up tab state, create button, notice color options at the bottom panel; you can play with color and text.
• In Over tab option, change things around and your mouse will initiate the change that you create here.
• Do something here; ask.
• Now button is in the library. Now drag to the place on the web page.
• Highlight button, then add your link on the bottom. Now button is programmed/linked!
• Now export to html format/dreamweaver. Choose file and then export. Save file into (for us, digthinking). Also make sure the file is completely named “html”!
• Quit out and save work.
• To make a link: /../index.html (“..” means go up a folder
  Homework for Wed: take three picture in fireworks and make a mainpage.
  

Scanning: Click on the UNMAX VistaScan DA 3. 7. 5. NB: this software runs in OS 9.

• Use advance mode.
  There are six settings on the right side
• flatbed scanner
• 2nd box: Try Color RGB for best quality and 300 DPI
• For paper type, use “No Descreen” unless you are using a magazine/newspaper.
• Seeting: avoid b/c fireworks can do a better job. Thus, choose no filter, 100%, no special effects
• NB: on the top left next to the question mark, click the icon for Preference to come up. 1. click the disc icon and make it a JPEG. (Stuff for the web needs to be a JPEG. [Graphic Image File; JPEG = ?) 2. Click on setting box/button and save it to the desktop (b/c we can’t do it in OS 9 to tigernet) and change file name to preferred name.
  Review: six settings on the right and preference button on top.
• Click preview. (it is best to always use the preview step so that you are not stuck with last person’s settings) Try to have your picture touch an edge. Don’t worry about orientation of the picture; you can turn it around in fireworks.
• Now you have a JPEG on the desktop, open fireworks. One image per scene;
  Images do not have to be litteral photographs. In fact, try to interpret the
  The media that is used for today for most poetry is music nad lyrics. We’re trying to get you to think visually. Think of a music video and how a music video director will come up with an artistic interpretation? How can you create a story board sequence of images.
  Eventually it will have buttons
  

Last Project: Multimedia/Visual Interpretation of Poem: Visual Images: you must break down your poem into images.

• Folders: Poem folder: in that, have images folder; flash folder; fireworks folder (be mindful that you need to create specific fireworks folders for each poem1html page. Thus, if you have ten pages, you will have ten ).
• Each page should include:Text; phrase of the poem
• Imagery:
• Buttons: previous, next and back to beginning
• Voice: each student will record his/her voice
• Title page/poem1.html/poem2.html/poem3.html…etc and then a link to title page.