Amber’s Blog

This week we learned a lot of new things that can enhance our blog. I learned how to make a text only reader on my blog and I started corresponding more with my advisor to create the blog for the book club.

The text only reader that I put into my blog will help people with disabilities. If they need to have a screen reader then the text only option really helps. The text only also really easy to add to my blog. It didn’t need a lot of HTML code and there was a program that I could plug what I wanted into.

This week I also set up the book club’s blog. I used the mandigo theme because I can change the header. I made this headera stack of classic books. I also set up the columns and added different aspects into the columns.

I moved some of my widgets around this week to increase usability and to place key things in Hot Spots. I put my Voki avatar in the top left corner of my blog as a greeting to vistitors. I also added a calendar to my bottom right hand corner which is a helpful tool but not as important, hence it did not go into a hot spot.

The website we needed to read about the hotspots was very confusing and contradictory. It showed one hotspot map with hot spots in the upper left and lower right corners and then showed a second map with hot spots in the middle but a “dead zone” in the lower right. I found these websites to be not as useful as they could possibly be.  

This week we started to learn more about what is going to be required for our final projects. I am excited for this project and ready for the challenge that it will present. I need to learn how to set up usernames for everyone in the book club and subscribe them to the blog. I have a lot of work ahead of me but I’m ready for the challenge.

This week we also learned about the negative effects of the internet. I learned about a beating of a sixteen year old whose family is suing Youtube because of a video of her beating posted on the site. I think that the internet is a great place to access information but it is also a dangerous place because there is a great amount of anonymity, so you are unsure who exactly is posting things or who you are talking to.

I firmly believe that children need to be educated on the internet to keep them safe.

The recent posting of a video of a teenage girl being burtally beaten on Youtube  is a tragic incident and could have been avoided. I feel that my generation is being desentized from violence. Violent video games, movies and even advertisments on television and in magazines portreys violence in a way that does not seem as such a big deal. Children are growing up with this feeling that violence is not a big deal and that people will bounce back.

In reality people do not bounce back and the example of Victoria Lindsay being brutally beaten by six girls shows exactly this. Yet, the parents of the Victoria are not placing all of the blame on the attackers but on Youtube which posted the video of the attack. While it is Youtube’s responsibility to monitor all of the videos placed on their site, it is also the responsibility of the viewers to tag the videos as inappropriate. Which connects to the topic of desentizing children.

I agree with the statement about teenagers now wanting to broadcast their actions on the web. I think that teenagers want attention and if they can get it on a national level, they will be recieving their five minutes of fame. They are not worried about the repercussions of these five minutes in the spotlight.

Our society can teach children about the repercussions of their actions and how what they post on the internet can effect other people. Society needs to teach children that violence is wrong and that when we see violence on the internet to report it not just let it slide.

I agree with the article on prohibiting teens on the internet. I am aware that there are predators out there but teens need to know how to use the different aspects of the internet to be able to recognize the predators and keep themselves safe.

I do take steps to stay safe online. I make sure that I personally know the people that I am talking to and if talking in a chat room I do not disclose any details about myself. There is a certain anonymity about the internet and it should be kept that way. Teens need to know how to use the internet in this technological era.

I think that it is important to keep children safe but I also think that disabling them from learning has the same effect as putting them in danger. Naiive children are more likely to be at risk than someone who has been taught how to correctly use something such as the internet.

This week we worked on our tutorials for our collabrative group projects.

I found that using Microsoft Encoder is very tedious. There is no way to record the tutorial in sections, you need to record your entire tutorial at once. This is difficult because if you mess up one portion of your tutorial you must start the entire tutorial over again. My group and I found this to be very frustrating and used the pause button as a tool. We recorded in sections pausing between each section.

Over all it was a very productive week and now we are just ironing out the bugs we have with Encoder.

I read Mary’s blog and found the information about the new research about Parkinson’s disease very intersting. Parkinson’s is a degenerative cancer that claims the lives of many. Researchers are still working toward finding a cure and are getting closer each day. MIT students are working diligently on mice to find a way to quiet the symptoms and hopefully come closer to a way to help the victims of this disease.

This week we learned how to use Microsoft Encoder. At first it seemed a little confusing but after watching the tutorial today I believe I should be able to understand how to use it.

We are going to use the encoder to make tutorials in our collabrative groups. I got a firm grasp on how to make these tutorials and I’m looking foward to make these tutorials with Microsoft Encoder.

This week we were put into groups to work on making tutorials. This is going to be very helpful to work on my final project. I am going to need to make tutorials to show how to update my website for when I am off in college.

My group and I are going to make a tutorial on how to use Windows Movie Maker because most students do not know how to use movie maker. I was very confused on how to use it when we started using it for the Technology Autobiography. I am looking foward to working on this project.

This week I learned about usability. I learned to keep things short and scannable. I also learned to bullet things. It was a very productive week. I was able to learn some more about things I need to make the website for the school bookclub.

This week I was able to:

• learn about usability
• learn more about edublogs for the school website