Module 10

Module 10

Fair Use

As a fledgling web-site designer I can see that most of my fair-use materials will be in Category 2 (Illustration or Example) and Category (Five) Launching a Discussion). Above is a Creative Commons image that  I think I'll use this on my website later. Usually to avoid music copyright issues I use the Scorefitter  feature in Pinnacle or Fayette County subscribes to a music site we can use for free, but I think I'm going to use more Creative Commons audio . As a member of the Kentucky Antique Phonograph Society, their Cylinder Recording Digitization project was especially interesting to me. Here's a clip.

Tahitian Field Recording

As per the wiki assignment my cropped photos/ commentary and avatar have been posted there.

Digital Video Assignment

My big computer where I had the video editing program installed fried so this assignment had to be done "in the cloud" as it where. I used xtranormal.com to generate original animation, animoto for a slide show of relevant images and the YouTube video editor. The YouTube Video editor is really just a system to "glue" videos together or add music. You can't make any cuts or change timing. Very bare bones. Here it is

The last time I posted this video in this blog, the blog froze and would not save, publish or preview so here I am rebuilding this post..

This video is in keeping with the Fair Use guidelines. It has original animation obtained through a licensed site. The music is provided by the sites. (xtranormal and animoto.) The images are from Google Images and Wikipedia. In another editing system it would have been easier to credit the sources, but they are being used for Illustration or Example (Category Two) and for Launching a Discussion (Category Five). Usually when I make a video for class I write in the credits that it is for classroom use only.

Recording/Audio

I don't know if the blog crash was the result of downloading Audacity and the LAME encoder or not, but I did manage to record myself doing an actor's warm-up. I can really see where this tool would be great for foreign language teachers. As there is no "insert MP3" button, I'm using a Dropbox URL link to post.
Acting Warm-up

Finally Web Rubric

This has been a very ambitious project that I can see myself working on for the next 6-8 months. As the site stands now I would give myself a "2" for graphics as most of the graphics on my site are clip art and not user-generated. For multi-media, I would give myself a "3" as I have generated the majority of the videos/slideshows etc. for the site.

I hope to take another equally challenging course with you in the future if possible, Dr. Peach. I never learn so much as I do under your tutelage. Thank you- Valerie Powell

Module 9

Module 9

Fun with Javascript

I haven't decided if  Javascript is simpler than HTML or not. All coding has been pure trial and error, but I entertain hopes of getting better eventually.

The assigned Java rollover activity should prove especially helpful to my drama website as I can incorporate before/afters for make-up and other special effects.. It took me a  a whole lot longer than it should have  to come up with code for this simple effect as I never could get the Quicktime demo to play.


More than the rollovers, I'm interested in incorporating slideshows into my site. Currently I do make a lot of slideshows, but I edit them in Pinnacle, post to YouTube and incorporate the link. This will be more direct for examples where narration is not required.The slideshow for this assignment is on the homepage of my website. http://theblesseddamozel.wix.com/desperatedramateach .

Finally after reading about a lot of different Java script applications, I chose to put a simple date box on this blog.

Professional Development

 As far as  RSS/ Social Media and podcasting in regards to my professional development, I have developed  a few favorites.

I've been following "MindShift" for a while now initially because I was looking for assistance with "flipping my classroom".  Mindshift posts related articles from a variety of sources on my Facebook thereby  working as an RSS/Social media combination. Over the five day period that I monitored the site I learned about electronic textbooks that can data mine student's study habits. (Nothing like your Chemistry book tattling to your teacher that you didn't read Chapter Six, right?), how schools are meeting the  technology costs necessary to implement the new Core Curriculum, why daydreaming is necessary, using technology to manage our increasingly larger classes. (I could have used this info last year when I had thirty-eight seventh graders in my first class of the day.) and how to learn a language in a couple of days.( The jury is out on that last one, but the App called MemRise is phenomenal. I use it every day now to help me keep my foreign language skills up. I understand you can modify  the app to incorporate any lesson where you need kids to memorize information. I know memorization is a skill that has fallen out of favor, but theater people still rely on it and I don't know how anyone picks up another language without memorizing a lot of vocabulary.

     Because I went so many years without a television (Ten years. It's a long story.)I was an early adopter of podcasts.  I still don't watch much television, but I love radio and I've always looked at podcasts as TIVO for Radio. Some  podcasts that I like download are  http://www.radiolab.org/, a very entertaining show on science. Last week's show was on Memory and Forgetting. (http://www.radiolab.org/2007/jun/07/?utm_source=local&utm_media=treatment&utm_campaign=daMost&utm_content=damostviewed)
     Another great  podcast is from This American Life. Last week's show was a repeat of a back -to-school episode on the inner life and perceptions of middle schoolers. Very insightful. Sometimes it's hard to put ourselves into our student's shoes and hearing these middle-schoolers honestly commenting on their experiences reminds me as a teacher of how difficult this time of life really is for my students.(http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/449/middle-school)
For more main stream educational podcasts, I find the education channel of podcasts.com has a mixed bag of resources though they do offer "Grammar Girl"

Module 7 and 8- More Website Design

In designing my website, I've decided to dedicate my header to branding and the requisite social media icons. I'll be incorporating scan columns especially on my home page to segregate my Google Reader and Facebook feed from the text in a logical way.

As for my home page organization, I'd like to think of my home page as a breezy newspaper with lots of images to catch the eye. I want to keep the colors and patterns to a limited palette so that we don't distract from the text. For the footer, I'd like to repeat the navigation bar so no one has to scroll to the top of the page to move on.

I wireframed my first page(https://cacoo.com/diagrams/I8Mb9NM1Ks2Lc16A ) and my home page (https://cacoo.com/diagrams/WrgKBAQOncWdyZmt) but ended up not following the plan very strictly. Not that the wireframe wasn't a useful exercise, it helped me decide what I couldn't live without.
Here's how the final pages ended up.
http://theblesseddamozel.wix.com/desperatedramateach#!home/mainPage


http://theblesseddamozel.wix.com/desperatedramateach#!theater-history/c1enr

I would like to integrate a left-hand navigation bar to the sub-pages listed under Theater History, but I haven't figured out how to do that. As far as interactivity , I was able to incorporate a Google Reader feed, an interactive site survey and a Facebook "Like" button which  I think satisfies the majority of the rubric.

 In a separate, unrelated note, thanks to the accessibility exercises we did in class, you will note that a typed transcript accompanies the video on  “The Beginnings of Theater” page. Plans have been made to provide transcripts for all site videos. Now I just need to tag all my images.

Web Accessibility and Cascading Style Sheets

MODULE FIVE-JOURNAL-WEB ACCESSIBILITY

     Initially looking at the website below for accessibility issues, I identified poor color contrast (light blue text  on  a royal blue background), fuzzy and broken text, hyperlinks in the same color as the background, and an irritating marquee tool that would have made the site difficult to read for users with poor vision. While there was a video, the audio was not captioned. Text shown on the screen did not mirror the narration.  These faults kept the site from being Perceivable and Understandable .  Navigation on the site was by mouse alone which would have rendered it in-Operable for users with motor-function disabilities. The site lacked font consistency. There were no options to change the appearance of the text.

http://spider.georgetowncollege.edu/peach/edu558/accessibility/accessibility-bad-example-1.htme

The “Cynthia Says” website was much more thorough and specific in pointing out accessibility issues than the “WAVE” site.  It noted untagged elements, tables and frames as well as a lack of specific code to keep the screen from blinking. “Cynthia Says” verified that the site was not “robust” because it pointed out numerous “IMG” elements containing the “alt” attribute with an empty value. Here is an example from Line 56.

<img src="images/link2.jpg" width="476" height="142"></a><a href="http://webaim.org/resources/cynthiasays/"><img alt="" src="images/link3.jpg" width="476" height="142" class="style1" /></a></p>

I was confused as to why this should matter until I read the following explanation on http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9610.html.

"Most people already know about the use of "alt attributes to provide alternative text for images though there are still many Web pages without ALTs. Some accessibility specialists advocate so-called "described images" where text is provided to verbalize what a seeing user would see. For example the Web Access Symbol shown above might be described as a glowing globe with a keyhole." In my opinion such literal descriptions are fairly useless for Web pages unless the user is an art critic. I much prefer "utility descriptions" that verbalize the meaning or the role of the image in the dialogue: what is the image intended to communicate and what will happen if it is clicked?" "An accessible website should utilize alternative  texts or utility descriptions of all images to make them comprehensible to visually-impaired users.

     Marquee elements contain scrolling text and are unsuitable for truly accessible websites.

     Testing my former school’s website (http://www.tcms.fcps.net/) found much of the same mistakes as in the class example site. Uncaptioned video.  Untagged elements.  Code not sufficiently robust. No options to change font sizes or color. I called Tammy Lane of the Fayette County Public Schools to see if there was a policy in place concerning web accessibility. She said that there is no official Fayette County policy on website accessibility for the disabled. Four years ago when they overhauled the site they began instituting the use of tags so a reading program could pick up the text, but that’s about it. They do not add descriptive tags to photos or caption audio.

     After reviewing the materials from this module, I can see I will have to revise some plans for my web site. While most of my video has text transcription available, it’s not captioned. I can do that myself as it’s just a matter of dropping things back in the video editing program. Color and font choices should be easy to control, but I’m not sure of how to add audio narration for the blind without the page becoming too crowded. Can I just use tags and let the assistive technology do the rest?  I already control for color blindness on my page because my fiancé is color-blind.  Client-side image maps should assist users with limited motor coordination. I also need to let people know that my site is accessible by using the symbol for accessibility.

In reading about the various issues inherent to web accessibility, it occurred to me that this issue of web accessibility is more crucial than ever as our population ages. I’ll be fifty this year. I’ve been using the internet for almost twenty years at this point and I certainly see myself continuing to do so for at least the next twenty years. In designing a web site for use by both my students and other drama teachers I need to consider a design not only for my possibly impaired users, but for myself in the future.

MODULE 6- JOURNAL- CASCADING STYLE SHEETS

You weren't kidding, Dr. Peach, this was a bit of a pain. However after two aspirin ,a large slice of chocolate cake and more than a little profanity, I finally was able to change header one and two to hot  pink and my background to green. I can see where the use of  Cascading Style Sheets would help a blogger customize their template for a unique appearance that is consistently applied over multiple entries/pages. I don't know how much of this I'll be applying to my particular project, but it was a useful tool to learn.(Note on the above reference to profanity: I promise I was home alone.)

Still designing and Organizing my Website

Looking at various school district websites gave me many ideas I can use as I design my website.

The Fayette County Schools website adheres pretty well to the stated standards in the articles read for class in regards to navigability and ease of use.  The site uses neutral colors and leads with personal stories from around the district.  It offers RSS feeds and a site Search engine. (I’m thinking of incorporating one of those in my site now.) It has a nice FAQs section prominently placed and appears to be updated frequently. The overall look of the site is uniform though each school’s individual site does not conform to the same standards for color/graphics/updating etc. The district would probably benefit from a content manager in that regard. Other than the patronizing tips to parents (Eating breakfast or lunch with your child at school will make them feel special), I feel this district gets a lot of things  right.

 On Organizing my website-

 My teaching units are organized by historical periods so I think I’ll stick to that method of organization (Time) for my website. This time-based organization also adheres to my underlying paradigms. My site is geared towards other drama teachers and secondary-level drama students not theatre-goers or professional actors who would benefit from an entirely different method of organization.

I like the idea of mapping the browsing flow of the site with post-it notes. It reminds me of the old days before word-processing when “cut and paste” was  actually “cut” and “paste”. Because of the educational nature of my planned site, organizing it in a linear sequence with supporting digressions makes the most sense.

Here's a rough initial plan on wire frame.

https://cacoo.com/diagrams/GK73afeZmBZ0VMfc

I liked Weebly a lot when we used it for a class assignment, but I wasn't sure it allowed for enough customization. So I've been playing around with Wix.com. I like how easy it is to customize a template or add a feature (Facebook Like button,Live Twitter feed, opportunities to go mobile or add e-commerce). They offer free hosting and actually have theatre-related templates to advertise shows or post your resume show biz-style with imdb and show links! They had lots of examples to explore. The various features and the clean looking  designs available will give my site more appeal and keep it from looking quite as "educational".

Designing My Website

   As I've started to plan this website it has occurred to me that I've needed a website as a teacher for as long as  I've been a teacher. As a drama teacher, no school I've ever taught at has ever had anything much in the way of resource materials available for my content area. My last school didn't even have drama textbooks and had no intent to buy any either. No school library has ever seemed to have more than half a dozen drama-related texts and an outdated box of  freebies from the local public television station.
   As a result I've made a whole lot of materials/project sheets/instructional videos over the years. A website would be an opportunity to corral all of my resources in one handy digital cyber-source. The students could access the site for their readings/assignments etc and other drama teachers might find useful material as well. Some instructional videos I posted on YouTube for use by my classes now have thousands of hits so I know somebody is using them.
  At present I'm planning a fairly static resource site which I'll host commercially. After the 40-80 hours I imagine it will take to put up the 30 "pages " currently planned, I can see that this site will require about two hours a week to tweak, maintain and update the blog. All content in progress can be stored on my external hard-drive (useful at school when the wireless is down too.) The initial site could be up and running by November 15,2012  with a commitment of 10-15 hours a week from now until then.  I'll have to pay for hosting, but that's the only cash expense predicted right now.
   I polled students last year when I was teaching and at that point at least 85% of my students had home/phone internet access.  100% had school access as Fayette County is pretty technologically savvy. My ultimate goal for the site is that it enables me to "flip" my drama classroom in order to efficiently maximize classroom time. When I'm spending my class time focused on activities rather than readings and instructional video that could be viewed before class at home I'll know the site is a success