Public Service Announcement.

In tech class, we made public service announcements. I decided to make my PSA about the dangers of posting dumb things online, since things like that can haunt you for the rest of your life and also I hate dumb posts on the Internet. Would you kindly watch and review?

Press Release

    Today on Starwatch, we have some very exciting news. Actor extraordinaire Clay McDermott has confirmed rumors that he will be starring in Chasing Shadows by Sebastian Orlich. He is pleased to announce he will be playing Hank, who is a likable families man. This play will be incredibly entertaining and I am looking forward to seeing it.

Evaluate Reflection

One must reflect on the work that they have done in order to grow from the experience as a person. Reflection lets people think about what they have done and how they can better themselves from their experiences. In order to reflect well, one must look over everything they do.

I think that my final product is quite good, and I feel that I will be able to express myself well through the use of this blog. I think that this blog could be better, as it does look like one of the cookie-cutter blogs from blogger. I am most proud of my professional looking layout and clear font/ colours. These make my blog stand apart from the other blogs that others have made. My blog fulfill my design specifications quite well. It is attractive, easy to access, organized, and gets my theme across well, and perhaps most important of all, I am satisfied with it. To make my blog better, I would probably work on the individuality of it, as it does look like many other blogs that have come along. I think I could try to better learn who would read my blog and tailor content even more directly to them, so that my little community that I have created can be more satisfied.

I think that my final product was quite successful, considering all of the revisions and re-revisions it went through. I feel that I have learned how to create and manage a blog, and that alone makes this blog successful. That, paired with the fact that I  am quite proud of what I have created, makes me think that I am quite successful.

Evidence of Learning

During the year, I will be updating my blog with posts that show evidence of my learning. Each of these posts will be labeled so you can easily search them according to my classes.

Design of a Blog

My current task is to compare my mock-ups for my blog, which you obviously are at. These mock ups consist of the different ideas for the blog I have thought up. Making the mock-ups for my blog in Blogger was kind of sad for me, since I had a beautiful blog beforehand, and had to remake it since the design did not fit the design specifications and there was no way that I could make it so. I chose a combination of gadgets that make it easier for me to project my interests onto the blog.

    From my designs, a theme focusing on information and the ways it is distributed has seemed to emerge on my blog, partially without my intention. This theme relates to me in that I am extremely interested in information and knowledge, and the power of the internet in distributing that to all. I wish to use my blog as an outlet for the knowledge I wish to share and a receptacle for what I want to learn. My specifications include a clear theme, which means the blog is obvious to all what it is about; attractiveness, meaning people can look at my blog without burning their eyes it is so ugly; organization, just making sure that people can see where things are; and finally ease of access, which means people can find things relatively easily on my blog.
    My first (sketched) blog mock up showed the gadgets I wanted to use. It is not exactly the prettiest thing, since my art skills are not very strong. I also lost the paper and had to go search through most of the devices in my classroom to find this picture. The gadgets I am using include a search bar, for, well, searching; a page view counter, because I like people seeing how popular I am; and a RSS subscription bar, because I really want my blog to be easy to access. I also made a different design choice than many have on their blogs. I put the gadgets on the left side and the posts on the right side, contrary to most of the defaults of blogger. I did this because since I have so many gadgets, this design balances it out a bit more.  I chose these gadgets because they all help in the accessibility and easy access in my blog. This mock up does not show much of the character that I aim to put into my blog, but the title does show a little of the information focus.
    My second mock up used two complementary colours, purple and green. This did not really reflect much about the blogs  intent, but I really do not see how the colour of a blog can show information, unless somhow the code for that colour spells out something. I mostly chose that colour scheme because I thought I would like the way it looks. Needless to say, this mock up fails the attractiveness portion of the test by default, since it truly looks horrendous. It also shows nothing of the theme, meaning that it is horrible and has no place in the archives of my work.

My third blog mock up used a number and letter based computer code-like background to show the flow of information. It keeps the gadgets which I mentioned in the second paragraph, so it passes those requirements. It need to have the colour of the title, because right now it is nigh-invisible, blending in with the background. I have to say, this is my favorite mock-up aesthetically. This mock-up also includes the accessibility gadgets mentioned in mock up one, meaning it passes those tests. I also really enjoy the look of this mock up.

My fourth and last blog mock up was not really necessary but was helpful for me in that I saw that I did not have to focus on the information only, I could branch out. Good thing about it: You can see the title! Bad news: It has nothing to do with the theme. That said though, it did not really represent my ideas at all.

My final choice is my third mock up, as the aesthetic showed my love of information very well while staying very easy on the eyes, the gadgets greatly aid the ease of access, making people feel more comfortable using my blog, and I like it the most myself, and this being my blog, I believe that I should get the final say.

A Story of a Boy and His Blog

Investigate Reflection

I can share ideas that will help as many people as I can, and not limit myself to a small audience, since many people may be able to benefit from my ideas. To also help post these in a responsible and safe manner, I can read over and monitor any idea that I want to post online. An example of this would be taking recommendations from my viewers on what to cover.

I will  take the blogging knowledge that I have acquired from this unit to help build a blog that is individual to me. For example, I can take the things that we learned about Bloggers layout tab to customize the look of my blog. I will also make sure that I moderate and keep my blog a good representation of both me as an individual and our school.

The class criteria that is most important to me is that the blog is organized, as the entire point of a blog is to post information online, so if no one can read it due to being disorganized, that blog is wasted. I will try to respond to any concerns about the organization of the blog as organization is important to me and I know that no one can stand a messy website.

In order to make sure I fulfill the five class criteria which I found from looking at other blogs, I will do a few tests. To accomplish the attractiveness, I will look at other blogs and see what make them attractive and see if my blog includes any of those features. To make sure that my blog has a clear theme,  I will poll random people to see if they can get an idea of what the blog is about. In order to make sure the blog is organized, I will do a parallel of the test for attractiveness but focusing on the organization. To monitor the ease of access, I will get test subjects to try and complete a “race” through the site. Finally, to monitor the creativeness, I will check other blogs with my topic to see if mine looks unique.

Engineering Site Creation

Allison, Riana, and I  are trying to create a website for Adam(Mr. Pennington’s friend).T By doing this project it will help a whole engineering company by creating a website and exposing it to people around our community so it will give information on the company.   Can we successfully create a corporate website? We can only work with the software that we know how to use on the computer. Our client is Adam, and he is one of Mr. Pennington’s friends.  The problem is the he needs some people to help him create a website for his engineering company. In our new age of technology, a company needs a website or it will flounder and die. Human Ingenuity Is the AOI of this project.