Criterion E Evaluation Website

First of all I will talk about my process because I did not post anything in the meanwhile. Criterion A: For investigation, we did a lot of things. We looked at other websites and got ideas and carefully look at them. We looked at sites that other kids made and wrote about what I liked, what I didn’t like, and what I will use in my own website. It was interesting seeing that other kids even younger than me made these website. I don’t know if they made it by html or not but they were really good. Mrs. Wilson also gave us links to websites that are about websites. They give tips and they talk all about html. There were a few sites and some of them had so much to read, so I just read the outlines and got what it was about. Then, we had to pick what our websites would be about. I picked how to get you parents to say yes. It was what I was dealing with at the time so I wanted to investigate deeply into it. Mean while, to get introduced and get a glimpse of online classes, we posted these things that we wrote about the investigation on webteachertools.com. She would give us instruction on what to do. It was interesting to me because, who knows, I might take online classes. In class, Mrs. Wilson would not tell us what to do, but instead we would look at what she wrote on the site. And this is what online classes are like. Criterion B: For design, we designed how our websites would look like which is the layout. From the beginning, I had this image in my head of how my website would look like. I drew it out with different pages. It met my design specifications. However, nothing was as I expected. I knew html was going to be a little hard, but apparently I did not know how hard. It turned out that I had designed things that were too complicated for my knowledge and expertise for html. My design ended up totally different than I had planned. At first, it was frustrating, but in the end, it did not bother me that much. What mattered was the content and accessibility. My websites design was very plain, with just one picture on one page. A good thing about it is that it meat all my design specifications. It was simple, easy to understand (I hope), not too colorful (in fact it almost had no color, the pictures helped), not hard to read (the text was in black), it is easy to navigate, it has enough pictures (I think), and not too big in size. Criterion C: My plan was a good plan I tried to follow it, but the deadline was extended. The times for me to work on it was, unlike other units, in class. Coffee cup is a html editor, a website making program. We only got it installed on the school computer. We were not having enough time to finish our sites, so that is why the deadline got extended. Criterion D: The hardest part of the whole unit was the creating part. I think it was for all of my classmates too. As I said before, I didn’t think it would be that hard but it was like a nightmare. I could not figure out what to do so when I messed up, I started again from scratch. I did that about 3 times until I kind of got the hang of it. When I realized how difficult it was, I really didn’t care about how it looked anymore. I thought, “as long as the content is good.” I also dropped some of the pages that I was planning on doing. If you scroll down, u will see that I planned on having pages on different parents from different places. I had planned too many pages, so I decreased mine to 6 pages from 13. My content in my website are from interviews, my opinions, and voted top tens. I went around my classmates and asked them their opinions, tips, and experiences. My pictures are made and found from the Internet. The ones I made are done in paint. My website is not to teach kids to not listen to their parents, or go the wrong path and do bad things. It is just for kids, mostly teenagers, who feels how I feel. Imprisoned, lack of trust, overprotective-ness. My tips might not work for some parents, if it doesn’t then its ok, because I tried to help. And if their parents are still saying no, then they are asking for something that is just very wrong. Doing this website also helped me because I found out new things that I did not know. I will use them on my parents and also remember not to fall for it when I become a parent. Testing my site was the same as all my classmates. We opened our website and left them. We went around and put a scale from 1 to 10 and some comments. There are 3 things to grade: visual appeal, navigation, and content. It was really exciting and fascinating to see my classmates’ works after all of us working so hard. The one I liked the most was Ha Young’s grade 10 website. As for me, my highest mark was for navigation, then content, then visual appeal. My website was plain. If I do this unit again, or make another website on my own, there are many things I would remember to do to improve my website. First of all, I would pay close attention to the codes. I would really investigate more about the codes. I would have a better program. If it is available, I would use something like dream weaver, but it was not available in our school, and doing this project again, would not be the same with dream weaver. I would also work on it more, put more time into it. There are still a lot of things I don’t understand about html, just like many other things in the world. This is embarrassing, but before this unit, I did not even know what html was. I didn’t even care. I was just happy that there are websites and I could use them. I see now that I took it for granted. It is hard work, and it takes up a lot of time. Now that I know how people make the sites, I appreciate it more.

New plan for website

Plan for website

Criterion B Website

For my website that I am going to make, I have picked the topic: “How to make your Parents say yes to everything you ask for.” I need to come up with a better name for my site. Here are some ideas
· Guide to conquer your parents
· Parents say yes, you’re not a mess
· Guide to make your parents say yes to every thing you ask for
Here is the list of everything I want to include in my website
· Experience from kids
· Tips from kids
· Top ten ways
· How to make your grandparents, brothers, sisters say yes
· Don’t overdo it and go the wrong way
· Game
· What parents say
My website is to make kids happy and parents happy. I have had a lot of experience with my parents when they would not allow me to do anything. So I want to help out the kids without making the parents angry and we all live happily ever after.

Color: 2 or 3 continuous colors throughout the whole website
· Green, purple, grey
· Orange, blue, white
Font: title/logo: “yes!” : Funky and fun
· Kirsten
Links on homepage: 13
· What other kids did
· Tips from kids
· Top ten ways
· What about grandparents and brothers and sisters?
· Not too much!
· Game
· What other parents said
· Different parents around the world
o US parents
o Mongolian parents
o Korean parents
o German parents
o Cool parents
o Strict parents
In the beginning, we evaluated the works of other people, and described how we want our website to look like, from looking at others’ websites. For mine, I think it is almost identical to what I described.

My sketch of my website and my design specification are

-simple

-easy to understand

-not too colorful

-not hard to read

-easy to navigate

-nice and enough pictures

-not too big in size

-and the text will be understandable.

Investigate Website Week 2

What designs scare you?
http://webdesign.about.com/u/ua/webdesignbasics/what-design-scares-you.htm

On this page, people commented on the question that one person put. They told the annoying, and 'scary' things about websites from their experience. Most of the people wrote very true things.

• annoying fonts that you cant read
• you cant navigate away
• shocking music that you can't turn off
• videos that make the other things on the page load longer
• flash

Accessibility
http://www.yourhtmlsource.com/accessibility/

This is a page about a guide to make websites. It has tips and steps. It has many different types of topics

1. website navigation
2. content accessibility
3. logical style
4. testing your pages
5. 10 things that people hate to see in websites
6. browser support
7. 216 non-dithering colors chart
8. HTML 4 explained
9. XHTML explained
10. mobile
11. the redesign process
12. bookmarklets

"Website navigation" talks about the significance of navigating through a website for the audience. if the Wbsite is unnavigatable, then they will quickly escape the site.

"Content accessibility" is to give you information to make you aware of the different types of problems people might have that they might not be able to fully use or get information from your website. These problems could be disabilities like

• some kind of color blindness,
• reading disorder,
• or blindness.

But not only disabilities will prevent people from using your website the way you meant it to. People could have problems like

• not have speakers
• not have the current web browser
• not have a keyboard

and so on.

"Logical style" is to have people not confused while they are in your website. It talks about how you should put things in places so that it is not all over the place.

"Testing your pages" is very useful so that you know that people are actually looking at your site. If something doesn't work and you didn't test it, then people will not be looking at your site or sending a bunch of mails to you complaining.

"10 bad things" is pretty clear cut by its title. The ten things that should not be in a website are:

• Broken links
• Typos
• Under-construction
• Redesigns
• Plug-ins
• Low update rates
• Too much advertising
• No way to make contact
• Slow websites

There is one missing. I don't know why. Hypocrites.

"Browser support" talks about the different types of browsers people have and how to avoid it.

"216 non-dithering colors chart" tells you to use colors that are compatable with all computers. Not all comuters are same, so you should try to make it convenient for others.

"HTML 4 explained" talks about the new versions of HTML and ways to use it. People need to be updated so their website works becuase the codes of HTML changed from the ones in 1998.

"Mobile" says that lots of people use their phones to go on the internet so your website should be mobile compatable too.

"The redesign process" gives tips on how to make a successful redesging of your website.

Webstyle guide: 3rd edition

http://webstyleguide.com/wsg3/1-process/5-list-of-reminders.html

The 3rd website was a link to a page with short and useful tips. These tips were “get to the point”, and from experienced web designers that want to help you. They were tips like “Be clear” and “Do the visuals last.”

Sources Cited

Kyrnin, Jennifer. "Readers Respond: What Design Scares You?" About.com: Web Design/HTML. 21 March 2010. http://webdesign.about.com/u/ua/webdesignbasics/what-design-scares-you.htm

Shannon, Ross. "Accessibility." HTML Source: HTML Tutorials. 21 March 2010. http://www.yourhtmlsource.com/accessibility/

"Sidebar: A List of Reminders." Web Style Guide 3rd Edition. 21 March 2010. http://webstyleguide.com/wsg3/1-process/5-list-of-reminders.html

Investigate Website

We have started a new unit called Website. The goal of this unit is to make a website of our own. I am very excited to do this because I like doing things like this. I like creating things that other people can see and I like designing them.

The site called thinkquest.org annually organizes a competition for kids that make the best website. I checked out some of them that won places and they were really good. It was unbelievable that kids did them. They had 3 places for 1st place and 3 places for 2nd place and so on. It is because they have kids competing with a variety of ages, so they have 19 and under, 15 and under and 12 and under. Making a website is tough work so they allow kids to work in groups. Kids from all over the world enter this program. I got a lot of inspiration and ideas, so I will be sure to think back or look back to these sites when I am making my own website.
The sites that appealed to me from the design standpoint were a few. One was the leadership one from 2009. It had great pictures and colors. The layout/theme was perfect for the topic of the site. It catches people’s eyes. The best thing was the pictures. It also had many links to other information inside the website. The websites that I didn’t like were the ones that take forever to start. They have a starting off thing like picking what kind of server you have, or what language you want. The chocolate one had a very long introduction. It was just showing chocolate coming from all over the world. Even though the information and things were great I just didn’t like the beginning part.

From the ones that I saw from thinkquest.org were the chocolate, the time for tolerance, and man and woman the age-old struggle, and many more. They were interesting to me because they are just interesting topics for me. I like chocolate because I love chocolate and I wanted to know the origin and history of chocolate.

Chocolate
http://library.thinkquest.org/08aug/00696/
Leaders
http://library.thinkquest.org/08aug/02289/
Time for Tolerance
http://library.thinkquest.org/07aug/00117/
Man and woman: the age old struggle
http://library.thinkquest.org/07aug/01443/

Evaluation Wikiality

Design Specifications

I was supposed to use the fact on the CNN Haiti Earthquake site, but for the reason I have said earlier, I was unable to. In the beginning of this unit, I checked other sites to see if they had the same numbers as CNN, and they did. Because it the earthquake had just happened, the number of deaths were not all found. But now, recently, I checked and the numbers had increased because the more they dig and as time goes by, more people are being identified as dead. So now, other sites other than Wikipedia say around 200,000. So now, it turns out that Wikipedia is right, and we don’t even need to change the information on Wikipedia.

Design Specifications
1. Use the fact of the web site of CNN including a few other reliable sources too (BBC, FOX)2. Add the sources to the reference on Wikipedia.
3. Follow the steps of the method of finding inaccuracy in Investigation.
The first design specification was completed because we looked at other reliable sources like BBC and FOX and care.org. The second design specification was not achieved because we did not change information so we cannot add the source to the reference section on the page. The third is not very provable, but we did follow the method because we did find an inaccuracy.

Criterion A
In criterion A we got into pairs and answered a set of questions about Wikipedia by researching. I got together with Temuulen. In the first class, we researched very neatly and organized, but then in the next class, she did not come to school. So I had a hard time finding some of the information alone. But we answered them and then we had to find a method of finding an inaccuracy. I think we answered the questions not very detailed. We found a method which I think was a good one. The investigation was the hardest part of this unit because it was hard to find all the right answers to all the questions. It was also very hard because we had to find an inaccuracy on Wikipedia and there are very few wrong things. I had to search very specifically and after researching about 50 things, I found one, and it turned out to be right in the end. I researched many topics like Mongolian things, obesity things and Barbies. I tried to look mostly at things that I knew a lot about.

Criterion B
On my blog I copied and pasted the part of Wikipedia that had the inaccuracy. I highlighted the specific thing red and on the bottom in green I wrote the correction that I will do. The design criterion was very easy because it was just changing words from a text. At the bottom I sited my source.

Criterion D
I logged in with the school account on Wikipedia and tried to change it but there was no edit sign. Other sections had the edit sign but the piece of information that we wanted to change was in the introduction and it turned out we cannot change things in the introduction. So we failed to achieve our goal. To have achieved our goal, we could have gotten a piece of information that was not in the introduction.