BP_14 Dreamweaver Journey Part 3

Okay so I am getting the hang of what this CSS is all about! I actually learned a cool and interesting tool on making links standout with their own little background.  I've always wondered how people were able to do that.  I am hoping in the tutorials to follow it will teach me how to make my background transparent so that I can have a logo as wallpaper and still view the words well.

My attempt after watching the tutorial

I am excited about all the things that CSS can do as opposed to just modifying a page's properties.  What a difference one tutorial makes.  I am looking forward to learning more tools.  Off to my next tutorial.  Hopefully soon I can post a finished website after completing all the tutorials! I love lynda.com wish I would have known about this before!

BP_13 Dreamweaver Journey Part 2

So now I am on to learning about CSS styles this part is a bit more complicated but the beauty of Dreamweaver is that it takes care of the styles for you.  The main issue is how I want to have everything set up so that when i change something in my CSS that it changes across the site.  I might have to look at this chapter a few times to understand what it is exactly.

Next up is how to actually design the pages. I will come back to the CSS a little later. I'll let you know when I am ready to focus on this part.

BP_12 My Journey with Dreamweaver

So for this project the tool I want to learn more about is Dreamweaver.  I think that Dreamweaver can 
be a very useful tool.  This can help me with my business and also with my teaching.   I have learned HTML in the past but haven't become fully proficient in designing websites.  So to start off I am using the tutorial on Lynda.  The first over view lessons are great in helping me plan out and decide what I want my site to look like.  It is very helpful to see this as a brainstorming web.  


My biggest struggle is understanding pixels and making sure that the site is easy to navigate. The Lynda.com tutorial helps break down the components of a page on he site you are trying to build to make sure it's appealing to the eye: Defines where you are, Clear and consistent navigation, hierarchy of info, visually different links and legible body copy that is not too long.

Time to map out my site before moving on to the next set of tutorials.

BP_11 OMM Protagonize

Here is my one minute movie on Protagonize! Enjoy!

BP_10 My Comment on Greg's Blog

Here is the link to read my two cents on Greg's Blog!

BP_9 My comment on Dana's Library Studio

Here is my comment on Dana's Web 2.0 Tool Bookemon

BP8_Protagonize

My week 3 web 2.0 tool is called Protagonize.  I have a a group of boys that hate to write.  Fiction stories, non-fictions stories, How-to, Narratives, you name it if it involves writing they do not want to do it. Part of it is that they don't like the process of writing on paper (but will type all day on their mobile phone) and another part of it is that they never know where to start.  The first couple of step of the writing process is always difficult.  With this in mind I looked on Go2web20 website specifically looking for writing tools and came across Protagonize.  

Protagonize is a tool that helps anyone create stories and work online with a collaborative writing community.  This tool could be very useful in helping struggling writers and just to create a collaborative community of writers within the classroom.  The way it works it you start a story and people on the site add chapters to your story.  people can become fans of your writing to follow what you write and can decide to add to your story or not.  It would be nice to have the students in my program to make profiles and become fans of each other.  They could then write chapters to other people's stories.  This could be very useful in generating ideas and can be used as a brainstorming tool to create a published story for a writing assignment as well.  Also for the student who has trouble getting things on paper starting their writing process on the computer might be helpful to them.  This is a great place to get mentor-texts as well!

They have a group option but you have to get special permission to create a group.  I hope to look into that because that would make it easier to monitor what the students are posting.