Shabab Technology

Ok... as of now, I am starting on a completely fresh page... turning over a new leaf... rising to a new dawn...

You get the picture.

Ok... these are our requirements: (White Hat)

DIGITAL PORTFOLIO
Your digital portfolio must be ready for assessment which we will do
on-line. It should contain AT LEAST the following:
1. Complete structure as per planning stage.
2. Complete graphics on home page etc as per Digital Imaging Project.
3. A minimum of 2 artifacts with completed reflections as per Reflection
Worksheet.

PROCESS JOURNAL
Your blogger process journal must be ready for assessment which we will do
on-line. We will be looking for regular entries and evidence of use of the
thinking hats.

EVALUATION REPORT
1. Soft copy submitted to turnitin.com by 11:59pm on the 11th November, 9B
to use user name and pw for Mr Hawkins, 9A to use Mrs Lindsay's.
2. Hard copy handed in to Mrs Lindsay's Office or Room 218 before the end
of school on the 11th November.
3. This report should have:
A title page, a table of contents, the self and peer evaluations and a
brief report based on the following(from the design brief):
* The portfolio development and design process
* Justify any deviations from the planned solution
* The use of weblogs as a publishing medium
* The use of an online discussion area such as nicenet.org to promote
collaboration and peer reviews
* Any strengths or weaknesses your portfolio has
* Make suggestions for future development of your portfolio
* Which areas of interaction were the main focus of this brief? Discuss
* What is the social significance of your digital portfolio?

All rubrics and other information are available from the ICT home page.

Thats a lot of work!

Black Hat:

Did not do a lot of work. Lots of work to do. This "lots of work left" theme has become my constant black hat. I guess I should add more.

I have an EXTREMELY slow internet speed at home.

I am SO not comfortable with a digital portfolio (it's true! it's true! I admit it!). Paper and plastic sleeves just seems more... achievable, real, actual matter.

Yellow Hat:

We have a deadline extension! I plan to set out my work in order to be abe to finish by the 11th

Green Hat:

My PLAN OF ACTION!!!

I plan to finish (by this lesson) 2 artefacts and at least one reflection.

Later, I shall create a list of my artefacts and prepare the content for each of my webpages. It is not a good idea to copy and paste stuff onto my weblog from word, because the font style and size become a nightmare. I shall have to sit down one day (at school, to have a constant connection) and create my pages. I shall also have to link all of them to have a working framework.

Red Hat

I do not like working with a portfolio that is on a blog!!! What's wrong with a regular website, for crying out loud?

Enoughg PJ-ing (process journal - ing) for now.

Sionara!

Actually, each of those paragraphs was a different hat:

Black (and White):

Ok... I have officially been inactive on my process journal for 12 days. That's a lot. Boohoo.

Yellow (and White):

On the bright side, take a look at my digital portfolio. I've included lots of new things, including my personal statement and sitemap.

Red:

I am so sick and tired of doing hats reflections that I will not do one today. I will just reflect the way I WANT TO!

Blue:

I find the hats quite useful for reflecting, but for some reason, I find it difficult to do in ICT. Perhaps this is due to the online format.

Ok... I have officially been inactive on my process journal for 12 days. That's a lot. Boohoo.

On the bright side, take a look at my digital portfolio. I've included lots of new things, including my personal statement and sitemap.

I am so sick and tired of doing hats reflections that I will not do one today. I will just reflect the way I WANT TO!

I find the hats quite useful for reflecting, but for some reason, I find it difficult to do in ICT. Perhaps this is due to the online format.

Task B: Comment on one of the four principles of Web Design

CONTRAST

For this task, I have chosen to comment on the importance of contrast in web design.

What is contrast?

Contrast is the use of differences in a web page. It may be any two characteristics of a page that are different. For example, orange text against a blue background may be considered a contrast. It makes use of two variations (blue and orange) of one element (colour).

It would be ridiculous to say that a size 12 font and left alignment is a contrast. Contrast must be something in relation to something else. The use of a certain sized font against a certain alignment does not compare variations of one element; rather, it compares two completely different elements (font size and text alignment).

Why is contrast important?

Contrast is important for about three major reasons:

It helps us see better, e.g. dark text against a light background would allow us to easily make out the writing.

It allows us to distinguish between different parts of a website. If a different colour is used for the text of different parts, our minds differentiate between the two.

Contrast is also used to highlight certain aspects of a page. If all the text is in a certain font and size, and one word or sentence is different from the rest, it stands out, establishing its importance or significance compared to the rest.

What is good contrast, and what isn’t?

Good contrast is the use of contrast effectively and appropriately. The aim of using contrast in web design is to make things clear and comprehendible. We may want to create a contrast between the colours or alignments to emphasise certain parts of a webpage. However, we would not want to create a contrast between layouts of webpages in a series. If the first page had photos at the very top and the second had the photos at the very bottom, it would confuse viewers. Contrast, like anything else, is only effective in moderation. Constant change and the emphasis of everything will overwhelm viewers and ultimately desensitize them to the contrasts used.

Examples:

For the first example, I did not use a website available on the Internet, so I have included sreenshots.

The image on the left is a screenshot of a webpage I had created with partner Tahmid for a project in Grade 7. We had used a predominantly black background with white text, but the colour combination was still flawed. As can be seen in the picture below, certain parts of the text were illegible due to the white streaks in the background.

In addition, the blue hyperlink cannot be read against black.

An example of contrast used effectively would be:

On the right is a webpage from the UN News Centre. The titles at the top are in a different colour altogether. The heading of the article is in bold type and has a larger font size than the rest of the article. The links and related articles on either side have a smaller text size.

I had searched the News Centre for articles containing certain keywords. Notice that the keywords are highlighted and in bold type.

What I liked most about this page was that it used contrast in moderation. The entire page has about three colours (red, blue and purple) being used for all the headings, text links and even the logos. It uses those colours to make things stand out, but does not overwhelm the viewer with an unreasonably large array of colours.

URL:

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=16422&Cr=nuclear&Cr1=&Kw1=nuclear&Kw2=iran&Kw3=

planning report due in one hour

did not do any process journal entries because I HAD nothing to write about. I've been working a lot today, on the report, and will now be doing my comment for section 3.

As of last week, I have realised the utter worthlessness of my DeBono's hats coments. We were all supposed to read out one of our comments when I realised that all of mine were... to say the least, horrible!

I must work harder
--- Boxer, Animal Farm

So... Let's start:

hehe, that's quite a large hat.

I have successfully created a website design on Inspiration. I will post it both here and on my isdweblog as a sitemap.

Right now, I am busy with the task of actually creating my webpages.

The planning and creation reports are due soon after the Eid break which starts on the 7th of November.

Must get lots of work done by then.

Sick of reflecting

Rest of the hats later.

First of all, INVESTIGATION IS OVER!!!

CELEBRATE! REJOICE! The boring part is gone!!!

hehe... we're getting the Inspiration lady on our computers to say funny stuff about each other...



It has been FAR too long since I did any proper reflection stuff.

Here goes:

(btw, am planning to add colour and images more often, specially for the deBono reflections)



We began our Planning last week. This is what we have to do (forthe design planning and organising section): (of which I have so far done nothing)

1. Make my super duper secret and ultra cool table of contents

2. Put supporting info and artefacts into the blog

3. Make a sitemap on Inspiration (which I am promising myself will not be boring, despite the extreme boring-ness of Inspiration)

I also have to do the ENTIRE planning report during the eid break and also start my creation. AHH!!! And this was supposed to be good once Investigation was over!!!

I have finally finished INVESTIGATION!!!

AHHHH!!! No tim to finish. Will do rest later!

Task 2: Framework and Focus

WebQuest 4:

(based on our teacher's portfolio)

Describe briefly the metaphor used for this digital portfolio

The metaphor used is that of a human body divided into 4 parts:

The head - the thinking section, under which are all the artefact reflections, educational philosophy and other such 'thinking' documents

The torso - the being section, devoted to her personal life, her family, hobbies and interests

The hands - the 'reaching out' section, which is about collaboration with others and personal contributions to the field of education

The legs - the 'making tracks' section, is about her journey, her achievements and past experiences and her footprints in the sands of ... er... education.

How effective is the metaphor? Did you understand it immediately?

I think the metaphor is extremely clever, but very weak as a portfolio metaphor. The different section headings were clearly set out and were appropriate to the content. But it would have been more interesting if the 'body' metaphor had been developed more. I didnt even know that the human body was being used as a metaphor until I visited the 'About this Portfoli' page.

I suggest using pictures of the various body parts as icons for the different sections, rather than having a head for the thinking section and a landscape for the making tracks section (individually appropriate, but no conection between the two). Perhaps there could be a full-body silhouette on the title page, with each body section hyperlinked to the corrsponding portfolio section.

If you were to choose a metaphor as the framework for your portfolio what could it be? Read the information found on this website to help you with ideas.

After reading the recommended website, liked the follwing ideas:

toothbrush, but not enough room to develop the idea
butler, but implies dependency on digifolio
laboratory, but way too scientific

I had previously had the idea of having my workstation as my metaphor. I have developed this idea somewhat, and hope to use it for my isdweblog.

Task 2: Framework and focus

WebQuest 3:

(based on Roberta's Personal Portfolio)

What categories does this portfolio cover?

Briefly comment on the relevance of these

I want to answer these 2 questions together.

Roberta uses the following categories:

Personal Background - her previous schools, her home community, etc.

Resume/Work Experiences/Career Goals - couldn't have put it better myself!

Academic Demontstration - major projects in the 4 years (each year is a sub-category) she studied at MEHS.

Extracurricular - Trips, community groups, etc.

Other links - photos

Each of the categories used by Roberta was completely relevant to her personal portfolio (with the possible exception of the page with pictures of babies). As I have stated earlier in this process journal, MEHS students do not have a very impressive layout for their portfolios. Roberta's was the most detailed one I have found so far, and her portfolio is divided into subcategories that clearly show her accomplishments as a learner. All the categories are ones I would consider including in my own digifolio.

If you were to choose categories as a framework, what headings would you use?

I would use these categories:

MYP Subject Areas (Language A {English} and A2 {for Bangla}, Language B, Humanities, Maths, Science, Technology, Arts and PE)

I would also include pages for achievemnts (certificates, awards...), CS work, ECA, my Personal Statement and a photo album

Task 2: Framework and Focus

WebQuest 2:

(based on this page)

What question do you think the student has been challenged with to use as a framework for this protfolio?

Although Natalie Krupka has not mentioned a question anywhere, we can guess from the context, her message. Ms. Krupka is the technology coordinator at the Holy Cross School. Her protfolio answers the question, "What are the different roles I have had to play to succeed in my career?"

What headings have been used to provide evidence?

She has colour coded her potflio in 5 colours, representing the following sections: "About Me", "Teacher of Students", "Teacher of Teachers" and "Leader". These are the headings under which she has categorised the various elements of her job. Under each of the colour sections, she has further sub categories, e.g. "Resume" would fall under "About Me".

How effective is her portfolio layout and content in answering that question?

Natalie Krupka has used a unique and effective layout for her portfolio. Each of the colour sections make up puzzled pieces that form a rectangle around the centrepiece titled "Natalie Krupka". It shows herself in the center of her many resposiblities, all of which are directky connected to her, as well as with each other, as suggested by the jigsaw theme.

Think of a guiding question that you could use for your portfolio.

Possible guiding questions for my portfolio are:

"How have I developed as a learner since my enrolment in the MYP Programme?"

"How much have I improved myself as a student over the past academic year?"

"What qualities do I possess that make me a reponsible young citizen of the world?"

"How much has my education contributed to my development as a person?"

Notes to self: This is the stuff I need to do next time I log in:

Talk about Blogger of the Week, turnitin and what I did in class today.

WebQuests 2,3 & 4.

Task on Multimedia

AND use the hats

AND take a look at this week's blogger of the week

Smiley says HELLO. (Deja vu???)