Heee-yah!
The Web Unit! Day Dos:
The morning started out with the CSS Switcheroo activity. The students observed the differences in CSS in their page while learning how to apply external CSS sheets. Several students were able to articulate what was changing (the layout, colors, and styles) and what wasn't (the content inside the HTML page).
Next Kevin formally introduced CSS, with a rousing lecture that put only two students to sleep. They learned how to style up a basic website from 10,000 feet, seeing some of the tags but not using them themselves.
The Exploration section was kicked off with Tony showing Hey Monday's (band) website's firebug and explaining why you'd use firebug. Next, students jumped into what has heretofore been known as a "To Do List" but will hence forth be known as an "Adventure List", at the request of several students.
The students took an existing HTML page and added their own background images, colors, and styles by attaching a CSS sheet. They weren't given the syntax, but rather forged their web pages with a combination of remembrance and w3school googling. Excellent initiative all around, but things did get a bit carried away (as will be covered by the two points Kevin lost).
Kevin gained his first point of the day by proving Saige wrong on something (we started keeping track on the white board), then subsequently lost it when he forgot to have students save their work up until just 5 minutes before break. They then had to work through the break, which they did cheerfully. Apparently, they really enjoyed styling up their sites.
The day passed straight on into Certification, when students had to break up into groups of three for their BTWs. A group of four students requested to become a group of four BTW students, and Kevin had to say "three" in four languages before they gave up. (English: "three", Spanish: "tres", Arabic: "ثلاثة", and Albanian: "tre". Kevin did not know these languages before, but picked them up fluently and with impressive alacrity once the students started conversing freely.)
Now in groups of three (and one of two, and another of two but possessing a rain check from the absent Marze), students chose trilogy movies they would make parody sites about. Groups dallied significantly in selection, with conversations being fiercely and academically debated with rigor and exceptional rhetoric. At one point, a group even rock-paper-scissored for the honor of mocking Shrek.
Kevin lost his last point when he recalled, 5 minutes before the end of the day, that the blog question had yet to be tackled. Besma point this out, and, having been the observer of the first error, had two points written up on the board.
Miraculously, most students had already finished theirs earlier during the missed break, and serendipity prevailed.
All and all, absolute blast of an ITA Saturday.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Felipe and Eliza explore the POWER of CSS (Web Unit Day Two)
We started with a daily puzzle. Students opened an HTML file and applied several different CSS files to see how the files changed the look of the website. It seemed to be a good way for the students to see how the CSS changed the whole site. The students seemed to understand fairly quickly.
During the Education part of the day, Felipe demonstrated CSS code and talked about how it works and how to apply it to an HTML page. Some students had questions as they watched the demonstration. They wanted to know if CSS always had to be done externally or if you could do it inside the HTML document.
After a brief break, we started on our To Do list for the day:
This To Do list seemed to be more difficult than the list last week, and most students had trouble working with it. Students didn't know to make sure all their files were saved in the same folder so that Dreamweaver could work with them. Also, Stephanie had the style name spelled wrong, so the background color wouldn't work. David figured it out quickly and so did Lucy.
After break, students got in to groups of three to begin working on their Behind the Wheel project. For the project, students choose a movie trilogy to make a parody website. Each student in the group will have individual responsibilities that reflect the types of roles professional web designers might have when working on a team to make a website. One student will do all the work for the visuals and images, another student will be the writer/editor of all the content, and one student will be responsible for all the coding.
Today, students chose their groups and then decided together which trilogy to work on. Then they began to design a simple layout for their webpage.
During the Education part of the day, Felipe demonstrated CSS code and talked about how it works and how to apply it to an HTML page. Some students had questions as they watched the demonstration. They wanted to know if CSS always had to be done externally or if you could do it inside the HTML document.
After a brief break, we started on our To Do list for the day:
- Grab the ToDo Folder
- Create a blank CSS sheet
- Link or import it to the HTML document
- Add a repeating background image using CSS
- Apply a margin to the body or center the page
- Replace picture of the cow with another image
- Style the body, h1, h2, p, ul, and a tags.
- Artifact: take a screen shot of your web page for your blog
This To Do list seemed to be more difficult than the list last week, and most students had trouble working with it. Students didn't know to make sure all their files were saved in the same folder so that Dreamweaver could work with them. Also, Stephanie had the style name spelled wrong, so the background color wouldn't work. David figured it out quickly and so did Lucy.
After break, students got in to groups of three to begin working on their Behind the Wheel project. For the project, students choose a movie trilogy to make a parody website. Each student in the group will have individual responsibilities that reflect the types of roles professional web designers might have when working on a team to make a website. One student will do all the work for the visuals and images, another student will be the writer/editor of all the content, and one student will be responsible for all the coding.
Today, students chose their groups and then decided together which trilogy to work on. Then they began to design a simple layout for their webpage.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Blastoff
The WEB UNIT! Our room kicked off with Kevin finishing the daily puzzle right up to the last minute (8:59am), allowing students to submit answers to form questions they found buried in HTML comments and w3schools.
Next, a lecture on the Internet and HTML, where students took notes on a shared google doc. At the end a pop quiz ensued, with students proving they had sucked up everything like sponges. Clarifying questions were asked!
After break, 2013 showed their true colors by blasting through a checklist of HTML coding tasks. With only a hand-waving introduction to the very basics of the basic bare-bones, 2013ers used their burly minds to look up tags, fonts, and colors, whatever it was that they wanted for their first ever HTML page.
After break number two, students finished up taking a print screen of their pages, then even remembered that we needed to transfer the pages off desktops and onto the network in order to save them for good. Tony and Kevin then showed their BTW examples, getting laughs at fake quotes from movie critique Excel Williams.
Next, a lecture on the Internet and HTML, where students took notes on a shared google doc. At the end a pop quiz ensued, with students proving they had sucked up everything like sponges. Clarifying questions were asked!
After break, 2013 showed their true colors by blasting through a checklist of HTML coding tasks. With only a hand-waving introduction to the very basics of the basic bare-bones, 2013ers used their burly minds to look up tags, fonts, and colors, whatever it was that they wanted for their first ever HTML page.
After break number two, students finished up taking a print screen of their pages, then even remembered that we needed to transfer the pages off desktops and onto the network in order to save them for good. Tony and Kevin then showed their BTW examples, getting laughs at fake quotes from movie critique Excel Williams.
And So We Begin and the Web Unit Shall Be Fantabulous!
Web Rompin' With Felipe and Eliza
We started the day with a daily puzzle. Students looked at a simple website and used "control + u" to reveal the html code. Then they read the comments within the code to answer the questions on the website. Some of them had trouble at first figuring out how the code links up with what they see on the screen, but they figured it out fairly quickly. Then we had a brief lesson about what html code is and how the internet works. We looked at today's To Do list and then took a brief break. (The Madison area High Schools are currently in basketball playoffs, so that was the topic of break time conversation in our room!)
As students worked on the To Do list, they started understanding both the code itself and how careful you have to be so that the code will actually work. Juan A. and Oscar had trouble at first because although they had the code right, they had it in the wrong order. They were putting a paragraph tag before every sentence and then not closing the paragraph tag. So, once they fixed that, they could see that it worked.
Many students finished the list quickly and they all seemed to be enjoying the activity. They were more than enthusiastic about it! Several of them wanted to learn right away how to add colors and font styles to the webpage they were creating. They asked the question and they did their own online research to find out how to do what they wanted to do. They even started linking videos to their page.
It was thrilling to teach them, to see them get excited about what they could do with code. Jose wanted to add more colors than basic red and blue, so he found a website that showed him the codes for a lot of colors. You should have seen these amazing students! They were moving to each other's computers to help each other, to show each other something new they had learned. The lab was full of a really awesome electric learning energy of enthusiasm! I heard one student say "Oh my gosh, this is cool!" when he opened his file with a web browser. The students went way beyond the To Do list. This was really the best ITA session I have seen and it was exactly what I always hope the students will do. Illa said, when he came back from break "This unit is the best one so far!".
Then we blogged and learned about the BTW for this unit.
AWESOME!!
Illa's HTML code and webpage
We started the day with a daily puzzle. Students looked at a simple website and used "control + u" to reveal the html code. Then they read the comments within the code to answer the questions on the website. Some of them had trouble at first figuring out how the code links up with what they see on the screen, but they figured it out fairly quickly. Then we had a brief lesson about what html code is and how the internet works. We looked at today's To Do list and then took a brief break. (The Madison area High Schools are currently in basketball playoffs, so that was the topic of break time conversation in our room!)
As students worked on the To Do list, they started understanding both the code itself and how careful you have to be so that the code will actually work. Juan A. and Oscar had trouble at first because although they had the code right, they had it in the wrong order. They were putting a paragraph tag before every sentence and then not closing the paragraph tag. So, once they fixed that, they could see that it worked.
Many students finished the list quickly and they all seemed to be enjoying the activity. They were more than enthusiastic about it! Several of them wanted to learn right away how to add colors and font styles to the webpage they were creating. They asked the question and they did their own online research to find out how to do what they wanted to do. They even started linking videos to their page.
It was thrilling to teach them, to see them get excited about what they could do with code. Jose wanted to add more colors than basic red and blue, so he found a website that showed him the codes for a lot of colors. You should have seen these amazing students! They were moving to each other's computers to help each other, to show each other something new they had learned. The lab was full of a really awesome electric learning energy of enthusiasm! I heard one student say "Oh my gosh, this is cool!" when he opened his file with a web browser. The students went way beyond the To Do list. This was really the best ITA session I have seen and it was exactly what I always hope the students will do. Illa said, when he came back from break "This unit is the best one so far!".
Then we blogged and learned about the BTW for this unit.
AWESOME!!
Illa's HTML code and webpage
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
2013 Photoshop End of Semester Recap
Overall this Photoshop Unit semester with the class of 2013 went great! The students got to learn a great amount of how to use Photoshop and many of them really caught on quick and were able to make some impressive projects throughout the Unit.
The Unit ended with a nice end-of-the-semester presentation of all the projects the students from the class of 2013 did while progressing in their world of "Photoshopism." The presentation did a great job of showing how much the students, as well as the instructors, had accomplished this semester. And knowing how much some of them really got into it, it will be interesting to see what other magnificent projects they go on to create as they continue to learn and explore all of the many, many possibilities of Adobe Photoshop.
Overall this Photoshop Unit semester with the class of 2013 went great! The students got to learn a great amount of how to use Photoshop and many of them really caught on quick and were able to make some impressive projects throughout the Unit.
The Unit ended with a nice end-of-the-semester presentation of all the projects the students from the class of 2013 did while progressing in their world of "Photoshopism." The presentation did a great job of showing how much the students, as well as the instructors, had accomplished this semester. And knowing how much some of them really got into it, it will be interesting to see what other magnificent projects they go on to create as they continue to learn and explore all of the many, many possibilities of Adobe Photoshop.
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