Journal #7 PLN Reflection

I joined the Classroom 2.0 affinity group and surprisingly it isn't completely dead like most of the other affinity groups I was poking around on throughout the course. I received at least one email per  week that listed free conference sessions, updates to events, or research opportunities. They had a free informative session for "connected librarians" last week, which one could attend through the connectedlibrarians.com website. It seems like every day they have some kind of presentation or event that correlates to technology in the classroom, in October they had presentations with titles ranging from "Connection to Collaboration", "Connected Leadership", and "21st Century Classroom Management". The website itself has an extremely useful section on the left called "Finding Interesting Discussions" which breaks down forum threads by category, making it easily to search for discussions relevant to what you are looking for. I highly recommend this affinity group, it was extremely useful for me and I can see myself using this resource in the future.

In terms of the Digg Reader, I found it pretty useful for keeping news stories organized by source. This can be a useful tool for students and teachers to individually organize all their web sources for a project, presentation or research. Digg has it's drawbacks in terms of collaboration however, which is why I prefer Reddit as a social network for content, whether it be news, jokes, videos or pictures, the community and the commenting ability makes it a superior social news site in comparison to Digg. I have mentioned Reddit before, and I think it could be a powerful tool for the classroom and is totally free. A class could have it's own subreddit that the teacher could moderate (add/remove users, content, etc) and the entire class could submit and comment on each others posts.

Twitter is an interesting case as I mentioned in a previous blog post. I didn't find it useful during this class or for anything really. I only find it useful for its ability to collect information like social trends and to see the daily 'hive mind' thoughts of humanity. As I said before, I normally use Twitter as an openly public user to proclaim my frustration or approval of political or worldly events. I don't use it to communicate with any friends or family, but I do find that companies, celebrities and other personalities tend to use Twitter for everything and can be the only reliable way of communication with them if you don't know them. For example, Formula 1 on the BBC and SKY both have twitter accounts specifically to ask questions directly to the commentators or personalities. It introduces a fun way for companies and entertainers to interact with their audience. I really think Twitter is an excellent social media outlet, though I do not think it is a good tool for direct student-teacher interaction. Email is and will be the main point of contact for most people in the professional world for a long time to come, so I'd rather focus on some sort of email communication between student and teacher to build that essential skill.

Journal #6 Self-reflection

I came into this class with a solid background in the basic structure of HTML and CSS, albeit with a few gaping holes in my knowledge. The only formal web instruction I had was at a nerdy 13 and under technology summer camp where the day was split into two sections, intro to web, and intro to game programing. Since that camp I have always had an immense interest in how the internet and websites work. When I was in high school I created a few basic forums, bought my own domain name, and created a few gaming based websites. I used a lot of WYSIWYG editors like DreamWeaver (Version 4! No, not CS4 - Version 4, like when Macromedia was still its own entity and not owned by Adobe) and Photoshop 7 and mostly everything was static, so HTML and CSS vocabulary was unnecessary or very limited. It wasn't until I was in college where I started helped create a website using WordPress and the woman I was working with was so specific, I had to learn enough vocabulary to get by using the themes within WordPress. Because of my self-taught, round-about way of learning HTML and CSS, these gaping holes in my knowledge have suppressed my creativity and frustrated me.

This class has, perhaps unsurprisingly, filled in a lot of these gaping holes. My major issue was vocabulary confusion - the mismatching of definitions for basic things. For example the difference between elements (<p>, <a> , <table>), classes (specified groups of elements to make up a sub-style, noted with a period [.name]), and the id selector (aka divs, sectioned areas of styles for individual elements noted with a hashtag [#name]). The last class period when we started creating the two column layout was when it finally all came together. It is so basic, but I just didn't make the connection that the placement of divs within the structure of the HTML is key. I knew to use CSS rules to negotiate it's place with the other divs, but if the divs aren't nested in correct order in the HTML the layout won't appear as desired. 

I enjoy the hands on format of the class and I am really enjoying the new HTML5 stuff that is being shared with us, even if we aren't using it. It is awesome to see how much is being incorporated directly into HTML, like the drawing canvases and advanced form field integration, without having to go to third party products like Flash. Mostly, this class has made me extremely excited to get to the advanced course with Dr. McGarvey, so I can get to the really fun (err, complicated) stuff.

I don't think anything was really overly complicated, so I will share what my favorite project has been so far. My favorite has actually been creating the navigation buttons and the CSS behind it. You can see my red to gold navigation buttons on my main page, http://www.csupomona.edu/~dcstewart/first.html . 

Journal #5 - Twitter

My account was created with Twitter when it was first launched in 2006. I think I have used it 5 times a year since then, for a few reasons. Twitter and my activity on it, is my only publicly viewable social media account. I do this because Twitter's ability to interact and provide data with the rest of the internet (the APIs they use). The catch is you must have a public profile in order for the data to be used by others. For example, a lot of researchers are using Twitter to run experiments on social behavior, collective conscience ("the hive mind"), and human interactions in the digital world. Researchers, news organizations and others will use the API's Twitter provides to analyze and sift through Tweets, location data, trending topics, and other information; so I leave my profile open to the public so I can contribute to the community, though I tend to post political or social issues that matter to me. Unlike Facebook, Twitter will allow me to keep my profile public, but limit almost nearly all other information, like name, friends, location and workplace.

The other reason I use Twitter is to follow celebrities from my favorite television shows and professional athletes. Mostly because they are amusing and post ridiculous pictures. Jeremy Clarkson from Top Gear (UK) is constant entertainment.

Think CSS is tough?

This guy Chris Pattle is a CSS genius, artist, or whatever you want to call it.

The Simpsons, made with CSS!!!

Check out the collection:
http://pattle.github.io/simpsons-in-css/

Check out how it was made:
http://www.chrispattle.com/blog/simpsons-in-css/