Day 6 of working in Pages

Today I remade everything I lost from the operating system wipeout. It's very similar to what I posted earlier, in the PDF file, except with some grammar editing and a new title. Then, I started working on my brochure. It's going along pretty well, even though citing everything is fairly time consuming. I hope to finish the brochure by next class, though that's probably unlikely.

Brochures

Today, our teacher showed us some examples of brochures and told us to comment on which brochures caught our eyes the most. These two really got my attention:
http://s3images.coroflot.com/user_files/individual_files/223799_OMVOPMejI077Cg6i2U21yLiUA.jpg
And

http://gotwood.bfrancesi.com/images/portfolio/australia.jpg

These two really caught my eye as soon as I looked at the list. The "Gateway to China's Future" brochure has a great design on the front and makes you just want to look into it more, and the color scheme makes it all the more interesting. The Australia brochure has a very nice background and seems to balance out the amount of text and pictures very well. My brochure will probably be more like the Australia brochure, but the Gateway brochure was certainly a good example of what a good color scheme can do.

Today's Work (Day 5)

Well, besides posting that rant/overview of the six weeks, I did pretty much nothing today. Sorry, folks! Next class, though, I'll focus on remaking my Pages project. I still can't believe it was all wiped out...anyway, I'll definitely work harder next class. Today, I pretty much relaxed a day and played games.

Rant & The Latest 6 Weeks

Well, our first six weeks of working in this class are over. :(
I've really enjoyed this class so far, all difficulties and grievances aside. It's been easy at times and hard at times, but I think I've done well. I've learned a lot of things about making a blog and keeping it up, about how my Mac works, netiquette, and about working in Pages. Making a blog was, in my opinion, the more fun thing to do since we could be as creative as we wanted to and had a lot of themes to think about. But, maybe I'm just saying that because our school installed new operating systems onto these Macs, which effectively destroyed our Pages projects. Yes, that happened. *Sigh*. One more reason for me to hate, right? Couldn't they have at least, like, backed it up, or something? I don't know.
Anyway, the skills I've learned could really help my future. The blog seems like a great and organized way to keep track of everything you need to do, and keeping in touch with people you know. It could be a great center for everything in college or late high school for homework and other kinds of things as well. Netiquette will certainly help me later on, even though it was implanted in my head at a very early age. (My teacher in elementary school for technology was very strict on netiquette.) After all, saying the wrong thing could get me in big trouble. As for Pages, well, if I have to ever use a Mac I suppose it would be useful to know how to make documents in it. I still definitely prefer PCs to Macs.

My Favorite Projects

This morning, I looked at some of my friends' projects in Pages, like my Italy one. My top three were:
Kel :] -It was one of the best I'd seen- great cover, great designs, a consistent font that added to the mood of the project and looked really great in contrast, and everything that needed to be done. ; 

http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0Bxs_cPhXC5L3OWM4ZjY3NTEtZTYzOC00Yjk2LWI4NTItYjQwMWY1NWEyMDU4&hl=en&authkey=CMi3hPgH. 

TheAsianLeprechaun-At first, I was laughing at the name of the country, but then I kept looking and it was a wonderful overall project. The cover was beautiful and instantly captured my attention, and the rest of the project was great as well. The brochure especially was really good. ; https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B-yY_l0l8tS2NGNjOGY1OGItNWZkYy00YWM2LWE2MTAtYWVhOTI1MDIxMjJi&hl=en&authkey=CK6U9osO


Big Taco- His was the best example that a great color scheme can grab your attention and make the project look a lot better. I'm going to go fix mine before self-grading myself, actually. ; https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0ByuByHN_AFlUMjQyZTE1NDQtMzc1Ni00MjJjLWJjNzQtYTM1NmE4ODhmOWQ0&hl=en&authkey=CLOFm10

Right, time for the self-assessment.
General- 3 1/2?, I actually just added the headers and footers myself. The page numbers were there already. However the design style is still a bit off.
Cover- 4, It has a lot of images related to Italy, a title and has a good design style.
Table of Contents- 4, Neatly labeled with all color schemes in order.
Work Log; Initial Design- 4, I have everything listed with explanations for everything.
Bibliography and Bibliography Citations- 4 each, I have well over 12 citations and everything is neatly colored.
Professionalism- 4, I have no typos or grammar mistakes of any kind.

Cheers! This is pretty much all I did today, but I also started on my brochure. My mouse's scroll button is a bit broken, so it's a bit annoying, but it's okay.

The fourth day of working in Pages & My PDF File

Hello again, everyone. It's my fourth day of working in this program...I can't wait for it to be over. Anyway, today, I finished up my cover page, table of contents, a whole page of bibliographies, and my work-log, which is basically what I posted on this blog for the first three days. Anyway, here's the link in a PDF File https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B9aIgWEtuCXgZTRmNGZiODQtZGJiNi00NDhjLTgyM2UtOWJhNTRlMDJkOWVh&hl=en&authkey=COT6rKoL.
Yes, it's in Google Docs. The process was surprisingly easy to do- I just had to reduce the Pages document, save it as a PDF, upload it onto Google Docs and make it so anyone could see it. It was really easy and only took me 5-6 minutes to do. However, Google Docs hates on backgrounds- The cover page has a background on the bottom half and the Table of Contents also has a background, but Google Docs decided not to show them. I'm not entirely sure what happened, but I hope you like it!

Day Three of Working in Pages

So today I came into class happy and cheerful. By the middle of class, I was decidedly less cheerful. Pages is once again thwarting all of my attempts to be happy and cheerful with it.
My first obstacle today was the lack of an "insert" key on Mac keyboards, which on PCs lets you replace current text with new text as you type. Most people say this is a great annoyance to them, but if you had a perfect setup on your work and just needed to add things to the first page without affecting the other ones, you might want an insert key. Too bad there wasn't one.
So, instead of making my cover on the Pages document with my itinerary, I decided to open up a new template and use that instead. I used the "Garden Project Poster Large" format and replaced all the images with stock photos and replaced the text with my own cover wording. Then, I had to go back to my bibliography program and cite every last image that I used, which took about twenty minutes with all 7 photos and the websites and databases. After that, I emailed the bibliography to myself and copy and pasted it into Pages, where it came up as a small text box. After resizing the box, the bibliography took up pretty much all of one page.
So, to sum it up- Today I finished most of my cover and bibliography as well as changing my table of contents a little. I guess I'm learning more about what a Mac can and cannot do, as well.

Day two of working in Pages

Our rubric for this project is finally up. http://cms.springbranchisd.com/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=2nKgqr0XtHo%3d&tabid=12561&mid=29208...
Riiiight. Time for my daily hat- reflection on Pages. Anyway, I finally figured out how to make arrows on an image so that I can show my travel route in Italy. Yay! Then, I fixed my itinerary to be more realistic and researched the ways to get around Italy. Getting around Italy in a train is normal, and so that's what my group will be doing. From Bologna to Pisa we'll have to take a bus, though, and we'll have to take boats to Capri and Palermo in Sicily. Today, I started making the cover page for my project and started getting information about my cities as well. When I get home, I'll probably try to start up on my bibliography.
On another note, Mac keyboards are totally working against me- The keys feel so different compared to PC keyboards, and it's messing me up. Also, I haven't added any pictures to the itinerary- I'll attempt to jump over that obstacle when I hit it. (I'll probably fail somehow, too)

Day 1 Working on the Pages Project

You know how I said that I didn't mind using Pages? I take that back. I despise Pages. It can go and take itself out of my Mac and I'd be fine with that. Today, I uploaded my plan to this blog (See below post) and started working on this project. I instantly ran into a problem as I tried to search for a map of Italy. Then, when I finally found one, I couldn't move it behind my text and make an arrow to point from one place to another. This project is definitely not one of my favorite ones so far.

Plan for Italy Project

There's my plan for the Pages project we're doing in class. Sorry it's so blurry, the lightning is way off even though I Auto-Toned it in Photoshop... anyway, on the left you can see the plan for the Travel Brochure: two pages, with three columns on the first page and about nine pictures and a brief overview of the trip on the second page. On the right you can see the itinerary, which includes the table of contents on the first page and the actual itinerary and travel plan on the second page. After that, page 3 - page x (however many I need) will be in depth information about the trip and the cities.

Hope to have the project done soon. I hate projects in Pages or Microsoft Word that aren't just essays, but it'll have to do.

Things you should or should not use in a project.

Today, we're going to begin our new project in Pages with the countries. Before we do, though, we had a couple things to learn about so we didn't get into any legal trouble.


Plagiarism is the act of using someone else's work in your own projects and saying that it was your work. When you look at a sentence online, you would have to restate everything you read in a completely different way to avoid plagiarism. There are very good reasons to avoid plagiarism in any station of life: as a student, plagiarism would get you into detention, ISS, or maybe even suspension. For sure you would get a 0 on your assignment. In college, plagiarism can result in expulsion from the school and a note in their permanent record. In a real job, you would probably lose your job, and it would be pretty hard to find another one. 

In our blogs, we will have to cite our sources. To cite our sources, we will use our teacher's little special method of citations1. In our itinerary and facts, we will use a small footnote to link the project paper to our bibliography, which will have all the necessary information about the citation- The author, title of the work, location found, date published and date used, website, etc.

Examples: 

Italy Heaven. "About Italy." Italy Heaven. Italy Heaven, 2010. Web. 10 Sept.
     2010. <http://www.italyheaven.co.uk/aboutsite.html>.

Internet Studios. "Best of Italy." Just Italy. Internet Studios, 2010. Web. 10
     Sept. 2010. <http://www.justitaly.org/italy/best-of-italy.asp>.

Stock Photography is a set of photos that were collected for people to use instead of needing a professional to take the pictures instead. Commercial stock photography makes you have to pay to use the photos, but a lot of stock photography is free for people who create accounts on a website. It's a lot better to go onto a free, public stock photography site instead of finding random images off Google because Google images can be copyrighted, and the owners of the picture could contact their lawyers and sue the person who used the picture without permission. 

An image that is 'Public Domain' has no property rights and no copyrights. These are normally pictures that have an expired copyright. They still need to be cited, of course. 

Karan's Whimsy. Shields in stained glass of the 14th century with the arms of 
     Mowbray. 14th Century. Karan's Whimsy. Karan's Whimsy. Web. 10 Sept.
     2010. <http://karenswhimsy.com/public-domain-images/medieval-shields/
     medieval-shields-3.shtm>.








1: http://sw-multimedia.blogspot.com/search/label/multimedia

Researching Italy

So our next project is to create a trip to a country to "promote cultural understanding".
Today, I researched a little bit about Italy, which is the country I'm planning a trip to. I've been to Italy once, and I'd love to go again, which is why I'm researching how to plan the trip. I love Italy- It is, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful countries. The food is wonderful, the cities are beautiful (Venice is my favorite!) and the culture is very interesting.  I discovered you could find out a lot if you Google "Traveling around Italy".
What I ended up planning today was just the itinerary, not much real information yet- I planned that we'd arrive in Venice and then travel down through Italy, visiting the famous cities (Rome, Florence, Naples, etc.) and staying for 1-3 days in each, so that anyone else on the trip can have time to visit the famous monuments and buildings. Even though you could stay a lifetime in Rome or Venice and still be awed by the city, the trip can only be a maximum of 20 days long, so we'd have to cut our visits short.
I think this will be a fun project to do, but we'll have to do it in Pages, which makes me a bit nervous. I'm fairly sure I can make a decent project, but it would be much easier in Powerpoint/Keynote.

Pages

Once again, before I say anything, I must say that I still prefer PC's to Macs.

With that fact in mind, I have to say that Pages seems to be a very good program compared to it's PC counterpart, Microsoft Word (Okay, it kinda hurt to say that. But on the most part, it seems more advanced.) 

Today, after finishing up that rubric on my blog, I experimented with Pages '09, which is the program that our next project will be in. With my limited knowledge of Pages (but knowing that it was similar to Word), I decided to watch the first section of tutorials on the program, and they were pretty good. The first section had "Getting Started with Pages '09", "Working with Sections", "Creating a Table of Contents" (Which I found very helpful for multiple reasons), "Using Outline Mode", and "Using Full-Screen View". The Full-screen was what I found as one of the more interesting functions, since it looks better on a Mac.  (Actually, I’m working on Full-screen Pages to write this right now- the internet just went down. It looks pretty cool.) I'm a novice at this program, but I think I'll watch the rest of the tutorials later, because this is a program on a Mac I think I'd like to master.  I like Pages better than I like most other Mac programs, and I hope to learn more about it so I can use it for some of my essays later on. 


By the way, I'm going to blame everything I said here that's good on the fact that I only have Microsoft Word 2003. The fact that I might like a Mac program is driving me insane.

Netiquette

Netiquette is also known as cyberethics or digital citizenship. It is the list of basic rules by which one should follow at all times while online. The basic concepts are to be polite and respectful to everyone online, but it goes more in depth than that.




Scenario #1 – A student sends a harassing e-mail to another student. The receiving student
retaliates with a “flaming e-mail.” Is this the appropriate response? If not, what would be?
This is not the appropriate response to receiving a harassing email. If you receive an email that you deem to be inappropriate, then it should be reported to a teacher (if in school), or you should respond in a polite manner, such as with an apology (if the email was for a reason), or you should wait to talk to the person face-to-face instead of responding in a bad way.

Scenario #2 – When hanging out with friends, one of the students makes a call on their cellphone and carries on a conversation while still within the group. Is this ok? Why or why not?
Calling people and continuing to talk in a group is not polite. You should always give someone full attention. The correct thing to do would've been to excuse yourself from the group, talk on the phone and then return and ask what you've missed.

Scenario #3 – A student logs on to a free file sharing website and downloads a song they just heard on the radio. Is this ok? Why or why not?
This is a method known as pirating, and it is illegal. Downloading a song from a website instead of buying it isn't legal, and shouldn't be done-The song is cheap enough to buy on iTunes, or if you're really that desperate you could go on one of the numerous sites that play music.

Scenario #4 – A student follows a questionable link to a website and downloads a malicious script which releases a Trojan Horse virus on to the school network. Is the student to blame? Why or why not?
The student is to blame, because the student followed the link instead of asking the teacher if that link was safe first.

Scenario #5 – An hour before class, a student remembers that a writing assignment is due. The student goes to the library, logs on to a website, and copies/pastes the information. Is this ok? Why or why not?
This is called plagiarism, and it is against the rules to do. Most information on the web is copyrighted- it  can't be copy and pasted. If a student is caught doing this in most schools, he/she will have to talk to the principal, and maybe go to courts for it. The penalties are very severe.

Scenario #6 – At home, a student uses a software package to copy movies and games from DVD’s for his or her friends. Is this within fair-use laws? Explain.
This isn't within the law to do. Most movies and games have the FBI notice on them- that notice isn't just for show! You're not supposed to copy movies or games onto DVDs for friends.

Scenario #7 – A student logs into the school website to download the syllabus they lost. Are they breaking any rules or laws? Explain.
Actually, the student here is perfectly fine. Logging onto the school website just to get homework information is fine, as long as they make sure to tell the teacher later on that they did. Hacking the school website, on the other hand, is illegal and not fine. Of course, the student could've just asked the teacher for another copy of the syllabus in the first place...

Scenario #8 – Students spend a good amount of time in class creating a web page for a school sponsored fundraiser. However, there website is not usable by certain individuals with disabilities. Was this disrespectful or wrong of them?
This was disrespectful, for sure. They should've let anybody view the webpage- leaving out certain individuals like that is like banning some people from sitting at your lunch table, or leaving some people out of your group on purpose. However, most people with disabilities like this already have a program or piece of hardware to counter their problem and therefore should be able to view the webpage anyway.




Netiquette is important because if one person doesn't follow the list of rules, then it could end badly for everyone involved in a project or assignment. If they don't follow all the rules, then they could get into serious legal trouble or at best just get a 0 on an assignment. Following the netiquette rules makes everyone like you more for using good grammar and spelling. We study this in class to make sure our blogs are good and to make sure we don't break any rules, spoken or unspoken.

My Blog Based on the Grading Rubric.

Based on this rubric http://cms.springbranchisd.com/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=w2ErdB4N3Kg%3d&tabid=12561&mid=29208, my grade would be the following...

• Design Template: 4~ I changed my background, template (to add extra gadgets), and changed color settings and other things in my advanced settings.
• Design Tab: 4~ There's obviously a ninja up there, and I have multiple gadgets like google search, a calculator, google translate, etc.
• Setting Tab: 4~ Only logged-in users can comment on this blog, all comments are being moderated, the time-zone has been changed appropriately, and my description has been written.
• Protecting Your Identify: 4~ My name and location are not mentioned, nor are any photos of me or my friends.
• Posting: 4~ See below post about "Other Blogs".
• Blog Entries: 4~ All of my blog entries have vivid detail and how the skills I've learned in each section could contribute to real life situations, and how I've improved.
• Commenting: 4~ If you look at the blogs in the "Other Blogs" post, then all of them have comments from me that are at least related to the post and/or are polite. ;)
• Professionalism: 4~ Orange and blue is a complimentary color scheme (I passed Art class!) and it looks great on black, in my opinion. If anyone sees any spelling mistakes, feel free to tell me.. but otherwise, it's all set.

I guess I'll double check this now, but it seems that all is in order... This rubric has been very helpful in helping me make this blog, and will probably help me make any other blogs later on in my life as well. Some of these things apply for other things as well, such as forums, email, etc. Thanks for reading!

Making my Ninja

So you guys can see the cool little ninja up there waving a sword around, right? Making him was pretty fun. At http://www.voki.com/ you can make simple animated avatars, but I didn't like that site so I headed over to http://www.meez.com/.
This site was more to my liking. I was very confused at first because of the price tags on the avatar items, but then I found that we got 2000 Meez Coinz to begin with. There was a lot of options to choose from, but I decided on a ninja theme. Meez even had a ninja Lifestyle under that category. I could barely make the 2000 Coinz starter, and I had to delete some of my items at first. But when I got home from class and logged on, I found that I could play games to get more Coinz instead of purchasing them. Also, the site gave me some Coinz for logging on again and some more for a daily bonus. After a few achievements (Note: Mutually Assured Destruction is probably my favorite so far.), I could buy the background and boots that I wanted to go with the ninja outfit and sword animation. It was pretty confusing at first, but after looking around for a bit the site is easy to use and fun to design an avatar with. I'll probably work more on my avatar later, to change the background to the Ninja temple (Edit: Done!) If I ever need a cool avatar for a blog, profile picture, or project, http://www.meez.com/  is where I'd go to make it.