Catching up

I have not updated my blog since I started the final project. It was very intense and it took many hours of work. This is my time to catch up.
My final project was done in partnership with Areej and it worked out great.
Our project was to design a website and a calendar for the Children and Nature non-profit. Areej and I are a great team. We would get together on Saturdays in my office and spend most of the day working. It was an interesting experience to play client and consultant at the same time. Areej interviewed me several times as I played client and we were trying to figure out ways to thank the current sponsors with the calendar and seek out new sponsors using the website. Areej came up with great design and beautiful colors. We are still working on the calendar. So far we have two versions. I like the first one better and Areej likes the second one. So we have decided to continue working this week and come up with a third version to make us both happy. I should post it sometime next week.
I like the website a lot and will upload it soon. I have it working well locally in my computer. In order to upload it it needs to be optimized. The problem with the site are the pictures. They are very high resolution and I need to work on it to make it upload faster. My friends from Brazil have not been able to see it as it is. On a dial up slow connection near 44Kbps, it took about 10 minutes to load the first page and nothing else happened. It crashed. Well, after so much work I am very motivated to make it viable in a slow connection.
I was post it here for now, but this is really work in progress
htpp://fog.ccsf.edu/~clamha/childre/index.html
This class was great and worked out well for my. I have accomplished so much in terms of seeing a real project from beginning to end. I am looking forward to continue with this project in future classes.

Week 7

Week 6

It was great to have to opportunity to work with the FLICKR site. I was impressed by the technology. I was feeling forgiving and not too critical of the bad explanation and design of the map function. Being able to put a picture on a map was worth it. I have a lot of pictures from Brazil and I intend to use this technology to show my friends where the pictures are from. Brazil is so big and it is hard to explain where things are. This will also be used in our final web page project.
Well, back to the Map, I found it by accident while looking for something else. When we followed the video and FAQs, it was very far from the reality of using it and also time consuming. In this particular case I do not mind sacrificing design in favor of getting the technology out there and whenever time and resource permit address the design issue. The design of my department web site is not good, but the information is fine so we decided that is important to have the content to be updated and let the design wait until someone has the time to work on it.

Upload a file

Is it possible to upload a file as well?

Daniel

S5000052
Originally uploaded by carmenitec.

Xmas

S5000083
Originally uploaded by carmenitec.

This was at Xmas times where the kids in our block received presents.

Week 4 Design of Everyday Things

When I moved into this house about 15 years ago, this system was explained to me by the installer. It has the following features: alarm, interphone, radio, clock... but looking at it today, I noticed it has so many botoms that I started wonder if it did anything else. Actually it does not work anymore, the installer has moved away, the maker is in Canada and the closest support center is in Oakland. They are not sure what to charge me for the house call since they can't predict the time it would have the driver to cross the Bay-Bridge.

I tried to use the system today for this assignment and nothing worked, not even the radio. I made a digram of the system on the left. I got used to have it as part of the living-room decoration.

Week 3 - ISD discussion

The discussion on ISD and the history of learning was very good. The teams did a great job in sorting through very dense material and presenting it in an easy to follow presentation. The class answered and clarifies a lot of issues for me. Looking forward to more discussions.

Elluminate

I have chosen this as my project. So far so good. I have been able to install the software as a moderator and a participant. There is 1 small glitch and 1 annoyence.
The glitch is that the user is instructuted to cut and paste an internet address that has 2 lines. The problem is when an email is forwarded it puts >> (greater than ) in every line, which needs to be removed manually. This is obvious to a more experienced computer user, that is, after getting an error message!
The annoyance is that during installation the software does not detect the user's connection speed and asks what is the speed of the connection. Depending on the user and where it is connecting from it may not be so easy to tell if it is modem, DSL, cable, etc.
Using it was not so obvious so I have signed up for 2 live online training sessions for next week. I am going to try using it on saturday and try the recorded training session.
I am hoping to get this going fast so we I can invite everyone to participate.

Hello ITEC students

This is a great class. The discussions make me learn so much!
After reading this week's assignment I have been thinking quite a bit about education on demand. Hope to be able to discuss it in class