Criterion E Evaluation

Criterion A: Investigation

For the investigation we were supposed to look at the think quest websites, get ideas on what we would like on our websites such as what colors and images. We should consider the font of the writing and how many images or any other things we want to put on there. Then we were supposed to read three articles, cite them and describe what we thought about the different websites.

I did all the research we were supposed to do and considered all that I want to have on my website and its layout. I also read the three articles.

I think that the research and the process of considering what I want on my website would not need much improvement, but the descriptions of the articles could have been more profound. We also went on a website that teaches us how to use HMTL, so I learned almost everything I know now about HTML from there, but the learning process was quite frustrating, because it seemed like it goes on forever. HTML consists of so many things. On the website w3schools.com (where we learnt about HTML), in the basics of HTML there were 19 different pages to read about, and those were only the basics. Then there are advanced ones which are probably the same length as the basics, so if we had learnt about the advanced HTML and had more time our website would be more developed and professional.


Criterion B: Design

For design, we were meant to list the things we want to include in our website and then basically describe our website taking into account the layout, speed of loading, and everything that is important for a good website.

I did most of that but my descriptions were possibly a bit short. I think that I could have gone a bit deeper, because my descriptions were only on the navigation and what pages I will include in my website. I could have put more thought into what will be the content of each website. I considered about adding the girls football team rosters, but then realized that I would have to go around to each girl from the teams, which would take long, and ask them about their height, weight and any other factors I used for boys. Usually girls don’t give away their weight, so it would be inappropriate asking them about it.


Criterion C: Plan

For plan we were supposed to make a table listing the date, time, steps, materials, resources, and any changes.

I made the table and included everything that needed to be there, except for change, because I did not have any changes. We only added 2 more days after the final date to finish, but I finished already so I did not need to change anything. I think that I did not need to do anything differently if I were to make my plan again.


Criterion D: Create

For create we were supposed to start making our websites using Coffee cup, editing it using HTML, not already having everything done in HTML for us.

My website turned out to be a little bit different that what I had started out with. At first I started working on the overall layout of the website like the background of each page and any basic things I needed before I got into working on the content. I realized that I had still much to learn about HTML, because I faced many challenges while trying to link images, change the background color (which I realized was a picture in the end so I had to open it up in paint and edit it however I wanted it to be) and many other problems. I had to ask Ms. Wilson for help many times to get past these problems. I even received help from Ms. McDermott, because she used to work with HTML and was in the IT lab so I asked her. After I had the background finished, which took most of the time, I started working on the content. On the home page I put a picture from the basketball ACAMIS since it was one of the more recent ACAMIS we had. Then I had headlines and where the next ACAMIS’s will be taking place. In the headlines I described the games from this year’s soccer tournament, both boys and girls. That was the home page. Next I had the gallery. There were only images from the volleyball and basketball tournaments on the server so I could only include those. I added 12 pictures and linked them to their original pictures. I could not add anymore because the page is already quite slow when it loads and I didn’t know how to put the images into a folder or something that would make it load faster. It was too advanced for my first time experiencing HTML. My next page was the roster page, so I just made two tables, boy’s basketball and volleyball rosters took a screenshot and saved the tables as an image and put it on my website. I tried making the table using HTML but it wasn’t working and I could not find the problem and the button that makes the tables did not work. The last page was the contacts, where I just copied the contact information from the school website, so that did not take long. I wanted to make the background ISU colors, but it did not look good, so I made the background black and the text golden, which did not look too bad, so I kept it like that. That is basically my whole website. It took a lot of work linking all the images and was a huge challenge using HTML for my first time, but I think I managed working with it quite well.

I think that my work could be better, but then again it was my first time using HTML so I just had to experience all the basics and a little bit more advanced instead of just jumping into the complicated things like the professionals do, so I think I did a good job in the end.


Design specifications -

1. Main page with navigation to everything included there
2. Pictures
3. Roster for either each sport or one of them
4. Contact
5. Possibly videos
6. Schedule w/results

I had 4/6 of my design specifications in my actual website. I did not include videos, because I did not have any and I did not know anyone who had videos, so it would take a while asking all the people from ACAMIS if they took a video. I also did not include the schedules with results like I planned to do. I said the results for the soccer tournament, but originally I was planning to make a table with the list of games and the venue, but I forgot about that and decided to leave it out since it wasn’t that important.

Yesterday we judged each others websites on 3 criteria: visual appeal, content, and navigation. My average was 6.2/10 for the total and average for visual appeal was 6.2, content 6.4, and navigation 6.1. I received a bad score for navigation because all the pictures slowed down the speed of loading the website, but i did not know how to make it fast with keeping all the pictures there since we only covered the basic HTML.

Some of the comments that people made were that the roster was messy, only pictures and roster of boys, unproportional pictures, and that the website is slow. I do agree that the roster was quite messy, but i did not have any ideas on how to change it. I had to take a screenshot of the table, since making a table did not work using HTML and the automatic table making button did not work either.

I believe that this product did not have an impact on society, because we did not post it anywhere, so it is only on my computer and the only people who viewed it were people from my class, which leads me to believe that there was no impact, since no one really cares about sports in this class. If we do publish the websites online, then it might show some people who are maybe interested in ISU how the sports team is doing and the person would know what to expect from the sports.

Criterion C Plan

Criterion B Design Week 3

I only had one topic that i would like to do and that was a school sports page.

List of things i want to include

1. Main page with navigation to everything included there
2. Pictures
3. Roster for either each sport or one of them
4. Contact
5. Possibly videos
6. Schedule w/results

I think my design will be like a typical college sports page, with the colors of the jerseys in the background. I dont think i have a specific font i want to use so when we start creating the website i will check out different fonts and choose the one that fits best. I basically want my website to look something like this college website. It is from duke university and the link is http://www.goduke.com/.

So my sketch does have a main page and there are links to different pages. There will be pictures with recent new and headlines and there will also be a picture page. The roster will include the name, number, height and weight of each player on the team, except i havent yet decided if i should do it for every sport and if it should be boys and girls. I will decide depending on the time i have. I will put the contact to our school and contact for Mr. Ricketts on the website also if allowed. If i can find some videos from ACAMIS then i will post it on the website and if i will have access to the results of the games then i will put that there also.

Criterion A Websites

Our new unit is called websites and we will be creating our own individual website





For the investigation, so far we looked at the thinkquest websites, getting ideas on what we would like on our websites such as what colors and images. We should consider the font of the writing and how many images or any other things we want to put on there. The website that i enjoyed viewing the most was a website on leadership. I think that a website should include a test to see at what level you are at, because that is always fun, unless the test is very dull and unproductive.



I think that websites that are quite simple but not plain, yet not too many images of anything on there appeal to me the most. If the website has too many things on there then your eyes dont know where to start and it will all be very confusing before you look at all of it and instead of being happy with the site you will be frustrated and close it before you gain any kind of knowledge. If the website is too simple you would just by looking at it determine that it does not have anything interesting to offer to you so you would also close it right away.

For me i always like looking at sports web pages and anything else that i am passionate about. I especially dont like websites that have too much information and all you can see on the website are words. There have to be at some point some images, because it will just repel the person from viewing that website.



Week 2:

Article 1 -

Kyrnin, Jennifer. "Readers Respond: What Desgin Scares You?". 2010 About.com.
<http://webdesign.about.com/u/ua/webdesignbasics/what-design-scares-you.htm>

I think that this article is quite interesting. I never thought that the color or design of a website could actually scare someone. I only get worried when my AVG shows up saying that i have a virus or my computer freezes, basically anything that can have consequences to my computer, otherwise no. I found the comment that says something about the background being bright red with black text i think very weird. How can just the colors of a website scare you? Also similar to this was the white writing on a black background. I dont understand how this can scare anyone at all. I would use a different title for this website. A better fit would be what annoys you or somethign like that instaed of scare. Another example, when the people started talking about flash player, how it starts up on it own and slows down the whole internet. This does happen to me but i cant really say i get scared or annoyed, because i lived in zimbabwe where the internet speed was 25kb/s, so probably 20 times slower than the one i have in mongolia and 44 times slower than the one i have in czech republic. Due to that i became very patient.

Article 2 -

Shannon, Ross. "Accessibilitty". 2000-2010.
http://www.yourhtmlsource.com/accessibility/

I think that this website has some useful information for us, but some of it is logical. The website navigation paragraph was useless because it is logical and if you are making a website you will automatically consider the navigation, unless you have only one page, but you would still try to make it as simple as possible. I think that the 10 worst things you can do is useless because it doesnt even list the 10 worst things that you can do. I think that this website informs about the very basic things we need to know to create a website and then it goes on to the very complicated thigns like the html or the xhtml, where if you dont know what html is you cannot understand the xhtml. I think that it is good that the website considers mobile phones as browsers also, because i hate it when i go onto a website with my phone and it is too hard to read and takes way too long to load. They also give ways to check your website if it has no errors and suggest improvements, which is another positive side to the article. I just realized that the 10 things you can do does list the 10 things, except the website is badly layed out, because the links look like advertisements, which i learnt to ignore after a while because they got frustrating, so it was a bit harder for me to navigate through this website.

Article 3 -

Lynch, J. Patrick. " Sidebar A list of Reminders". Lynch and Horton.
http://webstyleguide.com/wsg3/1-process/5-list-of-reminders.html

This article seems to me more like a reminder of what we should consider while making our website, not actually learning about making websites. It basically describes what to watch out for and what to/ not to do while making you website. I dont understand the part under the title where it says "with apologies to...." some person. Out of that i understood that the author might have stolen some information from the person he is apologizing to, otherwise i have no other ideas.

Criterion E Evaluation

Criterion A: Investigation
For investigation we were supposed to research what wiki's are all about, who creates them, why we would use them and who edits them. We also were supposed to state what our task was and why it is important for us to do this task. Then we were supposed to research about Wikipedia and then give our opinions on if we think it is reliable or not. After that we were meant to pair p with a person we did not yet work with and then create a method of finding inaccuracies on Wikipedia and then test our method

I believe that i answered all the questions we were meant to answer and posted them on my blog, including the research that i made. I worked with Urangoo on the method and testing the method.

I think that i did all the research that was required and the method was quite decent also. I could have found a different article where there were more inaccuracies, because all Urangoo and I found was an old population that was not accurate enough. The rest was correct information


Criterion B: Design
For design, we were supposed to post the article we were going to edit on our blog. We should have highlighted all the information we were going to edit and research properly using a variety or reliable sources to support our editing of the article. After gathering the research we should have cited our sources and made our design specifications list.

I believe i did all the required things we needed to do, except instead of posting the article we will change on our blog, we edited first and posted our edited article on our blog only.

I think that we should have read everything before we started doing it so we would follow the instructions and that's about it.


Criterion D: Design
For criterion D we were supposed to show our edited article to ms. Wilson to approve of, sign the responsibility agreement, after ms. Wilson checked the article we edit it on Wikipedia including our citations

We did the editing already with ms .Wilson's consent and we edited the article properly with our sources there.

I don't think that there was anything i could change or improve upon.

Evaluation:
Our edited part of the article did not stay on, but then we were unsure if we cited it properly or saved it properly so we re-edited the article today and we will see next class if it was changed back to its original information. The editing of the article should not have an impact on society, maybe a foreigners perception of Mongolia, thinking that its a more developed country now that it has a higher population, unlike the mistake that wikipedia had, saying it was around 2.5 million, even though it is over 3 million now.
Today i checked the wikipedia page again and our edited population was still there. We must have made some kind of mistake with the citation or the wikipedia editors disagreed without checking our source.

Criterion A Investigation Wikiality

Today we began a new unit called Wikiality. We are going correct an article that has been posted on wikipedia to basically see how reliable it is.


Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia. It was created by people and it is used as an encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone. There are people that look after wikipedia so you cannot just write random and fractious things on the website. It is important for us to learn about wikipedia and try out this project, because most of the students use wikipedia as their main research website, even though most of the teachers think it is unreliable. By doing this project we will see how quickly and effectively the website will be changed, if needed to. If in the end we believe that wikipedia is unreliable to use for school research we will stop using it, but if it turns out to be reliable for school we will be able to use it and if teachers say it isnt, we have proof that it is.


Wikipedia gets its information from published and other reliable internet sources. It also gets its information from any person who wants to but the person needs to have some sources that are genuine.



Anyone can edit the aritcle, but the wikipedia personnel have the final say on what goes on or not. I think that wikipedia is quite reliable, maybe not for getting all the information for research and being the only website, but for starting the research, getting an undertsanding on what you will be later on researching about. I think that usually if someone posts an article on wikipedia, they usually put their sources on there from where they got their information from. If the information on an article is very random or out of place, logically we should notice it, but if there is something that is hard to prove wrong, then we cannot know unless someone fixes it or we find information that differs from the one on wikipedia.



How do you make a wiki?

To make a wiki you go one the website http://www.pbworks.com/, where you go on sign up. After signing up you post anything on your page that you want to, but anyone can edit it if you choose the option while signing up. It is very easy to create this page, you just need to sign up like creating an email. For signing up, you just need to put basic information that you put everywhere when you sign up, and los of it is optional. You must put the email.



What material on your wiki was changed? Why? How does that feel?

We had very small changes on our article we posted. I think only the names were changed from guy names to girl names. I didnt get a chance to look at all the changes that were made, because Kyu changed it back to the original article we had. The article was changed, because we allowed everyone to do changes on our article and everyone to look at it. I didnt really mind the changes, but if it was an article that i really enjoyed doing and cared about and worked hard to create so i could educate people on the topic, i would get angry, because people dont appreciate decent information that is free of charge and is out there.



How can the owner of the wiki delete changes or go back to an older version?

The owner just needs to go to the page history. There will be buttons you can click on saying view changes and delete. Therefore, you can just click delete and it will all go back to its original version.



How do you think wikis could be used?

I think that these wikis could be used for many reasons. Some for advertising a band, product or anything they need to advertise, it could also be used for educational purposes, just used as a blog for people to write their life story or anything they want to write on there. You could also post up a rough draft of an essay you need for class and ask if anyone could proofread it and give you some ideas. The problem with this is that people might have different intentions with the rough draft. Some might want to mess it up completely, some might want to help you, some could maybe steal your idea on whatever it is you are writing about. It can be used for chatting purposes, where you can meet new people and make new friends, but it is not so convenient for this. You could just use a chat or something like facebok or hi5. You can also use it for surveys, support groups, debates, coolaboration on a written work.



Inaccuracies on Wikipedia

1. Research the topic of the article title


2. Compare answers and see which one has the most common answer


3. Verify/find out if there is anything that does not correspond


4. If there is something that corresponds, verify the validity of your research source


5. If your research/ resources is valid, then the wikipedia entry has an error or inaccuracy

Test of method

Our group worked very hard to find inaccuracies on Wikipedia. So we came up with special plans such as starting up with some information we learnt in the past. WE decided to edit Mongolia’s population, which was either old or inaccurate. This is the page we have edited:

"Mongolia." Wikipedia. Wikipedia, Web. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolia.

On this page, we particularly edited the population estimate of 2009 and the population of 2000. Basing on the information on CIA world fact book the population of Mongolia was 3,041.142, while Wikipedia said it was around 2,700,000. The source for the CIA page is:

"Mongolia." CIA The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency, Web. 16 Feb 2010.


Edited part of article

Population
- July 2009 estimate 3,041,142 [3] (140th)
- 2000 census 2,407,500[4]
- Density 1.75/km2 (236th)
5.03/sq mi

Desgin specifications
- Information from reliable source
- Edited properly
- Cited properly

Criterion E Evaluation

Test evaluation:
Brooke
1- Kind of
2- because she is a tenager living in mongolia
3- Not that often
4- yes
5- 3
6- informative, clear
7- kyus voice was painful

Ha Young
1-Yes
2-Because i live in mongolia and am a teenager
3-Rarely
4-I think so
5-5
6-Imformative, funny
7-Could have added music

Elise
1-Yes kind of
2-Most things we said are true
3-Not that often, sometimes
4-No
5-4.5
6-Not that long, spoke clearly, interesting topic
7-Could be louder

Sonya
1- No
2- Dosnt go on dates
3- Not that often
4- No
5- 2
6-Shorter, realistic, flowed well
7- louder, repetition

Bilegt
1- Yes
2- Answers were true about mongolia
3- Often
4- I dont know
5- 5
6- Sound quality, entertaining, isnt boring/dragging
7- Not as entertaining as previous trial podcasts

Test Questions:

1. Can you relate to our podcast
2. Why do you think it relates/ doesnt relate to you
3. How often do you find yourself in this situation
4. Has the situation gotten any better
5. Rate your empathy to our podcast from 1-7
6. What was goo about our podcast
7. What was bad about our podcast

Criterion A: Investigation
For the investigation, we were supposed to investigate how to make a podcast, listen to some podcast samples and obtain knowledge on what a good podcast is, and check some podcast websites where we can post our final podcast.
I did the research we were supposed to do, we all listened to at least three podcasts, but i think i only listened to one very long one. I think it was about 90 minutes long so that should compensate for it. We looked at some podcast websites, but in the end we decided to make it into a video and post it on our blog (Me and Kyu), because we had to make an rss feed, which was too complicated.
I think i could have done a bit more thorough research and maybe listened to more podcasts than one so i can see what i didn't like about the other ones. I think that i researched how to make a podcast enough, because it isn't that hard, there are only about 3 steps to making a podcast.

Criterion B: Design
For design, we were supposed to make 3 different designs of what to include in a podcast and also make one practice one to see what we will need to improve upon in our final podcast recording.
Me and Kyu made our 3 designs and before that the practice podcast we did separately. I wrote a script for it and it was about alcohol. I think that it was good, but the sound and quality wasn't that great.
I think our 3 designs were quite good and i could have made a better script for the practice podcast, but that is irrelevant to the final product, because we were just supposed to see and realize what a good podcast needs to have.

Criterion C: Plan
For the plan we were supposed to make a table with all the dates and what we were going to do on that date. Basically the plan should include the date, time spent, steps, resources, and changes. Mine and Kyus plan was similar and very long, because we decided to make 4 trial podcasts before we got to out final one.

Criterion D: Create
For create we were supposed to make our final podcast, bearing in mind all the qualities a good podcast has like the quality of the sound, background music and many other things.
Kyu and I had made in total 5 different podcasts, in which one of them was our final one. The time for each podcast decreased each time we did another trial. It went from 13 minutes to 11 minutes to 9 minutes to 8 minutes and the final one was around 8 minutes also. We were also supposed to write a script for the podcast, so we wrote the introduction and the conclusion, because we interviewed some people to help us make the podcast and we were just going to discuss their answers, so it wouldn't be so good to write a script saying exactly what we are going to discuss so we just left it for improvisation. We also we supposed to publish the podcast anywhere on the Internet like a podcast website or on our blog or on YouTube if it was a video file.
According to our test, people didn't relate to our podcast extremely, but there was some small relation, so we could have put more passion and relation into it to improve it, but i think that we put enough effort into making it since we made 4 trials before the final one and got feedback on each of those.
Our podcast through its greatness and perfection did not impact the society at all, maybe annoy some classmates for having to listen to it so many times....haha....the real answer is that our podcast gave insight to some adults, maybe even parents on what the situation is in Mongolia on dating and how their children feel. This also might have helped the parents understand what their children are going through if they are depressed or feel sad, because what they expected from their date did not actually happen. Then, maybe me and kyu will decide to make a podcast on "How to help your child in depression from dating".

Evaluation of our product
I think that our product was quite decent. We put in a lot of effort, except our test didn't show that people would relate to it, but most of them said they found it funny and interesting, so i would say it went pretty well. The average answer to how much empathy they feel to our podcast was 4/7, which is more than fifty percent so it isn't that bad. Most of them answered yes to can you relate to our podcast and the reason was they are teenagers living in Mongolia. The situation according to most of the people has not gotten any better here. The good things about our podcast were that it was funny, interesting and entertaining. Some bad things were that it could have been louder, it wasn't as entertaining as the previous trials, because we had to cut some parts out to not make it as long as it was the first time. Also, someone thought that we could have added music to the background to make it more enjoyable.