Technical Development Project - complete

Hi everyone,

As you may know, my technical development project was to use Dreamweaver to create a personal and professional website. Since I am presenting in class this week, I decided to finish my website today so that I had time to work on my presentation for Thursday.

Here is a summary of my thoughts on my technical development project:
While doing this project, I found it difficult to remember and apply new things I learned from one work session to the next since I worked on it mostly on the weekends only. I did find it fun to explore new tools in Macromedia Dreamweaver that Contribute does not have. While the NetG classes were helpful, I felt as though there were some things that I should learn more about before trying to incorporate them into my website, such as CSS. I found that using the blog and asking questions to people who are more experienced than I am was very helpful. I received great tips to enhance my website by using the blog. All things considered, I feel like I have learned enough about Macromedia Dreamweaver to make a functional website. For the upcoming year, I will work on the accessibility of the website and try to streamline the HTML so that it’s cleaner than it is now and will optimize it by incorporating style sheets.

Here is the final product: http://grove.ufl.edu/~kkenned/pages/kathryn_kennedy.htm

Technical Professional Development Learning Contract

Hi everyone,

Here is my Technical Professional Development Learning Contract. Thanks to Jade for developing the wiki for those of us learning Dreamweaver for this project!

http://grove.ufl.edu/~kkenned/lc_techdev.pdf

Also, I figured out how to use grove for a webserver (it's free for UF grad students and faculty) so if anyone wants some help in doing this, it's really easy, and I would be more than happy to get you on your feet.

Thanks,
Kathryn

Change in technical development project

After discussing this with a number of people, I have decided to change my technical development project. Previously, I wanted to learn HTML and CSS so that I could make my own website. But I have been encouraged to learn a software instead of having to learn straight HTML. So I am going to learn how to use Dreamweaver and will have a website as my proof of learning the software. I have been told that with its splitscreen capabilities, I would pick up some HTML along the way. Does anyone know the best place to get web space (I don't want to use the library server for my course and personal webpages nor do I want to use the grove account.)? Thanks for everyone's input!

Kathryn

Technical Professional Development Learning Contract

Broad Statement of Goal (Must include improving technical expertise within an authentic context):
I have always used web design software, such as Macromedia Contribute, to do web pages, but I have never formerly used HTML. My goal for the semester is to learn HTML in conjunction with cascading style sheets (CSS). I will demonstrate this new knowledge by creating a website.

Steps to take to achieve goal:
1. Get a Grove account to use as practice space (9/11/06).
2. Read book about HTML and CSS (9/16/06-9/29/06).
3. Take netg courses online while reading book (9/16/06-9/29/06).
4. Develop website (9/17/06-11/1/06).
5. Present website to class (11/2/06).

HTML and CSS

The real coding part of web development is something that I have neglected. I have always relied on Macromedia Contribute to help me with my page design. That is the easy way out and doesn't allow you to do as many neat things as hands-on coding does, so I would like to learn HTML in conjunction with CSS for the "Technical Professional Development" part of the course. I will be posting my learning contract for this tomorrow.

In need of some RSS/XML help...

At work on Friday, I set up a website that I am using as sort of my web design playground/sandbox. It is where I will be trying my new design skills as I learn them. I was setting up an RSS feed on this website to see if I could do it, and I was able to get the channel set up and subscribed to the feed using my bloglines account. But every time I tried to set up an item on the XML document, it wouldn't show up in the bloglines account while it did update within the code on the XML document. Has anyone tried this before, and if so, could I send you my code to see what I am doing wrong? I spent about four hours on Friday on this, and by the end of the day, I was ready to throw my computer out the window. Thanks for any and all help! :)