Those Links I Promised

Here are a couple links to the sites i have being useing for the Sketchbook

DeviantART

Worth 1000

Written Work / Pagemaker

This week has being challenging, I had to get most of the written work out of the way yesterday, this includes all of the first 4 tasks of the assignment, ill admit, I haven’t completely done them all yet but I have got most of it done. I have also started to put my references into a separate document; I will be putting these into the final version of my work.

I also had my first tutorial with John Munday, we went over my personal statement and it seems that I need to elaborate on a few things, I don’t disagree with him, reading through it again shows that some of it doesn’t make sense so I will be doing the redraft for personal study. We also went over the email Steve sent out, john asked my how may times have I checked my mail this week, truth is, if I'm online I will check my email every 30 minutes, I got told not to do that, so I’ve been told to check them regularly, not as regularly as that, confused?... I know I am.

Today Steve taught us how to use Adobe PageMaker; this is the application I will be using to make my site template. It will also be used to create the remaining 4 tasks of the assignment. This is also the same software we will be using to print out the entire assignment once it is written up.

At first Steve gave a lecture on it and naturally I took notes, then he asked the class to follow the instructions and create a newspaper article. I was rather simple to use, and even though he told us how to resize boxes, which we all knew before, I still wrote it in my Sketchbook, just for future reference.

Ill admit though, this afternoon the entire class including myself were unprepared for our seminar groups, and Steve didn’t take to it well, we all ended up finding out about the web accessibility points. We didn’t task about them much In the seminar but I have been told that I am not leaving any comment to all of you, so you may be receiving a comment form me very soon.

My scrapbook is coming along rather well; I’ve found some great inspiration and also some humor which is always good, ill post a few links up that I have used later on this week.

Overall it’s been a good week, I’ve learned a how to use Page maker, which is the most important thing for this assignment.

This is what I will be doing throughout the rest of the week:

• *Complete all written work in word
• *Rewrite Personal Statement
• *Play With PageMaker
• *Develop Scrapbook
• *Create Draft templates for site
• *Research Jakob Nielson
• *Take notes on Web accessibility

Time sheet troubles

I’m in a spot of bother with Steve at the moment, I was in my first tutorial with him today and he noticed I haven’t being filling in my time sheets properly, I was supposed to fill in the “Production Schedule” at the beginning of last week, and I had only filled in the first box.

Steve said I was cheating and told me to write about it in my “Online Learning Journal” and from now on to write it in at the beginning of the Assignment. He also sent out an email last week and we agreed to reply to it with 48 hours, I checked my emails everyday except Friday night and Saturday. And guess what, he sent it Friday night. Typical....

Anyway, we were given a library tour on Monday, well when I say a tour I mean sitting at computers and briefly viewing the policies and being told how the printer works, this is all good information, but we were told it would last for an hour. In fact it lasted exactly 14 minutes, so I was rather confused about that, as was everyone else.

Someone from the financial department came in today, I explained to her that I had sent off my letter to them and had not yet received my grant. I'm now starting to get worried about this, so I have being told to phone up and ask them when I will get it, kind of push them along, so that is in my to-do list.

Throughout the week I have being rather busy, I had to go back and edit my “Project Goals” because I didn’t feel that some of them were relevant. I also have to edit the “Target audience”, and it is still ongoing.

Although fortunately, I have completed most of the “Delivery Requirements” task, I still need to find statistics to backup my assumption of what percentage of people aged 45 – 60 use the internet and I also have to research scripting languages like XHTML and CSS.

At the moment I have wrote approximately 1000 words in the assignment, and I’m not even half way through it yet so I’m rather pleased about that.

Conclusion

Overall I believe I have done well this week and think that the punishment I received off Steve was uncalled for… Only kidding.

My main targets for the rest of the week are as follows:

• Complete the first three tasks of the assignment
• Develop Scrapbook
• Complete weekly time sheet
• Complete SWOT Analysis
• Develop skills in Photoshop and Dreamweaver
• Phone Student Finance

Big thanks to Craig Burgess

I recently visited Craig Burgess’s site and found this link, I think it will come in hand for all of us.

Thanks Craig

A new course, a new assignment, or two....

This week we received our first assignments (which are combined into one). I didn’t know what to expect for it but I feel that as a first assignment, it seems fairly straight forward, although I was surprised to how much time we were given to complete it, and found it was very generous. I was worried at first about the amount of writing we had to do, the assignment has to be between 1.5k to 2.5k words. I am still worried, but now im worried that I will go over the given amount.

The assignment itself is to create a website plan of a famous Britton, we were given a list of around 200 people, but I immediately found who I wanted to the assignment about.

I chose the most famous Slapstick artist ever; Charlie Chaplin, I chose him because he is one of the funniest people of all time and his shenanigans have always made me laugh.

I also had my first seminar today, id never been to one before, so I dint know what to expect. We were split into groups of 4, and were given last years sketchbooks to look through, I was looking at the sketches that they had done for the site template.

Im so relived that the sketches aren’t as artistic as I though because, well, I am terrible at drawing. We also went over the first part of our assignment which was the goals, it was good to see what goals other people had done, but it made me feel small, knowing the fact that it took me ages think of a goal of my own.

There is a lot of research involved in this task, and this morning I was struggling to find some of my own website goals, and it took me longer than I thought, which is never good and I'm still not happy with the list I have, so I will have to do more research into this when I get home.

The best part of this week for me is probably receiving the first assignment, because I enjoy challenges, and over the summer it has being very boring, I feel it’s good to be “back in the saddle” so to speak.

My targets for the rest of the week are:

1. Think of more “Goals” for the first part of the assignment
2. Complete the “Target Audience” section of the Assignment
3. Continue “Scrapbook” Work
4. Start “Delivery Requirements”

Personal Statement

Where I’ve come from

My interest in computer media first started in high school, in year 10 I chose to do a course called GNVQ ICT. This course gave me a tasted of how to use the internet efficiently; this course also allowed me to develop my creativity skill, not in website design but in the form of leaflets and posters.

After high school I went to Wakefield College and join the GCE in Applied ICT course, this was situated on Margaret Street. At first, I tried to apply for the higher course which was a BTEC National Diploma, but I was unable to get into the course because I didn’t obtain a grade C in my maths and English at high school, fortunately I managed to pass both subjects at grade C this year.

During my course I learned many things, how to set up a network, how to take apart and build a PC, but I feel the most important topic we covered was how to create a website. Unfortunately the software that the college used was Microsoft FrontPage, so I felt i couldn’t make a website to my full potential. Our work had to be submitted in eBook form so we learned how to make the links work on every page, it took some people alot longer to figure this out that others.

Where I’m going

In 10 years time, I see myself doing website design as a profession, I would also like to own my own business, go freelance and develop websites for a variety of companies.
I would also like to repair computers and do this as well as web development; I feel it’s good to do a variety of things rather than doing one constant job.
One of my other interests has being building computers; it’s something I really enjoy, so I hope to maybe go into business on my own or perhaps with a friend.


How I’m going to get there

I’m going to use the course to get me where I want to go, and I will also develop my skills at home in my spare time, learning new things with all different pieces of software.
I have never used most of the software that is used in this course so I feel it will be a good challenge to get to grips with them.

I will also search for artistic inspiration everywhere I go, perhaps even buy a camera, because inspiration can be found everywhere and I need to find it to develop different styles, so every piece of work I do doesn’t look the same.

I also think that learning code will be an advantage, the only programming codes I know at the moment are VB and HTML. I would like to learn more code languages because as well as the designing part of the course.
I feel knowing the code behind it is just as important, I will also learn how to manage my time properly; this course is going to test my time keeping, I intent to work to the best of my ability throughout the course.