Fundamentals of IMD

Zoho.com has just released their new Zoho Notebook web-based application, which has very easy to use features for adding a wide variety of content into a “notebook” type of interface with pages. A 3-min video offers a good tutorial and introduction to the product. The Notebook product allows you to add audio, video, html and text to the page, and it will accept web based assets that can be moved around on the page freely to organize the information your put on the page.

The free product is one of many Zoho applications that have been developed as desktop apps all available as web based tools. Sign up for your account at Zoho.com.

Next week we will spend the whole class working on building an HTML page for your new domain. As preparation for the class it will help you a lot if you are new or inexperienced with HTML to spend time working through a tutoral before class. This will make our class time together much more valuable.

1. Two different tutorials are offered – choose the one that you relate to best, but not both of them. HTML Dog and w3schools are the sites and in each do the beginning HTML (except for tables and frames) and the Beginning CSS tutorials.

http://htmldog.com

http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_examples.asp

There are also “text” oriented tutorials in W3 schools if you prefer, but this method of seeing and being able to change the code is very experiential and useful to helping  you learn what is going on.

2. Get started with your personal blog that you uploaded to your domain site. This blog is for you to define and hopefully use over time. Decide what you want its focus to be, and plan how you will work with it, and if possible create a schedule for when you will work on your blog. The “How to be Heard” article (handout) by Stephen Downes is excellent for helping you think through this process.

If you are not yet installed or not sure about working with Wordpress, write up your plans and add to your class weblog as a response. Also, if you want to learn more about your Wordpress blog, James Farmer of Edublogs has created 4 video tutorials to help you along. The tutorials are located at:

http://edublogs.org/videos 

Seneca’s weblog has be re-created and is now working.

1. Purchase and establish a web hosting account. (If you have any problems, let me know by email.) Information about hosts in the article below this one.

2. Read the Robinson article: “A Recipe for Learning Web Design” and respond with a post in  your weblog by Sunday Noon. The post should be your ideas and feelings about what was stated and not just repeating what the author said.

3. After Sunday, respond to at least two other people in the class by commenting on their post about the article. Comment to two different people from last week!

I will email everyone with corrections to the class list of email/blog addresses, and the addition of Quest’s information.

Patrick Brewer        http://www.dragonpjb.net                                Web Host
http://www.dragonpjb.net/wordpress         WordPress site
dragonpjb                                                            del.ici.ous username
email
Angela Edwards        http://www.ellashere.com                                Web Host
http://www.ellashere.com/wp-blog                Wordpress
ella07                                                                    del.icio.us username
ellafireavatar@yahoo.com                                email
Daniel Livingston      http://drlivingstonsafari.com                         Web Host
http://drlivingston2.uniblogs.org                  Wordpress
Piptrader9                                                          del.ici.ous username
drlivingston3@tx.rr.com                                  email
Eric Lutts                    http://www.maniamedia.net                            Web Host
http://www.maniamedia.net/wordpress       Wordpress
el0611                                                                   del.icio.us username
elo611@stu.aii.edu                                             email
Michael Neill               http://www.mkndesigns.com                          Web Host
http://www.mkndesigns.com/wordpress    Wordpress
huffa5                                                                   del.icio.us username

This weblog will serve to provide class news, changes, and review of assigments. Please log in and sign up as a user and check it at least weekly. Your comments are always welcome.

As we explore the various issues and experiences of interactive media you will be learning to use a variety of social software applications for communication with class members as well as collaborative efforts with others in the IMD program. You are encouraged to ask questions and contribute suggestions to make your learning experience as personalized and useful to you as possible. The more you explore and seek answers to your questions, the more you will learn and experience in the process. You are not alone in the learning process. Other class members and other IMD students along with the entire IMD faculty are here to work together to make your experiences as successful as possible. I hope you enjoy the experiences you are beginning!